Michelle Rhee's Book Is A Huge Failure

A week ago, I asked if Michelle Rhee's anti-teacher, anti-union screed book Radical was a flop. It hadn't cracked the NY Times bestseller list, and sales were not strong on Amazon:

As I said, I know nothing about publishing, so maybe a book like Radical needs time to get traction - even if Rhee has been on a dream book tour that included many national media outlets including The Daily Show, Charlie Rose, and This Week (let's see if Diane Ravitch gets the same bookings when her book comes out).

Well, it's a week later, and Rhee still hasn't cracked the NY Times list. How's her book doing on Amazon?

Oh, dear. I wonder is Harper has a merit pay plan for Rhee, based on her sales; you know, a plan like the one she insisted on for her teachers...

The only reason Michelle Rhee gets any attention is because a group of very wealthy people bought her access to national media outlets. But even with this outsized reach, her message just doesn't resonate. She has no real grassroots support: she is the consummate astroturfer, pretending to lead a national movement that, in reality, has very little parent or teacher support.

She was a mediocre at best an average teacher*, then a mediocre superintendent, then a mediocre, ignorant, and, frankly, incoherent "reform" advocate. Now, she's a very, very mediocre author.

No one should take Michelle Rhee seriously - and, it turns out, no one does.

I hope Harper doesn't want my advance back...

* Some of you will think I'm maybe wussing out here, but I'm going to moderate that a bit. I really don't have many objections to Rhee's second and third years as a teacher (she was clearly unprepared for her first year, by her own admission, but I know what that's like, so I forgive it (even though I never taped my kids mouths shut)). She was, by all accounts, an OK teacher by her third year.

My objection is really to her exaggeration of her record: an exaggeration so large that Rhee should have known her claims were outrageous when she was making them in preparation for taking the chancellor's job in Washington. The only person who seemed to care at the time was Bob Somerby, who was universally ignored by a fawning press.

Rhee's sin at that time wasn't that she was a bad teacher; it was that she only owned up to her record when she was outed by G.F. Brandenburg. To me, that's a far worse transgression.