Access Today The Bee Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes On The Nation's Worst School District Engineered By Richard Whitmire Compiled As EText

Would You Be Willing To Do

What would you be willing to do if things were so out of control that nobody dared do anything
What a tragedy it is that this book was even made possible in the wealthiest country on the planet.
Having attended the second worst school district, Los Angeles's, everything in this book hit home, It is unbelievable that such low standards are maintained by the very people who claim to be fighting for the students, namely, the Teachers Union, Politicians, and the Teachers themselves.


The condition of the schools that Michelle Rhee was thrown into was abominable, but worst, the excuse for this most subtle form of racism was that the parents and students were to blame.
For the mostly black population, the district's party line being that the parents were uncaring and the students were incorrigible, was patently racist, Rhee proved them wrong and brought down the wrath of an entire system designed for failure,

The Bee Eater consists of three parts, The first part deals with who Michelle Rhee is, where she came from, and what her core values are, Clearly, she has always felt that the students were all teachable and how passionate she is about education,

The second part deals with her rapid success as an educator and administrator culminating with her appointment as the Chancellor of the Washington DC School District.
The battles she fought were primarily against the Teacher's Union machine that had allowed standards to exist that even a third world country would not accept.
She must have known that her reforms must be sweeping and deep because her opposition would be relentless,

I was very impressed with her focus and determination in getting rid of teachers who did nothing, principals who allowed chaos, and administrators who didn't even know how to keep records.
The amount of progress and new levels of competence she achieved in just a few years is proof that the excuses ginned up by the real problems were bogus.


On the downside, part three deals with the criticisms of how these reforms were enacted, More than fair, I feel, were the many charges leveled at her by the people who wanted Rhee out at any cost, Of course, the 'racist' chant, which was more a projection by people who had nothing substantive to say,

Some charges do stick, particularly where Rhee made decisions that were a bit too radical, When she refused to back off of the Hardy Middle School move, or maybe too hasty with Dunbar High School, many of her detractors were given plenty of ammo to take her down in the next mayoral race.
That last third of the book is not sunshine and roses there are some very important flaws in Rhee's approach and basic character that set her up for a short lived tenure.


We all have faults, and many are hard to excuse, but on the positive side few people have the kind of determination and passion for providing children the best possible education as Rhee.
Her future as a school reformer has just begun and this book offers a hopeful vision for parents and students tired of being blamed for an institutional failure.


Read this book, I couldn't put it down, I read this book for a few reasons, First, Im insanely curious about Rhee, I actively seek out articles about her or interviews with her and followed her movement as DC schools chancellor closely, Coming from a family of educators, I find her to be a fascinating public figure, The second reason I wanted to read this book is that despite my interest in Rhee, I still didnt feel knowledgeable enough about heror her policiesto make a judgment call on the work she did during her term as chancellor.


Heres the good about this book: its laid out well and organized in such a way as to boil down the not insignificant amounts of information about

Rhee into approachable, easy to understand chapters.
Whitmire did an admirable job of staying out of the weeds and focusing more specifically on the broad strokes of Rhees decisionmaking, The book also provides a nonDC resident some fairly good insight as to the major struggles in the education systemstruggles that are echoed atlarge in other areas of city politics.
Whitmire explains the socioeconomic divides helped along by DCs geography in a way that even a local may not fully grasp, and thats helpful to remember throughout the book as a major context to the reforms Rhee was trying to put into place.
Additionally, although I knew most of what Whitmire discussed in the book, there were absolutely some moments that took me by surprise, The multifaceted nature of Rhees tenure made it difficult to sort through all the information in realtime, and with the benefit of a year or two years of research, Whitmire has helped bring issues to the surface that were probably never touched on by the local media.


Butthats the good, Unfortunately, theres a major bad problem with the book, Luckily, the author himself addresses it in the forward, which is to say, that he mentions he was very close to the issue and in the process of seeking Rhees cooperation with the book he got it, he also became a Big Rhee Fan.
That bias is evident throughout, and although he tries to present legitimate criticisms of Rhee that led to her eventual ousting later in the book, Whitmires bias makes the entire chapter come off as defensive or excuseladen rather than objective.


However, in the end, I still got what I wanted out of the book, I got an indepth portrait of Rhee both personal and professional and feel more educated about the work she did as DC schools chancellorenough to maybe discuss it without feeling like Im grasping at straws or simply pulling random quotes from Post articles or NPR interviews.
Whether you love her, hate her or know nothing about her, one cant deny the fact that she brought attention to many issues that would have otherwise stayed buriedboth in DC and on a national scale.
Its clear there were missteps during her term, but she also sparked positive education reform and got people talking about issues and looking for ways to solve problems.
Whatever your personal opinion, shes someone worth reading about, The problem with reviewing biographies/memoirs is that I sometimes feel like, "What am I supposed to review here The person's life or the writing" I try to do a combination of both.
I'm saying this only because this is my zillionth biography/memoir of the year and I feel sometimes it's tricky as to what to say.
I digress

The information/story of this book is definitelystars, easily, The writing is ridiculously bad, The author is supposedly a journalist, and while the information, as I said, is topnotch, he has this bizarre, snide voice that creeps in at various times that made me absolutely CRAZY.
And his worship of Michelle Rhee is often eyeroll inducing, His repetitiveness is irritating too I could describe the photo of her on the cover of Time even if I've never seen it, he mentions it that much, as well as tell you about how utterly fashionable she is repeated a thousand times, and how she's totally, totally not racist and that's totally ridiculous.
For the record, I didn't ever, and still don't, think she's even remotely racist, But I think any logical freaking human being would have come to that conclusion if you'd just let the facts speak for themselves instead of expressing utter outrage that anyone would call her that.


Not that she doesn't deserve worship, I related to her in a way that is slightly scary to me, As in, the ruthlessness she displays when defending our nation's kids, The key mantra to me is, "There is nothing wrong with the kids, It's the adults that are the problem, " It's true we KNOW what works in education, We know what teachers are effective, we know what teaching methods/curriculum work, etc, and when we don't implement these changes, it's because ADULTS are terrified of losing their jobs because they can't deliver, I have absolutely NO problem with removal of crappy teachers, and never have, Frankly, I'm not sure how any teacher who thinks they're good at what they do WOULD have a problem with it, I asked a friend of mine who'd lived in D, C. and worked in the school system what she thought of Rhee, and she said that while the reforms were good, even good teachers were walking on eggshells and resented it.
Well, too bad, says I, I appreciated that the author acknowledges the lack of communitybuilding in Rhee's process as a criticism though it's hard not to agree with her when she mentions how, when your main goal is collaboration, nothing is going to get done.


I knew she was a bad ass, but holy crap, Reading the entire context of what an utter crapfest D, C. schools were make her achievements even more remarkable, and her urgency and ruthlessness even more understandable, I thought the most interesting defense of her methods was how D, C. didn't even have a proper database with which to track attendance, or even to tell exactly how many kids were enrolled, The fact that kids around the country with similar backgrounds and S, E. S's were still two years ahead is absolute insanity, I also was really glad to read more about how the schools are run from a government level, and all the red tape officials need to go through in order to get through anything.


Anyway, despite her achievements, and purely in terms of the writing, there was a "roundness" to the story that I feel could've made it better.
Maybe it's because the author was writing this during or soon after her chancellorship, and the closeness made it a bit muddled, but overall it's a mustread for anyone even remotely interested in education and politics.
It was interesting to dig into the Rhee experience in DC even though I closely followed the entirety of her tenure, I learned a good deal of new information.
The book left me with a lot of questions, and I don't know if it was able to capture the whole story, but it's a valuable addition to the story of current ed reform.
Michelle Rhee is probably one of the most polarizing figures in American education currently, and is polarizing almost entirely due to her battles with the DC educational establishment toward the end of the last decade.
This book, which is pretty positive toward Rhee on a whole, tries to explain how she got to that point, and how the DC battles occurred.


The book tries very hard to be evenhanded, often to a fault, That might be the only flaw in what is otherwise a fairly wellwritten while basic piece on the DC educational battles, I liked the basic outline of Rhee's rise, but would have preferred more detail as to the theories and policies regarding the educational systems in play.
The book pretty much left me wanting in that way in a book that could have done more to swing me to one side or the other, it instead asks a lot of simply accepting what's there.
Kind of unfortunate.

This was worth my time, probably worth your time as well, Just don't expect a huge payoff, I guess, Several years ago I watched a PBS documentary on Michelle Rhee, . . who became chancellor of the Washington DC school district, Her story is interesting, especially understanding the small episode of her actually eating a bee!, hence the title of the book, This book illustrates the power of politics in the school system, and how disadvantaged many people are because of the fact they have no choice but to send their children to this terrible school system.
Rhee was a political appointment, and although she may have been doing a good job, her wings were clipped long before the end of the book by the inertia of a system that really does not want to change, in which children and the poor are held hostage by the system.
Right after I read this book I read a book by a "celebrity" named Tony Danza about his year of "teaching" in Philadelphia, . his experiences with the kids of poor, disenchanted and disenfranchised youth reinforced that what I read in Mr, Whitmire's book about Michelle Rhee and the "worst school district" in the US may be true, Somewhat tedious in spots but a worthwhile glance into a broken system, It's hard not to admire Michelle Rhee, and this book gives you many reasons why you should, Whitmire has created an easytoread portrait of a very polarizing figure, While there is a chapter in the book that alleges to review Rhee's faults, there are some holes in this story that Whitmire leaves out.
Frontline's profile of Rhee was more balanced and included questions about possible cheating on standardized tests in D, C. during Rhee's reign. There's no mention of that at all in this book, Quite an oversight for an education reporter, Even so, I still enjoyed reading about Rhee's background and what led to her fight to improve D, C. public schools. The story of a lady, who one day walked into a low performing class and got their attention by doing something unexpected, is anything short of being an amazing story of how she went against the grain and did what needed to be done, all for the sake of the children.


Michelle Rhee is the type of person that this world needs more of, The change agents that come in and make change happen, whether people like it or not, The only thing is that most of the attention that is created came from the people who got moved out of a system that they were comfortable in but was harming children's futures.
The story of this book explains the lifeline that showed how Michelle Rhee became who she is today, One day in college she was watching a documentary on students who went into Teach for America and it was that very moment that defined what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
She just didn't know that it would take her to where she is today,

The story continues as to how she became chancellor of a school district and the different actions she took to make the change that then D.
C. major, Adrian Fenty, was looking for, This book is great at detailing her very actions of what her management style is like and how she views people in jobs and how she understands the real purpose of doing great work.
It is clear why so many people are turned off by her work ethic and style, In short, she is a work horse who will not stop until the job is done and if you are someone that gets in her way, she has no problem firing you, even if its on camera.
Another reason why people are turned off by this style is because she expects people to work and if you don't do your job, there should be no coddling or nursing to help get the person back on track, just fire them and hire someone who does want to do and will do the job better.
The last part is what gets under people's skin about her, No likes being told what to do in the first place, along with how to do their job as well,

Again, this the kind of change agent needed in many industries so companies don't have to waste their money on people who suck the system dry by requiring provisions in their workplace or excuses as to why they can't do such and such.
A Michelle Rhee would have none of that, strip that person down of their bargaining rights, which saves tons of money immediately and in the longrun, and tell that person, shipup or shipout.


This book also chronicles the people that she found or who came to her, about how they helped make her muchneeded change possible.
There was one middle school so run down that teachers would be found sleeping in class with students doing whatever they wanted, A high school that was so bad that teachers were afraid of getting hit or killed by their students with no order what so ever in the classrooms and hallways.
Michelle Rhee had a system in place for knowing how to bring all that to a halt, How did the community respond when she managed to bring up test scores beyond anything anyone has ever seen, even by the test company itself, along with bringing order to the hallways and classrooms They made sure the mayor got voted out, and that the ones who got fired, the lowperforming teachers got their jobs back.
Does it matter that most of the jobs cut were of AfricanAmerican teachers It shouldn't but to the community that was made up of mostly AfricanAmerican, it did.
It was the whites in the neighborhoods who praised Michelle Rhee for all the hard work she did in bringing up test scores, but the news stories tended to overlook that part.


This book also went into showing that as reform was taking place in the Washington, D, C. schools, so was change taking place around the country for the first time, With the documentary, "Waiting for Superman," people were starting to see just how unions were hurting their children, how teacher's, regardless of their testscores, were still allowed to work and how school systems had made it so difficult to fire bad teachers, with some teachers getting paid more money some as high as six figures to sit in a room away from kids then to actually teach because of union and contract laws.
People were finally started to get that the education system needs to change,

For anyone interested in understanding how Michelle thinks and works then this is a great book to pick up, If you are looking for pointers on how to make change possible in your workplace then again, read this book, You will understand why so many hate her but at the same time, why so many people in top positions around the country were offering her special jobs, some even custommade just for her to help fix their problems.
It all started when she watched a simple documentary on how teachers can make a difference, .