Rhee: Elevate teaching, empower parents, spend wisely

Parental empowerment and high-quality options will serve as the nexus of Michelle Rhee’s policy agenda for her new organization, StudentsFirst.

Rhee unveiled the proposal today, breaking down what StudentsFirst referred to as “a call to action and a roadmap for state and local lawmakers …” Anticipating the polarization her proposals are sure to bring, she prefaced that the agenda “has assembled policies that will improve public education without regard to their point of origin on the political spectrum.”

Sure to start some dialogue is her embrace of “real choices” for parents, even those that publicly fund private options:

There simply are not enough good options to meet demand, and there will not be until policy-makers take bold steps to expand access to high-quality schools. StudentsFirst will stand for parental choice, recognizing that we can only increase the scale of quality schools through a mix of strategies. Parents must be empowered to place their children in the learning environment that will work best for them, in a high-quality traditional public school, a district-run magnet, a charter school, a private school, or even a virtual school. StudentsFirst will be agnostic about school choice vehicles as long as the schools deliver results for students.