#michellerhee

Honored to be standing next to this amazing power couple this morning... #MichelleRhee #KevinJohnson @MichelleRhee @KJ_MayorJohnson #CultureShifting VC Breakfast #MakeShiftHappen @cultureshiftlabs #venturecapital #entrepreneur #educator #blackventurecapitalists (at New York, New York)

Sometimes in life the women who make strong impacts or shake up a system in which we grow accustomed to accepting, are not the most amiable people among the masses. This may be said about our next honoree Michelle Rhee, but we disagree. Rhee is also a product of Teach for America, as upon completion of the training program she taught in Baltimore for three years. She took her own struggles as a teacher and turned them into triumph, drastically increasing results of her students pass rates on standardized tests. In this same effort, she launched The New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that had trained 23,000 professionals wanted to become teachers within ten years of its inception. Rhee was the chancellor of Washington D.C public schools from 2007 to 2010, who was said to have fired 241 teachers, and put 737 additional school employees on notice. She remains a highly controversial figure because of her aggressive style of reform and anti-union sentiments. Since she resigned as chancellor she started an organization entitled Students First, whose mission is to build a national movement to defend the interests of children in public education and pursue transformative reform, so that America has the best education system in the world. Thank you for pushing for better education in this country and for that we honor you Michelle Rhee. #WWWGroupHonors #NationalWomensMonth #MichelleRhee #tfa

(Source: studentsfirst.org)

Feb. 22: The Washington Post reports that at a council retreat, Councilmember Jim Graham complained that the city didn’t provide him free tickets to a Lady Gaga concert. Gray had pledged to solve the piddling ticket controversies that had dogged relations between the council and Gray's predecessor, Adrian Fenty.