An Unlikely Gambler

Naturally, this sentiment seems patronizing, if not downright threatening, to many career teachers with a union card. They resent the young Ivy Leaguers who come in from Teach For America for a couple of years, acting superior, and then go off to become investment bankers or lawyers. (TFA stands for "Teach for Awhile," they joke.)

It is hard to know how Rhee sustains her own pace. Three days a week she picks up her kids at 5:30 (they are in after-school programs) and stays with them until bedtime—then it's back to work until 1 or 2 a.m. When their father, a TFA executive named Kevin Huffman, has the kids, she basically works 18-hour days. Having a mom as school chancellor is "hard on the kids," she says. She recalls that when she refused to cancel school on a not-very-snowy day, her older daughter, Starr, came home complaining, "Other kids are saying that by not canceling school because of the snow that you are putting all of our lives in danger." Rhee explained that some poor kids don't eat unless they can get a school meal. A couple of weeks later, Starr reported, "Now there's a rumor that you are going to lengthen the schoolyear and make us go to school longer." Rhee replied, "Well, you know, time on task is very important." Starr, who apparently takes after her mother, answered, "I backed you on the snow thing. I am not backing you on more school, though."

Rhee's bluntness and unwillingness to compromise are admirable, but they may also be her undoing. Rhee has Mayor Fenty's complete support, but she has irked some city council members, in one case because her aides supposedly blocked a council member from going onstage with her at a summer-school graduation. Rhee does not seem interested in the rituals of political nicety, and, while she says she's a Democrat, she can be very scornful of her own party. "It's embarrassing to be a Democrat when you hear Democrats talk about education," she says. "The Democratic Party is supposed to be the party that looks out for poor black kids, yet the kind of rhetoric they spew about … [how the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind law is] 'sucking the life out of our teachers'—come on. Get real. I believe that until the Democratic Party breaks ties with the teachers unions, we are not going to see the true reform in this country that we need."

As she spoke, late in the day (but only in the middle of her workday), she was becoming uncharacteristically wound up. "We do not have a nation right now where every child has an equal chance in life, because poor black kids don't have an equal shot in life, because they go to crappy schools, and the Democratic Party is not tackling this issue, which I think is one of the biggest problems that exist."

The interview was drawing to an end. A NEWSWEEK reporter asked her if she still got welts from stress. "Uh, yeah," she said, seeming slightly knocked off-balance for the first and only time. The moment passed; she excused herself to go back to work.

© 2008