Michelle Rhee has certainly landed on her feet. Rhee stepped down as chancellor of the Washington, DC, public school system in October after the mayor who hired her was tossed out by the voters, a defeat for which she says her policies are to blame. Rhee, who spent a couple months mulling her future, has launched an education reform organization called StudentsFirst.org with a goal of attracting 1 million members and $1 billion within a year.
It’s an audacious bid to capitalize on her near-rock star status in education. When she started as the DC schools chancellor in 2007, she closed almost 24 schools, fired close to 200 teachers, slashed administrative spending, and pushed for a pay structure that rewarded teachers for how well their students performed on standardized tests.
She became a darling of the Obama administration and was featured in 2008 on the cover of Time, broom in hand, under the headline “How to Fix America’s Schools.” She later was featured in the education documentary Waiting for Superman.
Her stature since leaving the DC schools is, if anything, greater, at least in media circles. Newsweek gives Rhee its cover this week, and inside it lets her write her own story, which is basically a long pitch for her StudentsFirst organization.
“The truth is that despite a handful of successful reforms, the state of American education is pitiful, and getting worse,” Rhee writes. “Spending on schools has more than doubled in the last three decades, but the increased resources haven’t produced better results.”
(Memo to Boston Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson: Rhee says trying to build consensus on school closings is impossible. “Would people really have been happier with the results if we had done it more slowly?” she asks in her Newsweek article.)
Oprah Winfrey recently interviewed Rhee on her show, or perhaps I should say worshipped her. “I believe that Michelle Rhee is one of the people who can turn this dire situation around,” Winfrey said. “I am behind you. We are behind you.”
Winfrey at one point turns to the camera and says she has 10 million people watching her show and urged at least a million of them to sign up for Rhee’s organization. “I’m not going to cry, but I could. God bless you,” Winfrey said.
–BRUCE MOHL
HEALTH CARE
Doctors are preparing for a new way of caring for – and being paid by – patients, WBUR reports.
One fringe benefit of Caritas Christi Health Care’s sale to a private equity firm: The hospitals’ loss of their charitable exemption means big property tax payments to stressed municipal budgets.
Is the bone marrow registry that’s part of the UMass Memorial Health Care system an organization run amok? WBUR asks.
A Florida judge signals he’s sympathetic to 20 states’ claims that a federal health care mandate is unconstitutional, but he appears less concerned with the plaintiff states’ Medicaid costs.
The maker of Newport cigarettes has been ordered to pay a landmark $182 million judgment, NECN reports.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT
The state’s prevailing wage law has boosted Peabody’s trash-hauling contract by $700,000, the Salem News reports.
In an editorial, the News says the way liquor licenses are distributed in Massachusetts makes no sense.
An off-color comment at a holiday party results in the firing of the chairman of Newburyport’s housing authority, but the chairman suspects City Hall was maneuvering against him long before he started spewing salty epithets.
Sitting up and taking nourishment after his second trip to the hospital in two weeks, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino travels to Brighton to sit down with Emily Rooney on “Greater Boston” to talk about his and the city’s health and future in all respects.
Some heel stole the bronze footprints leading to the larger-than-life-sized 10-foot statue of former larger-than-life Mayor Kevin White at Faneuil Hall, police confirm for the Dorchester Reporter.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
California sets the rules for its cap-and-trade regime.
The Obama administration unveils new guidelines for large-scale solar plants on public lands in the West.
EDUCATION
The Mansfield teachers union has ordered a work slow-down to protest slow progress on contact talks, but not everybody has jumped on board.
The kids are reading more today, but they’re reading junk, says Nicole Russell in The American Spectator.
The North Andover School Committee approves a 20-minute later start time for the high school, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Globe op-ed columnist Larry Harmon has high praise for Boston School Committee members who voted for painful, but necessary, school closings and lots of scorn for “blow-ins from fringe political groups” whose frequent outbursts disrupted Wednesday night’s meeting.
Meanwhile, families whose children will be displaced by the school closings are weighing their options as they begin the search for a new school for next year, the Globe reports.
BEACON HILL
Brian McGrory says it’s scandalous that House and Senate leaders will avail themselves of the donated services of a high-priced Boston lawyer to help them deal with a federal subpoena related to the probation department scandal.
Goldman Sachs has withdrawn as the bond banker for MassHousing and the MBTA. Bloomberg reports Goldman’s former government bonding chief in Boston, Neil Morrison, may have exposed the firm to pay-to-play violations by volunteering on the gubernatorial campaign of state Treasurer Tim Cahill.
ECONOMY
CommonWealth reports that the lure of the state’s film tax credit may be fading, while the Globe says John Dukakis, son of the former governor, has been recruited to help plot the state film office’s mission.
Boston and Cambridge don’t make the cut of the Brookings Institution’s list of the top 20 cities leading the US out recession – a fact that puts them behind Pittsburgh, Rochester, and Buffalo.
CommonWealth‘s Paul McMorrow, writing on the Globe op-ed page, bemoans the new heights NIMBYism is being taken to in a Cape Cod cottage kerfuffle.
WASHINGTON
The tax cut is a done deal and on its way to the president’s desk. Only two Bay State House members, Bill Delahunt and Niki Tsongas, gave it a thumbs-up.
The Wall Street Journal breaks down the winners and losers in the great tax fight of 2010. (Spoiler alert: Wall Street Journal readers are among the big winners.)
Scott Brown now says he’ll support a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy if it’s brought to a vote, joining with three other GOP senators who have made the same pledge. The announcement is good news for those working to end the policy, bad news for those hoping Brown would cast his lot with national right-wingers and inexplicably imperil his 2012 reelection chances.
President Obama takes a page out of Gov. Deval Patrick’s playbook: Voters like the president personally even if they aren’t enthusiatic about his policies or leadership style. First Read via Political Wire.
NATIONAL POLITICS
Our own Sen. Scott Brown has the most cash on hand of all the 33 senators whose terms are up in 2012, according to US News & World Report. Brown’s $6 million war chest nearly equals the total of the next two on the list.
Retiring Chicago Mayor Richard Daley surpasses his father’s record as the city’s longest serving mayor. Chicago Sun Times via Political Wire.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Immigrant populations increase in Metro West, including gains in “non-traditional” immigrant havens such as Milford.
TRANSPORTATION
Lawmakers and security experts argue that the airport security system needs a complete overhaul to target specific suspicious individuals rather than every passenger.
Meanwhile, some infectious passengers on the national “Do Not Board” list manage to travel anyway.
COURTS
Now where will retirees go during the day? Starting next month, Quincy District Court will live stream its proceedings over the Web thanks to a $250,000 Knight Foundation grant to WBUR.
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