Excerpt:
Early life, education, and personal life
Rhee's parents, Shang and Inza Rhee, immigrated to the United States from South Korea in the 1960s. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Rhee was raised in the Toledo, Ohio metropolitan area, where she graduated from Maumee Valley Country Day School in 1988. She graduated from Cornell University in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government and later earned a Master of Public Policy degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.[7] Rhee is divorced from Teach For America Executive Vice President of Public Affairs Kevin Huffman.[8] The couple has two daughters, Starr and Olivia,[9] who attend DC Public Schools.[10] Rhee is engaged to Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento, California and former NBA basketball player.[11]
[edit] Professional life
Rhee taught in Baltimore, Maryland as a recruit of Teach For America for three years. According to her resume, over a two-year period she moved students scoring on average at the 13th percentile on national standardized tests to 90 percent of students scoring at the 90th percentile or higher. This claim, however, could not be verified, as the relevant Baltimore records could not be located. [12][13] Rhee recalled the difficulties she had her first year of teaching. [14]In 1997 she founded the New Teacher Project, a non-profit organization which works with needy school districts to recruit and train new teachers. In ten years, the New Teacher Project has expanded to forty programs in twenty states and recruited more than 10,000 teachers.
Through the DC Teaching Fellows program, Washington, D.C. participated in the New Teacher Project, and was successful in recruiting highly qualified applicants.[15] On June 12, 2007, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty announced that he had chosen Rhee to replace superintendent of D.C. public schools Clifford Janey and become the schools' new chancellor. Rhee initially rebuffed Fenty's offer, but relented when promised wide latitude and significant authority in decision-making as well as strong mayoral support for her proposed initiatives.[16][17][18][19][20] New York City Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein highly recommended her to Mayor Fenty.[21]
Rhee has served on the advisory boards for the National Council on Teacher Quality,[22] National Center for Alternative Certification, and Project REACH.[citation needed] She was a special guest of First Lady Laura Bush at President George W. Bush's 2008 State of the Union address.[23]
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/12/obamas-americorps-scandal-and-the-first-ladys-meddling/
Excerpt:
President Barack Obama plans to fire the inspector general who investigates AmeriCorps and other national service programs amid a controversy between the IG and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star.
The IG, Gerald Walpin, was criticized by the U.S. attorney in Sacramento for the way he handled an investigation of Johnson and his nonprofit group, St. HOPE Academy, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants from the Corporation for National Community Service. The corporation runs the AmeriCorps program.
On Thursday, Obama said in a letter to Congress that he had lost confidence in Walpin. Neither the president nor deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest would give details. The president must give Congress 30 days’ notice before removing Walpin, who is being suspended with pay for the 30 days. Earnest said, “The president will appoint a replacement in whom he has full confidence as the corporation carries out its important mission.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a letter to Obama, pointed to a law requiring that Congress be given the reasons an IG is fired. He cited a Senate report saying the requirement is designed to ensure that inspectors general are not removed for political reasons. Grassley said Walpin had identified millions of dollars in AmeriCorps funds that were wasted or misspent and “it appears he has been doing a good job.”
http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/2010/05/st-hope-academy.html
Excerpt:
REPORT: D.C. SCHOOLS CHIEF RHEE MISHANDLED SEXUAL MISCONDUCT SCANDAL: RHEE, FIANCE INVOLVED IN 2007 COMPLAINT AT CALIF. SCHOOL , November 21, 2009, The Washington (DC) Times
A congressional report released Friday includes allegations that D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee mishandled a complaint that Kevin M. Johnson, her current fiance, engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with a student at a California charter school in 2007.At least one staff member at the St. Hope Academy resigned in protest over the handling of the case, according to the report, released jointly by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, and Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.The staff member, Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez, reported a student's charges to Ms. Rhee, according to the report. Ms. Wong-Hernandez later told an independent investigator that Ms. Rhee replied that "she was 'making this her number one priority, and she would take care of the situation,' " the report said.Soon afterward, Ms. Wong-Hernandez said, she heard that the student had been contacted by a personal lawyer for Mr. Johnson, who was a founder of the school. He is now the mayor of Sacramento, Calif…Erik Jones, a St. Hope teacher who alerted police to complaints about Mr. Johnson, said he resigned for reasons similar to Ms. Wong-Hernandez, according to the report."St. Hope sought to intimidate the student through an illegal interrogation and even had the audacity to ask me to change my story," Mr. Jones wrote in his resignation letter.The findings involving Ms. Rhee were a small but surprising detail in a 62-page report on the firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which manages the youth service organization AmeriCorps.Mr. Walpin had been looking into the reported misuse of $850,000 in federal grant money by Mr. Johnson, a friend and supporter of President Obama who was accused of spending AmeriCorps grant money by having members wash his car, run personal errands, and engage in partisan political activities.Ms. Rhee, a controversial figure in the District who has pushed a package of school reforms and closed several schools to address falling enrollment, was a member of the St. Hope's board of directors at the time. Mr. Johnson, a former professional basketball player, was the school's executive director… [Rhee and Johnson are engaged]
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/10/rotten-to-the-americorps/?feat=home_top5_shared
Excerpt:
Rep. Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Republican, attempted last year to prohibit groups “engaged in political or legislative advocacy” from receiving taxpayer dollars through AmeriCorps. The left saw this as a direct attack on what has become a prime source of income and blocked the effort. As a result, the state of Oregon hosts on its official Web site a job listing for an AmeriCorps “volunteer” to accept an $11,100 living allowance and a $4,725 education award to work full time for a local Planned Parenthood office. The position requires a “commitment to the mission of Planned Parenthood,” which - among other things - is to maximize the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood. Support in the past also has gone to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and various homosexual advocacy groups.
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ME/People/DEAs/hager.html
Excerpt:
Making a Grand Slam With a Curve Ball
John Hager was 34 and life was flowing smoothly. He had just been given the biggest promotion of his career, he and his wife, Margaret, had recently welcomed their first child, and he was on his way to the top of the corporate world. That was one day in August 1973; the next day, his life changed forever.Polio, which had disabled thousands of Americans in the 1950s, had been nearly eradicated by the Salk vaccine. But when his infant son was inoculated against polio with the live-virus Sabin vaccine in August 1973, Hager contracted the disease from the vaccine and nearly died. After four months of hospitalization and rehabilitation, he emerged–without the use of his legs–to a new life.
“I had gone to the top and got knocked down to the bottom,” Hager says. He had lost his promotion with American Tobacco Company but rejoined the company and worked his way back to the top, demonstrating the spirit and diligence that has propelled him since. He retired as American Tobacco Company’s senior vice president, Leaf and Specialty Products Division, when the company was sold to British American Tobacco
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Hager
Excerpt:
John H. Hager
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| John Henry Hager | |
 | |
| In office January 14, 1998 – January 14, 2002 | |
| Governor | Jim Gilmore |
| Preceded by | Don Beyer |
| Succeeded by | Tim Kaine |
| Born | August 28, 1936 Durham, North Carolina |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret Chase Hager (1971-present) |
| Children | John Vigil Hager (b.1973) Henry Chase Hager (b.1978) |
| Profession | Politician, Entrepreneur |
[edit] Family and early life
Growing up in Durham, Hager started a neighborhood newspaper in 1945.[2] While an undergraduate at Purdue University he ran a vending machine business, was an active member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and was a member of ROTC. One term, his course load was 25 credit hours - about two thirds more than normal. He was graduated with a BSME (mechanical engineering) in 1958. Both his parents, Virgil and Ruth Hager, were 1928 Purdue alumni.[3] Hager earned his MBA at Harvard in 1960, and subsequently served in the Army, rising to the rank of Captain.[4]Hager married Margaret Dickinson "Maggie" Chase on February 27, 1971; whom he have two sons, John (b.1973) and Henry (b.1978). Hager's younger son, Henry, married former President George W. Bush's fraternal twin daughter, Jenna on May 10, 2008 at her parents' Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas.[5] He contracted polio when his son was vaccinated for the disease with live virus vaccine in 1973.[3] As a result, he uses a nonmotorized wheelchair for daily ambulation - and competes in wheelchair races.[6]
[edit] Career
After his active duty military service, Hager began work for the American Tobacco Company in Richmond, Virginia. The company retired him after his bout with polio, but he returned - beginning at the bottom again. At American Tobacco, he served as a government affairs representative. Hager was forcibly retired from the American Tobacco Company after the company's sale in 1994.[2]In 1975, he volunteered for Lieutenant Governor John N. Dalton, and in 1984 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. In 1994, he co-chaired the Senatorial campaign for Oliver North.[3] He ran for state party chairman in 1992,[7] and was treasurer of the state Republican Party in 1994.[8]
Hager has served as the director of Virginia's homeland security under Governors Jim Gilmore and Mark Warner. Hager was elected Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in 1997, defeating Democrat Lewis F. Payne, Jr. Hager is believed to be the first disabled individual to serve in an elected statewide office in Virginia.
In 2001, Hager ran for Governor of Virginia, but lost the Republican nomination to Virginia's then Attorney General, Mark Earley.
Hager is the former Assistant Secretary of the Department of Education's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services. He was nominated to this position by President George W. Bush on May 24, 2004, confirmed by the Senate on November 21, 2004[4] and resigned effective August 1, 2007.
In July 2007, Hager was elected to serve as chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia.[1][6] He was defeated for reelection by Delegate Jeff Frederick in May 2008.[9]
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