Michelle Rhee, celebrity, goes national
Blog by Valerie Strauss/Washington Post
Michelle Rhee is going national. Running the Washington, D.C., schools wasn’t a big enough platform for the superstar Rhee. So, with the secretary of education’s job already filled, she's on to her next act, heading a new organization, created around her, that has as its aim nothing short of transforming public education in America. Just to make sure nobody misses the launch of Students First, at http://www.studentsfirst.org/, Rhee has arranged to have the launch announced by that great educator Oprah Winfrey, who earlier this year anointed Rhee “a warrior woman.” And in what is surely a journalistic coincidence, there is a cover story in Newsweek magazine on Rhee. When you go to the Students First Web site, the first large image is not of Rhee with students, who are supposed to be first, but of Rhee, when she was on the Oprah show this year, sitting with Winfrey, Bill Gates and Davis Guggenheim, who made Rhee the star of his skewed “Waiting for Superman” film. (more…)