Ever since Kaya Henderson took over as chancellor of D.C.’s public schools, she’s quietly gone about continuing in the footsteps of Michelle Rhee, her former boss. But unlike Rhee, she has studiously avoided the media—and said very little about the work that Rhee did.

Until now. Over the weekend, Henderson gave WAMU’s Kavitha Cardoza what we’re going to call her philosophy on running the city’s schools—and a not-so-veiled critique at how Rhee went about it.

“We at least try to share with people before we make huge decisions about the ‘what’ and the ‘why'” she says. “So I think people have a clearer rationale as to what we’re doing.”

She also says media outlets aren’t as interested in the nitty-gritty details of education reform.

“You cannot reform your school district in the spotlight of the national press,” says Henderson. “You have to sit down with the people who are on the ground holding hands to do the messy difficult work together. And that is not headline grabbing.”

Of course, not everyone is happy about the way Henderson has gone about the job she inherited from Rhee. The Examiner Jonetta Rose Barras says that she’s been too timid in doing the hard work of making D.C.’s public schools better:

She already has one of the largest budgets in DCPS history. Federal law allows her to restructure any school that has failed consistently to meet annual academic progress; that means she can demand the resignation of every administrator and teacher at such schools.

She can redesign the curriculum for any specific school. By law, she can declare an emergency, permitting her to bypass certain union rules. She can re-create a summer school model during the normal academic year, extending the instructional day to provide assistance to underperforming students. She can provide incentives like computers or basic in-home libraries to parents who commit to more active participation in their children’s school.

Henderson has more than enough tools. Does she have the willpower and courage to push through reforms? Or will she continue to blame the problem on too many schools?

There’s probably a good middle ground between what Rhee did and what Henderson is doing. While the former created the political space for education reform to take hold in D.C., the latter is now ensuring that it gains broader acceptance and that it can’t be reversed the next time a new chancellor is chosen.

One thing that’s for sure: we don’t expect a follow-up to Waiting for Superman starring Henderson.