DCist Interview: Michelle Rhee

What restaurants do you like to go to, in your limited free time?

Well my new favorite restaurant is Ray's the Steaks, where Kevin [Johnson, Rhee's fiance] and I went, and now I've been a couple of times, because I had a phenomenal prime rib there. Me and the girls, our old standby is D.C. Coast, my girls love that place. We also like Zentan, because when Kevin comes to town he stays at the Donovan House, so it's just convenient to eat there. The girls also love House of Prayer, which is this restaurant that is in the bottom of a church, at the United House of Prayer. Oh my gosh, they have the best soul food in the District. It's at M and 7th, I want to say. They have the best food ever there. Kevin's favorite place to go on the weekends is the breakfast place at Eastern Market, so we go there a lot too.

Aside from restaurants, what are your favorite neighborhood spots?

Well, we spend most of our spare time eating, so...I'm really into the restaurants thing! Like I said, the kids and I spend a ton of time at the new Target. We have our little places that we like to go. They love to go to Sullivan's, the toy store on Wisconsin. We just hang out a lot on the weekends, doing various things. Kevin likes to go to the E Street Cinema, my kids love to go to the Spy Museum.

Forbes recently named D.C. as the second best city in the country for working mothers. They didn't use a particularly rigorous formula, but there are a number of ambitious young women in this city who hope to have both a meaningful career and a family. You have two young daughters, yet hold an incredibly demanding position. What have been some of the challenges of being a single, working mother while managing such a high-powered role, and how have you handled them?

I probably have a little bit of a different situation than most people, but I think the biggest thing for me is that their dad is totally a fifty percent dad. We always help each other out. If I have some meeting that I can't avoid, he'll fill in for me, and vice versa. That's probably one of things that makes it work for us. Also, my parents are retired, so when we get into a real pinch I fly them out from Denver, and they come and will help. They came for eight weeks I think, at the end of the last school year after our college babysitter went home.

I try to schedule myself so that on the days I have my girls I can pick them up and have dinner with them and do their homework with them, and do all of the normal things. I start working again after they go to bed. But really during those times we're sort of normal. On the days I don't have them, that's really when I schedule all of my community meetings and forums and I'll work really late on those nights.

During a typical day or week, what are you reading, or what kind of media do you consume -- for news, work or pleasure?

We usually have CNN on in the background at the office, although I'm rarely just sitting at my desk. I try to pick and choose my stuff in the Post. Lots of times what I've found is that on education coverage, it's often better if I don't read it. People throughout the day just send me a ton of stuff that's either happening nationally or locally that's somehow connected to the schools. I feel like I'm constantly reading things that are happening, but it's not through a predictable medium. It's not like I wake up every morning and open the Wall Street Journal and read it cover-to-cover or things like that. It's more that I rely on things people are sending me, or things that I've heard which I'll then Google and read about, and that sort of thing.

Are the things that people are sending you from a staff member whom you've asked to keep an eye on things, or is it just friends who see things that they think you would find of interest?

No, it not an official arrangement. [Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education] Joel Klein will send me lots of things all the time about what's going on in New York, and different superintendents will send me stuff from their cities. And I'm connected to different people in the education reform world. It's not my staffers' job to do that, but just because they're doing this education reform work as well, and just because they're interested and looped into this stuff, when they see something good they'll send it on to me.

Do you follow any local news sources besides the Post?

I end up reading a lot of DCist stuff.

Really?

Yeah! And we listen to WAMU once and a while in the office. I don't watch TV like a normal person does, like watch the 6:00 or 11:00 news, per se, but when there's a particular story, I'll try to find it. Like News Channel 8 does some good stuff, especially with politics and local coverage, and I'll tune into specific things there. City Paper, I read them too.

Congratulations on D.C. winning the $75 million in Race to the Top grant -- can you tell us a bit about how this money will be used?

Sure -- of the $75 million, $30 million is coming directly to DCPS and we'll be eligible for about $16 million more in competitive grants from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. So we have the potential for up to $46 [million], but for sure it's $30 million, and the vast majority of that is going toward our human capital. That's our priority, that's the lever that we feel like is going to have the most influence on the quality of education that our kids are getting.

So the human capital initiatives are taking up a lot of that money, but we're also putting about $6 million on putting additional resources into some of our chronically failing schools, to try to turn them around. And a lot of money is also going to be used in schools in order to help them better utilize data. We're going to hire data coaches in schools who will be responsible for pulling data and helping teachers analyze it.

Will those data coaches be in every school?

We're trying to figure that our now, but eventually we want to get to every school. We may in this first year do a pilot in a certain subset of schools and then grow that out over the life of the grant.

There was a renewal of teacher opposition to the IMPACT performance evaluations at the end of this past school year, and a lot of it had to do with whether teachers felt like they were prepared, or how knowledgeable they were about the new Teaching and Learning Framework. If you were to rollout IMPACT again, would you do anything differently? What could have been done to better train or prepare teachers to be effective under the framework?

Obviously, the more information we can give teachers the better. But we're limited, because we can't just ask teachers to come back a week early so we can train them in IMPACT. We're bound by the teachers' union contract and the calendar, so we had to make do with the time that we had. But one of the things that we did to kind of phase the rollout was to say, last year, we're just going to train and evaluate on one component of three -- just the "teach" component. The Teaching and Learning Framework has three components: Plan, Teach, and Increase Effectiveness. So we just focused on "teach" this last year. And the feedback we got from teachers for this coming year was that they didn't want to add "plan" or "increase effectiveness," they just wanted to focus on "teach" again. Given that, you're talking about several years before the entire evaluation tool will be in place.

A lot of people thought it was very "wham bam, thank you ma'am," and it was just rolled out in three days, but that's not the case. But I do think that any time you have a new evaluation system, with high stakes, you're going to have some angst and some worry amongst teachers. I think now that we're done with the first year, and that a lot of effective teachers have now been told, "we have concrete data and yes, you're effective" will help. In a couple of days we'll be announcing some things that we'll be doing around the most highly effective teachers in the District. I think that's going to create a better balance. For a long time, in the media and other places, the focus was on ineffective teachers, and it's important for us to have a plan around ineffective teachers. But really, we want people to understand that there are many more highly effective teachers than there are ineffective teachers, and here's what we're going to do to celebrate and recognize and reward those people.

There is a new teachers' union contract, IMPACT has been rolled out, Race to the Top has been awarded. What's next on your agenda for DCPS?

This year we're going to focus on a few things. One, now that we have the teachers' union contract, we want to make sure that we're actually implementing it well. That means really putting in place good professional development for teachers, really honing and modifying the Teaching and Learning Framework, and continuing to ensure that the IMPACT is being implemented with fidelity. We spent a ton of time last spring meeting with teachers and trying to understand from them what was working about IMPACT and what wasn't. We've made modifications that are very much based on the feedback that they gave us, and which I think makes it a better tool. So we're excited about that.

We'll have an increased focus on interventions for kids, so that we're differentiating for every type of learner in the District. With interventions for kids who are below basic in skill level, it's asking what are we doing to ensure that we're quickly accelerating their learning, but we're also looking to differentiate for our higher achieving kids. And special education. We've made a tremendous drive over the last two years in terms of what was probably the biggest monkey on our back, which was the special ed problem, our Blackman/Jones consent decree. Because we've made so much progress on that front, now we can really begin to focus on building the capacity of DCPS so that we can start bringing some of the kids back from nonpublic placements and that sort of thing. So we'll have a pretty big emphasis on that for this year.

Some people are calling this election a referendum on the city's schools, and your leadership. Do you think that is a fair characterization, given that Mayor Fenty has staked so much of his administration on education reform?

I think that one of the great things that has happened under the last four years under the Mayor is that schools and education have become the number one priority in the city. And in my mind, it's because he made it that. When he started his reelection bid several months ago, somebody from the media asked him, "what are your top three priorities for your second term," and he said, "schools, schools schools." That's just consistent with everything that he's articulated over the life of his term, and that's now reflected in what the polling data says about D.C., with education being the number one issue. That's very different from what it is nationally. I was on the John King show the other day, and he was like, oh you must be really disheartened because our polls show that education is...I don't know, 8th or 13th on their list of issues, up behind, obviously, the economy and jobs and that sort of thing. And I said, well that's not the case here in D.C.; it's the number one issue. So I think that's huge and such an opportunity for the school district, and one that we really appreciate a lot, just the fact that so many people are thinking about it.

People are saying, oh this is a referendum on you and the schools. And it's less that in my mind than the fact that these two men are very, very, very different in their philosophies and their styles and their priorities. And because they each have very distinctive views on the schools, and because it's important to both of them, I think that sort of is bubbling up to the surface a lot.

You have implied that you would leave DCPS should Vincent Gray win the primary, and the Chairman has declined to speculate on whether he would want to continue to work with you. For you, under what circumstances would you stay should Gray become Mayor? What kinds of commitment or agreement about the direction of school reform would the two of you have to reach?

I have to be careful on this, because I've been accused of violating the Hatch Act, so I really can't elaborate, you know...All I can do, which is not going to be helpful for you, is reiterate what I've said a million times, which is what I need in a boss, in general, separate from this election. I really can't say more than that.

Are there any issues or policy positions that for you would be deal breakers?

Say that a different way.

What would be a dealbreaker, in any setting?

Well, like what I've said before, the only reason we've been able to accomplish everything that we have and we've been able to move as far as we have is because we've had the unequivocal support of the Mayor. And this is not easy stuff, when you're talking about closing down schools, and restructuring schools, and removing ineffective staff members -- that's not easy or fun stuff. It's not something that I enjoy, causing this kind of disruption. But at the same time, they are necessary things that have to happen in order for us to believe that kids are going to get a good education. And so if you look at it from the political side of things, and it's making a lot of people upset -- well, it's making a lot of adults upset -- if that's the kind of thinking that's going to drive our decisions then I'm not going to be the most effective leader to have.

For me, one of the things that the Mayor and I have in common, one of the things that has driven so much of our work together is that fact that when faced with decisions, even if it's going to make a lot of adults unhappy, if it's the right thing for kids and we know it's going to result in better schools for our children, then we're going to make that decision. And when you add in the component of people who have agendas where decisions need to be made on keeping people happy, keeping all the adults happy, well then there's probably a better leader who can fill that role.

One of the things that I've been hearing from people in my neighborhood and in the larger community that has surprised me, is the assumption that even if Mayor Fenty is reelected you might leave.

That's absolutely incorrect.

I've found it a little sexist, actually.

It's totally sexist! Let me just tell you this -- not a single person in Sacramento has implied that because Kevin and I are getting married that he's going to be moving to D.C. Not a single person. And it pisses me off to no end that people assume that I'm going to be the one to move, or that of course I would have to move. People say, well, her husband is there, so of course she would have to move. And I say "really?" What century are you living in?

So I am committed to the Mayor, that when he is reelected I will absolutely be here for a second term, and I'm really excited about the prospect of it. The scary thing is that somebody told me recently that in a few months I will be the longest standing schools chancellor in twenty years in the city, which is terrifying. I haven't been here that long, right? It's been a little more than three years. I just feel like I'm beginning to scratch the surface of things. And I know that when we have four more years it will be amazing, the things that we can do and we can build on. So it's really exciting to me, and that's why I'm fully committed to it.

Two more quick questions. Have you voted yet?

I have not, but I'm trying to figure out the whole early voting thing.

And do you have a new wedding date?

We're not talking about new wedding plans. That's what got us into trouble in the first place!