Author of
The Bee Eater:
Michelle Rhee Takes On The Nation's Worst School District
and
Why Boys Fail:
Saving Our Sons From An Educational System That's Leaving Them Behind
Join DL21C Wednesday, May 25th for a discussion with author Richard Whitmire on issues surrounding failing schools, the state of education reform and his books The Bee Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes On The Nation's Worst School District (http://thebeeeater.com/) and Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons From An Educational System That's Leaving Them Behind.
Free for members and those buying books; $5/non-members
Books will be available for purchase and signing on-site
Membership is only $50 and gets you admission into all DL21C events for a full year....buy or renew your membership at www.dl21c.org.
For more information about this event or about DL21C, email us at contact-dl21c@dl21c.org.
About Richard Whitmire
Richard Whitmire, a veteran newspaper reporter and former editorial writer at USA Today, is the author of the just-published The Bee Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation’s Worst School District. He is also the author of Why Boys Fail, which explores why boys are falling behind in K-12 schools. He writes the Why Boys Fail blog for Education Week and comments on urban school reform issues at thebeeeater.com.
Whitmire’s commentaries appear frequently in publications including The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today. For the boys book, he was interviewed by both Good Morning America and Fox & Friends. Education Next featured a reading from his book and a debate between Whitmire and a skeptic of the “boy troubles,” and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof made his book the centerpiece of a Sunday column.
Whitmire is the immediate past president of the National Education Writers Association. In 2009 he was the Project Journalist for the Broad Prize for Urban Education.
About The Bee Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation's Worst School District
Hailed by Oprah as a "warrior woman for our times," reviled by teachers unions as the enemy, Michelle Rhee, outgoing chancellor of Washington DC public schools, has become the controversial face of school reform. She has appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, and is currently featured as a hero in the documentary "Waiting for Superman." This is the story of her journey from good-girl daughter of Korean immigrants to tough-minded political game-changer. When Rhee first arrived in Washington, she found a school district that had been so broken for so long, that everyone had long since given up. The book provides an inside view of the union battles, the school closings, and contentious community politics that have been the subject of intense public interest and debate along with a rare look at Rhee's upbringing and life before DC.