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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Michelle Rhee outspoken to the end of her tenure as D.C. schools chancellor

Michelle Rhee outspoken to the end of her tenure as D.C. schools chancellor

Michelle Rhee outspoken to the end of her tenure as D.C. schools chancellor

In one of her last public appearances as D.C. schools chancellor, Michelle A. Rhee took part in a College Board conference at the Washington Hilton.

By Bill Turque
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 9:01 PM
She is D.C. schools chancellor for just one more day, but that didn't stop Michelle A. Rhee from issuing one last warning Thursday, this one to ineffective teachers and the undergraduate education programs that granted them degrees.
"Now we have a new teacher evaluation system where we know who's ineffective, minimally effective and highly effective," she told a hotel ballroom filled with educators attending a College Board forum. "We're going to back-map where they came from, which schools produced these people. And if you are producing ineffective or minimally effective teachers, we're going to send them back to you."
Rhee is exiting the District much as she entered it a more than three years ago: outspoken, impatient, apparently indifferent to the kind of tension and pushback that most in her line of work labor to avoid. What she did here, and how she did it, will be debated for years. But her signature contribution, many supporters and detractors say, was a change in the conversation.
Rhee added a new urgency and righteous anger to the