Schools would be great if it weren’t for the kids is a great piece by Alfie Kohn, who responds to Robert Samuelson’s weird recent column in Newsweek blaming the problems of schools on….students.

I’d rate it as a “must-read.”

The arrogance of Michelle Rhee is well-known — allowing herself to be pictured on the cover of TIME Magazine with a broom in school is just the most well-known example.

One would have thought it would be difficult to top that, but she did last night after her boss, Washington, D.C. Mayor Fenty, lost the election (she is expected to leave her job as Superintendent of Schools shortly as well). She said:

“Let me not mince words, and say that yesterday’s election results were devastating – devastating. Not for me, because I’ll be fine. And not even for Fenty, because he’ll be fine, too. It was devastating for the children of Washington, D.C.”

Messianic complexes are not what schools, nor any public institution need. Memo to Ms. Rhee: No one is indispensable in any organization anywhere….

Just as many of the changes initiated by Ms. Rhee’s predecessors have been given the credit for many of today’s improvements in the D.C. schools, there is ample reason to believe that schools will improve under her successors.

In fact, the only negative that I can see happening as a result of yesterday’s election in D.C. is that it dramatically increases the odds of Ms. Rhee coming here to Sacramento after she marries our Mayor, Kevin Johnson, this month. Coincidence or not, he happened to announce today the formation of a Broad Foundation funded citywide education organization.

Uh oh….