Fenty hired an outsider with status-quo busting credentials, Michelle Rhee, formerly of the NYC-based organization The New Teacher Project, to lead his effort as his hand-picked superintendent. (Fenty also named Allen Y. Lew, who is overseeing the construction of a new baseball stadium for the Washington Nationals, to spearhead the district's $2.3 billion school moderinization program.)

This is what mayoral control is supposed to be about. Leadership. Get the right people on the bus (and in the right seats) and then hold the mayor accountable for whether or not the team is improving the education that is delivered to the district's school children.

Less than a week into the job, Rhee is already indicating that things will be very different. She announced that the system would halt its process of filling principal vacancies with warm bodies and would instead be aggressive about trying to hire the best. Rhee, and her own hand-picked deputy superintendent Kaya Henderson, will get right to work trying to tame the district's human resources functions so that the district can focus on getting the best teachers it can into its classrooms.

Things are moving quickly in DC, and some feathers are being ruffled because some habitual insiders aren't "at the table" bogging down decisive action with paralyzing old-school collaboration. That is par for the course when you are trying to turn failure upside down. Washington Teachers Union President George Parker, for one, seems to get that.

Parker said the District's educators realize "that we have to do something very different if we're going to get different results in D.C. Public Schools for our children."

Our hats off to Fenty and everyone involved in the latest attempts to transform one of America's most shameful public education systems.