Radical

by Michelle Rhee

  Among the presenters were New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, NBC Meet the Press moderator David Gregory, and former Washington Redskins star Darrell Green. Arne Duncan took the stage and said, “When I think of all the legendary people who’ve performed on this stage, I don’t think there have ever been more important people than those who are here tonight.”

  In a few words, I said that some children come to school with problems that might seem insurmountable, “but all of those obstacles can be overcome if you have an amazing teacher in the classroom.”

  It was a lovely, uplifting celebration and the perfect reward for the turmoil of the layoffs and the contract negotiations.

  Driving home KMJ asked, “Tomorrow will be your first day not being chancellor. How does it feel?”

  “Lousy,” I said. “In my ideal world, I would be the chancellor for four more years. I have loved this job. I can’t imagine having a better one for as long as I live.”

  7

  Students First

  The day after the screening of Waiting for “Superman,” KMJ and I flew to Hawaii. We had planned the trip months before. It was originally supposed to be our honeymoon, but we had postponed the wedding because it was turning into a media circus. Instead the trip was now supposed to be a time to celebrate Adrian Fenty’s primary victory. I figured I would want to relax and recharge for the next four years as chancellor. As it turned out, I needed the recharging, but for very different reasons.

  I felt like a zombie, but I could neither sleep nor turn off my mind.

  On the flight west I closed my eyes and kept replaying the calls and conversations the day after Fenty lost. Dozens came in from my friends and allies in the education reform movement. They went like this:

  “Wow, I can’t believe your boss lost. What are you going to do now?”

  Or: “What a surprise! We didn’t even know Fenty was in trouble. I feel so bad, I didn’t even help!”

  And: “Fenty was the most important politician in the country for education reform. I can’t believe this happened.”

  I sat up straight next to KMJ: “That’s why we’re losers,” I said.

  “What?” he asked.

  The unions knew Fenty’s primary was crucial. They took polls and surveyed D.C. politics and realized Fenty was vulnerable. They figured they had a chance to take him out and sideline me at the same time. The Teamsters and public employee unions from up and down the East Coast brought in members with vans to get people to the polls. The teachers unions threw in $1 million.

  “They knew what was at stake,” I said. “They were focused. And they got what they wanted. We have no such equivalent on the education reform side. All I got were these sad condolence calls. Where was the reform movement’s political muscle?”

  “The bottom line,” said KMJ, “is that we education reformers don’t know how to play the game. They do. You’re right. We are losers. But it doesn’t have to continue to be that way. We can beat them. We’re smarter than they are, and we have right on our side.”

  I was angry. Then I was tired. Then I slept. I didn’t like being a loser.

  WHEN WE SETTLED INTO our hotel, KMJ set the tone and gave a few clear orders: no BlackBerry, no phone, no work.

  “It’s time to turn it off,” he said. “We are going to relax.”

  Relaxing was also something we weren’t very good at. But this time was different. We snorkeled; we swam; we kayaked. We rode zip lines and flew over the islands in a helicopter. Our vacations in the past had been a mix of work and play. These three days were pure play. It was the first time either of us had ever completely stopped working before.

  On day four, sensing my angst, he gave in. “Okay. I know you’re dying. You can check,” he said.

  “Michelle, this is Rahm Emanuel.”

  “Michelle, Chris Christie. I told you I’d be calling, and I’m good for my word!”

  Meg Whitman had called. She was in the midst of a race against Jerry Brown to be governor of California.

  Eli Broad, head of the Broad Foundation, left a message. There must have been fifty more.

  More opportunities and calls would come my way over the next few weeks.

  Leaders from a large, well-known for-profit company offered me an executive position on strategic change. I couldn’t quite figure out what that meant, but they were talking about a ridiculous salary, in the range of $1 million a year.

  A number of think tanks and academic organizations, including the Aspen Institute and the Hoover Institution, invited me to join them for a year. That sounded appealing.

  Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called KMJ to talk about education reform and insisted on speaking with me. He had just seen Waiting for “Superman.” He was almost screaming into the phone: “This film has changed my life and my approach to education. We have to lead this charge!” He kept me on the phone for half an hour talking about changes he intended to make in his school system.

  “Enough,” KMJ said at some point. “Turn them off. We’re not going to jump into the next venture. I know how you are. You want to just pick the next thing and start running. That’s not how we’re going to play this. I think it’s a good idea for you to hear everyone out and for you to consider all of the options first. Let’s wait a few weeks and see where we are.”

  We devoted ourselves to the task of vacationing. I returned to D.C. with batteries fully recharged.

  IN THE MIDST OF arranging my exit from D.C., I flew to Aspen, Colorado, to participate in Ted Forstmann’s annual visionary conference for the smart, the wealthy, and the well connected. I certainly wasn’t wealthy or well connected, and I wasn’t feeling overly smart in the wake of the political defeat we had just been handed. Forstmann, a financier who had made billions as a pioneer in the leveraged-buyout industry, created his annual gathering to generate intellectual debate and give birth to new ideas. He also gave generously to a few favorite causes, among them school reform.

  It was my first chance to sound off after Adrian Fenty’s defeat at the polls. Forstmann asked me to take the stage one day with Charlie Rose, who interviewed me about my thoughts on D.C. I vented. I talked about how the unions were aware of the opportunity to defeat Fenty and neutralize me at the same time. I aired my disgust with the frailty of the reform movement. My rage returned, and it felt good to articulate it.

  At one point I turned to face the audience.

  “People like you like to think big thoughts and come up with great ideas,” I said, “but we’re not playing to win. We need something different to happen. We need to connect ideas with action. Something has to change.”

  I didn’t know what that might be, but my thoughts were starting to come together.

  Eli Broad was in the Aspen audience. Funds from his organization had helped finance reforms in D.C. schools. He took me aside after my Charlie Rose rant.

  “We really need to talk. I think everything you said today made sense,” he said. “I still want you to consider having a role with the foundation.”

  “I don’t think I can,” I said, “but I know I have to do something about this political dynamic. I’m just not sure what.”

  “Whatever it is, I’ll help you,” he said. “I’ve been doing this a long time now and I’m fed up. The change is too slow in coming. I want to see major change while I’m alive and I’m willing to invest in it.”

  After Aspen I flew to Sacramento on September 24 to spend time with KMJ and his mom, Mother Rose. During the entire flight my head was spinning with ideas and questions. Why not join the Broad Foundation and give money to good causes? Something was bothering me. I was feeling unsettled—“angsty” as KMJ would say.

  As soon as I walked into Mulvaney’s restaurant, KMJ took one look at me and asked, “What is it? You’re contemplating something. I can tell.”

  I told him about my comments in Aspen and the thoughts that filled my head on the flight.

  “Whatever we do has to be something big,” I said.
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  KMJ had been pondering the politics of Fenty’s loss, as well. Late in the game, he had campaigned for Fenty in African American neighborhoods in Wards 7 and 8, where KMJ was big because of his days in the NBA. He had talked to Washingtonians who were angry with Fenty and prepared to toss me out with him.

  “Why,” he wondered, “in a city with the worst public schools in the nation, would people turn against a mayor and a chancellor who were actually starting to improve their schools? Why reject them?”

  Clearly, he said, we failed to build a grassroots following.

  “You can’t make change from the top alone,” he said. “That was our problem in D.C. We had the right policies but not the right politics. We didn’t make sure that the very people who would benefit most from the reforms were driving and fighting for the changes.”

  My frustration came from the perspective of an education reformer—from the top. I figured that the right superintendent who was willing to make changes and had political backing could accomplish bold reforms. I was proved wrong, because I didn’t figure in the power of the unions.

  KMJ was plotting and jotting notes.

  “If we are going to make a difference, we need to start a movement. A movement of everyday people who are fed up with their kids getting a subpar education. We need to create a vehicle through which they can take action and drive change,” he said.

  He was right. It’s what was missing in D.C. I recalled how when I walked up and down the streets people often came to me, encouraging me to “keep going!” Yet those were not the voices that were heard in the debate. The opposition was loud and organized. The people who supported me didn’t know what they could do to help.

  It clicked. “How many people would it take?” I asked.

  “One million, at least,” he said.

  He asked how much money we would need. I said, “A billion, at least.”

  KMJ kept jotting. We kept talking. Finally, he turned over his notes for Mother Rose and me to see. He had sketched out our new organization.

  We settled on a plan to create a national advocacy group that would raise money and build membership with the goal of providing political muscle to leaders who stood for change.

  We had no name, no staff, no business plan, no location. All we knew was that it was going to be big.

  A million people and a billion dollars. That was big.

  COULD WE RAISE THE money? I set out to start answering the question.

  First stop was Jim Blew, the education head of the Walton Family Foundation. Jim was one of the most thoughtful minds in education reform and understood the political dynamics in a way most of us did not. I had just taken my daughters to see a screening of Waiting for “Superman.” He called on our drive home. I offered my take on why and how we lost in Washington, what we had accomplished, and how we could take the reforms nationwide.

  “I’m tired of us reformers getting our butts handed to us time and time again,” I said. “We run good programs, great schools, and get results. Then we naively believe that we can take those results to the powers that be, and that they’ll want more. Wrong.”

  I explained that the teachers union is on the other line telling politicians that they’ll finance their next campaign if they support them. And who wins out in the end? Self-interests. Adults. I said we had to give politicians who were willing to take courageous stands the same backing that the unions did. And we had to play their game. It had to be both with dollars and boots on the ground. We needed our own power base.

  “I’m thinking about starting it,” I said. “With a million members and one billion dollars.”

  “Terrific plan,” Jim said. “Very exciting. I absolutely think this is the right next step for you.”

  “But I will need money,” I said.

  “How much?”

  “I was hoping I could count on the foundation for one hundred million,” I said.

  He didn’t hesitate.

  “I can’t guarantee it,” he said. “But I’ll take a request to the family.”

  Ted Forstmann called. “It was hard to take some of your tongue-lashing at the conference,” he said, “but what are you going to do about it? What’s your next move?”

  I told him I had a plan; he invited me to New York to discuss it face-to-face. I flew up and described it much as I had to Jim Blew, but I found myself refining the concept with each encounter and homing in on the unions.

  “I am a Democrat and I support unions,” I said. “The teachers unions have millions of dollars and millions of members to bring to bear in political and legislative battles. They are very effective. Good for them. They do a great job of representing the special interests of their members.

  “But who is standing up for the special interests of students and parents?” I asked. “No one. They have no way to balance the union’s clout, no way to compete at the state and national level.

  “I want to establish an organization that will seed a movement nationwide to give voice to students and parents,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “I’m in,” he said.

  “I need one hundred million dollars from you,” I said.

  “Fifty,” he said.

  “But I need one hundred,” I replied.

  “Fifty,” he answered.

  My next stop was John and Laura Arnold. They had virtually come out of nowhere in the last few years as education reform philanthropists. A very young couple from Texas who made their fortune through an energy hedge fund, they had become supporters of my teachers union contract in D.C. They were the dream funders. No bureaucracy, no crazy staff, no ridiculous hoops to jump through—just the two of them asking incredibly thoughtful questions and then making quick decisions. I knew they had to be in.

  The Fishers at the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund had become bedrock supporters since TNTP. Don Fisher, who had founded the Gap clothing stores, had been generous with both money and wisdom. Shortly before he passed away he called to say, “If you can manage to get a revolutionary contract there in D.C., I know you can raise the money to support it!” He was right.

  This time, it was his son John who provided the wisdom. He listened to my pitch and said he would try to help out on the money end. “But be forewarned,” he said. “You are taking on powerful institutions in a very direct way. Not everyone will understand. Even some of your friends in the education reform movement might be either nervous or jealous.

  “In the end, they might become some of the biggest impediments.”

  IN SEPTEMBER, OPRAH WINFREY had invited me to appear on her show to discuss Waiting for “Superman.” I’d held in check my sadness at Fenty’s loss.

  “People say, ‘Chancellor Rhee, you are so mean,’ ” I said, “and ‘Chancellor Rhee, you are so harsh.’ ”

  “ ‘We should give ineffective teachers more time,’ they tell me.

  “I look at this from the vantage point of being a mother,” I said. “I can tell you that if I showed up on the first day of school with Olivia, and the principal said, ‘Here’s your teacher. Guess what? She’s not so good.’ He explains that the school system is giving her one more year to improve, and he says: ‘Olivia and her classmates might not learn how to read this year, but we think this is the right thing to do for this adult.’ There is no way I would ever accept that for my child. So why should we accept that for anyone’s child?”

  The audience cheered.

  Mark Zuckerberg later appeared on Oprah with Governor Chris Christie and Newark, New Jersey, mayor Cory Booker. The creator of Facebook was contributing $100 million to launch reforms in Booker’s public schools. Oprah gave them a forum and brought her audience of seven million to focus on public education.

  Thinking about it, KMJ saw an opportunity. Though our organization was still in the birthing stages—no name, no staff and all—KMJ wanted to announce it on Oprah.

  “You’re crazy,” I said. “There’s no way that’s going to happen.”

  “It will,” he
replied. KMJ has a self-assuredness about him the likes of which I’ve never seen. It’s not cocky or immodest, though. It’s just matter-of-fact.

  “I’ve already been on the show once; there’s no way they’d have me on again!” I said.

  “Let me take care of that part,” he responded. “It will be good for us, because it’ll give us both a deadline and a powerful launch. Green?”

  As in, green light.

  “Green,” I said.

  He called Oprah.

  “Michelle is going to start a new advocacy group,” he said. “It’s going to change education as we know it. We need your help. We want to announce it on your show.”

  “I get it,” she said.

  They booked me for December 6. Great, I thought—we had a launch date for an organization that existed only in our minds.

  WE BROUGHT TOGETHER A group of longtime advisers—my brain trust—to meet in New York and put some flesh on the bones of an idea.

  Along with me, KMJ, and Joel Klein, the group took shape. First was Anita Dunn, who had been on Barack Obama’s communications team for his 2008 campaign. Living in D.C. and having seen the media struggles that I had endured in my early years as chancellor, she began to help me on the PR front in my last year with DCPS. She had masterfully guided us through the announcement of the new teachers union contract. Next was Bradley Tusk, founder of Tusk Strategies, who had served on Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 reelection campaign. Bradley was known as a keen political strategist who was very familiar with the politics of education reform. As I started to conceive of StudentsFirst, Anita suggested I meet with him. After the first meeting, he whipped out an impressive plan of the next steps that would be necessary to launch a major national organization.

  Then came Joe Rospars, with Blue State Digital, the company that took online grassroots mobilization to a new level with Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Anita connected us, and we immediately hit it off. Also in the room was Byron Auguste, with McKinsey & Company. Byron was the lead McKinsey person working with DCPS when Mayor Fenty first took control of the schools, and he remained a trusted adviser throughout my tenure. Joe Williams, with Democrats for Education Reform, was a friend and fellow reformer with whom I had had a long-standing relationship. The groundwork that DFER laid in the education reform landscape was critical to future advocacy efforts. Next was Dmitri Mehlhorn, who Byron thought could be a valuable member of the team. Dmitri would become one of my top executives at StudentsFirst. David Coleman also joined us. David is one of my dearest friends and also one of the smartest people I know. He had masterminded the strategy and messaging around my entry into DCPS and was a natural to aid this second transition. Adam Mendelsohn, head of Mercury consulting in Sacramento, a strong adviser to KMJ, and an activist in Republican politics, was also in attendance. Rounding out the group, my brother Erik served as our legal counsel.