Michelle Rhee Email & Phone Number

Investing in founders and innovations that accelerate economic mobility

Washington, District Of Columbia, Us

In December of 2010 I founded StudentsFirst, a non-profit, grassroots organization that solely represents students in public education. Through the support and strong voices of our members across the country, we aim to bring balance to a system that has been skewed to serve adult special interests more than children's. We believe that by organizing the collective will of the many Americans who want their legislators and schools to put students first, will we create an excellent public school system across the United States.

On June 12, 2007, Mayor Adrian Fenty appointed me to lead the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), a school district serving more than 47,000 students in 123 schools. Due to the work of thousands of educators, students, parents and central office employees, from 2007 - 2010 DCPS went from the worst performing school district in the country to the only major city system to see double-digit growth in both their state reading and state math scores in seventh, eighth and tenth grades over three years. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) comparing DCPS to states, DCPS eighth graders grew at three times the national average in 2009, and our fourth graders were the only group in the country to see gains in every "subgroup," from African American students to students receiving a free or reduced-price lunch. When compared to other urban districts on the NAEP/TUDA, DCPS fourth graders outpaced those in all other tested districts, ranking number one in student growth among TUDA districts for first time. Eighth graders were second only to San Diego. The graduation rate rose, and after steep declines enrollment rose for the first time in forty years. We were proud to see that every eligible DC public school attracted applicants for the annual Out-of-Boundary lotteries, with fourteen schools generating waiting lists for the first time. We even saw a 50 percent increase in families' interest in DCPS programs in all eight wards over the year before. Much work remains, and DCPS teachers continue to do the job under a groundbreaking new teachers' contract, which we negotiated to reward their success and value them as the professionals they are.

New York, New York, Us

In 1997 I founded The New Teacher Project (TNTP) to bring more excellent teachers to classrooms across the country. With the help of a great team, TNTP soon became a national leader in understanding and developing innovative solutions to the challenges of new teacher hiring. We partnered with school districts, state education agencies, non-profit organizations and unions to transform the way schools and other organizations recruit, select and train highly qualified teachers in difficult-to-staff schools.As a result of this work, district leaders improved teacher hiring in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, New York, Oakland and Philadelphia. During this time TNTP placed 23,000 new, high-quality teachers in schools across the country. In all, since TNTP's launch that number has risen to 43,000.

Baltimore, Md, Us

As a third-grade Teach for America (TFA) corps member in Harlem Park Community School in Baltimore City, I learned a lot about teaching through trial and error, but after a tough first year, I decided that 8 year-olds were not going to run me out of town! I began with a candid conversation with the kids about where their skills were versus where they wanted them to be. I worked with another teacher to set achievement goals with our students and work toward them, engaging parents and increasing the workload to match the size of our task. I learned a lot about just how much persistence it takes to consistently create results in the face of poverty and other factors.By the end of the year, our students were showing tremendous progress compared to the year before. I moved on from that experience truly believing that the more we could empower teachers toward the results they wanted, the more quickly we would see widespread excellence in our nation's public schools.

Masters, Public Policy

Ba, Government