{"id":2510,"date":"2010-10-12T21:47:43","date_gmt":"2010-10-13T01:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=2510"},"modified":"2010-10-12T21:47:43","modified_gmt":"2010-10-13T01:47:43","slug":"commenting-on-rhee-resignation-please-channel-ellen-goodman-not-maureen-dowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=2510","title":{"rendered":"Commenting on Rhee resignation? Please channel Ellen Goodman, not Maureen Dowd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So Michelle Rhee is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/10\/12\/AR2010101205658.html\">announcing her resignation<\/a> tomorrow, and I have one request for anyone who is tempted to comment on her &quot;style,&quot; a la Maureen Dowd: please don&#39;t.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you&#39;re tempted to write about how Rhee closed schools in a high-handed manner, please consider instead the policy issues: how schools are often some of the few public institutions in very poor neighborhoods, and how Rhee&#39;s discussions did not raise issues of how the same properties might still be used for the neighborhoods, if not as schools. That&#39;s urban policy, not style.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you&#39;re tempted to write about the infamous &quot;broom&quot; picture, think instead about the dilemmas of firing significant numbers of mid-level managers in a public bureaucracy when those managers are often well-respected residents of middle-class neighborhoods. I forget whether Mike Petrilli or Rick Hess mentioned this issue, but one of them did in a recent &quot;Education Gadfly&quot; podcast, and whoever did is correct. That&#39;s urban politics, not style.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you&#39;re tempted to write about Rhee&#39;s semi-insulting comments about teachers delivered in whatever tone of voice you infer, please write instead about IMPACT and the contract with WTU: the attempt to impose a new evaluation system and the bargaining she drew Randi Weingarten into. That&#39;s the management of power, not style.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you&#39;re tempted to write about the &quot;style&quot; of Michelle Rhee in any way, you need to persuade me that a different person with a different style would have faced fewer or different problems with the <em>same substantive decisions<\/em>. Some things would have been different, but you&#39;ll have an uphill battle in the argument. Marshal some good arguments if you&#39;re so inclined.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So Michelle Rhee is announcing her resignation tomorrow, and I have one request for anyone who is tempted to comment on her &quot;style,&quot; a la Maureen Dowd: please don&#39;t.&nbsp; If you&#39;re tempted to write about how Rhee closed schools in a high-handed manner, please consider instead the policy issues: how schools are often some of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-Eu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2510"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2526,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions\/2526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}