Michelle Rhee ’92 has a no-nonsense attitude when it comes to improving the Washington, D.C. public schools system. As chancellor of the historically under-performing school district, she has shut down schools and fired teachers en-route to creating an environment in which all students can succeed.

Often seen as a controversial figure in public education, Rhee’s pioneering actions may someday lead to large-scale school reform. The Sun sat down with Rhee on Monday to talk about higher education’s role in innovating public schools, her portrayal in the media and her time at Cornell.

The Sun: Your work focuses on helping K-12 students succeed. And one of your measures of success, I would assume, is the number of students who enter post-secondary education. But how is higher education helping to allow greater access to underprivileged students?

Michelle Rhee: I think that one of the things that I kind of encourage a lot of the colleges and universities to realize is that all of our top grads, their SAT scores might not be on par with others, but it has nothing to do with their abilities and aptitude and everything to do with the fact [that] for 12 years, they have done everything they have been told, and the level of rigor and the quality [of public school education]. It’s going to be a tougher road for our kids when they come to more competitive environments like this. But I have every belief they can do it if given the chance. I would hope that Cornell and schools like it are really cognizant of, again, [realizing that] public schools are not nearly where they should be.

Sun: Has higher education done a good job of helping create innovation in public education?

M.R.: I think that Harvard has done a tremendous amount. There’s a professor there, Roland Fryer, an economics professor, who started the Ed Labs, and they have put a tremendous amount into innovation in higher education. Tom Kane, also at Harvard, does a tremendous amount of on-the-ground work with school districts. Now, it might be because there are really vibrant school vocations at Harvard, and for various reasons that don’t make a lot of sense to me, we don’t have one at Cornell. I do think that there are ways that we can ensure that people who are in institutions of higher ed don’t just live in the ivory tower, but really get into what’s going on and figure out how we bring changes to bear.

Sun: From the standpoint of higher education, where does most of the work to improve public education currently lie?

M.R.: A lot of top-tier schools, the level of involvement they have in education and school reform is at a very policy level — 30,000 feet above what’s going on in schools. What I would like to encourage more of, and what we are starting to see with the Harvard programs, is those people — those people who are professors, researchers — actually working side by side to help figure out what are some of the solutions to these problems. How are we going to be on the ground level trying to find some of these things out? I would like to see more of that in the top-tier schools.

Sun: As a graduate of Teach for America, you have become somewhat of a poster-child for the program. Do you see Teach for America and other programs like it as the solution to education inequities?

M.R.: I don’t think it’s the answer, but I don’t think Teach for America thinks it’s the answer either. It’s definitely one key lever. When I think about all of the things we can be doing right now to solve the problems that we face, the one lever that I think has the most impact is human capital, and how we bring it in and keep great teachers. I certainly think that of all of the teachers we have, Teach for America is an absolutely phenomenal [resource] ... And whenever I go to classrooms and see very good teaching, it’s invariably Teach for America.

Sun: Time Magazine wrote last year that you “could transform the way schools across the country are run.” It seems like what you are doing is often seen as a grand experiment in deciding the future direction of public schools. Do you feel the pressure?

M.R.: For me, the greatest pressure I feel every day is the knowledge that 45,000 kids are counting on me to ensure that we are creating the [best education we can]. And knowing that the majority of schools are not providing nearly enough motivation — that’s the biggest pressure I feel every day.

Sun: A big emphasis on measuring success and improvement in the D.C. school district is based on test scores. Do you ever feel that there is a limit to the usefulness of test scores?

M.R.: I wouldn’t say there necessarily is a limit, I would say we look at things outside of test scores as indicators. But one of the problems that public education has is that people gage whether or not a teacher is good based on how you feel. ... More of a focus [needs to be] on ... kids actually learning the skills necessary to be productive members of society. If they can’t read, they aren’t going to be productive members.

Sun: How do you find that balance between qualitative and quantitative assessment?

M.R.: I think there are some communities in which they never have to look at test scores, because those aren’t an issue. If kids are achieving, those districts have the luxury of paying attention to lots of other things. For us, we pay attention to a whole lot of things when kids aren’t learning. And when you have a situation like we do, where according to the last national examination of education progress, 8 percent of our eighth graders are on grade level in mathematics, that means we are not doing something right. So to not focus on that fact is not going to help us.

Sun: You have been superintendent of the D.C. schools since 2007, which means that you have worked under two different administrations. Has the new administration changed your job in any substantial way?

M.R.: Interestingly, the new administration is taking the vast majority of the Bush administration’s policies, and really kind of giving me the authority, instead of saying ‘we are taking control’ and [moving] in their own direction. I have been incredibly impressed with the consistency and clarity of the president’s message — that we have to improve the quality [of] teaching, that we have to move towards merit-based pay. Those are things that Democratic leaders at his level never say. And the fact that he has been so consistent about articulating that, I think helps it seep into the public consciousness in a better way.

Sun: You graduated from Cornell in 1992. Can you talk about your experience at the University?

M.R.: I had a great experience at Cornell. I was a government major. I mostly got into government because that’s what everyone seemed to be majoring in, so I jumped on the bandwagon, and I never would have guessed back then that I would eventually end up in government. But I had a very enjoyable experience here. Definitely because of Cornell, I became much more aware of the racial inequalities in education. I took a lot of classes in Africana studies, and I learned more about that, and I think that’s what really drove me to join Teach for America.

Sun: What you are doing now — relentlessly pursuing excellence — doesn’t sound all that different from a Cornell student. How much did your time here influence what you would eventually ended up doing?

M.R.: I certainly think that any time you are in an environment where you have access to unbelievable resources and peers, it makes you realize how fortunate you are. One of the things I realized back then is that not everyone has access to higher education in the way that I did because I grew up in a more privileged background. And I think seeing people who are coming from a variety of different places, but who all had varying degrees of preparation to get to Cornell solidified in my mind back then that we have a lot of problems in public education.