Synopsis
Michelle Rhee began her career by teaching for three years in an inner city school, before founding and running The New Teacher Project, which in ten years recruited and trained more than 23,000 new teachers to work in urban schools across the United States.
In 2007, Mayor Adrian Fenty appointed Michelle to lead the District of Columbia Public Schools, a school district serving more than 47,000 students in 123 schools. Under her leadership, the worst performing school district in the country became the only major city system to see double-digit growth in both their state reading and state maths scores in the seventh, eighth and tenth grades over three years. The graduation rate rose, and after steep declines, enrollment rose for the first time in forty years.
In 2010, Michelle set up StudentsFirst, an organisation that works with parents, teachers and citizens across the US to ensure great teachers are rewarded appropriately, novice teachers receive the training they need and ineffective teachers are removed from schools.
Michelle also appeared in Davis Guggenheim's 2010 Waiting for “Superman", a documentary about the state of public education in America.
Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove will give a brief introduction for Ms Rhee.