Least Shocking Education News of the Year …

The Washington Post reports that Michelle Rhee is on her way out of the DC Public School system:

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee will announce Wednesday that she is resigning at the end of this month, bringing an abrupt end to a tenure that drew national acclaim but that also became a central issue in an election that sent her patron, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, to defeat. Rhee survived three contentious years that made her a superstar of the education reform movement and one of the longest-serving school leaders in the city in two decades. Student test scores rose, and the teachers union accepted a contract that gave the chancellor sweeping powers to fire the lowest-performing among them.

No man or woman, mayor, chancellor or superintendent can significantly and permanently reform the government education monopoly. It is unreformable. Rhee's tenure and modest success underscores this fact. Entrenched interests regroup, respond, bide their time, and reformers move on or are shoved along.

We're all still waiting for Superman in DC and across the nation, and it reminds me a whole lot of waiting for Godot. Rhee, Geoffrey Canada, and all the rest of the celebrated reformers clearly aren't Superman, and the whole reform conversation is far past absurd.

Only systemic reform that creates a market in education will bring sustained, continual improvement. Try looking a this for a sustainable bite out of the system.