Some DC Schools Will Have Textbooks in Sept, is This Progress?

New DC schools "Chancellor" Michelle Rhee just announced that that

most of the District's public schools will start the academic year this month stocked with required textbooks, although more than half of the schools lack the requisite number

Iknow that Rhee is working hard, as much as a Colorado divorcee with young children can work.

As a DC taxpayer I say scuttle the whole system. Rhee might be brilliant, but unless she finds a way to give taxpayers relief for funding the most expensive and least productive public education system in the US I will not be a big fan.

Michelle Rhee- The Salvation of DC Schools?

Mayor Fenty has annointed Michelle Rhee the "Chancellor" of DC schools. He awarded her with a $300K salary and a hired driver, an excess that no DC official should have.

I know people who know Michelle Rhee. They really like her, but I have harbored suspicions about her since I knew that she was leading her NY non-profit from Colorado as she raised her two young children with a husband she is now divorcing. Fenty acknowledged that Rhee needs to live here. And, as the Wash Post reported, Rhee was given a bonus of $25,000 to compensate for her moving the the District. I would think that the $300K salary would have been enough.

As a business person, my experience is that women with young children are distracted and should not be put in important positions. To top that, Rhee is a single mom, so her distraction and commitment to her children is even more extreme. I know this is politically incorrect, but how a single mom with two young kids has the bandwidth to justify her huge salary and reform the dysfunctional DC schools is beyond me.