Michelle Rhee is a democrat, but she came very close to voting for John McCain in November. She chose Barack Obama because one of her closest friends had begged her to give him a chance. "It was a very hard decision," she says. "I'm somewhat terrified of what the Democrats are going to do on education." Like most other Democrats, Obama is allied with the teachers' unions, which generally oppose efforts to weaken tenure rules that protect teachers from being fired or to pay them on the basis of merit. The biggest teachers' union, the National Education Association (NEA), has 3.2 million members and committed $50 million to Obama's campaign. Now that the election is over, Rhee is filled with hope and dread about whom Obama will pick to be Education Secretary.
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