So Why Didn't the Police Ever Investigate Michelle Rhee?

Remember the "amusing" story of how Michelle Rhee, in her first year of teaching in Baltimore, taped her students' mouths shut? How she tried to find the "humor" in making her second graders bleed? Remember when Alex Russo told us, when he heard about the story: "I'm not so sure I'm all that worried."

I wonder what might have happened had Rhee been a teacher in Elizabeth, NJ:

ELIZABETH, N.J. --

Third-grader Angelique Correa Henderson said her teacher taped her mouth and three of her friends' mouths shut at their Elizabeth, N.J., school.

Angelique, a student at Winfield Scott Elementary School in Elizabeth, said she had been talking too much in class, but that the teacher's move scared her.

She said the teacher put the tape almost covering her nose. "She said that if we kept on talking she would rip it off of our mouths."

"My heart kept on beating fast really fast," she said Thursday. "I felt really scared."

Her father thinks what allegedly happened here crosses the line. "Who would do something like this and why?" said Mundford Henderson. "There are other methods to get kids to be quiet." [emphasis mine]

Who indeed?

The school district filed a police report, but he plans to file on his own, Henderson said. The Elizabeth School District did not return calls requesting comment.

Angelique said after about 15 minutes she slowly ripped the tape off her face. "Everybody kept on laughing at us," she said.

Henderson has not heard anything from the district, he said. "I would love for the administration, the Board of Education, the school to apologize to my daughter, the other kids and myself."

The Elizabeth Police Department confirms that it is investigating the incident and that it is working in conjunction with Child Protective Services.

Apparently, this was a substitute. Unlike Rhee, I doubt she's finding much "humor" in being investigated by both the police and the state.

But hey, if the whole teaching thing doesn't work out, maybe this sub can go run the Washington, D.C. school district. Sounds like she's about as qualified as Rhee was...

Taping students' mouths: merely the first of Rhee's many subsequent failures.