Campaign 2010: How Obama & Duncan Abandoned Rhee

The big lesson from Fenty's defeat and Rhee's likely ouster isn't that the teachers union will oppose you or that extreme care and effort are needed in explaining reform to the public but rather that you may well find yourself abandoned by those who could save you.  The White House and the Duncan team left the one person arguably doing the most for their own cause out there on the battlefield alone.  In case you hadn't noticed, there was no big push, no signalling, nothing dropped into the news cycle.  Obama and Duncan were pretty much entirely absent -- suddenly shy and retiring on a local issue when they've weighed in on so many others.  Sure, the unions probably told the White House to stand down on this one or risk losing support in November.  Sure, Rhee was over the top on more than a few things.  Sure, Fenty looked like he was going to lose.  But that hasn't stopped the White House before.  And it's hard to argue that Obama in particular couldn't have tipped the scales here.  I think that the White House and the Duncan folks were tired of Rhee's criticisms and independence and aggressiveness -- an issue raised before here and by Richard Whitmire (Duncan Must Deal With Rhee, Union).  She slammed Dems on reform two years ago (Republicans Do Education Reform Better).  She accused Obama and others of pandering to teachers on NCLB (Rhee likes McCain's education plans).  (I think she even -- uncool! -- panned RTTT, though I can't find the link right now.)  And I think that the strongest voices of the reformy crowd -- DFER, Stand for Children, TFA -- still don't have the killer instinct or the oomph to push powerful Dems into action (or influence votes on their own), which is why their explainers and apologists are now left spinning recent events as a consequence of strategy or style rather than what it was -- what all this stuff is! -- politics.  

Comments

[Leonie]

I don't see that at all; the entire NAEP event was built around Rhee last year, politicizing the event. Duncan has consistently done what he could to promote her image. If they stayed out of the campaign towards the end it was more likely because it was pretty clear that Fenty was going to lose and they didn't want to be associated w/ a loser. What do you think about the fact that many of the charter school supporters backed Gray?

[GSM]

Superintendent Rhee, for whatever her flaws like the rest of us, has to be ADMIRED for her staunch courage in favor of fostering student achievement. She quite correctly has it pegged: It's about the "little people," not the "big people." Urban American schools, especially, would do well to have Rhees all over the place. If so, the nation's children would be much better off! I hope the President and Secretary Duncan will realize the above and will unequivocably support this educator who is truly about education .... GSM

[Jose]

Thanks for this. It's too true. When I heard Fenty was out, there were a few factors we could point at, but the biggest was Rhee on a national scale. People locally complained of his arrogance and self-centered agenda, but on a national level, his legacy of Rhee made the situation that much worse.

It's also a lesson to those who forget that Obama's still the biggest fundraiser there is for Dems out there, and that he is, in fact, the head honcho in this education reform discussion and in DC, not anyone else. In other words, Obama got gangsta.

Thanks to GSM, by the way, for making me laugh. Hard.

[Alexander Russo]

great comments -- thanks.

a friend writes in to remind me about duncan's crack that you "can't fire your way to the top" or something like that after rhee fired the "bad" teachers --

here's the video. four and a half minutes in
http://press.org/news-multimedia/videos/cspan/294785-1

i'm still looking for the quote where rhee belittled RTTT, if anyone remembers when and where that happened

[Alexander Russo]

three weeks later, they're still talking about how the white house abandoned rhee

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/13/did-the-white-house-abandon-michelle-rhee-educations-superwoma/