MICHELLE RHEE, former chancellor of public schools in Washington, D.C., and founder of Students First, a national movement pushing education reform
Idea: Start with students
Ms. Rhee's recipe for revitalizing education in the US sounds simple: Focus on the best interests of students, not adults.
But it's not easy, she says, to "shift the balance of power" away from politically influential teachers' unions.
One powerful idea: End the last-hired, first-fired policies that most school districts use when they lay off teachers.
Keeping teachers with the most seniority is fair from an adult's perspective, Rhee says, but not from a child's – especially when more-talented new teachers are let go.
She cites the example of Liechty Middle School in Los Angeles, which opened in 2007 in a low-income neighborhood. "Over a two-year period, these teachers absolutely just knocked it out of the park," she says, with the students making some of the strongest academic gains in the district.
"Then the pink slips came, and this school got absolutely decimated. Because they had so many new teachers, [about] half of their staff got laid off."
A Los Angeles Times analysis showed that many of those laid-off teachers ranked in the top 20 percent in the district in producing student achievement gains.
"Any policy in which you are laying off some of the top-performing teachers is not about children," Rhee says. "We've got to be willing to fight on behalf of the kids."
