Radical by Michelle Rhee Page A

identical course load and did all of our work together. We did well. Probably the most surprising thing to me about my experiences at the Kennedy School was my affection for statistics.
    In high school I had struggled through calculus. I never liked math at all and completely avoided it in college. Logarithms, sines, and cosines made absolutely no sense to me. So when I saw that we were required to take quantitative classes as part of our course of study, I shuddered.
    But statistics spoke to me in a completely different way. It wasn’t about abstract concepts; it was completely logical and concrete. I quickly learned the value of statistics. We read the newspaper, see stories about a study showing that eggs are bad for our health or that kale is good for us, and take them as fact. We might believe what we are reading and change our behavior based on the information, often based on statistics.
    What I learned at the Kennedy School is that data can be manipulated. Two academics can look at the same set of data and come to two wildly different conclusions based on the biases they bring to their research. The most valuable skill I learned at Harvard was to never take numbers at face value, to always dig in and analyze to see what’s really happening in any given situation.
    W ENDY K OPP AND I had kept in touch during my time at Harvard. She was aware that I had done well at Harlem Park and that I had decided on graduate school. We had emailed a few times and followed one another through friends. She knew I was clearly still committed to working in public education in some capacity. I had applied for fellowships that would have allowed me to work for a foundation on education reform, but nothing was panning out.
    Out of the blue, I got a call from Wendy’s office. She was in town giving a speech in Boston and wanted to meet with me. They wanted to know if I was available.
    We met for lunch. She wore that intense look on her face. I detected that distinctive cross-armed lean-in that she does when she’s trying to talk someone into something. I’d seen her turn on her persuasive, almost magnetic charm before—usually to wring something from funders or school district officials. This time I was the target.
    â€œWe have all of these school districts that are begging us for more teachers,” she said. “At TFA we can’t recruit and train them fast enough. The school districts are asking, ‘How do you develop these teachers? Bring us some more.’ ”
    She paused. She sipped her water. She leaned in.
    â€œWe are not growing at Teach For America,” she said, “so we can’t fulfill their needs. We have no plans to grow anytime in the near future. School districts need some help. So why don’t you start an organization that could help them recruit more and better teachers?”
    It made sense. After my experience in Baltimore, I knew that excellent teachers could make all the difference for students and schools. I agreed to start an organization that would help school districts and states find the best teachers.
    Wendy managed to get a grant of $50,000 to pay my first year’s salary. She gave me a desk and an office at the Teach For America headquarters on Wall Street.
    Each day I would trudge into the office, read my books, and try to figure out what I was doing. After a while, I felt that I needed to start producing something, so I began to write the business plan for the new venture.
    By the time I finished what I thought was a solid draft, I decided I needed some feedback. I was reluctant to take it to Wendy until I got some validation that it was a decent start. I did some research and found an organization, called SCORE, that matched fledgling entrepreneurs with retired business executives. One morning I went to the New York SCORE office, where I was given a number and asked to wait. About thirty minutes later I was seated across from an older gentleman who had