By Choi Yearn-hong
The Korea Times is seeking the man or woman of the year 2008. I almost nominated Michelle Rhee, but I nominated someone else, because Rhee is a Korean-American woman in Washington, D.C.
The Korea Times cannot consider the Korean-American woman for the woman of the year. Nevertheless, I am sure that many people in Korea know who Michelle Rhee is after Time magazine put her on its cover Dec. 8, 2008.
I am going to reveal who Rhee is in this column, because she deserves to be in the Washington Lounge.
She graduated from Cornell University in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in politics, and earned a master's degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
In 1997, she founded the New Teacher Project, which in 10 years has recruited 10,000 teachers in 20 states.
First, I did not understand why she accepted her position as the head of the Washington, D.C., schools system on June 12, 2007, because the job was a mission impossible.
How did I know? I was teaching at one of the universities in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s-90s. The inner city administration, including the school system, was just miserable, worse than any city administration in developing nations.
Crimes, drugs, violence, and broken families were the symbols of American inner cities. The then mayor himself was a drug addict and a drunk driver arrested by his police force.
All the U.S. governments since President John F. Kennedy in 1960 attempted to change the ghettos, but failed. The Great Society programs were supposed to eradicate the urban blight, but failed. That was the best attempt.
Since then, the U.S. government gave up until now. So I could figure out Michelle Rhee's mounting agonies and possible failure within a couple of years.
Contrary to my expectation, she has survived and come up to the cover figure of Time. Isn't this amazing? I come to rediscover her achievements after Time's coverage of her work in Washington.
She has come a long way in less than two years. She has fired 270 teachers, 34 principals, 98 administrative staff and closed 23 schools. Now, teachers hate her. Principals are scared of her.
But those teachers and principals should pay attention to simple statistics, such as: 36 percent of D.C. high school students are proficient in math and 39 percent are proficient in reading.
Rhee laments the fact that the schools in the nation's capital do not produce decent students: ``The children of this city receive an education that every single citizen in this country should be embarrassed by." This is her statement. I agree with her statement.
I knew what she saw and sees. Her prescription against shameful school performances is relatively simple. ``Teachers make a difference!"
She said about her first teaching job, ``It drives me nuts when people say that two-thirds of a kid's academic achievement is based on their environment. That is B.S." She pointed to her second graders in Baltimore in her first teaching job whose scores rose from worst to best.
``Those kids, where they lived didn't change. Their parents didn't change. Their diets didn't change. The violence in the community didn't change. The only thing that changed for those 70 kids was the adults who were in front of them every single day teaching them."
Rhee, with parental consent, made the kids go to school on Saturdays and gave them two hours of homework a night, so they would ``not watch TV or sit on the stoop or play Nintendo."
She slowly won the respect of parents. ``My first year of teaching, they were, like, `We do not want the crazy Korean lady,' and by the time I left, they were, `where are you going? You can't leave!"
Her story is touching many American people. It is sustaining her life in the inner cities. Her two daughters are attending a school in Washington.
She is a brave woman now confronting an almighty teacher's union. The Atlantic Monthly, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have chronicled her battles with the Washington Teachers' Union.
She is not threatened by the union power, because she believes in herself: the kid's education is her prime goal. She has offered the best paying salaries of up to $130,000 annually for school teachers on the condition that they give up their tenure (job security) and that they perform (merit pay) ― students' high score in the standardized tests.
That is a fair deal. The union has not yet responded. In the meantime, she will create more charter schools with non-union teachers, if the union is resisting her offer.
The students' performances from the charter schools will be compared with those of the public schools and the private schools in Washington, D.C. The comparative data, productivity, will guarantee her final victory.
Time magazine, in its Dec. 8 issue, posed a question, ``Can she save our schools?" She should, and she can. If she can't, no one can. Then, inner cities do not have a hope for the future. Why? Because the kids are the future of the city.
Her chancellorship stunned the city in 2007. Rhee, then 37, had no experience running a school, let alone a district with 46,000 students that ranks last in math among 11 urban school systems.
When new Mayor Adrian Fenty called her, she was running a nonprofit organization, New Teacher Project, which helped schools recruit good teachers. Most problematic of all, Rhee is not from Washington. She is from Ohio, and she is a Korean-American in a majority African American city.
She has overcome many impossible barriers. She was a special guest of first lady Laura Bush at President George W. Bush's 2008 State of the Union address.
Now she is on the cover of Time magazine. In between, she was depicted as an unconventional gambler, and a bee-swallowing reformer. She will be a flame of hope for America.
Dr. Choi is a retired college professor after a long teaching career in the United States and Korea.
