Virginia L. Rhodes

Virginia Rhodes is a practitioner-turned-policy-maker whose research includes student mobility and de facto learning theory. She taught social studies for eleven years and was elected in 1984 to two terms (eight years) on the Cincinnati Board of Education. Policy initiatives on the Program & Personnel, Finance, and Transportation committees included student mobility policy, affirmative action, elimination of student smoking and corporal punishment. Following her Board service, Rhodes served as Assistant Principal in three large high schools in the district, and as Interim Principal of the Academy of World Languages. Following her B.A. in Political Science at Antioch College in 1975, she obtained a Master's in Teaching at Indiana University in 1978 and an Ed.D. in Urban Educational Leadership in 2005 by the University of Cincinnati. Rhodes' dissertation is entitled, Kids on the Move: Impact of Urban Student Mobility on Ohio School Ratings. Some of her other articles include: "Kids on the Go: Voices of Highly Mobile Students" (2000), a qualitative study with interviews of mobile schoolchildren; "de facto Learning Theory" (publication pending); "School Security: Real Safeguards, or Mechanical Shortcuts?" (Cincinnati Post, January1993); "Representation & Neighborhood Power: District Elections" (Cincinnati Herald, February 1993); "Panaceas and Public Schooling" (Cincinnati Post, September 1989); "Privatization in Public Schooling" (NCEA Conference paper, June 1989). She can be reached at vrhodes@cinci.rr.com.