Mark Datema Lipscomb

As a teacher for the Chicago Public Schools, I found your decision to run an advertisement from StudentsFirst.org (September-October 2011) troubling. The StudentsFirst mantra is “accountability,” and it locates the source of almost everything wrong with public education at the feet of unions who protect “incompetent” teachers. But for more than a year now, Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of Washington, D.C.’s public schools who now runs StudentsFirst, has largely refused to address the cheating scandal that occurred on her watch.