Radical: Fighting to Put Students First

In Radical, Michelle Rhee, a fearless and pioneering advocate for education reform, draws on her own life story and delivers her plan for better American schools.

Rhee’s goal is to ensure that laws, leaders, and policies are making students—not adults—our top priority, and she outlines concrete steps that will put us on a dramatically different course. Informing her critique are her extraordinary experiences in education: her years of teaching in inner-city Baltimore; her turbulent tenure as chancellor of the Washington, DC public schools; and her current role as CEO of the education nonprofit StudentsFirst. Rhee draws on dozens of compelling examples from schools she’s worked in and studied, from students who’ve left behind unspeakable home lives and thrived in the classroom to teachers whose groundbreaking methods have produced unprecedented leaps in student achievement.

An incisive and intensely personal call-to-arms, Michelle Rhee’s Radical is required reading for anyone who seeks a guide to not only the improvement of our schools, but also a brighter future for America’s children.

Michelle Rhee is the founder and CEO of StudentsFirst, a political advocacy organization for education reform. From 2007 to 2010, she served as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public school system. She is also the founder of The New Teacher Project and a former Teach For America corps member. She divides her time between California, with her husband, Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, and Nashville, with her daughters, Starr and Olivia.