Steven Wise is no friend of education
Let me tell you about the months of coloration and input on the bill that Wise seems so proud of. It was the equivalent of forcing a four year old who has no love for vegetables to choose between squash and lima beans. I use a four year old in my analogy because the legislature has chosen to treat teachers like children. These same teachers when testifying who were overwhelmingly against the bill were filed in one after another only to be dismissed while another NFOE Michelle Rhee was given rock star treatment. John Thrasher perhaps the biggest NFOE around even cut off testimony, saying how many times can I hear the same thing; so much for democracy at work.
Wise says people are against teachers having tenure, well I bet they are against teachers losing their right of due process, which is what they actually have even more. He says they are for merit pay, well who isn’t, except education isn’t as simple as, fire bad teachers reward excellent ones. Study after study has shown has shown merit pay based on standardized tests does not work. It rewards the luck of the teachers draw (who is in their classes) rather than the teacher’s ability to teach. Yet Wise would have you believe differently. Do we want education policies decided on what sounds good (FCAT anyone) or tried and true research. Who should be making decisions for what’s best for kids, teachers in classrooms and parents (most of whom are likewise against the bill) or politicians who have already meddled with public schools almost to death.
Friends don’t let slick packaging and a snake oil salesmen’s tongue convince you this bill is good for education and it’s doing teachers and children a favor. It’s not on both accounts. It’s another attempt by those who hate public education to further cripple public education.
I would say urge your representative to vote against this bill except it was a done deal, regardless of what Wise would have you believe, as soon as Rick Scott was elected, it would be pointless of me to do so. Instead I urge you to remember this day the next time you are in a voting booth. Then please vote what’s best for Florida’s children.
Chris Guerrieri
Showing posts with label michele rhee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label michele rhee. Show all posts
Friday, February 25, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Rhee starts push to get paid
From the Washington Posts Answer Sheet
By Valerie Strauss
Former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee likes to say that everything she does is for kids. But the first big campaign of her “Students First” organization, announced Wednesday, isn't really about them.
Rhee announced today what she is calling the national Save Great Teachers campaign.
What it’s not about: Giving great teachers what they say they want -- more support to do their jobs in school.
What it is about: Getting state legislatures to eliminate policies that require school districts, in the event of layoffs, to let the last-hired employees go first. This way, principals can supposedly save great young teachers and get rid of lousy older teachers.
Rhee’s intentions become transparent when one considers how to really protect great teachers: a reliable, valid, multi-part assessment system. If Rhee were so concerned about saving great teachers of any age, she would be more interested in immediately pursuing a valid assessment tool. If teachers were properly evaluated and those who don't belong in the classroom really removed, then the last-hired first-fired wouldn't be an issue, and the kids and adults would benefit.
Rhee did create a new teacher assessment system while she was D.C. schools chancelleor, called IMPACT, but after millions of dollars put into it, the system has been sharply criticized.
Among the problems cited about IMPACT are that it is highly punitive though provides little support for teachers, and that it relies on student standardized test scores, which research has shown are prone to error and ignore the fact that the quality of teaching isn’t the only factor that goes into how well a student performs on a single test. The system, unveiled in 2009, has undergone revisions though teachers still say it is unfair.
It is now common currency in school reform circles to blame teachers unions for pretty much everything wrong in schools, except for those things that can be laid at the steps of bad parents and lazy students. It doesn’t matter to people who want to union bash that the problems in schools are identical in states with unionized teachers and with non-unionized teachers, and that, perhaps, whatever one thinks about unions, the basic problems lie elsewhere.
It's tiring to hear the mantra “it’s for the kids,” or “students first” every time someone takes an anti-union step, but that any teacher who fights for his/her rights is only thinking about themselves and not the kids.
That is what is being said of the protesting teachers in Wisconsin by their critics, because they are fighting to keep their collective bargaining rights, which the Republican governor, Scott Walker, has vowed to eliminate.
Why shouldn’t the teachers protest? They already made monetary concessions and the governor still wants to strip them of the right to bargain in the future.
Why didn’t anybody say that plans just announced in Detroit to close half of the schools, a move that will create high school classes of about 60 students, is all about the adults and their failure to properly budget? Where is the concern for the kids here? Why isn’t someone figuring out how to protect the kids from humongous classes?
Maybe Michelle Rhee could have offered financial help to reduce class size in Detroit. Now THAT would be kid-friendly.
Meanwhile, the assault on teachers and their unions continues. As an example: In Amelia Island, Fla., last week, the Philanthropy Roundtable, a national association of individual donors, corporate giving officers, and foundation trustees and staff, held its annual conference and there was a session entitled “How to End Teacher Tenure.” That's what's on the minds of the rich folks who are dabbling in education policy with their millions.
It is true that over time teachers and their unions haven’t done themselves any great favors by saving the ultimate tool -- taking to the streets and shutting down schools -- to save their own collective bargaining rights.
How come teachers did not actively protest the imposition of a standardized testing dominated accountability system hen they knew that it would narrow curriculum and perpetuate invalid notions of success and failure?
It is safe to say that had they taken to the streets over No Child Left Behind, they would have been been accused of being obstructionist, lazy and afraid of being held accountable.
Oh wait. That happened anyway.
If they didn't loudly protest before over the shape of school reform as they should have, teachers are now worked up. Teachers and parents are planning a march on Washington July 28-31 in an effort to “organize and reclaim control of our schools.” That’s what the Save Our Schools March Web site says.
They can only hope that someone will be listening listening, and that they aren't too lat
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/michelle-rhee/rhees-new-initiative-not-all-a.html?wprss=answer-sheet
By Valerie Strauss
Former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee likes to say that everything she does is for kids. But the first big campaign of her “Students First” organization, announced Wednesday, isn't really about them.
Rhee announced today what she is calling the national Save Great Teachers campaign.
What it’s not about: Giving great teachers what they say they want -- more support to do their jobs in school.
What it is about: Getting state legislatures to eliminate policies that require school districts, in the event of layoffs, to let the last-hired employees go first. This way, principals can supposedly save great young teachers and get rid of lousy older teachers.
Rhee’s intentions become transparent when one considers how to really protect great teachers: a reliable, valid, multi-part assessment system. If Rhee were so concerned about saving great teachers of any age, she would be more interested in immediately pursuing a valid assessment tool. If teachers were properly evaluated and those who don't belong in the classroom really removed, then the last-hired first-fired wouldn't be an issue, and the kids and adults would benefit.
Rhee did create a new teacher assessment system while she was D.C. schools chancelleor, called IMPACT, but after millions of dollars put into it, the system has been sharply criticized.
Among the problems cited about IMPACT are that it is highly punitive though provides little support for teachers, and that it relies on student standardized test scores, which research has shown are prone to error and ignore the fact that the quality of teaching isn’t the only factor that goes into how well a student performs on a single test. The system, unveiled in 2009, has undergone revisions though teachers still say it is unfair.
It is now common currency in school reform circles to blame teachers unions for pretty much everything wrong in schools, except for those things that can be laid at the steps of bad parents and lazy students. It doesn’t matter to people who want to union bash that the problems in schools are identical in states with unionized teachers and with non-unionized teachers, and that, perhaps, whatever one thinks about unions, the basic problems lie elsewhere.
It's tiring to hear the mantra “it’s for the kids,” or “students first” every time someone takes an anti-union step, but that any teacher who fights for his/her rights is only thinking about themselves and not the kids.
That is what is being said of the protesting teachers in Wisconsin by their critics, because they are fighting to keep their collective bargaining rights, which the Republican governor, Scott Walker, has vowed to eliminate.
Why shouldn’t the teachers protest? They already made monetary concessions and the governor still wants to strip them of the right to bargain in the future.
Why didn’t anybody say that plans just announced in Detroit to close half of the schools, a move that will create high school classes of about 60 students, is all about the adults and their failure to properly budget? Where is the concern for the kids here? Why isn’t someone figuring out how to protect the kids from humongous classes?
Maybe Michelle Rhee could have offered financial help to reduce class size in Detroit. Now THAT would be kid-friendly.
Meanwhile, the assault on teachers and their unions continues. As an example: In Amelia Island, Fla., last week, the Philanthropy Roundtable, a national association of individual donors, corporate giving officers, and foundation trustees and staff, held its annual conference and there was a session entitled “How to End Teacher Tenure.” That's what's on the minds of the rich folks who are dabbling in education policy with their millions.
It is true that over time teachers and their unions haven’t done themselves any great favors by saving the ultimate tool -- taking to the streets and shutting down schools -- to save their own collective bargaining rights.
How come teachers did not actively protest the imposition of a standardized testing dominated accountability system hen they knew that it would narrow curriculum and perpetuate invalid notions of success and failure?
It is safe to say that had they taken to the streets over No Child Left Behind, they would have been been accused of being obstructionist, lazy and afraid of being held accountable.
Oh wait. That happened anyway.
If they didn't loudly protest before over the shape of school reform as they should have, teachers are now worked up. Teachers and parents are planning a march on Washington July 28-31 in an effort to “organize and reclaim control of our schools.” That’s what the Save Our Schools March Web site says.
They can only hope that someone will be listening listening, and that they aren't too lat
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/michelle-rhee/rhees-new-initiative-not-all-a.html?wprss=answer-sheet
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Humanity of Michelle Rhee
From the Washington posts Answer Sheet
By Mike Rose
No one involved in education – probably including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan – has the media profile of Michelle Rhee, ex-chancellor of the Washington D.C. public schools. For those of you who don’t follow the politics of school reform, and might know of Ms. Rhee only through, her appearances on Oprah and in Waiting for Superman, let me offer a brief history.
Ms. Rhee, who had taught school in Baltimore for three years through Teach for America and founded an educational non-profit called The New Teacher Project, was selected by then-Mayor of D.C. Adrian Fenty to run the D.C. schools – and to shake them up. Rhee did so, famously firing a number of teachers and administrators and closing some schools. She also negotiated a new contract with the teachers union.
The media loved her – young, attractive, spunky (she used words like “crappy” and “suck”), and determined, she was all over TV and radio and made the cover of Time Magazine holding a broom to sweep clean the district. When in 2010 the voters turned out Mayor Fenty, in part because of Rhee, and she resigned soon afterward, her popularity only seemed to rise. More OpEd pieces, more interviews, and lots of rumors about what next large urban school district she would run. Instead she has started a non-profit education reform group called Students First.
I don’t know Michelle Rhee. I don’t know what she’s like personally, off-stage. So what I’m going to write here concerns the public Michelle Rhee, the persona she offers to the world with, one can assume, forethought and strategy. There have been two recent events that have been much discussed and that might tarnish this persona and that I think are revelatory about some of the features of contemporary school reform – for which Ms. Rhee is a powerful symbol.
The first event. An independent arbitrator ruled that the District of Columbia must rehire 75 teachers who Chancellor Rhee fired during their probationary period in 2008. The dismissals were improper, said the arbitrator, because Rhee did not provide a reason for the terminations. The teachers had “no opportunity to provide their side of the story.”
There is much to say here: the violation of due process, the hardship these teachers endured, the significant burden the ruling places on the already burdened district. But I can’t help but think as well of the irony that teachers in D.C. never felt they were heard by Chancellor Rhee (or, for that fact, by Mayor Fenty), and that the arbitrator cites Rhee’s not giving teachers a chance to speak on their own behalf as the “glaring and fatal flaw” in her action. So the broom that sweeps clean – the brash and decisive kick-ass-and-take-names persona that the media celebrated – in fact operated improperly and ended up causing her successor a whole heap of trouble.
Here’s the second event, and it has gotten a lot of attention in the blogosphere. When Michelle Rhee was applying for her chancellor’s post in D.C. she stated on her resume that when she taught in Baltimore, she raised her students’ test scores in two years from the 13th percentile to the 90th percentile. It is a sign of her appeal that Mayor Fenty and then the media didn’t balk.
Or was it just that they know so pitifully little about education? That kind of gain, even if Mother Theresa were teaching the class, is not credible. But it passed, and it resurfaced here and there as part of the developing mythology surrounding the dynamic Chancellor.
A short while ago, a blogger posted an analysis of the test scores from the school in Baltimore where the young Ms. Rhee taught. Though scores weren’t broken down by teacher, the overall scores were sufficiently modest to make the kind of gain Ms. Rhee cited statistically unlikely. It is possible that Ms. Rhee had those astronomical scores, and they were averaged out by several classes that were entirely in the hole by 40 or more points. Possible, but a quite unusual occurrence. A few weeks ago, Ms. Rhee said that if she were applying again, she would word the claim differently. The chancellor who put such stock in standardized test scores has some difficulty representing the scores from her own classroom.
So what might these two events mean for the reputation of Ms. Rhee? Probably not much. She has extraordinary support from very powerful people and a remarkable ability to work the media. In a recent column in The Washington Post education reporter Valerie Strauss noted that the test score flap is beside the point and put her finger on the big issue: What did Michelle Rhee accomplish during her 3 and 1/2 years as Chancellor? The jury is still out on that question, though as has been happening in the reform environment of the last decade, initial big bang initiatives and events turn out to be disappointing – or worse have unintended consequences. Witness the reversal of Chancellor Rhee’s firing of those 75 teachers. (For a damning assessment of her tenure, see Leigh Dingerson’s The Proving Grounds.)
Perhaps it’s my old English major background surfacing, but I can’t help but see the firing/rehiring and test score episodes – and the very creation of the public Michelle Rhee herself – as emblematic of the weaknesses of current school reform.
There is the unflagging search for a miracle cure, a highly potent structure (small schools, charter schools), or technology (value-added measures), or figure (Ms. Rhee) that will do what past reformers were unable to do – and will be able to do it in any setting.
There is the technocratic faith in the machinery of standardized tests – and a vindication when the test scores rise. But the rise in scores frequently turns out to be temporary or in some way manipulated. Remember the “Texas Miracle?”
There is a belief in the tough, bold outsider, the gunslinger who will come in and clean things up. These gunslingers are often young, smart, quick on their feet, and very, very assured. But what comes with this character – a very appealing character for Americans – is a disdain for anything already in place, an unwillingness or inability to find the local good and take the time to learn local history. This attitude and bearing fits also with the technocratic dismissal of the old and the embrace of the new. A bad mix: the righteousness of the gunslinger with the naïve belief in the latest technology of reform.
The above suggests a Manichean view of the world; there are good guys and bad guys. You’re on the side of the good – and these days the bad are older teachers, teachers unions, ed schools, and pretty much anyone not on your reform wagon. Ms. Rhee is fond of saying that she and like-minded peers are in this “for the kids” and everyone else is simply looking out for their own adult self interest.
And finally there is the media savvy of the reformers. They are masterful at framing the debate, demonizing their critics, creating appealing narratives that touch a chord in the national consciousness. The public Michelle Rhee is a creation of this media machinery. But as my friend John Rogers, the director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, pointed out to me, she equally represents the danger of the celebrity reformer – a creation that brings with it impossible expectations. The miracle cure embodied.
The sad thing, and at the end of the day it is sadness I’m left with, is the degree to which Michelle Rhee gave herself over to this celebrity machinery, a machinery that will amp up one’s most attention-grabbing qualities, indifferent to the consequences to one’s self or anyone else in the way.
There is a scene in John Merrow’s PBS feature on Michelle Rhee and described in his new book, The Influence of Teachers, in which Chancellor Rhee is talking with members of Merrow’s film crew and casually announces that she is about to fire someone – and asks the crew if they would like to tape it. Fire someone on video. The person’s dignity is stripped away. But so is the humanity of Michelle Rhee.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/the-meaning-of-michelle-rhee.html
By Mike Rose
No one involved in education – probably including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan – has the media profile of Michelle Rhee, ex-chancellor of the Washington D.C. public schools. For those of you who don’t follow the politics of school reform, and might know of Ms. Rhee only through, her appearances on Oprah and in Waiting for Superman, let me offer a brief history.
Ms. Rhee, who had taught school in Baltimore for three years through Teach for America and founded an educational non-profit called The New Teacher Project, was selected by then-Mayor of D.C. Adrian Fenty to run the D.C. schools – and to shake them up. Rhee did so, famously firing a number of teachers and administrators and closing some schools. She also negotiated a new contract with the teachers union.
The media loved her – young, attractive, spunky (she used words like “crappy” and “suck”), and determined, she was all over TV and radio and made the cover of Time Magazine holding a broom to sweep clean the district. When in 2010 the voters turned out Mayor Fenty, in part because of Rhee, and she resigned soon afterward, her popularity only seemed to rise. More OpEd pieces, more interviews, and lots of rumors about what next large urban school district she would run. Instead she has started a non-profit education reform group called Students First.
I don’t know Michelle Rhee. I don’t know what she’s like personally, off-stage. So what I’m going to write here concerns the public Michelle Rhee, the persona she offers to the world with, one can assume, forethought and strategy. There have been two recent events that have been much discussed and that might tarnish this persona and that I think are revelatory about some of the features of contemporary school reform – for which Ms. Rhee is a powerful symbol.
The first event. An independent arbitrator ruled that the District of Columbia must rehire 75 teachers who Chancellor Rhee fired during their probationary period in 2008. The dismissals were improper, said the arbitrator, because Rhee did not provide a reason for the terminations. The teachers had “no opportunity to provide their side of the story.”
There is much to say here: the violation of due process, the hardship these teachers endured, the significant burden the ruling places on the already burdened district. But I can’t help but think as well of the irony that teachers in D.C. never felt they were heard by Chancellor Rhee (or, for that fact, by Mayor Fenty), and that the arbitrator cites Rhee’s not giving teachers a chance to speak on their own behalf as the “glaring and fatal flaw” in her action. So the broom that sweeps clean – the brash and decisive kick-ass-and-take-names persona that the media celebrated – in fact operated improperly and ended up causing her successor a whole heap of trouble.
Here’s the second event, and it has gotten a lot of attention in the blogosphere. When Michelle Rhee was applying for her chancellor’s post in D.C. she stated on her resume that when she taught in Baltimore, she raised her students’ test scores in two years from the 13th percentile to the 90th percentile. It is a sign of her appeal that Mayor Fenty and then the media didn’t balk.
Or was it just that they know so pitifully little about education? That kind of gain, even if Mother Theresa were teaching the class, is not credible. But it passed, and it resurfaced here and there as part of the developing mythology surrounding the dynamic Chancellor.
A short while ago, a blogger posted an analysis of the test scores from the school in Baltimore where the young Ms. Rhee taught. Though scores weren’t broken down by teacher, the overall scores were sufficiently modest to make the kind of gain Ms. Rhee cited statistically unlikely. It is possible that Ms. Rhee had those astronomical scores, and they were averaged out by several classes that were entirely in the hole by 40 or more points. Possible, but a quite unusual occurrence. A few weeks ago, Ms. Rhee said that if she were applying again, she would word the claim differently. The chancellor who put such stock in standardized test scores has some difficulty representing the scores from her own classroom.
So what might these two events mean for the reputation of Ms. Rhee? Probably not much. She has extraordinary support from very powerful people and a remarkable ability to work the media. In a recent column in The Washington Post education reporter Valerie Strauss noted that the test score flap is beside the point and put her finger on the big issue: What did Michelle Rhee accomplish during her 3 and 1/2 years as Chancellor? The jury is still out on that question, though as has been happening in the reform environment of the last decade, initial big bang initiatives and events turn out to be disappointing – or worse have unintended consequences. Witness the reversal of Chancellor Rhee’s firing of those 75 teachers. (For a damning assessment of her tenure, see Leigh Dingerson’s The Proving Grounds.)
Perhaps it’s my old English major background surfacing, but I can’t help but see the firing/rehiring and test score episodes – and the very creation of the public Michelle Rhee herself – as emblematic of the weaknesses of current school reform.
There is the unflagging search for a miracle cure, a highly potent structure (small schools, charter schools), or technology (value-added measures), or figure (Ms. Rhee) that will do what past reformers were unable to do – and will be able to do it in any setting.
There is the technocratic faith in the machinery of standardized tests – and a vindication when the test scores rise. But the rise in scores frequently turns out to be temporary or in some way manipulated. Remember the “Texas Miracle?”
There is a belief in the tough, bold outsider, the gunslinger who will come in and clean things up. These gunslingers are often young, smart, quick on their feet, and very, very assured. But what comes with this character – a very appealing character for Americans – is a disdain for anything already in place, an unwillingness or inability to find the local good and take the time to learn local history. This attitude and bearing fits also with the technocratic dismissal of the old and the embrace of the new. A bad mix: the righteousness of the gunslinger with the naïve belief in the latest technology of reform.
The above suggests a Manichean view of the world; there are good guys and bad guys. You’re on the side of the good – and these days the bad are older teachers, teachers unions, ed schools, and pretty much anyone not on your reform wagon. Ms. Rhee is fond of saying that she and like-minded peers are in this “for the kids” and everyone else is simply looking out for their own adult self interest.
And finally there is the media savvy of the reformers. They are masterful at framing the debate, demonizing their critics, creating appealing narratives that touch a chord in the national consciousness. The public Michelle Rhee is a creation of this media machinery. But as my friend John Rogers, the director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, pointed out to me, she equally represents the danger of the celebrity reformer – a creation that brings with it impossible expectations. The miracle cure embodied.
The sad thing, and at the end of the day it is sadness I’m left with, is the degree to which Michelle Rhee gave herself over to this celebrity machinery, a machinery that will amp up one’s most attention-grabbing qualities, indifferent to the consequences to one’s self or anyone else in the way.
There is a scene in John Merrow’s PBS feature on Michelle Rhee and described in his new book, The Influence of Teachers, in which Chancellor Rhee is talking with members of Merrow’s film crew and casually announces that she is about to fire someone – and asks the crew if they would like to tape it. Fire someone on video. The person’s dignity is stripped away. But so is the humanity of Michelle Rhee.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/the-meaning-of-michelle-rhee.html
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Michelle Rhee, half true
If they would have limited what she said just to Florida which has an embarrassingly low per pupil spending, Politifact probably would have found her mostly false. -cpg
From the St. Peterdburg Times Grade Book
By Aaron Sharockman,
TALLAHASSEE — Florida legislators recently fawned over former Washington, D.C., public school chancellor Michelle Rhee as she addressed House and Senate members. Today, PolitiFact Florida offers its most sincere form of admiration:
We put Rhee in front of the Truth-O-Meter.
Rhee appeared in Tallahassee Feb. 8-9 to support Gov. Rick Scott's proposals to overhaul the K-12 system by ending teacher tenure and linking teacher pay to student test scores.
She also at least tacitly defended Scott's proposals to cut public education funding by $703 per student as part of his budget for 2011-12 and 2012-13.
"Money does not necessarily correlate with student achievement," Rhee said. "In this country in the last 30 years, we have more than doubled the amount of money we are spending per child … and the results have gotten worse, not better."
Are education funding and student results moving in opposite directions?
Per-pupil spending
Education spending certainly has increased in the last 30 years.
The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics has collected and analyzed per-pupil spending since 1919.
When adjusted for inflation, per-pupil spending has nearly doubled from $6,037 per student in 1976-77 to $11,674 in 2006-07, the last year figures are available.
(For the record, Florida says it spends about $6,900 per student. Scott proposes to shrink per-student funding to about $6,200).
The payback?
What the country has gotten for that investment — especially over a 30-year period — is more difficult to determine.
We first tried to compare the U.S. education system with those of other countries.
Common assessments, however, don't span 30 years. And different tests measure different-aged students.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/michelle-rhee-tells-florida-legislators-spending-on-education-is-way-up/1152830
From the St. Peterdburg Times Grade Book
By Aaron Sharockman,
TALLAHASSEE — Florida legislators recently fawned over former Washington, D.C., public school chancellor Michelle Rhee as she addressed House and Senate members. Today, PolitiFact Florida offers its most sincere form of admiration:
We put Rhee in front of the Truth-O-Meter.
Rhee appeared in Tallahassee Feb. 8-9 to support Gov. Rick Scott's proposals to overhaul the K-12 system by ending teacher tenure and linking teacher pay to student test scores.
She also at least tacitly defended Scott's proposals to cut public education funding by $703 per student as part of his budget for 2011-12 and 2012-13.
"Money does not necessarily correlate with student achievement," Rhee said. "In this country in the last 30 years, we have more than doubled the amount of money we are spending per child … and the results have gotten worse, not better."
Are education funding and student results moving in opposite directions?
Per-pupil spending
Education spending certainly has increased in the last 30 years.
The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics has collected and analyzed per-pupil spending since 1919.
When adjusted for inflation, per-pupil spending has nearly doubled from $6,037 per student in 1976-77 to $11,674 in 2006-07, the last year figures are available.
(For the record, Florida says it spends about $6,900 per student. Scott proposes to shrink per-student funding to about $6,200).
The payback?
What the country has gotten for that investment — especially over a 30-year period — is more difficult to determine.
We first tried to compare the U.S. education system with those of other countries.
Common assessments, however, don't span 30 years. And different tests measure different-aged students.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/michelle-rhee-tells-florida-legislators-spending-on-education-is-way-up/1152830
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Concerns about Michelle Rhee
A concern I have is she will attempt to profit off her teacher evaluating tool IMPACT and that not concern for children drives her ideas. So often it is all about the money. -cpg
From the Washington Posts Answer Sheet
By Larry Ferlazzo
A local magazine here in Sacramento is doing a big story on former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who, apart from Gov. Jerry Brown, might be Sacramento’s most famous newest resident. The writer asked if I would be willing to answer a few questions... Here's a summary of how I responded when he asked what I thought of the policies that Rhee and her allies in the “school reform” movement are promoting.
I responded by saying that I had four main concerns:
1) During her 3 1/2 year tenure as chancellor, Rhee seemed primarily interested in doing “to” teachers and families instead of doing “with” them. This lack of willingness to work in partnership and to listen, symbolized by her TIME Magazine cover holding a broom in a classroom, showed a lack of understanding of the basic tenets of power — sharing it with others doesn’t mean you have less; in fact, it means that the pie gets bigger for everybody with the new possibilities that are created.
2) I was very concerned with her focus on using test scores as the most important tool to evaluate teacher and student success. I referenced the discovery last week that the test scores her own students supposedly achieved when she was a teacher were far lower than she had claimed (see The Best Posts About Michelle Rhee’s Exaggerated Test Scores).
That doesn’t mean she wasn’t an excellent teacher — she might very have been. It does, however, point out that standardized test scores are easy to misinterpret and are probably not the best evaluation tool for teachers — or for students. At our school, we talk about being data-informed, not being data-driven. Test results are just one of many pieces of information that should be used when we reflect on our work.
3) I didn’t appreciate Ms. Rhee and her allies regularly portraying themselves as the “true” champions of children, while the rest of us were just “defenders of the status quo.” I believe that she and many of her allies truly do want to do what they think is best for children — I just don’t agree with their overall analysis of what needs to be done. That does not mean that I do not have the best interests of my students in my heart and mind everyday. I am wary of anyone, anywhere, in whatever policy or personal arena, feeling like they have a monopoly on the truth.
4) Plenty of research has shown that two-thirds of the factors that influence student achievement occur out of school. I don’t appreciate Ms. Rhee and her allies telling us that when we state that fact, we are just making “excuses.” That doesn’t mean that my colleagues and I don’t do everything within our power to push the boundary of that “one-third” area we can influence, including working with parents to try to combat some of those other factors. But saying that poverty doesn’t have a huge impact on our students doesn’t make it so.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/4-concerns-about-rhee.html
From the Washington Posts Answer Sheet
By Larry Ferlazzo
A local magazine here in Sacramento is doing a big story on former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who, apart from Gov. Jerry Brown, might be Sacramento’s most famous newest resident. The writer asked if I would be willing to answer a few questions... Here's a summary of how I responded when he asked what I thought of the policies that Rhee and her allies in the “school reform” movement are promoting.
I responded by saying that I had four main concerns:
1) During her 3 1/2 year tenure as chancellor, Rhee seemed primarily interested in doing “to” teachers and families instead of doing “with” them. This lack of willingness to work in partnership and to listen, symbolized by her TIME Magazine cover holding a broom in a classroom, showed a lack of understanding of the basic tenets of power — sharing it with others doesn’t mean you have less; in fact, it means that the pie gets bigger for everybody with the new possibilities that are created.
2) I was very concerned with her focus on using test scores as the most important tool to evaluate teacher and student success. I referenced the discovery last week that the test scores her own students supposedly achieved when she was a teacher were far lower than she had claimed (see The Best Posts About Michelle Rhee’s Exaggerated Test Scores).
That doesn’t mean she wasn’t an excellent teacher — she might very have been. It does, however, point out that standardized test scores are easy to misinterpret and are probably not the best evaluation tool for teachers — or for students. At our school, we talk about being data-informed, not being data-driven. Test results are just one of many pieces of information that should be used when we reflect on our work.
3) I didn’t appreciate Ms. Rhee and her allies regularly portraying themselves as the “true” champions of children, while the rest of us were just “defenders of the status quo.” I believe that she and many of her allies truly do want to do what they think is best for children — I just don’t agree with their overall analysis of what needs to be done. That does not mean that I do not have the best interests of my students in my heart and mind everyday. I am wary of anyone, anywhere, in whatever policy or personal arena, feeling like they have a monopoly on the truth.
4) Plenty of research has shown that two-thirds of the factors that influence student achievement occur out of school. I don’t appreciate Ms. Rhee and her allies telling us that when we state that fact, we are just making “excuses.” That doesn’t mean that my colleagues and I don’t do everything within our power to push the boundary of that “one-third” area we can influence, including working with parents to try to combat some of those other factors. But saying that poverty doesn’t have a huge impact on our students doesn’t make it so.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/4-concerns-about-rhee.html
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The big bussiness takeover of Florida Schools
From the St. Augustine Record
by Kathleen Haughney
TALLAHASSEE -- As Gov. Rick Scott backs away for now from a push for an expanded school voucher program, former Gov. Jeb Bush's education foundation has begun quietly circulating draft legislation that may serve as the Legislature's template to massively expand the number of charter schools throughout the state.
Scott's budget team this week preached the governor's belief in school choice, saying the Scott wanted to expand virtual school offerings, allow more students to transfer from failing or sub par schools and create more charter school opportunities. Meanwhile, Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future has brought forth a plan that would allow colleges and universities to open charter schools without school district approval and set up a system for the per-student funding to follow the student and not be tied to a school district.
The governor and the foundation got a high profile push this week from former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who made her name by promoting school choice and firing teachers she deemed failures. Rhee, who also serves as an informal adviser to Scott, was in Tallahassee this past week to lobby the Legislature on an education reform issues, particularly expanding school choice and abolishing teacher tenure.
"We have to be putting policies and laws in place that don't hamstring charters ... that create the right environment for them," Rhee told reporters. "And if Florida can do that, I think you're going to attract more and more of the high quality charter providers into the state."
Charter school expansion may be an easier route for Scott to test the waters of school choice expansion.
State Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, who chairs the Senate's Prek-12 Education Committee, is open to the idea of charter school expansion, noting that the Kipp Charter School in Jacksonville has been relatively successful.
"Sometimes, they have a little bit more flexibility than the school districts, but I think they're going to be in this game," Wise said. "And we're going to try to work with them as best as possible."
Union officials aren't weighing in yet on potential charter school legislation. A Florida Education Association spokesman said the teachers' union has generally been in favor of charters in theory, but that it would not favor a system where per student funding left a school district to follow the student to a charter school.
A line in the foundation's draft legislation reads, "Charter school students shall be funded without regard to whether the student's home address lies within the school district sponsoring the charter school."
http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2011-02-13/charter-schools-could-be-expanded
by Kathleen Haughney
TALLAHASSEE -- As Gov. Rick Scott backs away for now from a push for an expanded school voucher program, former Gov. Jeb Bush's education foundation has begun quietly circulating draft legislation that may serve as the Legislature's template to massively expand the number of charter schools throughout the state.
Scott's budget team this week preached the governor's belief in school choice, saying the Scott wanted to expand virtual school offerings, allow more students to transfer from failing or sub par schools and create more charter school opportunities. Meanwhile, Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future has brought forth a plan that would allow colleges and universities to open charter schools without school district approval and set up a system for the per-student funding to follow the student and not be tied to a school district.
The governor and the foundation got a high profile push this week from former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who made her name by promoting school choice and firing teachers she deemed failures. Rhee, who also serves as an informal adviser to Scott, was in Tallahassee this past week to lobby the Legislature on an education reform issues, particularly expanding school choice and abolishing teacher tenure.
"We have to be putting policies and laws in place that don't hamstring charters ... that create the right environment for them," Rhee told reporters. "And if Florida can do that, I think you're going to attract more and more of the high quality charter providers into the state."
Charter school expansion may be an easier route for Scott to test the waters of school choice expansion.
State Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, who chairs the Senate's Prek-12 Education Committee, is open to the idea of charter school expansion, noting that the Kipp Charter School in Jacksonville has been relatively successful.
"Sometimes, they have a little bit more flexibility than the school districts, but I think they're going to be in this game," Wise said. "And we're going to try to work with them as best as possible."
Union officials aren't weighing in yet on potential charter school legislation. A Florida Education Association spokesman said the teachers' union has generally been in favor of charters in theory, but that it would not favor a system where per student funding left a school district to follow the student to a charter school.
A line in the foundation's draft legislation reads, "Charter school students shall be funded without regard to whether the student's home address lies within the school district sponsoring the charter school."
http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2011-02-13/charter-schools-could-be-expanded
Monday, February 14, 2011
Not sold on Rhee? You aren't the only one
From the St. Petersbug Times
by Jeffrey Solochek
Florida's lawmakers were starstruck.
Before them stood Michelle Rhee, the former Washington, D.C., public schools chancellor recently featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, on a Newsweek cover and in the documentary film Waiting for Superman.
"I am here today to ask you to keep being a leader," Rhee said, urging members of two education committees to tackle one the few reforms that Florida has yet to achieve: a streamlined way to get "ineffective" teachers out of the classroom. "There is so much more to do."
Senate Pre-K-12 Committee Chairman Steve Wise called her a movie star, and even Sen. Eleanor Sobel, a more skeptical Broward Democrat, gave a nod to Rhee for "bringing new energy to the education debate."
But as he watched from the audience, the spokesman from Florida's teachers union wondered why lawmakers were listening to her. "It's a little difficult to understand why she is given rock star status," said Mark Pudlow of the Florida Education Association.
Sure, Rhee might have the ear of the governor and the praise of the president. Sure, Rhee has made national headlines pushing through controversial measures relating to teacher tenure, evaluations and salaries in D.C.
But Pudlow noted that Washington, D.C., schools score at the bottom of the national Education Week Quality Counts ranking, while Florida rates close to the top. He observed that some of Rhee's controversial efforts to fire "ineffective" teachers have been overturned by an arbitrator after the Washington Teachers Union fought the effort tooth and nail.
Valid concerns, said Rhee, an unpaid, informal adviser to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. She suggested looking through a different lens for some perspective.
"Over the three years that I was there, we saw really record gains in academic achievement on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) examination," she said. "We went from being last in the entire nation to leading the entire nation in gains in both reading and math at both the fourth- and eighth-grade levels. And we were the only jurisdiction in the entire country in which every single subgroup of children improved their academic standing."
The 75,000-student district still isn't the best, she acknowledged. Far from it, in fact. But Rhee proposed that the gains that D.C. schools made might be replicated if other school systems adopt some of the "drastic changes" that she pushed through.
Her new national organization, Students First, seeks to get states to adopt similar changes. Rhee has made presentations to leaders in New Jersey and Indiana about these efforts, and she headed to Atlanta right after her Tallahassee stop to make a pitch to Georgia lawmakers.
But she sees Florida as the logical leader for altering the teacher contract landscape, she said, because of its history of adopting school accountability measures and the willingness of its leaders to take on the tough challenges that lie ahead. She credited former Gov. Jeb Bush — whom she has met with — for starting the ball rolling, and current Gov. Scott for taking the next step.
Some of Rhee's points to Florida lawmakers last week:
• End the practice of relying on seniority to determine which teachers stay and go during layoffs.
• Reduce the length of time low-performing teachers get to improve, so children's education is not wasted.
• Separate teacher evaluations from the collective bargaining process.
• Eliminate "tenure" and related systems.
House Rep. K-20 competitiveness subcommittee Chairman Erik Fresen thanked Rhee for creating a national blueprint for education reform.
"We have to start treating teaching as a profession," Fresen said.
Some observers question whether Rhee's approach does that at all.
Rhee has endured much criticism for her tough approach to the issue, where she didn't always wait for everyone to join forces with her before forging ahead. Some have contrasted her with Hillsborough County superintendent MaryEllen Elia, who is attempting to change the face of teacher evaluation with the local teachers union on board.
Richard Whitmire, a former USA Today editorial writer who wrote the Rhee biography The Bee Eater, said Rhee made things happen in a district that hadn't moved much before her tenure. Her relentless push for teacher quality won devoted followers, he said, but also had its fallout.
"The pushback that sparked, especially around firing teachers, was the biggest reason Adrian Fenty lost his re-election bid as mayor and Rhee had to step down," Whitmire said.
That's a lesson that Florida could draw from, Rhee said, acknowledging her own failure to communicate well with the public about her efforts.
"I didn't do as good a job as I needed to, to proactively go out to the great teachers and say, 'We're not talking about you. What I need you to do is stay. We want to recognize what you are doing. It's so important,' " she said. "You have to be careful not to send a message that you are blaming teachers or that you don't think teachers are good."
In fact, she said, teachers are critically important to the success of any effort to improve education. The strong ones want the weak ones out of their schools, Rhee related, and students deserve nothing less.
Wise stressed this point just before his committee passed its "teacher quality" bill on a unanimous, bipartisan vote.
"We are not here to punish teachers," Wise said, adding that he wants to hear from more teachers, as well as parents and others in order to improve the measure before it gets to a final vote.
Nathan Saunders, president of the Washington Teachers Union, said Florida lawmakers should think twice about heading down D.C.'s path. The full costs of Rhee's tenure have yet to be borne out, he said, but already they have begun to arise in the form of deficits and back pay for improperly fired teachers.
Boiled down, Saunders had one simple message for Florida lawmakers: "Florida should not be listening to Michelle Rhee."
Jeffrey S. Solochek can be reached at solochek@sptimes.com or (813) 909-4614. For more education news, visit the Gradebook at www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/not-everyones-sold-on-michelle-rhee-gov-scotts-education-adviser/1151311
by Jeffrey Solochek
Florida's lawmakers were starstruck.
Before them stood Michelle Rhee, the former Washington, D.C., public schools chancellor recently featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, on a Newsweek cover and in the documentary film Waiting for Superman.
"I am here today to ask you to keep being a leader," Rhee said, urging members of two education committees to tackle one the few reforms that Florida has yet to achieve: a streamlined way to get "ineffective" teachers out of the classroom. "There is so much more to do."
Senate Pre-K-12 Committee Chairman Steve Wise called her a movie star, and even Sen. Eleanor Sobel, a more skeptical Broward Democrat, gave a nod to Rhee for "bringing new energy to the education debate."
But as he watched from the audience, the spokesman from Florida's teachers union wondered why lawmakers were listening to her. "It's a little difficult to understand why she is given rock star status," said Mark Pudlow of the Florida Education Association.
Sure, Rhee might have the ear of the governor and the praise of the president. Sure, Rhee has made national headlines pushing through controversial measures relating to teacher tenure, evaluations and salaries in D.C.
But Pudlow noted that Washington, D.C., schools score at the bottom of the national Education Week Quality Counts ranking, while Florida rates close to the top. He observed that some of Rhee's controversial efforts to fire "ineffective" teachers have been overturned by an arbitrator after the Washington Teachers Union fought the effort tooth and nail.
Valid concerns, said Rhee, an unpaid, informal adviser to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. She suggested looking through a different lens for some perspective.
"Over the three years that I was there, we saw really record gains in academic achievement on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) examination," she said. "We went from being last in the entire nation to leading the entire nation in gains in both reading and math at both the fourth- and eighth-grade levels. And we were the only jurisdiction in the entire country in which every single subgroup of children improved their academic standing."
The 75,000-student district still isn't the best, she acknowledged. Far from it, in fact. But Rhee proposed that the gains that D.C. schools made might be replicated if other school systems adopt some of the "drastic changes" that she pushed through.
Her new national organization, Students First, seeks to get states to adopt similar changes. Rhee has made presentations to leaders in New Jersey and Indiana about these efforts, and she headed to Atlanta right after her Tallahassee stop to make a pitch to Georgia lawmakers.
But she sees Florida as the logical leader for altering the teacher contract landscape, she said, because of its history of adopting school accountability measures and the willingness of its leaders to take on the tough challenges that lie ahead. She credited former Gov. Jeb Bush — whom she has met with — for starting the ball rolling, and current Gov. Scott for taking the next step.
Some of Rhee's points to Florida lawmakers last week:
• End the practice of relying on seniority to determine which teachers stay and go during layoffs.
• Reduce the length of time low-performing teachers get to improve, so children's education is not wasted.
• Separate teacher evaluations from the collective bargaining process.
• Eliminate "tenure" and related systems.
House Rep. K-20 competitiveness subcommittee Chairman Erik Fresen thanked Rhee for creating a national blueprint for education reform.
"We have to start treating teaching as a profession," Fresen said.
Some observers question whether Rhee's approach does that at all.
Rhee has endured much criticism for her tough approach to the issue, where she didn't always wait for everyone to join forces with her before forging ahead. Some have contrasted her with Hillsborough County superintendent MaryEllen Elia, who is attempting to change the face of teacher evaluation with the local teachers union on board.
Richard Whitmire, a former USA Today editorial writer who wrote the Rhee biography The Bee Eater, said Rhee made things happen in a district that hadn't moved much before her tenure. Her relentless push for teacher quality won devoted followers, he said, but also had its fallout.
"The pushback that sparked, especially around firing teachers, was the biggest reason Adrian Fenty lost his re-election bid as mayor and Rhee had to step down," Whitmire said.
That's a lesson that Florida could draw from, Rhee said, acknowledging her own failure to communicate well with the public about her efforts.
"I didn't do as good a job as I needed to, to proactively go out to the great teachers and say, 'We're not talking about you. What I need you to do is stay. We want to recognize what you are doing. It's so important,' " she said. "You have to be careful not to send a message that you are blaming teachers or that you don't think teachers are good."
In fact, she said, teachers are critically important to the success of any effort to improve education. The strong ones want the weak ones out of their schools, Rhee related, and students deserve nothing less.
Wise stressed this point just before his committee passed its "teacher quality" bill on a unanimous, bipartisan vote.
"We are not here to punish teachers," Wise said, adding that he wants to hear from more teachers, as well as parents and others in order to improve the measure before it gets to a final vote.
Nathan Saunders, president of the Washington Teachers Union, said Florida lawmakers should think twice about heading down D.C.'s path. The full costs of Rhee's tenure have yet to be borne out, he said, but already they have begun to arise in the form of deficits and back pay for improperly fired teachers.
Boiled down, Saunders had one simple message for Florida lawmakers: "Florida should not be listening to Michelle Rhee."
Jeffrey S. Solochek can be reached at solochek@sptimes.com or (813) 909-4614. For more education news, visit the Gradebook at www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/not-everyones-sold-on-michelle-rhee-gov-scotts-education-adviser/1151311
Misinformation, half truths and out right education lies
From th Daily Censored
by Paul Thomas
The U.S. is floundering at the bottom of international comparisons of education, and what makes this worse is that in the grand ol’ 1950s, the U.S. was at the top—at least that is one story offered by Michelle Rhee on a recent episode of the Colbert Report.
Like the discussion of Waiting for Superman by John Legend on Bill Maher’s Real Time, the celebrity tour of Rhee, who recently lost her job as chancellor of schools in DC, raises some real problems about not only what our self-appointed educational leaders are saying about education, but also how our so-called left-wing media helps (directly and indirectly) to perpetuate misinformation about our education system—misinformation that is being promoted to mask the real issues about poverty in our culture that the political and corporate elite do not want to face.
Rhee, in her interview with Colbert, makes several sweeping claims about schools, and as is the nature of contemporary media (recognizing, of course, that Colbert is satire), she is allowed to make those claims without any evidence and without anyone raising a hand to ask, “Really?”
Let’s unpack for a second just the one claim about the U.S. being number one in education and graduation in the 1950s.
First, Rhee is following a clever playbook of the new education reform movement: Make partial claims that few people will question because they sound true. While I find the claim itself misleading, even if the claim is true, Rhee is referring to the U.S. public education system before integration and the civil rights movement impacted a public education system that had closed doors to many American citizens. In short, the education system of the 1950s was an incomplete one that shunned many people marginalized by race and poverty.
Rhee trusts that most people embrace a misguided nostalgia for the past, a nostalgia lacking evidence for such faith in a better time, but once we actually return to that Golden Era, the message then is somewhat confusing in the light of Rhee’s claims.
Let me recommend some reading: Admiral Hyman Rickover’s Swiss Schools and Ours: Why Theirs are Better (1962) and American Education, a National Failure; The problem of our schools and what we can learn from England (1963)—both built on the argument that throughout the 1950s U.S. public schools were clear failures when compared internationally (sound familiar?), and sweeping educational reform (to eradicate the leftist influence, no less) was needed to address the crisis.
Or how about Rudolf Flesch? Try reading this Time article from 1955 or Flesch’s book—Why Johnny Can’t Read—And What You Can Do About It (1955).
The full truth, of course, is that corporate and political elites have been making the same exact charges heard from Rhee, Secretary Duncan, and Bill Gates, unwarranted and without much resistance, for at least half a century. Rhee’s misinformation is nothing new, but it is finding renewed traction because these messages are being reinforced through the cult of celebrity, and that cult of celebrity is being driven by the so-called left-wing media just as easily as anywhere else—Oprah, Maher’s Real Time, The Colbert Report.
The message must be challenged, however, and it must come from the field itself—educators and scholars alike. When the usual claims and patterns are raised, we must do as much maligned educator and activist Bill Ayers has implored us to do, “Talk back, speak up, be heard.”
Now, what are the claims, and what rebuttals must we offer?:
• All cries of educational crisis are misleading. A crisis requires drastic responses quickly; our education system is a reflection of historical patterns that require patience and nuance in facing and addressing those patterns. We do not have education crises; we have lingering and systemic social failures.
• Education leadership that has no experience or expertise doesn’t deserve to be at the head of the reform table. Celebrities—Oprah, Bill Gates, John Legend, Andre Agassi—are not experts in education just because they have fame and money. Leadership and money are not the credentials needed to drive educational reform.
• Data don’t prove much of anything when the data is cherry-picked, and incomplete. As Rhee in her Colbert interview demonstrated, the new education reform celebrities have learned the power of incomplete statistics; offer just enough data to trigger popular assumptions—as long as those popular assumptions fuel the corporate agenda. When a simplistic and obvious claim about education is made, we must always assume it is false. The truth about education is nuanced and complex—and numbers can lie.
• Let’s be more like Finland? Well let’s do that, but not the partial way Secretary Duncan, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee have claimed. Let’s admit the genuine influence of socialism in Finland, along with their commitment to healthcare and sex education. Let’s consider that the government pays for all teachers’ graduate courses, leading to every teacher having a Master’s degree before teaching. Let’s consider that 95% of teachers in Finland are unionized. And let’s note that Finland does not use standards-driven testing to label students, teachers, and schools. And let’s consider that childhood poverty is about 4% in Finland (while the U.S. child poverty rate is 22%).
• International comparisons of test scores? What about international comparisons of childhood poverty? When we stoop to rankings, we are always risking yet more oversimplification and distortion, but when our political and corporate elites cherry-pick rankings (test scores) while avoiding the big picture (childhood poverty rankings), we are once again falling victim to factual but misleading statistics. State schools in all countries are a reflection of social realities of those countries—not data that can be used to compare the educational quality among countries.
Historically, the political Left has been a direct and indirect supporter of public education. That tradition does not mean the Left gets a free pass.
President Obama and Secretary Duncan have abandoned democratic principles and the promise of public education for a free people; they have abdicated those principles for the lure of corporate ideology.
The so-called left-wing media is following right along. I happen to like Oprah, Bill Maher,and Stephen Colbert (and the causes they promote as well as the voices they provide our culture), but, again, that doesn’t mean they are above being called on the carpet for their negligence (and the negligence of the media across the board).
And it is negligence to allow and even embrace the distortions driving the new educational reform movement being fueled by a celebrity elite who have no business representing the education agenda of a free society that claims to value academic freedom, human empowerment, and the hope of democracy not yet fulfilled.
http://dailycensored.com/2010/12/02/the-education-celebrity-tour-legend-of-the-fall-pt-ii/
by Paul Thomas
The U.S. is floundering at the bottom of international comparisons of education, and what makes this worse is that in the grand ol’ 1950s, the U.S. was at the top—at least that is one story offered by Michelle Rhee on a recent episode of the Colbert Report.
Like the discussion of Waiting for Superman by John Legend on Bill Maher’s Real Time, the celebrity tour of Rhee, who recently lost her job as chancellor of schools in DC, raises some real problems about not only what our self-appointed educational leaders are saying about education, but also how our so-called left-wing media helps (directly and indirectly) to perpetuate misinformation about our education system—misinformation that is being promoted to mask the real issues about poverty in our culture that the political and corporate elite do not want to face.
Rhee, in her interview with Colbert, makes several sweeping claims about schools, and as is the nature of contemporary media (recognizing, of course, that Colbert is satire), she is allowed to make those claims without any evidence and without anyone raising a hand to ask, “Really?”
Let’s unpack for a second just the one claim about the U.S. being number one in education and graduation in the 1950s.
First, Rhee is following a clever playbook of the new education reform movement: Make partial claims that few people will question because they sound true. While I find the claim itself misleading, even if the claim is true, Rhee is referring to the U.S. public education system before integration and the civil rights movement impacted a public education system that had closed doors to many American citizens. In short, the education system of the 1950s was an incomplete one that shunned many people marginalized by race and poverty.
Rhee trusts that most people embrace a misguided nostalgia for the past, a nostalgia lacking evidence for such faith in a better time, but once we actually return to that Golden Era, the message then is somewhat confusing in the light of Rhee’s claims.
Let me recommend some reading: Admiral Hyman Rickover’s Swiss Schools and Ours: Why Theirs are Better (1962) and American Education, a National Failure; The problem of our schools and what we can learn from England (1963)—both built on the argument that throughout the 1950s U.S. public schools were clear failures when compared internationally (sound familiar?), and sweeping educational reform (to eradicate the leftist influence, no less) was needed to address the crisis.
Or how about Rudolf Flesch? Try reading this Time article from 1955 or Flesch’s book—Why Johnny Can’t Read—And What You Can Do About It (1955).
The full truth, of course, is that corporate and political elites have been making the same exact charges heard from Rhee, Secretary Duncan, and Bill Gates, unwarranted and without much resistance, for at least half a century. Rhee’s misinformation is nothing new, but it is finding renewed traction because these messages are being reinforced through the cult of celebrity, and that cult of celebrity is being driven by the so-called left-wing media just as easily as anywhere else—Oprah, Maher’s Real Time, The Colbert Report.
The message must be challenged, however, and it must come from the field itself—educators and scholars alike. When the usual claims and patterns are raised, we must do as much maligned educator and activist Bill Ayers has implored us to do, “Talk back, speak up, be heard.”
Now, what are the claims, and what rebuttals must we offer?:
• All cries of educational crisis are misleading. A crisis requires drastic responses quickly; our education system is a reflection of historical patterns that require patience and nuance in facing and addressing those patterns. We do not have education crises; we have lingering and systemic social failures.
• Education leadership that has no experience or expertise doesn’t deserve to be at the head of the reform table. Celebrities—Oprah, Bill Gates, John Legend, Andre Agassi—are not experts in education just because they have fame and money. Leadership and money are not the credentials needed to drive educational reform.
• Data don’t prove much of anything when the data is cherry-picked, and incomplete. As Rhee in her Colbert interview demonstrated, the new education reform celebrities have learned the power of incomplete statistics; offer just enough data to trigger popular assumptions—as long as those popular assumptions fuel the corporate agenda. When a simplistic and obvious claim about education is made, we must always assume it is false. The truth about education is nuanced and complex—and numbers can lie.
• Let’s be more like Finland? Well let’s do that, but not the partial way Secretary Duncan, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee have claimed. Let’s admit the genuine influence of socialism in Finland, along with their commitment to healthcare and sex education. Let’s consider that the government pays for all teachers’ graduate courses, leading to every teacher having a Master’s degree before teaching. Let’s consider that 95% of teachers in Finland are unionized. And let’s note that Finland does not use standards-driven testing to label students, teachers, and schools. And let’s consider that childhood poverty is about 4% in Finland (while the U.S. child poverty rate is 22%).
• International comparisons of test scores? What about international comparisons of childhood poverty? When we stoop to rankings, we are always risking yet more oversimplification and distortion, but when our political and corporate elites cherry-pick rankings (test scores) while avoiding the big picture (childhood poverty rankings), we are once again falling victim to factual but misleading statistics. State schools in all countries are a reflection of social realities of those countries—not data that can be used to compare the educational quality among countries.
Historically, the political Left has been a direct and indirect supporter of public education. That tradition does not mean the Left gets a free pass.
President Obama and Secretary Duncan have abandoned democratic principles and the promise of public education for a free people; they have abdicated those principles for the lure of corporate ideology.
The so-called left-wing media is following right along. I happen to like Oprah, Bill Maher,and Stephen Colbert (and the causes they promote as well as the voices they provide our culture), but, again, that doesn’t mean they are above being called on the carpet for their negligence (and the negligence of the media across the board).
And it is negligence to allow and even embrace the distortions driving the new educational reform movement being fueled by a celebrity elite who have no business representing the education agenda of a free society that claims to value academic freedom, human empowerment, and the hope of democracy not yet fulfilled.
http://dailycensored.com/2010/12/02/the-education-celebrity-tour-legend-of-the-fall-pt-ii/
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The Slant of the Times Union
The Times Union has long been a big part of my life. My mother worked there for nearly thirty years and I have fond memories of sitting around the table with her reading the paper. Now however I have to say I am a bit frustrated with the paper. They seem to be on the wrong side of the education debate. Even in their news pieces there seems to be a slant.
In a recent article about Micelle Rhee, controversial former D.C. schools chancellor, addressing the Florida Legislature, Brandon Larrabee sited her presence in the movie, Waiting for Superman. I say movie not documentary because many of its dramatic scenes were staged. Mr. Larrabee referred to the movie as being critically acclaimed, I say the movie was blatant propaganda made by a public school hating film maker, financed by billionaires interested in increasing their share in the education market through misinformation, teacher demonizing, charter schools and an increased reliance on standardized testing. In case you blinked, you should know that education has become a multi-billion dollar business.
You know what really gets me? It’s the fact that many of those that embraced Waiting for Superman as the gospel are the same people that will dismiss a Michael Moore movie as Hollywood crap. I share many of Michael Moore’s views but I know when I watch his films to do so with both eyes open and to take them with a grain of salt.
Even if all of what was portrayed in Waiting for Superman was true regardless of the fact much has been debunked, (sadly however that didn’t get nearly the press the film did) it would still only show a miniscule fraction of what is going on in our schools. It would be like looking at three doctors you knew were bad and then condemning the whole medical field nationwide because of their actions. Sadly however when Mr. Larrabee says critically acclaimed he gives the movie more credibility than it deserves.
You expect a slant from their columnists take Ron LittlePage for example. In Ron Littlepage’s column about the state potentially withholding funds if some of our schools don’t improve, he talks about the education commissioner losing him, well I can tell you right where he lost me. It’s when he wrote, “But we now have a strong School Board and a strong superintendent in place who are putting extra effort into improving these schools.” Mr. Littlepage exactly what school board and superintendent are you talking about?
This school board and superintendent, instead of following the law which I agree is draconian and instead of addressing the real problem, kids getting to high school unable to read and do math at grade level, without the skills they need to succeed, came up with some half baked plan to cut the schools in half creating two theme schools that would share the same campuses. And you are surprised the state said no thanks?
That proposal was not extra effort, instead it was crazy and a common definition of crazy is to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Well friends we have been waiting for over a decade for 1701 Prudential Drive to fix those schools. The superintendent by the way was there every day and several members of the school board have been there for years and not one of there quick fixes have worked. They reason is they stubbornly refuse to address the real issues those schools have and because of that nothing has changed.
Mr. Littlepage, I don’t want the schools closed or taken over, but we have real problems which need real solutions and if you, the school board and the superintendent aren’t going to part of that it’s time you got out of the way and let somebody else try. That in case you are still lost is all the state is saying.
Then there are the editorials, columns without authors. A couple of editorials ago a Times Union editorial asked, what doesn’t the School Board get. Well I am now asking the Times Union’s editorial board the same question. What don’t you get?
We have the superintendent and school board we need in place, the school board is heading in the right direction, we need to have patience. Do you know where those statements and dozens similar to them have come from? They over the last few years, that’s years, have come from editorials that have been written by the Times Union’s editorial board. How much patience can and should we have? How many ideas thrown like paint against a wall hoping something sticks are we supposed to endure from the school board and the administration at 1701 Prudential Drive?
I know editorials are little more than opinions but when put in respected forums like the Times Union they carry weight, they both influence others opinions and policy. And in this case they propagate the failed policies of our local education system and that is causing children to fall through the cracks. It is hurting kids.
Times Union if we follow your advice and be patient and this latest solution to save our ailing schools doesn’t prove to be any more effective than the last few are you going to take responsibility for all the children doomed to a menial existence or who have had their development retarded. Are you going to apologize to their families or the victims of the children who turn to crime because quite frankly they aren’t suited for the workforce or college? Or like you did a while back are you going to call for more patience, and are you going to say, when these members of the school board leave or are superintendent retires, the next ones are competent and sincere too.
Patience is one of the problems we have and I think when children’s futures are on the line we need urgency. Though like the editors of the Times Union are entitled to theirs, that’s just my opinion.
I am not saying you have to agree with me all I am asking is to think what is best for the children. Pushing them trough without the skills they need to be successful and without discipline and a work ethic is not what’s best for children. Cramming them into a one size fits all curriculum regardless of desire and aptitude is not what’s best for children. Deamonizing teachers and endorsing propaganda is not whats best for the children. What the times union reporters and editorial staff often recommend is not what is best for children.
The Times Union has a powerful voice; I wish they would speak more for the kids and not the superintendent, school board and others.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
In a recent article about Micelle Rhee, controversial former D.C. schools chancellor, addressing the Florida Legislature, Brandon Larrabee sited her presence in the movie, Waiting for Superman. I say movie not documentary because many of its dramatic scenes were staged. Mr. Larrabee referred to the movie as being critically acclaimed, I say the movie was blatant propaganda made by a public school hating film maker, financed by billionaires interested in increasing their share in the education market through misinformation, teacher demonizing, charter schools and an increased reliance on standardized testing. In case you blinked, you should know that education has become a multi-billion dollar business.
You know what really gets me? It’s the fact that many of those that embraced Waiting for Superman as the gospel are the same people that will dismiss a Michael Moore movie as Hollywood crap. I share many of Michael Moore’s views but I know when I watch his films to do so with both eyes open and to take them with a grain of salt.
Even if all of what was portrayed in Waiting for Superman was true regardless of the fact much has been debunked, (sadly however that didn’t get nearly the press the film did) it would still only show a miniscule fraction of what is going on in our schools. It would be like looking at three doctors you knew were bad and then condemning the whole medical field nationwide because of their actions. Sadly however when Mr. Larrabee says critically acclaimed he gives the movie more credibility than it deserves.
You expect a slant from their columnists take Ron LittlePage for example. In Ron Littlepage’s column about the state potentially withholding funds if some of our schools don’t improve, he talks about the education commissioner losing him, well I can tell you right where he lost me. It’s when he wrote, “But we now have a strong School Board and a strong superintendent in place who are putting extra effort into improving these schools.” Mr. Littlepage exactly what school board and superintendent are you talking about?
This school board and superintendent, instead of following the law which I agree is draconian and instead of addressing the real problem, kids getting to high school unable to read and do math at grade level, without the skills they need to succeed, came up with some half baked plan to cut the schools in half creating two theme schools that would share the same campuses. And you are surprised the state said no thanks?
That proposal was not extra effort, instead it was crazy and a common definition of crazy is to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Well friends we have been waiting for over a decade for 1701 Prudential Drive to fix those schools. The superintendent by the way was there every day and several members of the school board have been there for years and not one of there quick fixes have worked. They reason is they stubbornly refuse to address the real issues those schools have and because of that nothing has changed.
Mr. Littlepage, I don’t want the schools closed or taken over, but we have real problems which need real solutions and if you, the school board and the superintendent aren’t going to part of that it’s time you got out of the way and let somebody else try. That in case you are still lost is all the state is saying.
Then there are the editorials, columns without authors. A couple of editorials ago a Times Union editorial asked, what doesn’t the School Board get. Well I am now asking the Times Union’s editorial board the same question. What don’t you get?
We have the superintendent and school board we need in place, the school board is heading in the right direction, we need to have patience. Do you know where those statements and dozens similar to them have come from? They over the last few years, that’s years, have come from editorials that have been written by the Times Union’s editorial board. How much patience can and should we have? How many ideas thrown like paint against a wall hoping something sticks are we supposed to endure from the school board and the administration at 1701 Prudential Drive?
I know editorials are little more than opinions but when put in respected forums like the Times Union they carry weight, they both influence others opinions and policy. And in this case they propagate the failed policies of our local education system and that is causing children to fall through the cracks. It is hurting kids.
Times Union if we follow your advice and be patient and this latest solution to save our ailing schools doesn’t prove to be any more effective than the last few are you going to take responsibility for all the children doomed to a menial existence or who have had their development retarded. Are you going to apologize to their families or the victims of the children who turn to crime because quite frankly they aren’t suited for the workforce or college? Or like you did a while back are you going to call for more patience, and are you going to say, when these members of the school board leave or are superintendent retires, the next ones are competent and sincere too.
Patience is one of the problems we have and I think when children’s futures are on the line we need urgency. Though like the editors of the Times Union are entitled to theirs, that’s just my opinion.
I am not saying you have to agree with me all I am asking is to think what is best for the children. Pushing them trough without the skills they need to be successful and without discipline and a work ethic is not what’s best for children. Cramming them into a one size fits all curriculum regardless of desire and aptitude is not what’s best for children. Deamonizing teachers and endorsing propaganda is not whats best for the children. What the times union reporters and editorial staff often recommend is not what is best for children.
The Times Union has a powerful voice; I wish they would speak more for the kids and not the superintendent, school board and others.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Students never come first
From the Huffington Post
Larry Srauss
The recent formation of Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst.org is a reminder to many educators of how many times we've heard that claim in its various forms:
We're going to put students first.
It's all about the kids.
Nothing is more important to us than educating the next generation.
Such statements have become clichés--but have they ever, on any consistent basis, been true?
One need only spend a few hours in most inner-city schools to answer that question. To be sure, some teachers and administrators sometimes actually can manage to put students needs ahead of all else--though there isn't much of an institutional mechanism to require it. In fact, putting students first often requires us to break the rules.
Current calls for "reform" and "accountability," including those of StudentsFirst.org, claim that compelling teachers and administrators to put students first requires firing teachers deemed ineffective and assumes that standardized test data can make such determinations and therefore protect students from miseducation.
There may be a place for standardized testing to monitor the progress of students but these multiple choice measurements--and the often abstruse data they generate--do not ensure quality instruction or positive learning experiences for students. They tend to encourage the opposite.
My own students seem to know that the tests aren't for them. They also understand that the manner in which their teachers are treated by the education hierarchy is in direct proportion to the manner in which they--the students--are regarded. If teachers are respected then students understand that such respect is for them as well. When they see their teachers being marginalized, undervalued, and insulted then students--those with enough awareness to notice--take that personally. And why shouldn't they?
SOME OTHER LIES WE OUGHT TO BE HONEST ABOUT
1. More money won't solve anything
That money is ill-spent in schools and school districts--and departments of education--is no revelation. From meaningless professional development to useless equipment and inflated text books and supplies--to name just a few examples--the wasting of these funds not only leaves less to be spent in ways that actually impact students but also erodes tax-payer confidence and creates the misimpression that increased funding for schools won't improve things.
Effective teachers and administrators know two essential truths about education spending:
•We can (and many of us have) gotten results with very little in the way of resources or other support.
•Increasing our resources, providing us with more favorable conditions in which to teach and learn, better equipment and materials and so forth--in short, spending money wisely on what we need--will result in even better instruction
2. School choice will improve education for everyone
The creation, beginning in the 1970s, of public school alternatives to traditional neighborhood schools--including the recent proliferation of charters--has helped some students to a better education. But the exodus out of neighborhood schools has made the educational prospects worse for those left behind. Creating more parental choices might help more children--and no one should deny the importance of helping improve education for even one more child--but such measures aren't going to repair the struggling schools. Nor will giving vouchers to parents to subsidize private schools for their children. School choice as a solution is, at best, grossly insufficient--unless every school on the choice menu becomes a viable one.
3. Purging the disruptive students will fix things
There is certainly a logical nd perhaps even a moral argument for removing the most disruptive students from our schools. What right do they have to sabotage the education of others? Can we really afford to invest so much of our time and other resources on a few recalcitrant children when so many willing ones have such dire needs?
But removing behavioral problems does not necessarily eliminate disruption. As a rookie teacher, I found that out when I lost my three most disruptive students--to various offenses outside my classroom--and almost immediately other students, previously quiet and relatively well-behaved, stepped into the void and took over the class. The problem was me.
Since then I've figured out how to keep students from taking over but have witnessed this same dynamic play itself out in the classrooms of other mostly inexperienced teachers. I have also seen many of the most challenging students stay in school and gain a little maturity and self-control.
4. Some children just don't want to learn
There are children and teenagers who do seem entirely uninterested in an education. Some of them will proudly declare it. In the triage environment in which some schools must operate, it is understandable to want to focus one's efforts on those with an expressed interest in trying to succeed. But we ought never surrender completely to the seeming self-determination of failure.
Which leads to the most important truth in all of this--the reason we really should keep trying to find a way for all of us to put students first all the time. That truth is the great untapped potential of our students.
Our collective fervor--our passion in this discourse and beyond--ought to be directed at realizing that potential.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-strauss/students-first-and-other-_1_b_821865.html
Larry Srauss
The recent formation of Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst.org is a reminder to many educators of how many times we've heard that claim in its various forms:
We're going to put students first.
It's all about the kids.
Nothing is more important to us than educating the next generation.
Such statements have become clichés--but have they ever, on any consistent basis, been true?
One need only spend a few hours in most inner-city schools to answer that question. To be sure, some teachers and administrators sometimes actually can manage to put students needs ahead of all else--though there isn't much of an institutional mechanism to require it. In fact, putting students first often requires us to break the rules.
Current calls for "reform" and "accountability," including those of StudentsFirst.org, claim that compelling teachers and administrators to put students first requires firing teachers deemed ineffective and assumes that standardized test data can make such determinations and therefore protect students from miseducation.
There may be a place for standardized testing to monitor the progress of students but these multiple choice measurements--and the often abstruse data they generate--do not ensure quality instruction or positive learning experiences for students. They tend to encourage the opposite.
My own students seem to know that the tests aren't for them. They also understand that the manner in which their teachers are treated by the education hierarchy is in direct proportion to the manner in which they--the students--are regarded. If teachers are respected then students understand that such respect is for them as well. When they see their teachers being marginalized, undervalued, and insulted then students--those with enough awareness to notice--take that personally. And why shouldn't they?
SOME OTHER LIES WE OUGHT TO BE HONEST ABOUT
1. More money won't solve anything
That money is ill-spent in schools and school districts--and departments of education--is no revelation. From meaningless professional development to useless equipment and inflated text books and supplies--to name just a few examples--the wasting of these funds not only leaves less to be spent in ways that actually impact students but also erodes tax-payer confidence and creates the misimpression that increased funding for schools won't improve things.
Effective teachers and administrators know two essential truths about education spending:
•We can (and many of us have) gotten results with very little in the way of resources or other support.
•Increasing our resources, providing us with more favorable conditions in which to teach and learn, better equipment and materials and so forth--in short, spending money wisely on what we need--will result in even better instruction
2. School choice will improve education for everyone
The creation, beginning in the 1970s, of public school alternatives to traditional neighborhood schools--including the recent proliferation of charters--has helped some students to a better education. But the exodus out of neighborhood schools has made the educational prospects worse for those left behind. Creating more parental choices might help more children--and no one should deny the importance of helping improve education for even one more child--but such measures aren't going to repair the struggling schools. Nor will giving vouchers to parents to subsidize private schools for their children. School choice as a solution is, at best, grossly insufficient--unless every school on the choice menu becomes a viable one.
3. Purging the disruptive students will fix things
There is certainly a logical nd perhaps even a moral argument for removing the most disruptive students from our schools. What right do they have to sabotage the education of others? Can we really afford to invest so much of our time and other resources on a few recalcitrant children when so many willing ones have such dire needs?
But removing behavioral problems does not necessarily eliminate disruption. As a rookie teacher, I found that out when I lost my three most disruptive students--to various offenses outside my classroom--and almost immediately other students, previously quiet and relatively well-behaved, stepped into the void and took over the class. The problem was me.
Since then I've figured out how to keep students from taking over but have witnessed this same dynamic play itself out in the classrooms of other mostly inexperienced teachers. I have also seen many of the most challenging students stay in school and gain a little maturity and self-control.
4. Some children just don't want to learn
There are children and teenagers who do seem entirely uninterested in an education. Some of them will proudly declare it. In the triage environment in which some schools must operate, it is understandable to want to focus one's efforts on those with an expressed interest in trying to succeed. But we ought never surrender completely to the seeming self-determination of failure.
Which leads to the most important truth in all of this--the reason we really should keep trying to find a way for all of us to put students first all the time. That truth is the great untapped potential of our students.
Our collective fervor--our passion in this discourse and beyond--ought to be directed at realizing that potential.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-strauss/students-first-and-other-_1_b_821865.html
Friday, February 11, 2011
You say critically acclaimed, I say propaganda designed to destroy our public schools and to line the pockets of corporate fat cats.
In a recent article about Micelle Rhee, controversial former D.C. schools chancellor, addressing the Florida Legislature, Brandon Larrabee sited her presence in the movie, Waiting for Superman. I say movie not documentary because many of its dramatic scenes were staged. Mr. Larrabee referred to the movie as being critically acclaimed, I say the movie was blatant propaganda made by a public school hating film maker, financed by billionaires interested in increasing their share in the education market through misinformation, teacher deamonizing, charter schools and an increased reliance on standardized testing. In case you blinked, you should know that education has become a multi-billion dollar business.
You know what really gets me? It’s the fact that many of those that embraced Waiting for Superman as the gospel are the same people that will dismiss a Michael Moore movie as Hollywood crap. I share many of Michael Moore’s views but I know when I watch his films to do so with both eyes open and to take them with a grain of salt.
Even if all of what was portrayed in Waiting for Superman was true regardless of the fact much has been debunked, (sadly however that didn’t get nearly the press the film did) it would still only show a miniscule fraction of what is going on in our schools. It would be like looking at three doctors you knew were bad and then condemning the whole medical field nationwide because of their actions.
Friends we do have serious problems in our education system but listening to slanted propaganda, like Waiting for Superman is, and to which Mr. Larrabee contributed to by his choice of words, is not the way to fix them.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
You know what really gets me? It’s the fact that many of those that embraced Waiting for Superman as the gospel are the same people that will dismiss a Michael Moore movie as Hollywood crap. I share many of Michael Moore’s views but I know when I watch his films to do so with both eyes open and to take them with a grain of salt.
Even if all of what was portrayed in Waiting for Superman was true regardless of the fact much has been debunked, (sadly however that didn’t get nearly the press the film did) it would still only show a miniscule fraction of what is going on in our schools. It would be like looking at three doctors you knew were bad and then condemning the whole medical field nationwide because of their actions.
Friends we do have serious problems in our education system but listening to slanted propaganda, like Waiting for Superman is, and to which Mr. Larrabee contributed to by his choice of words, is not the way to fix them.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
The Florida Legislature and their apparent distain for teachers
The Legislature greets controversial former D.C. Education Chancellor as if she is a hero, while most superintendants and teachers in Florida can’t get their phone calls returned or e-mails read. They listen intently to her as she spouts her anti-teacher rhetoric even though it is based on unfounded data or practice because it reaffirms what they already want to believe and do.
Jacksonville’s own Steven Wise, no friend to public education is leading the charge for Ms. Rhee’s education deforms. He says he worked to avoid the problems that Senate Bill Six had last year but after listening to his glowing praise of Rhee (he called her a movie star) who he had address several different sessions of the legislature and the lip service he gave to teachers, who got a few hours of committee time, it is hard to imagine that he didn’t already have his mind made up.
Before the legislature runs head long into dramatically altering the way teachers are paid, instead of just listening to Rhee’s demagoguery the legislature should do some research. Study after study has said merit pay based solely on testing does not identify the best teachers. It shows what teacher got the luck of the draw. It doesn’t work.
The legislature is also seeking to strip away from teachers what they mockingly call tenure but what is actually due process. Here in Jacksonville that means that after three years of service teachers can’t just be fired for any reason, which is what could happen in the future if Rhee and the legislature get their way.
Then finally before she took her limo to her private jet she also endorsed the proposed 5% pay cut to be given to all teachers, not the best paid group to begin with, to pay for their pensions. I get it we need pension reform but in this economy when many teachers are little more than pay check to pay check, is the right thing to do to take away five percent of their money. The millionaires that make up the legislature seem to think this is acceptable.
We want reforms, okay, but let’s make our reforms based on sound research not because a woman who was on Oprah thinks it is a good idea.
We want to streamline the process to get rid of bad teachers let’s do it but let’s not strip the good teachers of their right to due process and let's insist that principals and districts use the procedures in place the meantime.
We want pension reform, okay, let’s roll it out slowly so we don't hurt the thousands of teachers here in the state to much. Then at the same time lets close the tax loopholes which which only benefit a select few that see the Florida coffers looted of billions.
It’s hard to imagine the Florida legislature getting it more wrong, it is like the purposely want to hurt teachers and through extension public schools and children. Instead they should be working with teachers to find out what they need to help our children.
Please let your legislator know that, not punishing teachers, is what you want them to do.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Jacksonville’s own Steven Wise, no friend to public education is leading the charge for Ms. Rhee’s education deforms. He says he worked to avoid the problems that Senate Bill Six had last year but after listening to his glowing praise of Rhee (he called her a movie star) who he had address several different sessions of the legislature and the lip service he gave to teachers, who got a few hours of committee time, it is hard to imagine that he didn’t already have his mind made up.
Before the legislature runs head long into dramatically altering the way teachers are paid, instead of just listening to Rhee’s demagoguery the legislature should do some research. Study after study has said merit pay based solely on testing does not identify the best teachers. It shows what teacher got the luck of the draw. It doesn’t work.
The legislature is also seeking to strip away from teachers what they mockingly call tenure but what is actually due process. Here in Jacksonville that means that after three years of service teachers can’t just be fired for any reason, which is what could happen in the future if Rhee and the legislature get their way.
Then finally before she took her limo to her private jet she also endorsed the proposed 5% pay cut to be given to all teachers, not the best paid group to begin with, to pay for their pensions. I get it we need pension reform but in this economy when many teachers are little more than pay check to pay check, is the right thing to do to take away five percent of their money. The millionaires that make up the legislature seem to think this is acceptable.
We want reforms, okay, but let’s make our reforms based on sound research not because a woman who was on Oprah thinks it is a good idea.
We want to streamline the process to get rid of bad teachers let’s do it but let’s not strip the good teachers of their right to due process and let's insist that principals and districts use the procedures in place the meantime.
We want pension reform, okay, let’s roll it out slowly so we don't hurt the thousands of teachers here in the state to much. Then at the same time lets close the tax loopholes which which only benefit a select few that see the Florida coffers looted of billions.
It’s hard to imagine the Florida legislature getting it more wrong, it is like the purposely want to hurt teachers and through extension public schools and children. Instead they should be working with teachers to find out what they need to help our children.
Please let your legislator know that, not punishing teachers, is what you want them to do.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Michelle Rhee's teacher evaluation system has numerous flaws
Is she trying to sell this? Is this her million dollar idea? In a few months are we going to have to follow the money to her pockets? Sickening... -cpg
From the Washington Post
by Bill Turque
Mayor Vincent C. Gray says that the IMPACT teacher evaluation system, regarded as former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's signature reform, has "a long way to go" before it is fair because it disadvantages instructors in schools with large numbers of students challenged by the effects of poverty and other social conditions.
"It's a step in the right direction, but it's got a long way to go to be a fair evaluation," Gray (D) said Saturday during a panel discussion on education and poverty at Adas Israel synagogue in Northwest Washington.
Gray's criticism of IMPACT, his most explicit since entering office, echoes that of the Washington Teachers' Union, a major financial supporter of his candidacy. It appears to clash with a core tenet of Rhee and her successor, Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson: that excellent teachers can help children thrive academically, regardless of the students' economic or social backgrounds.
It also is the first public sign that Gray and Henderson - who is his choice for the interim post and is regarded as front-runner for permanent appointment - differ on how education reform should go forward.
To illustrate his point, Gray cited two schools at opposite ends of the District's public education spectrum.
At Horace Mann Elementary in Northwest, 80 percent of the 269 students are white, 90 percent read at proficiency level or better, and none is eligible for free or reduced-price lunch - a common barometer of household poverty.
At Stanton Elementary in Southeast, where 100 percent of the students are black, 13 percent read proficiently. More than 90 percent are eligible for federally subsidized lunches. This year, the school was placed under the control of Scholar Academies, a Philadelphia charter school operator.
"It's not the same to teach in Horace Mann as to teach in Stanton Elementary," Gray said. "That's a very different challenge. And frankly, I'm not convinced that we have figured out yet how, with an evaluation system that covers all teachers across the city, that you account for the social challenges that inevitably are to be addressed."
Gray said that he has raised the fairness issue with Henderson and that she expressed a willingness to meet his concerns. Henderson expressed confidence Tuesday that she and Gray could reach common ground.
"The mayor and I share a common outcome at the end of the road, which is a great teacher in every classroom," she said. "He and I have a track record of working together on vexing problems."
The union plans to push Gray and Henderson for substantial changes in IMPACT and is working on an alternative evaluation system that it plans to propose.
"IMPACT is tremendously flawed," said Nathan Saunders, president of the union. "The question is, is the District attempting to maintain IMPACT as a legacy to Michelle Rhee, or does it have a commitment to a fair evaluation tool?"
Rhee drew national attention when she launched IMPACT in 2009. It replaced an evaluation tool that she said gave more than 90 percent of the District's teachers ratings of "meet" or "exceeds" expectations. Such assessments, she said, were not justifiable, given the school system's historically dismal academic record. Under IMPACT, more than 120 teachers were dismissed for poor performance last summer, an unprecedented number for the District.
IMPACT takes some student challenges into account when assessing a small segment of the teaching force. Half of the evaluation for reading and math teachers in grades 4 through 8 is based on growth in the standardized test scores of individual students. A model is developed for each student, predicting how he or she should do on the next round of tests. The model includes prior test scores, special education and English language status, and eligibility for subsidized lunch. The District does not use race or ethnicity as a predictive factor.
But 80 percent of the annual evaluation for most other regular classroom teachers makes no allowance for student challenges. Teachers receive five classroom observations in a school year - three from an administrator, and two from an outside "master educator" - assessing their fidelity to an elaborate set of guidelines called the Teaching and Learning Framework. It covers virtually every aspect of a teacher's classroom performance, including delivery of course material and checking for student understanding.
In the classroom of a highly effective teacher, according to the framework, the flow of the lesson "is never impeded by inappropriate or off-task student behavior, either because no such behavior occurs or because when such behavior occurs, the teacher efficiently addresses it."
Henderson said the framework is a tool to measure pedagogical expertise, "something all our teachers should have, regardless of the student population with which they work," she said.
D.C. Council member Sekou Biddle (D-At Large), a former schoolteacher, said that teachers in high-poverty areas need more and different resources to do their jobs, but he agreed with Henderson that teaching standards shouldn't vary.
"If we allow people to say that a community is more challenging because the kids are poor, so they should be allowed to perform less well, then we are really missing the key thing here," Biddle said.
Staff writer Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/18/AR2011011804873_2.html
From the Washington Post
by Bill Turque
Mayor Vincent C. Gray says that the IMPACT teacher evaluation system, regarded as former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's signature reform, has "a long way to go" before it is fair because it disadvantages instructors in schools with large numbers of students challenged by the effects of poverty and other social conditions.
"It's a step in the right direction, but it's got a long way to go to be a fair evaluation," Gray (D) said Saturday during a panel discussion on education and poverty at Adas Israel synagogue in Northwest Washington.
Gray's criticism of IMPACT, his most explicit since entering office, echoes that of the Washington Teachers' Union, a major financial supporter of his candidacy. It appears to clash with a core tenet of Rhee and her successor, Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson: that excellent teachers can help children thrive academically, regardless of the students' economic or social backgrounds.
It also is the first public sign that Gray and Henderson - who is his choice for the interim post and is regarded as front-runner for permanent appointment - differ on how education reform should go forward.
To illustrate his point, Gray cited two schools at opposite ends of the District's public education spectrum.
At Horace Mann Elementary in Northwest, 80 percent of the 269 students are white, 90 percent read at proficiency level or better, and none is eligible for free or reduced-price lunch - a common barometer of household poverty.
At Stanton Elementary in Southeast, where 100 percent of the students are black, 13 percent read proficiently. More than 90 percent are eligible for federally subsidized lunches. This year, the school was placed under the control of Scholar Academies, a Philadelphia charter school operator.
"It's not the same to teach in Horace Mann as to teach in Stanton Elementary," Gray said. "That's a very different challenge. And frankly, I'm not convinced that we have figured out yet how, with an evaluation system that covers all teachers across the city, that you account for the social challenges that inevitably are to be addressed."
Gray said that he has raised the fairness issue with Henderson and that she expressed a willingness to meet his concerns. Henderson expressed confidence Tuesday that she and Gray could reach common ground.
"The mayor and I share a common outcome at the end of the road, which is a great teacher in every classroom," she said. "He and I have a track record of working together on vexing problems."
The union plans to push Gray and Henderson for substantial changes in IMPACT and is working on an alternative evaluation system that it plans to propose.
"IMPACT is tremendously flawed," said Nathan Saunders, president of the union. "The question is, is the District attempting to maintain IMPACT as a legacy to Michelle Rhee, or does it have a commitment to a fair evaluation tool?"
Rhee drew national attention when she launched IMPACT in 2009. It replaced an evaluation tool that she said gave more than 90 percent of the District's teachers ratings of "meet" or "exceeds" expectations. Such assessments, she said, were not justifiable, given the school system's historically dismal academic record. Under IMPACT, more than 120 teachers were dismissed for poor performance last summer, an unprecedented number for the District.
IMPACT takes some student challenges into account when assessing a small segment of the teaching force. Half of the evaluation for reading and math teachers in grades 4 through 8 is based on growth in the standardized test scores of individual students. A model is developed for each student, predicting how he or she should do on the next round of tests. The model includes prior test scores, special education and English language status, and eligibility for subsidized lunch. The District does not use race or ethnicity as a predictive factor.
But 80 percent of the annual evaluation for most other regular classroom teachers makes no allowance for student challenges. Teachers receive five classroom observations in a school year - three from an administrator, and two from an outside "master educator" - assessing their fidelity to an elaborate set of guidelines called the Teaching and Learning Framework. It covers virtually every aspect of a teacher's classroom performance, including delivery of course material and checking for student understanding.
In the classroom of a highly effective teacher, according to the framework, the flow of the lesson "is never impeded by inappropriate or off-task student behavior, either because no such behavior occurs or because when such behavior occurs, the teacher efficiently addresses it."
Henderson said the framework is a tool to measure pedagogical expertise, "something all our teachers should have, regardless of the student population with which they work," she said.
D.C. Council member Sekou Biddle (D-At Large), a former schoolteacher, said that teachers in high-poverty areas need more and different resources to do their jobs, but he agreed with Henderson that teaching standards shouldn't vary.
"If we allow people to say that a community is more challenging because the kids are poor, so they should be allowed to perform less well, then we are really missing the key thing here," Biddle said.
Staff writer Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/18/AR2011011804873_2.html
The mixed up Florida legislature gets’s it wrong again.
They greet controversial former D.C. Education Chancellor as if she is a hero, while most superintendants and teachers in Florida can’t get their phone calls returned or e-mails read. They listen intently to her as she spouts her anti-teacher rhetoric even though it is based on unfounded data or practice because it reaffirms what they already want to believe.
Jacksonville’s own Steven Wise, no friend to public education is leading the charge for Ms. Rhee’s education deforms. He says he worked to avoid the problems that Senate Bill Six had last year but after listening to his glowing praise of Rhee (he called her a movie star) who he had address the entire legislature and the lip service he gave to teachers a few hours of committee time, it is hard to imagine that he didn’t already have his mind made up.
Before the legislature runs head long into dramatically altering the way teachers are paid instead of just listening to Rhee’s demagoguery they should do some research. Study after study has said merit pay based solely on testing does not identify the best teachers. It shows what teacher got the luck of the draw. It doesn’t work.
The legislature is also seeking to strip away from teachers what they mockingly call tenure but what is actually due process. Here in Jacksonville that means that after three years of service teachers can’t just be fired for any reason, which is what could happen in the future if Rhee and the legislature get their way.
Then finally before she took her limo to her private jet she also endorsed the proposed 5% pay cut to be given to all teachers, not the best paid group to begin with, to pay for their pensions. I get it we need pension reform but in this economy when many teachers are little more than pay check to pay check, is the right thing to do to take away five percent of their money. The millionaires that make up the legislature seem to think this is acceptable.
We want reforms, okay, but let’s make our reforms based on sound research not because a woman who was on Oprah thinks it is a good idea.
We want to streamline the process to get rid of bad teachers let’s do it but let’s not strip the good teachers of their right to due process and let's insist that principals and districts use the procedures in place n meantime.
We want pension reform, okay, let’s roll it out slowly so we don't hurt the thousands of teachers here in the state to much. Then at the same time lets close the tax loopholes which which only benefit a select few that see the Florida coffers looted of billions.
It’s hard to imagine the Florida legislature getting it more wrong, it is like the purposely want to hurt teachers and through extension public schools and children. Instead they should be working with teachers to find out what they need to help our children.
Please let your legislator know that, not punishing teachers, is what you want them to do.
Jacksonville’s own Steven Wise, no friend to public education is leading the charge for Ms. Rhee’s education deforms. He says he worked to avoid the problems that Senate Bill Six had last year but after listening to his glowing praise of Rhee (he called her a movie star) who he had address the entire legislature and the lip service he gave to teachers a few hours of committee time, it is hard to imagine that he didn’t already have his mind made up.
Before the legislature runs head long into dramatically altering the way teachers are paid instead of just listening to Rhee’s demagoguery they should do some research. Study after study has said merit pay based solely on testing does not identify the best teachers. It shows what teacher got the luck of the draw. It doesn’t work.
The legislature is also seeking to strip away from teachers what they mockingly call tenure but what is actually due process. Here in Jacksonville that means that after three years of service teachers can’t just be fired for any reason, which is what could happen in the future if Rhee and the legislature get their way.
Then finally before she took her limo to her private jet she also endorsed the proposed 5% pay cut to be given to all teachers, not the best paid group to begin with, to pay for their pensions. I get it we need pension reform but in this economy when many teachers are little more than pay check to pay check, is the right thing to do to take away five percent of their money. The millionaires that make up the legislature seem to think this is acceptable.
We want reforms, okay, but let’s make our reforms based on sound research not because a woman who was on Oprah thinks it is a good idea.
We want to streamline the process to get rid of bad teachers let’s do it but let’s not strip the good teachers of their right to due process and let's insist that principals and districts use the procedures in place n meantime.
We want pension reform, okay, let’s roll it out slowly so we don't hurt the thousands of teachers here in the state to much. Then at the same time lets close the tax loopholes which which only benefit a select few that see the Florida coffers looted of billions.
It’s hard to imagine the Florida legislature getting it more wrong, it is like the purposely want to hurt teachers and through extension public schools and children. Instead they should be working with teachers to find out what they need to help our children.
Please let your legislator know that, not punishing teachers, is what you want them to do.
The Myth of Michelle Rhee Debunked
From the washington Posts Answer Sheet
By Valerie Strauss
Enough oxygen has been sucked out of the air about whether former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee really raised student test scores through the roof when she taught briefly at a Baltimore school. I still find more telling her admission that she taped her students' mouths shut when she didn’t know what else to do to keep them quiet. (This really happened and it would be a career killer for anybody but Rhee.)
The real issue is what she and her supporters say she accomplished but didn’t in D.C. public schools when she was chancellor for about 3 1/2 years before quitting in October when her biggest supporter, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, was ousted from office.
A myth has grown up around Rhee and her D.C. tenure that essentially has her swooping in like an avenging angel ridding the place of bad teachers and setting the troubled school system on the road to redemption. The reason it matters that the myth be dispelled is because Rhee has become a hero to state legislatures around the country who seem to think that everything she says about school reform is gospel.
If Rhee had in fact saved the school system, or even come a significant way toward that goal, nobody would be cheering more loudly than me. But she did nothing of the sort. She came to the District, talked very tough and proceeded to make a number of changes, as new school district leaders always do. Some were helpful, some weren't.
She didn't stay long enough to know if any could qualify as a success, but her major initiative, a multimillion-dollar teacher evaluation system called IMPACT, has serious flaws and as a result, there is no telling whether some of the teachers Rhee fired were really ineffective. The Rhee myth leaves no room for this reality.
Perhaps the person who knows best how much work Rhee left needs to be done is her successor, interim chancellor Kaya Henderson, who has been trying to clean up several messes Rhee left in her wake.
Henderson has already made two changes in school leadership because of Rhee’s bad decisions, and now, she faces having to implement the ruling of an independent arbitrator who concluded that Rhee improperly laid off 75 new teachers in 2008 because she didn’t follow this simple rule: She was supposed to tell the teachers why they were being let go. Pesky rules just weren't her thing.
My colleague Bill Turque reported that now the District has to find the teachers and offer them reinstatement in an appropriate job -- and give them back wages minus any earnings they have accumulated since. The total could cost the system $7.5 million.
Perhaps Rhee, who is raising $1 billion for her new anti-teachers union Students First organization, could contribute to pay for her mistake.
The debate of the last week has been over whether Rhee inflated how much her students’ test scores rose when she was a teacher at Harlem Park Elementary School. There seems to be no conclusive evidence, and, frankly, I care more about the ill-advised test obsession that drove her reform effort while she was chancellor. Standardized tests are a lousy way to measure anything, and she wanted to measure everything by the results.
The statement that the Students First organization issued to refute the allegations that she inflated student test scores had a most telling last line:
“To our members, this episode is further proof of what we’re up against and why we need your support to get the message out."
It is bewildering to imagine what Rhee thinks she is “up against.” She is the darling of the reform world. The Obama administration supports and funds her style of reform, Philanthropists have showered her with millions of dollars for her to pursue her educational dreams.
The people who need to get their message out there are the very people Rhee and other reformers have attacked: public school teachers.
Here’s part of an e-mail that was shared with a handful of people, written and sent by a veteran teacher in the Washington region, Ken Bernstein. He was responding to a critic who said that those people who do not support current education reforms only complain and offer no alternatives. That is not at all true, but that discussion is for another time.
I am publishing Bernstein’s response (edited to remove names) because I think it authentically speaks to the way many teachers are feeling. I will leave in his abbrevations but here is what they stand for: NCLB, No Child Left Behind;TFA, Teach for America; DFER, Democrats for Education Reform; NLNS, New Leaders for New Schools.
From Bernstein's e-mail:
“There is near systematic exclusion of other voices from the media.
"Yes, Diane Ravitch has gotten an audience as a result of her recent book. .... But that is swamped by the puff pieces on Rhee in Time and Newsweek, by editorials in supposedly liberal papers that support the test-centric - or should I say test-obsessed? - approach to education.
"One reason Diane Ravitch experienced the overwhelming support for her book is that for many teachers it was the first time they had heard a major voice expressing the things that really matter to them...
"We can tell lots of positive narratives. How about Lori Nazareno at Denver’s Math and Science Leadership Academy, a teacher-run school? But does the president focus on that, or does he not give a dog whistle by focusing on a school which is used to pound on teachers unions with the claim that the union rules were interfering?
And how can the President be telling people to become teachers when his Secretary of Education is agreeing with Bill Gates that masters degrees are a waste of money, when his administration supported putting language in that let TFAers and people out of similar programs be considered ‘highly qualified’ under NCLB in direct contradiction to the ruling of the 9th Circuit?
Right now the future of American public education is hanging by a thread.
Right now the administration, DFER, TFA, NLNS, Gates Foundation, Broad Foundation, Walton Foundation, and a whole host of other interconnected groups are pushing an untested (except where it has been tried and failed) set of approaches that will be destructive, yet the issue is how we present?
Why not ask Anthony Mullen about his experiences as NTOY [2009 National Teacher of the Year]? I remember one of his blog posts where he described that when he raised some questions he was treated like a skunk at the garden party, even though his was supposed to be the voice of America’s teachers.
The shape of the teaching profession has to change. Lots of us know that. But not in the direction being pushed by this administration.
Might I suggest that anyone who has not already done so read the new book called "Teaching 2030: What we Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools... Now and in the Future,” by Barnett Berry and a batch of teachers including the likes of Renee Moore, Ariel Sacks, Jose Vilson, Shannon C’de Baca, Cindi Rigsbee, Emily Vickery, Laurie Wasserman ....and if you do not know who every single one of those people is, is that not part of the problem....?
Heck, I want the voices of students included. I showed two brief clips from "Race to Nowhere" to my AP students. It absolutely coincides with their experience. These are highly motivated kids, taking college level government in 10th grade. They are getting burned out. And yet we are offered scare stories, international comparisons (which do not support the uses that are made for them, but that is nothing new in educational politics) with an insistence that we must do more, have higher standards at the same time as we are cutting funding (which still largely comes from local governments whose tax bases have shrunk dramatically) at the same time as supposedly we leave no child behind. Balderdash - although I would prefer stronger language.
Yes, we need to do the best job of presenting we can. But it will not matter if we cannot get access to the organs of mass media, without which it becomes harder to convince elected policy makers that we actually represent a point of view that is more commonly held by those who truly understand education.
OH, and by the way, why are so few in the media pointing out the obvious: we have been pursuing a path on education at least since 1983 that has repeatedly failed, so why do we act like the compulsive gambler and still keep doubling down again and again on the same failed approaches?
Sorry, I’m tired, and cranky.
I am spread too thin.
I am taking on even more, going to a conference cosponsored by EWA [Education Writers Association] and Carnegie on teacher quality. I am participating in a panel in my district trying to ameliorate the worst outcomes of tying teacher evaluation to student assessment. I keep writing.
Yet all of that has to take second seat behind my responsibilities to my students.
Those of us who take our teaching seriously already work too many hours.
Some of us are still willing to take on more, to ensure that the voices of teachers are heard....Peace.”
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/michelle-rhee/missing-the-point-on-rhee.html?wprss=answer-sheet
By Valerie Strauss
Enough oxygen has been sucked out of the air about whether former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee really raised student test scores through the roof when she taught briefly at a Baltimore school. I still find more telling her admission that she taped her students' mouths shut when she didn’t know what else to do to keep them quiet. (This really happened and it would be a career killer for anybody but Rhee.)
The real issue is what she and her supporters say she accomplished but didn’t in D.C. public schools when she was chancellor for about 3 1/2 years before quitting in October when her biggest supporter, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, was ousted from office.
A myth has grown up around Rhee and her D.C. tenure that essentially has her swooping in like an avenging angel ridding the place of bad teachers and setting the troubled school system on the road to redemption. The reason it matters that the myth be dispelled is because Rhee has become a hero to state legislatures around the country who seem to think that everything she says about school reform is gospel.
If Rhee had in fact saved the school system, or even come a significant way toward that goal, nobody would be cheering more loudly than me. But she did nothing of the sort. She came to the District, talked very tough and proceeded to make a number of changes, as new school district leaders always do. Some were helpful, some weren't.
She didn't stay long enough to know if any could qualify as a success, but her major initiative, a multimillion-dollar teacher evaluation system called IMPACT, has serious flaws and as a result, there is no telling whether some of the teachers Rhee fired were really ineffective. The Rhee myth leaves no room for this reality.
Perhaps the person who knows best how much work Rhee left needs to be done is her successor, interim chancellor Kaya Henderson, who has been trying to clean up several messes Rhee left in her wake.
Henderson has already made two changes in school leadership because of Rhee’s bad decisions, and now, she faces having to implement the ruling of an independent arbitrator who concluded that Rhee improperly laid off 75 new teachers in 2008 because she didn’t follow this simple rule: She was supposed to tell the teachers why they were being let go. Pesky rules just weren't her thing.
My colleague Bill Turque reported that now the District has to find the teachers and offer them reinstatement in an appropriate job -- and give them back wages minus any earnings they have accumulated since. The total could cost the system $7.5 million.
Perhaps Rhee, who is raising $1 billion for her new anti-teachers union Students First organization, could contribute to pay for her mistake.
The debate of the last week has been over whether Rhee inflated how much her students’ test scores rose when she was a teacher at Harlem Park Elementary School. There seems to be no conclusive evidence, and, frankly, I care more about the ill-advised test obsession that drove her reform effort while she was chancellor. Standardized tests are a lousy way to measure anything, and she wanted to measure everything by the results.
The statement that the Students First organization issued to refute the allegations that she inflated student test scores had a most telling last line:
“To our members, this episode is further proof of what we’re up against and why we need your support to get the message out."
It is bewildering to imagine what Rhee thinks she is “up against.” She is the darling of the reform world. The Obama administration supports and funds her style of reform, Philanthropists have showered her with millions of dollars for her to pursue her educational dreams.
The people who need to get their message out there are the very people Rhee and other reformers have attacked: public school teachers.
Here’s part of an e-mail that was shared with a handful of people, written and sent by a veteran teacher in the Washington region, Ken Bernstein. He was responding to a critic who said that those people who do not support current education reforms only complain and offer no alternatives. That is not at all true, but that discussion is for another time.
I am publishing Bernstein’s response (edited to remove names) because I think it authentically speaks to the way many teachers are feeling. I will leave in his abbrevations but here is what they stand for: NCLB, No Child Left Behind;TFA, Teach for America; DFER, Democrats for Education Reform; NLNS, New Leaders for New Schools.
From Bernstein's e-mail:
“There is near systematic exclusion of other voices from the media.
"Yes, Diane Ravitch has gotten an audience as a result of her recent book. .... But that is swamped by the puff pieces on Rhee in Time and Newsweek, by editorials in supposedly liberal papers that support the test-centric - or should I say test-obsessed? - approach to education.
"One reason Diane Ravitch experienced the overwhelming support for her book is that for many teachers it was the first time they had heard a major voice expressing the things that really matter to them...
"We can tell lots of positive narratives. How about Lori Nazareno at Denver’s Math and Science Leadership Academy, a teacher-run school? But does the president focus on that, or does he not give a dog whistle by focusing on a school which is used to pound on teachers unions with the claim that the union rules were interfering?
And how can the President be telling people to become teachers when his Secretary of Education is agreeing with Bill Gates that masters degrees are a waste of money, when his administration supported putting language in that let TFAers and people out of similar programs be considered ‘highly qualified’ under NCLB in direct contradiction to the ruling of the 9th Circuit?
Right now the future of American public education is hanging by a thread.
Right now the administration, DFER, TFA, NLNS, Gates Foundation, Broad Foundation, Walton Foundation, and a whole host of other interconnected groups are pushing an untested (except where it has been tried and failed) set of approaches that will be destructive, yet the issue is how we present?
Why not ask Anthony Mullen about his experiences as NTOY [2009 National Teacher of the Year]? I remember one of his blog posts where he described that when he raised some questions he was treated like a skunk at the garden party, even though his was supposed to be the voice of America’s teachers.
The shape of the teaching profession has to change. Lots of us know that. But not in the direction being pushed by this administration.
Might I suggest that anyone who has not already done so read the new book called "Teaching 2030: What we Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools... Now and in the Future,” by Barnett Berry and a batch of teachers including the likes of Renee Moore, Ariel Sacks, Jose Vilson, Shannon C’de Baca, Cindi Rigsbee, Emily Vickery, Laurie Wasserman ....and if you do not know who every single one of those people is, is that not part of the problem....?
Heck, I want the voices of students included. I showed two brief clips from "Race to Nowhere" to my AP students. It absolutely coincides with their experience. These are highly motivated kids, taking college level government in 10th grade. They are getting burned out. And yet we are offered scare stories, international comparisons (which do not support the uses that are made for them, but that is nothing new in educational politics) with an insistence that we must do more, have higher standards at the same time as we are cutting funding (which still largely comes from local governments whose tax bases have shrunk dramatically) at the same time as supposedly we leave no child behind. Balderdash - although I would prefer stronger language.
Yes, we need to do the best job of presenting we can. But it will not matter if we cannot get access to the organs of mass media, without which it becomes harder to convince elected policy makers that we actually represent a point of view that is more commonly held by those who truly understand education.
OH, and by the way, why are so few in the media pointing out the obvious: we have been pursuing a path on education at least since 1983 that has repeatedly failed, so why do we act like the compulsive gambler and still keep doubling down again and again on the same failed approaches?
Sorry, I’m tired, and cranky.
I am spread too thin.
I am taking on even more, going to a conference cosponsored by EWA [Education Writers Association] and Carnegie on teacher quality. I am participating in a panel in my district trying to ameliorate the worst outcomes of tying teacher evaluation to student assessment. I keep writing.
Yet all of that has to take second seat behind my responsibilities to my students.
Those of us who take our teaching seriously already work too many hours.
Some of us are still willing to take on more, to ensure that the voices of teachers are heard....Peace.”
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/michelle-rhee/missing-the-point-on-rhee.html?wprss=answer-sheet
Controversial Rhee calls for bad reforms
Merit pay is not proven to work and determining teachers pay by how some of their children do on standardized tests would be like tying their salary to the wind, unfair and impossible. -cpg
From the Palm Beach Post
by Tony Alanez
TALLAHASSEE — Controversial school reformer Michelle Rhee told Florida lawmakers Wednesday that students would be better off if public schools could get rid of teacher tenure and ineffective teachers without delay.
"Tenure does not put students first," she said before the Senate Prek-12 Education Committee. "It should be virtually impossible for an ineffective educator to stay in the classroom."
The former chancellor of the Washington public school system and founder of Students First serves as an informal education advisor to Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
A 41-year-old Democrat, she has been criticized for firing more than 200 teachers, closing dozens of failing schools and her support of measuring teacher quality by students' test scores.
Her boss, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, lost his bid for re-election in last year's primary, and she resigned in October amid outcry from unions.
Rhee, who is featured in the education documentary "Waiting for Superman," was introduced to Florida legislators as a "movie star." Lawmakers lauded her for political courage and willingness "to take the heat."
Her No. 1 word of caution: "If you'd like to learn from one of the mistakes I made in particular, make it as clear as possible that you are not out to get teachers when you talk about and create policies that reflect how incredible their influence is."
Rhee praised SB 736 or "Race to the Top for Student Success" bill now before lawmakers that would rely heavily on student test scores to judge teacher performance and end tenure for new instructors.
A similar effort last year was widely criticized by teachers as unworkable and unfair and was ultimately vetoed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist.
Crist, who was in the capitol Wednesday, said he was disappointed to see the return of similar legislation.
"I obviously had very strong feelings about it last year, that's why I vetoed it," Crist said. "I don't think there's anything wrong with merit pay per se, but it seems to me that it has to be crafted in a way that is fundamentally fair too."
Public education faces a 10 percent reduction under Scott's newly proposed budget, but Rhee said such cuts do not have to result in damaged schools systems.
"Money does not necessarily correlate with student achievement," she said. "In this country in the last 30 years, we have more than doubled the amount of money we are spending per child…and the results have gotten worse not better."
Noting that Florida's education system recently was ranked fifth in the nation, Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee asked: "How can we be such an inept public school system, yet rank so high?"
National standing is not an adequate measure, said Rhee, emphasizing that today's children will be competing for jobs on a global level.
Last-one-in, first-one-out firing policies result in more jobs lost and tend to have negative impact on poorer neighborhoods, Rhee said.
That's because newer teachers earn less than tenured ones, so when it's time for layoffs more have to be fired to meet budget gaps, she said, and it's the schools in the neediest neighborhoods that tend to employ new teachers.
"[These firing policies are] decimating schools of the best educators in neighborhoods that need them the most," she said.
Rhee did not quibble with Democratic Hollywood Sen. Eleanor Sobel's concerns that perhaps teaching programs were failing to adequately prepare future educators.
"I'm very disappointed with the majority of teacher education programs across the country," Rhee said. "[They're] not actually preparing teachers well for the rigors they're going to see every single day in the classroom."
Rhee additionally called for separating teacher evaluations from the collective bargaining process, requiring teachers to pay into their retirement accounts and eliminating the practice of school districts paying for teachers to earn Master's Degrees.
"Keep being a leader in this most urgent area of need for our country," she said. "As you know, being among the first to challenge the status quo will not make your lives easy, especially when confronting the economic pressures that threaten the communities across the state."
Rhee made a repeat performance before the House PreK-20 Competitiveness Subcommittee Wednesday afternoon. The Senate committee is expected to vote on the bill Thursday afternoon.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/schools/scotts-reformer-tells-legislators-dump-tenure-bad-teachers-1244326.html
From the Palm Beach Post
by Tony Alanez
TALLAHASSEE — Controversial school reformer Michelle Rhee told Florida lawmakers Wednesday that students would be better off if public schools could get rid of teacher tenure and ineffective teachers without delay.
"Tenure does not put students first," she said before the Senate Prek-12 Education Committee. "It should be virtually impossible for an ineffective educator to stay in the classroom."
The former chancellor of the Washington public school system and founder of Students First serves as an informal education advisor to Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
A 41-year-old Democrat, she has been criticized for firing more than 200 teachers, closing dozens of failing schools and her support of measuring teacher quality by students' test scores.
Her boss, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, lost his bid for re-election in last year's primary, and she resigned in October amid outcry from unions.
Rhee, who is featured in the education documentary "Waiting for Superman," was introduced to Florida legislators as a "movie star." Lawmakers lauded her for political courage and willingness "to take the heat."
Her No. 1 word of caution: "If you'd like to learn from one of the mistakes I made in particular, make it as clear as possible that you are not out to get teachers when you talk about and create policies that reflect how incredible their influence is."
Rhee praised SB 736 or "Race to the Top for Student Success" bill now before lawmakers that would rely heavily on student test scores to judge teacher performance and end tenure for new instructors.
A similar effort last year was widely criticized by teachers as unworkable and unfair and was ultimately vetoed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist.
Crist, who was in the capitol Wednesday, said he was disappointed to see the return of similar legislation.
"I obviously had very strong feelings about it last year, that's why I vetoed it," Crist said. "I don't think there's anything wrong with merit pay per se, but it seems to me that it has to be crafted in a way that is fundamentally fair too."
Public education faces a 10 percent reduction under Scott's newly proposed budget, but Rhee said such cuts do not have to result in damaged schools systems.
"Money does not necessarily correlate with student achievement," she said. "In this country in the last 30 years, we have more than doubled the amount of money we are spending per child…and the results have gotten worse not better."
Noting that Florida's education system recently was ranked fifth in the nation, Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee asked: "How can we be such an inept public school system, yet rank so high?"
National standing is not an adequate measure, said Rhee, emphasizing that today's children will be competing for jobs on a global level.
Last-one-in, first-one-out firing policies result in more jobs lost and tend to have negative impact on poorer neighborhoods, Rhee said.
That's because newer teachers earn less than tenured ones, so when it's time for layoffs more have to be fired to meet budget gaps, she said, and it's the schools in the neediest neighborhoods that tend to employ new teachers.
"[These firing policies are] decimating schools of the best educators in neighborhoods that need them the most," she said.
Rhee did not quibble with Democratic Hollywood Sen. Eleanor Sobel's concerns that perhaps teaching programs were failing to adequately prepare future educators.
"I'm very disappointed with the majority of teacher education programs across the country," Rhee said. "[They're] not actually preparing teachers well for the rigors they're going to see every single day in the classroom."
Rhee additionally called for separating teacher evaluations from the collective bargaining process, requiring teachers to pay into their retirement accounts and eliminating the practice of school districts paying for teachers to earn Master's Degrees.
"Keep being a leader in this most urgent area of need for our country," she said. "As you know, being among the first to challenge the status quo will not make your lives easy, especially when confronting the economic pressures that threaten the communities across the state."
Rhee made a repeat performance before the House PreK-20 Competitiveness Subcommittee Wednesday afternoon. The Senate committee is expected to vote on the bill Thursday afternoon.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/schools/scotts-reformer-tells-legislators-dump-tenure-bad-teachers-1244326.html
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Michelle Rhee's resume is tainted
Not only does she support reforms that aren't proven to work, merit pay and high stakes testing, and seeks to end basic teacher protections but she inflated her resume claiming her kids made gains they didn't. This is the person our governor and Steven Wise are turning to for advice. As far as I can see her only true talent is in self-promotion. Citizens of Florida you should really be outraged and concerned.
Check out the link below to GF Brandenbergs blog to see how her kids actualy did.
http://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/the-rhee-miracle-examined-again-by-cohort/
Check out the link below to GF Brandenbergs blog to see how her kids actualy did.
http://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/the-rhee-miracle-examined-again-by-cohort/
Monday, February 7, 2011
Michelle Rhee to speak to legislature, I wonder if she will mention tape
This not local Florida teachers is who Rick Scott is turning too for help. -cpg
From the Huffington Post
by pete Zucker
Sorry if I am late for the party. I'm thinking back to September when I posted on Twitter about a speech Michelle Rhee had made at the Columbia Heights Education Campus in Washington DC.
Rhee before a gathering was recounting her early days as an educator and the miscues that we all have made. I recall, now with a smile, of sending thirty-five fifth graders to the closet at once at dismissal time.
According to audio made by Rhee at the CHEC and reported by Alexander Russo and the Washington Post, Rhee said she, "took little pieces of masking tapes and put them on everybody's lips." At this point in her story the crowd laughs. She goes on to explain that, "their skin is coming off and that they are bleeding," and the crowd still is laughing. This is just wrong.
So why after three months or so of this being reported am I finally sharing my two cents? I guess it is seeing the launching of MichelleRheefirst.org er, I meant, Studentsfirst.org. Even though what Michelle Rhee did can be attributed to inexperience, as an educator, and even more so as a parent, I am uncomfortable about this having happened.
But what has gotten me most riled up, gotten my gander up, has bunched up my Fruit of the Looms is that a close, close person to me in another state has been reassigned because he dared to joke about taping students mouths. Now don't get me wrong, it was stupid to joke in this way. No doubt about it. But it should not involve a police investigation.
I decided to Google past transgressions of teachers taping students mouths and wondered if these teachers were able to skate by as did Michelle Rhee. The names are not meant to "out" these teachers in no shape or form. These names, the accusations are widely available. It is only meant to "out" Michelle Rhee.
In 2008, Pamela Dahnke was terminated for taping a student's mouth shut. She was an eighth-grade health and nutrition teacher at Battle Ground Middle School in West Lafayette, Ind. Did she get the same treatment as Michelle Rhee?
In 2009, Laura Gatlin, a first grade teacher in Cleveland County, Ark. was accused of taping students mouth and to the chair. Her lawyer's comment is here. Has she been afforded the same accolades and laughter as Michelle Rhee?
In 2006, in Katy, Texas, Jennifer Silva reportedly taped some the mouths of several students. When the superintendent got wind, he notified her he would recommend she was terminated. Why was she recommended for termination yet, Michelle Rhee is seen as the savior of education?
Just earlier this year, a teacher was accused of duct taping a student's mouth in Mishawaka, Ind. This student has Asperger's syndrome. The website, care2.com reported, "There are certainly many creative things that people do with duct tape. But using it on a child's mouth, and on the mouth of a child on the autism spectrum, is (serious understatement) not one of them." Does this feel as vehement about what Michelle Rhee did and will care2.com lead the charge to make sure that Michelle Rhee is no longer near students?
And in January 2008, a well-liked Driscoll School, Brookline, MA, science teacher, Christopher Huggins , is out of a job last week after allegedly duct-taping a 12-year-old girl's mouth during class. Michelle Rhee is not well liked. Why isn't she removed from the entire scene?
In 2009, a first grade teacher at Spaulding Elementary School, Emily Metcalfe, in Townsend, Mass., used duct tape on several students' mouths. The principal was quoted as saying, "The superintendent went on to say that the teacher may have thought at first this was a joke, but that there was a lack of professional judgment." Didn't Michelle Rhee show a lack of judgment?
I am in no way condoning, nor condemning what these teachers had done. They have every single right to be proven guilty, not to prove their innocence. That is how the American system works. But, does the punishment fit the crime? Especially in light of Michelle Rhee's acknowledgment of what she has done and the education reformers sweeping it under the rug? Do these teachers not deserve the same benefit of the doubt and second chance that Michelle Rhee has received? No one in this country is above the law!
What is especially galling to me is that no one -- not Oprah, not Bill Gates, not any of the high falutin' power brokers that either interview Michelle Rhee, work with her, or pal around with her -- will bring this abuse of children up with her.
This is all too chilling and reminds me, and for those who are old enough, of when Richard Nixon appeared with David Frost in 1977 when Nixon uttered those famous words: "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-zucker/michelle-rhee-and-masking_b_801339.html
From the Huffington Post
by pete Zucker
Sorry if I am late for the party. I'm thinking back to September when I posted on Twitter about a speech Michelle Rhee had made at the Columbia Heights Education Campus in Washington DC.
Rhee before a gathering was recounting her early days as an educator and the miscues that we all have made. I recall, now with a smile, of sending thirty-five fifth graders to the closet at once at dismissal time.
According to audio made by Rhee at the CHEC and reported by Alexander Russo and the Washington Post, Rhee said she, "took little pieces of masking tapes and put them on everybody's lips." At this point in her story the crowd laughs. She goes on to explain that, "their skin is coming off and that they are bleeding," and the crowd still is laughing. This is just wrong.
So why after three months or so of this being reported am I finally sharing my two cents? I guess it is seeing the launching of MichelleRheefirst.org er, I meant, Studentsfirst.org. Even though what Michelle Rhee did can be attributed to inexperience, as an educator, and even more so as a parent, I am uncomfortable about this having happened.
But what has gotten me most riled up, gotten my gander up, has bunched up my Fruit of the Looms is that a close, close person to me in another state has been reassigned because he dared to joke about taping students mouths. Now don't get me wrong, it was stupid to joke in this way. No doubt about it. But it should not involve a police investigation.
I decided to Google past transgressions of teachers taping students mouths and wondered if these teachers were able to skate by as did Michelle Rhee. The names are not meant to "out" these teachers in no shape or form. These names, the accusations are widely available. It is only meant to "out" Michelle Rhee.
In 2008, Pamela Dahnke was terminated for taping a student's mouth shut. She was an eighth-grade health and nutrition teacher at Battle Ground Middle School in West Lafayette, Ind. Did she get the same treatment as Michelle Rhee?
In 2009, Laura Gatlin, a first grade teacher in Cleveland County, Ark. was accused of taping students mouth and to the chair. Her lawyer's comment is here. Has she been afforded the same accolades and laughter as Michelle Rhee?
In 2006, in Katy, Texas, Jennifer Silva reportedly taped some the mouths of several students. When the superintendent got wind, he notified her he would recommend she was terminated. Why was she recommended for termination yet, Michelle Rhee is seen as the savior of education?
Just earlier this year, a teacher was accused of duct taping a student's mouth in Mishawaka, Ind. This student has Asperger's syndrome. The website, care2.com reported, "There are certainly many creative things that people do with duct tape. But using it on a child's mouth, and on the mouth of a child on the autism spectrum, is (serious understatement) not one of them." Does this feel as vehement about what Michelle Rhee did and will care2.com lead the charge to make sure that Michelle Rhee is no longer near students?
And in January 2008, a well-liked Driscoll School, Brookline, MA, science teacher, Christopher Huggins , is out of a job last week after allegedly duct-taping a 12-year-old girl's mouth during class. Michelle Rhee is not well liked. Why isn't she removed from the entire scene?
In 2009, a first grade teacher at Spaulding Elementary School, Emily Metcalfe, in Townsend, Mass., used duct tape on several students' mouths. The principal was quoted as saying, "The superintendent went on to say that the teacher may have thought at first this was a joke, but that there was a lack of professional judgment." Didn't Michelle Rhee show a lack of judgment?
I am in no way condoning, nor condemning what these teachers had done. They have every single right to be proven guilty, not to prove their innocence. That is how the American system works. But, does the punishment fit the crime? Especially in light of Michelle Rhee's acknowledgment of what she has done and the education reformers sweeping it under the rug? Do these teachers not deserve the same benefit of the doubt and second chance that Michelle Rhee has received? No one in this country is above the law!
What is especially galling to me is that no one -- not Oprah, not Bill Gates, not any of the high falutin' power brokers that either interview Michelle Rhee, work with her, or pal around with her -- will bring this abuse of children up with her.
This is all too chilling and reminds me, and for those who are old enough, of when Richard Nixon appeared with David Frost in 1977 when Nixon uttered those famous words: "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-zucker/michelle-rhee-and-masking_b_801339.html
What Floida's Education Savior (sic), Michelle Rhee did In Washington D.C.
From the Washington Posts Answer Sheet
By Rachel Levy
Here's what a lot of people are saying about Michelle Rhee as they sort out her legacy as chancellor of Washington D.C. public schools: Her policies were right on target and she moved city schools forward, but her big problem was simply that she didn’t play well with others. This assessment is wrong. Her reforms weren’t good policy, and criticism that her hard-charging style stifled her own well-intentioned reforms, such as is made here, misses the point.
Rhee's ideas about how to fix the ailing school system were largely misinformed, and it's no wonder: She knew little about instruction, curriculum, management, fiscal matters, and community relations. She was, to be sure, abrasive; she and Mayor Adrian Fenty, admitted as much here. But as education historian Diane Ravitch has said, "It’s difficult to win a war when you’re firing on your own troops.”
Rhee is the national face of the new brand of education reformer, so evaluation of her leadership is important not just for Washington D.C. but for the democratic institution of American public education.
Various reviews of her tenure have recently been written. This well-written and comprehensive report by Leigh Dingerson in Rethinking Schools, called "The Proving Grounds: School ’Rheeform’ in Washington, D.C" chronicles the history of D.C. public schools, Rhee’s belligerent approach to teachers, administrators, and parents, her connection to right-wing conservatives, the lack of attention given to curriculum and instruction, and the problems with her teacher-evaluation tool, IMPACT.
Not all of Rhee’s critics are liberal defenders of teachers unions; in this article in The American Spectator, Roger Kaplan makes several great points about problems with Rhee’s reign. Bill Turque, the fantastic education beat reporter for the Metro section of the Washington Post, published this succinct summary detailing the Rhee administration’s accomplishments and failures.
As a graduate of D.C. public schools and a former D.C. teacher, I offer my critique, point by point.
-0-
Rhee arrived in Washington D.C. in c. in 2007 with extraordinary power to do what she wanted. In fact, she only had her boss, Fenty, to answer to, and he never challenged her. Shortly after she started as chancellor, she met with the professionals and community leaders who had a long history of working to improve D.C. schools and promptly decided she didn’t have anything to learn from them. The die was cast.
Rhee never displayed an understanding of the city’s particular history--of political disenfranchisement, taxation without representation, and paternal federal control.
To the city’s black community, D.C. schools were a source of empowerment, autonomy, and even pride, for that community. People’s parents and extended families were educated and employed by D.C. schools. From Dingerson:
"The vast public sector employment created by the federal government helped establish a significant black middle class that supported its public schools. Many African American parents and grandparents remember their schools as neighborhood institutions and gateways to success."
Rhee paid no respect to members of the community whose elders had helped to build and fill the school system she was charged with leading. And that helped turn sentiment against her and Fenty.
-0-
A common refrain echoed by Fenty and his supporters is, "I know there were mistakes, but look at how Rhee has gotten people excited about urban public education."
Michelle Rhee did get a lot of people to pay attention to public education. Who? Many of them are unelected billionaires and conservative ideologues without any education expertise who have donated vast amounts of money to programs that have no basis in research. Some seek to privatize the public school system.
Rhee also drew some people into the profession of teaching, Who? Freshly minted graduates from highly selective colleges, teaching amateurs, most of whom don’t want to become professional teachers and who know very little about inner-city communities.
-0-
Rhee has been credited with improvements to the physical conditions of school facilities, but since June 2007, all capital planning, construction, renovation, and major repairs of D.C.P.S. school buildings have been the responsibility of the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, which is an agency separate from D.C. schools.
Facilities maintenance was moved from D.C. schools to the facilities modernization office in 2008. One of the reasons the office has been able to make so many improvements to public school facilities is that Fenty and the D.C. Council increased the schools’ capital budget to amounts unheard of prior to the takeover of the school system by the mayor in 2007
-0-
Rhee and Fenty and their supporters claim -- and some critics even agree -- that under her leadership, test scores went up. But here, too, things aren’t what they seem.
First of all, standardized tests should only be used as one of many teaching tools, so test scores should certainly not be the only standard by which we measure student achievement or teacher effectiveness. Standardized tests may tell you something about the students who are taking the test, but virtually nothing about who is teaching the students taking the test. What’s more, an emphasis on standardized tests is problematic because standardized test-based content makes for lousy curricula.
As Kaplan puts it, "The substantive issue is whether it serves a useful educational purpose to turn schools into fill-the-bubble-test cram boxes instead of teaching content-rich courses."
...and...
"No one who has looked seriously at the way achievements in math and reading are assessed under the No Child Left Behind rules believes you can judge a district on the basis of scarcely a couple of years. The D.C. schools implemented reforms aimed at improving scores, anyway, in 2006, so at most Miss Rhee should claim credit for staying with them, notwithstanding her stated plan to break with business as usual."
Furthermore, according to Dingerson (and she has the data and analysis to back this up thanks to seven-year D.C math teacher and 2010 finalist for D.C. Teacher of the Year, Chris Bergfalk):
"There have been dramatic drops in standardized assessment scores, and, on closer analysis, the highly touted increases in D.C. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores are a reflection of the changing demographics of the schools, not the result of any real improvement in the quality of education provided to D.C.’s poorest and neediest students."
Finally, in this timeline of events that was developed from a series of Washington Post articles and a July 2009 D.C. schools press release, former D.C. math teacher Guy Brandenburg shows that there were questions raised about possible cheating on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests. Though asked to investigate by Deborah A. Gist, then the state superintendent of education for the District of Columbia, the Rhee administration failed to do so.
-0-
Rhee emphasized teachers over the practice of teaching. There was no focus on what or how teachers were teaching. Wrote Dingerson:
"It is worth noting that, as a so-called ’education reformer,’ Rhee has not focused on content or pedagogy. There have been no initiatives to improve teacher induction or strengthen instructional practice. The focus has remained on management and staffing, and the tone has been judgmental rather than supportive."
And Kaplan wrote:
"The core of the matter is not this or that lapse of judgment or a clumsy manner with people. She is said to be abrasive, texts even while in the midst of formal meetings. Well, you can put that down to an American get-to-the-point spirit. However, Miss Rhee never bothered to explain just what all this reform and professional development and search for ’excellent’ teachers is supposed to mean. She did not explain it to the parents. Or to anybody.”
Rhee displayed questionable knowledge of teaching practices in this stunningly inappropriate account told during a Welcome to Teachers address ( I highly recommend listening to this) of taping shut the mouths of her inner-city Baltimore students such that she caused them to bleed.
Rhee was having a classroom management crisis in her classroom and chose to respond in an unprofessional and crude way. Similarly chose narrow and crude solutions to the crisis in D.C. schools.
Although Rhee’s teacher evaluation system called IMPACT has been touted by some as "ground-breaking," it’s a flawed instrument. Valerie Strauss, a long-time education journalist at The Washington Post, discusses the flaws of IMPACT in this post on this blog.
"IMPACT is actually a collection of 20 different evaluation systems for teachers in different capacities and other school personnel. In its first iteration, teachers were to be evaluated five times a year by principals and master teachers who went into the classroom unannounced for 30 minutes and scored the teacher on 22 different teaching elements. They were, for example, supposed to show that they could tailor instruction to at least three ’learning styles,’ demonstrate that they were instilling student belief in success through "affirmation chants, poems and cheers," and a lot more. It was so nutty to think that any teacher would show all 22 elements in 30 minutes that officials modified it. Now the number is a still unrealistic 10 or so. Some teachers, fearing that their professional careers were being based on an unfair system, got someone in the front office to alert them to when the principal or master teacher was to show up, according to interviews with a number of teachers who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Then they would send difficult kids out of the classroom, and, in some cases, pull out a specially prepared lesson plan tailored to meet IMPACT requirements. Meanwhile, some teachers never got five evaluations, apparently because a number of master teachers hired to do the jobs quit, according to sources in the school system."
Many teachers deemed "ineffective" by IMPACT were actually solid, experienced teachers, while others who were deemed "effective" were some of the weakest teachers in their schools.
-0-
The ultimate questions to ask about Rhee are not about whether she was liked or disliked, nice or mean.
They are, instead: Did she have sound and informed ideas about curriculum, fiscal and personnel management, education, and the craft of teaching? Were her policies and reforms effective? Did they improve the quality of public education in the District of Columbia? Did she adequately serving the communities and families she was hired to serve?
The answer to those questions is "no."
Rhee’s successor, Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson was Rhee’s right hand woman. Henderson is similarly inexperienced (a few years of teaching in Teach for America before going into administration) and holds carbon-copy ideas about education to her former boss.
Rhee supporters are pleased, saying that she will continue the reforms but is more likely than Rhee to be collaborative. But collaboration and consensus would require that Henderson compromise on the reform narrow, ideological, and inflexible platform.
Is Henderson prepared to give up her ideology or will she continue along the same path as Rhee, but just be kinder along the way?
We’ll be watching.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/rhees-legacy-point-by-point.html
By Rachel Levy
Here's what a lot of people are saying about Michelle Rhee as they sort out her legacy as chancellor of Washington D.C. public schools: Her policies were right on target and she moved city schools forward, but her big problem was simply that she didn’t play well with others. This assessment is wrong. Her reforms weren’t good policy, and criticism that her hard-charging style stifled her own well-intentioned reforms, such as is made here, misses the point.
Rhee's ideas about how to fix the ailing school system were largely misinformed, and it's no wonder: She knew little about instruction, curriculum, management, fiscal matters, and community relations. She was, to be sure, abrasive; she and Mayor Adrian Fenty, admitted as much here. But as education historian Diane Ravitch has said, "It’s difficult to win a war when you’re firing on your own troops.”
Rhee is the national face of the new brand of education reformer, so evaluation of her leadership is important not just for Washington D.C. but for the democratic institution of American public education.
Various reviews of her tenure have recently been written. This well-written and comprehensive report by Leigh Dingerson in Rethinking Schools, called "The Proving Grounds: School ’Rheeform’ in Washington, D.C" chronicles the history of D.C. public schools, Rhee’s belligerent approach to teachers, administrators, and parents, her connection to right-wing conservatives, the lack of attention given to curriculum and instruction, and the problems with her teacher-evaluation tool, IMPACT.
Not all of Rhee’s critics are liberal defenders of teachers unions; in this article in The American Spectator, Roger Kaplan makes several great points about problems with Rhee’s reign. Bill Turque, the fantastic education beat reporter for the Metro section of the Washington Post, published this succinct summary detailing the Rhee administration’s accomplishments and failures.
As a graduate of D.C. public schools and a former D.C. teacher, I offer my critique, point by point.
-0-
Rhee arrived in Washington D.C. in c. in 2007 with extraordinary power to do what she wanted. In fact, she only had her boss, Fenty, to answer to, and he never challenged her. Shortly after she started as chancellor, she met with the professionals and community leaders who had a long history of working to improve D.C. schools and promptly decided she didn’t have anything to learn from them. The die was cast.
Rhee never displayed an understanding of the city’s particular history--of political disenfranchisement, taxation without representation, and paternal federal control.
To the city’s black community, D.C. schools were a source of empowerment, autonomy, and even pride, for that community. People’s parents and extended families were educated and employed by D.C. schools. From Dingerson:
"The vast public sector employment created by the federal government helped establish a significant black middle class that supported its public schools. Many African American parents and grandparents remember their schools as neighborhood institutions and gateways to success."
Rhee paid no respect to members of the community whose elders had helped to build and fill the school system she was charged with leading. And that helped turn sentiment against her and Fenty.
-0-
A common refrain echoed by Fenty and his supporters is, "I know there were mistakes, but look at how Rhee has gotten people excited about urban public education."
Michelle Rhee did get a lot of people to pay attention to public education. Who? Many of them are unelected billionaires and conservative ideologues without any education expertise who have donated vast amounts of money to programs that have no basis in research. Some seek to privatize the public school system.
Rhee also drew some people into the profession of teaching, Who? Freshly minted graduates from highly selective colleges, teaching amateurs, most of whom don’t want to become professional teachers and who know very little about inner-city communities.
-0-
Rhee has been credited with improvements to the physical conditions of school facilities, but since June 2007, all capital planning, construction, renovation, and major repairs of D.C.P.S. school buildings have been the responsibility of the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, which is an agency separate from D.C. schools.
Facilities maintenance was moved from D.C. schools to the facilities modernization office in 2008. One of the reasons the office has been able to make so many improvements to public school facilities is that Fenty and the D.C. Council increased the schools’ capital budget to amounts unheard of prior to the takeover of the school system by the mayor in 2007
-0-
Rhee and Fenty and their supporters claim -- and some critics even agree -- that under her leadership, test scores went up. But here, too, things aren’t what they seem.
First of all, standardized tests should only be used as one of many teaching tools, so test scores should certainly not be the only standard by which we measure student achievement or teacher effectiveness. Standardized tests may tell you something about the students who are taking the test, but virtually nothing about who is teaching the students taking the test. What’s more, an emphasis on standardized tests is problematic because standardized test-based content makes for lousy curricula.
As Kaplan puts it, "The substantive issue is whether it serves a useful educational purpose to turn schools into fill-the-bubble-test cram boxes instead of teaching content-rich courses."
...and...
"No one who has looked seriously at the way achievements in math and reading are assessed under the No Child Left Behind rules believes you can judge a district on the basis of scarcely a couple of years. The D.C. schools implemented reforms aimed at improving scores, anyway, in 2006, so at most Miss Rhee should claim credit for staying with them, notwithstanding her stated plan to break with business as usual."
Furthermore, according to Dingerson (and she has the data and analysis to back this up thanks to seven-year D.C math teacher and 2010 finalist for D.C. Teacher of the Year, Chris Bergfalk):
"There have been dramatic drops in standardized assessment scores, and, on closer analysis, the highly touted increases in D.C. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores are a reflection of the changing demographics of the schools, not the result of any real improvement in the quality of education provided to D.C.’s poorest and neediest students."
Finally, in this timeline of events that was developed from a series of Washington Post articles and a July 2009 D.C. schools press release, former D.C. math teacher Guy Brandenburg shows that there were questions raised about possible cheating on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests. Though asked to investigate by Deborah A. Gist, then the state superintendent of education for the District of Columbia, the Rhee administration failed to do so.
-0-
Rhee emphasized teachers over the practice of teaching. There was no focus on what or how teachers were teaching. Wrote Dingerson:
"It is worth noting that, as a so-called ’education reformer,’ Rhee has not focused on content or pedagogy. There have been no initiatives to improve teacher induction or strengthen instructional practice. The focus has remained on management and staffing, and the tone has been judgmental rather than supportive."
And Kaplan wrote:
"The core of the matter is not this or that lapse of judgment or a clumsy manner with people. She is said to be abrasive, texts even while in the midst of formal meetings. Well, you can put that down to an American get-to-the-point spirit. However, Miss Rhee never bothered to explain just what all this reform and professional development and search for ’excellent’ teachers is supposed to mean. She did not explain it to the parents. Or to anybody.”
Rhee displayed questionable knowledge of teaching practices in this stunningly inappropriate account told during a Welcome to Teachers address ( I highly recommend listening to this) of taping shut the mouths of her inner-city Baltimore students such that she caused them to bleed.
Rhee was having a classroom management crisis in her classroom and chose to respond in an unprofessional and crude way. Similarly chose narrow and crude solutions to the crisis in D.C. schools.
Although Rhee’s teacher evaluation system called IMPACT has been touted by some as "ground-breaking," it’s a flawed instrument. Valerie Strauss, a long-time education journalist at The Washington Post, discusses the flaws of IMPACT in this post on this blog.
"IMPACT is actually a collection of 20 different evaluation systems for teachers in different capacities and other school personnel. In its first iteration, teachers were to be evaluated five times a year by principals and master teachers who went into the classroom unannounced for 30 minutes and scored the teacher on 22 different teaching elements. They were, for example, supposed to show that they could tailor instruction to at least three ’learning styles,’ demonstrate that they were instilling student belief in success through "affirmation chants, poems and cheers," and a lot more. It was so nutty to think that any teacher would show all 22 elements in 30 minutes that officials modified it. Now the number is a still unrealistic 10 or so. Some teachers, fearing that their professional careers were being based on an unfair system, got someone in the front office to alert them to when the principal or master teacher was to show up, according to interviews with a number of teachers who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Then they would send difficult kids out of the classroom, and, in some cases, pull out a specially prepared lesson plan tailored to meet IMPACT requirements. Meanwhile, some teachers never got five evaluations, apparently because a number of master teachers hired to do the jobs quit, according to sources in the school system."
Many teachers deemed "ineffective" by IMPACT were actually solid, experienced teachers, while others who were deemed "effective" were some of the weakest teachers in their schools.
-0-
The ultimate questions to ask about Rhee are not about whether she was liked or disliked, nice or mean.
They are, instead: Did she have sound and informed ideas about curriculum, fiscal and personnel management, education, and the craft of teaching? Were her policies and reforms effective? Did they improve the quality of public education in the District of Columbia? Did she adequately serving the communities and families she was hired to serve?
The answer to those questions is "no."
Rhee’s successor, Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson was Rhee’s right hand woman. Henderson is similarly inexperienced (a few years of teaching in Teach for America before going into administration) and holds carbon-copy ideas about education to her former boss.
Rhee supporters are pleased, saying that she will continue the reforms but is more likely than Rhee to be collaborative. But collaboration and consensus would require that Henderson compromise on the reform narrow, ideological, and inflexible platform.
Is Henderson prepared to give up her ideology or will she continue along the same path as Rhee, but just be kinder along the way?
We’ll be watching.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/rhees-legacy-point-by-point.html
The Sad Status Quo of Education
With a nod to Education Notes On-line, from the blog, Seattle Education
by Sue peters
The current crowd of ed reformers like to dismiss any of us who disagree with their agenda as “defenders of the status quo.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I am not a defender of the status quo in public education – because the status quo is currently “No Child Left Behind” and its insidious spin-off, “Race to the Top.”
In fact, I decry the state of public education in this country right now, because a beleaguered, underfunded system has been disparaged and ravaged even further this last decade by damaging policies based on failed concepts pushed by those who want to privatize our public schools.
I do not support the status quo because the status quo is teacher bashing. I don’t support the demonizing of teachers and belittling or weakening of the profession.
The status quo is standardization and high-stakes testing which narrows curriculum and kills all creativity and joy for learning and teaching.
It is “merit pay” which lashes teacher evaluations to student test scores, and which repeated studies and common sense show doesn’t work.
It is data-manipulation to create the illusion of ed reform “success.” (See: “Standards Raised, More Students Fail Tests.”
It is the re-segregation of public schools, exacerbated by the growth of charter schools.
It is overpaid, revolving school superintendents or chancellors with no ties to the local community, often no background in education, and no plans to stick around. That is the Broad Foundation model and the cause of the recent outcry in New York when Mayor Bloomberg chose a publishing executive with no background in education to be the chancellor of New York’s schools.
The status quo is national public education policy largely determined by unelected billionaires with zero expertise in education. “Venture philanthropists” Eli Broad and Bill Gates spend millions shaping public education policy. Formers staffers from the Gates Foundation now seed the Obama Administration’s Department of Education.
“Two of Duncan’s top aides, Chief of Staff Margot Rogers and Assistant Deputy Secretary James H. Shelton III, came from the [Gates] foundation and were granted waivers by the Administration from its revolving-door policy limiting involvement with former employers.”– “Bill Gates’ School Crusade,” July 15, 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek.
Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and former chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, are both former members of the Broad board of directors. The “Broad Prize for Urban Education” is a trophy and large cash sum awarded annually by the private Broad Foundation to school districts performing to its liking. In its 2009-10 Annual Report, Broad boasts that the trophy itself “resides at the U.S. Department of Education.”
You couldn’t ask for a better symbol of the infiltration of private corporate interests into federal government.
Have Mr. Broad or Mr. Gates been elected to public office, or to direct education policy? Do either have any expertise or experience in public education? No and no. Do either seek genuine parent input? No.
The status quo is Astroturf ed reform groups springing up like toadstools in the night, heavily funded by the same “venture philathropists” looking for a “return on their investment” and pushing the same corporate ed-reform agenda. Washington D.C. ex- school chancellor (Michelle Rhee’s new organization is apparently backed by the same wealthy interests. These organizations lobby for an ed reform agenda that we parents have no say in or may even oppose. But they have resources and media access at their disposal that ordinary parents don’t have. This is not a democratic dialogue about our children’s future when the main stakeholders — we the parents – are largely shut out of the debate.
I do not defend the current trend of sending recent college grads with just five weeks’ training and just a two-year commitment to teach in our nation’s most struggling schools which already suffer from high teacher turnover. But that is the model for Teach for America, Inc. a multimillion-dollar enterprise that is now funded by the Obama government to the tune of $50 million-plus and is arguably de-professionalizing the teaching profession.
Five weeks training does not make these uncredentialed grads “highly qualified,” despite the recent shenanigans by Congress.
I do not support the status quo that punishes teachers, principals and schools with mass layoffs, firings and closures because of student test scores, rather than addressing why some children are struggling and how else one might measure a child’s abilities and a teacher’s worth.
I do not support the status quo which is the mindset of the corporate ed reformers that schools should be run like businesses. Schools are not businesses. Their goal is not profit. The strongest schools are communities, more like families, and need to be cooperative, creative, engaging and nurturing environments.
I do not support the status quo of shameful attacks by the media on teachers and schools and the one-sided cheerleading for charter schools that fails to acknowledge the genuine proven limitations of these schools — their failure to serve children with special needs, the high attrition of kids (even a Geoffrey Canada Harlem Children Zone apparently booted an entire class of kids from a charter school because they weren’t deemed likely to do well on tests. (See: “The Myth of Charter Schools,” Brookings Institution, Nov. 11, 2010.)
I do not support the status quo which makes celebrities and “super(wo)men” out of spotlight-seeking figures like Michelle Rhee, Michael Bloomberg, and Arne Duncan, while all the real work is being done quietly by the thousands of anonymous teachers, principals, educators, parents and students, who suffer through reform after reform, trend after trend, searing budget cuts, and still manage to go on and offer a good education to many children in this nation without any national recognition.
I do not support a status quo that cuts so much from school budgets that the PTAs are left fundraising for such essentials as teachers and books, and school communities that do not have these extra resources suffer the most.
I do not support the status quo of education policies being driven by Wall Street interests and not by what’s in the best interests of our children.
I do not support mayoral control, abolishing of school boards, quashing of parent voices and end-runs around democracy.
I do not defend the federal government imposing its edicts on local school districts, suppressing local autonomy and skirting the edges of Constitutionality, which is what Race to the Top essentially does.
The research comes on the heels of a recent pledge by President Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, to use $5 billion of the $100 billion in federal stimulus funds for education to press states on charter schools. “States that don’t have charter school laws, or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools, will jeopardize their application” for federal grant money, Duncan said in a call with reporters last week. Currently, 10 states lack laws that allow charter schools, and 26 others cap their enrollment.” — from: “Charter Schools Might Not Be Better,” U.S. News & World Report, June 19, 2009.)
No, I reject this status quo.
What I support and call for is: the long-term personal and professional investment in every child –which takes time and commitment, as has been demonstrated in Everett, Washington. It’s not flashy, doesn’t require expensive high-tech products, just good old-fashioned follow-up with kids, mentoring and genuine support. And an engaging curriculum.
I support small classes sizes that allow greater one-on-one interaction. I call for the parents’ voices to be the loudest in the discussion of how to run our schools. I support autonomy for schools, teachers and principals who know their communities best, and who can ensure their children are doing well, learning what they need to know and able to graduate.
I call for creative teaching, rich, varied curricula that include the arts and music and languages, science, physical education. I call for safe, decent well-maintained buildings and healthy school meals.
I call for an honest dialogue about the ravages of poverty on our nation’s children. We need to acknowledge the shameful fact that 21 percent of our children live in poverty, and that inequities in academic results are largely determined by income and home life of the child. This is not an excuse, it is a fact, and to expect teachers and schools alone to correct the deep and damaging inequalities of our society is irrational.
I call for an overhaul of school district administrations, to pare them down to the essentials, make them efficient and serving the interests of the school communities, not the whims of private foundations or vendors of standardized tests, text books or online learning products.
I call for the hiring of school superintendents and chancellors who have a local connection and commitment to the community they must serve which will in turn lead to greater accountability. I call to retain democratically elected school board members who must answer to their constituents and oversee the superintendent, and a paid position for school board so they can do their job thoroughly and well.
Public education is an integral ingredient in creating an informed public and a strong democracy. I believe we must keep our public schools free of private and political agendas and manipulations, strengthen our schools, not close them down, stop punishing and start nurturing.
If you agree that our nation needs a new vision for public education, I invite you to join a forum of parents from across the nation who are launching a new organization, Parents Across America, in New York on Feb. 7. Our keynote speaker will be education historian Diane Ravitch. The event is free and open to the public. It starts at 6 p.m. and will held at: PS/IS 89 – Liberty School, 201 Warren Street, New York, N.Y. 10282.
Help bring parents’ voices to the education debate and support progressive, positive, constructive education reforms that work.
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/why-i-am-not-a-defender-of-the-status-quo-in-education-because-the-status-quo-is-failed-ed-reforms/
by Sue peters
The current crowd of ed reformers like to dismiss any of us who disagree with their agenda as “defenders of the status quo.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I am not a defender of the status quo in public education – because the status quo is currently “No Child Left Behind” and its insidious spin-off, “Race to the Top.”
In fact, I decry the state of public education in this country right now, because a beleaguered, underfunded system has been disparaged and ravaged even further this last decade by damaging policies based on failed concepts pushed by those who want to privatize our public schools.
I do not support the status quo because the status quo is teacher bashing. I don’t support the demonizing of teachers and belittling or weakening of the profession.
The status quo is standardization and high-stakes testing which narrows curriculum and kills all creativity and joy for learning and teaching.
It is “merit pay” which lashes teacher evaluations to student test scores, and which repeated studies and common sense show doesn’t work.
It is data-manipulation to create the illusion of ed reform “success.” (See: “Standards Raised, More Students Fail Tests.”
It is the re-segregation of public schools, exacerbated by the growth of charter schools.
It is overpaid, revolving school superintendents or chancellors with no ties to the local community, often no background in education, and no plans to stick around. That is the Broad Foundation model and the cause of the recent outcry in New York when Mayor Bloomberg chose a publishing executive with no background in education to be the chancellor of New York’s schools.
The status quo is national public education policy largely determined by unelected billionaires with zero expertise in education. “Venture philanthropists” Eli Broad and Bill Gates spend millions shaping public education policy. Formers staffers from the Gates Foundation now seed the Obama Administration’s Department of Education.
“Two of Duncan’s top aides, Chief of Staff Margot Rogers and Assistant Deputy Secretary James H. Shelton III, came from the [Gates] foundation and were granted waivers by the Administration from its revolving-door policy limiting involvement with former employers.”– “Bill Gates’ School Crusade,” July 15, 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek.
Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and former chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, are both former members of the Broad board of directors. The “Broad Prize for Urban Education” is a trophy and large cash sum awarded annually by the private Broad Foundation to school districts performing to its liking. In its 2009-10 Annual Report, Broad boasts that the trophy itself “resides at the U.S. Department of Education.”
You couldn’t ask for a better symbol of the infiltration of private corporate interests into federal government.
Have Mr. Broad or Mr. Gates been elected to public office, or to direct education policy? Do either have any expertise or experience in public education? No and no. Do either seek genuine parent input? No.
The status quo is Astroturf ed reform groups springing up like toadstools in the night, heavily funded by the same “venture philathropists” looking for a “return on their investment” and pushing the same corporate ed-reform agenda. Washington D.C. ex- school chancellor (Michelle Rhee’s new organization is apparently backed by the same wealthy interests. These organizations lobby for an ed reform agenda that we parents have no say in or may even oppose. But they have resources and media access at their disposal that ordinary parents don’t have. This is not a democratic dialogue about our children’s future when the main stakeholders — we the parents – are largely shut out of the debate.
I do not defend the current trend of sending recent college grads with just five weeks’ training and just a two-year commitment to teach in our nation’s most struggling schools which already suffer from high teacher turnover. But that is the model for Teach for America, Inc. a multimillion-dollar enterprise that is now funded by the Obama government to the tune of $50 million-plus and is arguably de-professionalizing the teaching profession.
Five weeks training does not make these uncredentialed grads “highly qualified,” despite the recent shenanigans by Congress.
I do not support the status quo that punishes teachers, principals and schools with mass layoffs, firings and closures because of student test scores, rather than addressing why some children are struggling and how else one might measure a child’s abilities and a teacher’s worth.
I do not support the status quo which is the mindset of the corporate ed reformers that schools should be run like businesses. Schools are not businesses. Their goal is not profit. The strongest schools are communities, more like families, and need to be cooperative, creative, engaging and nurturing environments.
I do not support the status quo of shameful attacks by the media on teachers and schools and the one-sided cheerleading for charter schools that fails to acknowledge the genuine proven limitations of these schools — their failure to serve children with special needs, the high attrition of kids (even a Geoffrey Canada Harlem Children Zone apparently booted an entire class of kids from a charter school because they weren’t deemed likely to do well on tests. (See: “The Myth of Charter Schools,” Brookings Institution, Nov. 11, 2010.)
I do not support the status quo which makes celebrities and “super(wo)men” out of spotlight-seeking figures like Michelle Rhee, Michael Bloomberg, and Arne Duncan, while all the real work is being done quietly by the thousands of anonymous teachers, principals, educators, parents and students, who suffer through reform after reform, trend after trend, searing budget cuts, and still manage to go on and offer a good education to many children in this nation without any national recognition.
I do not support a status quo that cuts so much from school budgets that the PTAs are left fundraising for such essentials as teachers and books, and school communities that do not have these extra resources suffer the most.
I do not support the status quo of education policies being driven by Wall Street interests and not by what’s in the best interests of our children.
I do not support mayoral control, abolishing of school boards, quashing of parent voices and end-runs around democracy.
I do not defend the federal government imposing its edicts on local school districts, suppressing local autonomy and skirting the edges of Constitutionality, which is what Race to the Top essentially does.
The research comes on the heels of a recent pledge by President Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, to use $5 billion of the $100 billion in federal stimulus funds for education to press states on charter schools. “States that don’t have charter school laws, or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools, will jeopardize their application” for federal grant money, Duncan said in a call with reporters last week. Currently, 10 states lack laws that allow charter schools, and 26 others cap their enrollment.” — from: “Charter Schools Might Not Be Better,” U.S. News & World Report, June 19, 2009.)
No, I reject this status quo.
What I support and call for is: the long-term personal and professional investment in every child –which takes time and commitment, as has been demonstrated in Everett, Washington. It’s not flashy, doesn’t require expensive high-tech products, just good old-fashioned follow-up with kids, mentoring and genuine support. And an engaging curriculum.
I support small classes sizes that allow greater one-on-one interaction. I call for the parents’ voices to be the loudest in the discussion of how to run our schools. I support autonomy for schools, teachers and principals who know their communities best, and who can ensure their children are doing well, learning what they need to know and able to graduate.
I call for creative teaching, rich, varied curricula that include the arts and music and languages, science, physical education. I call for safe, decent well-maintained buildings and healthy school meals.
I call for an honest dialogue about the ravages of poverty on our nation’s children. We need to acknowledge the shameful fact that 21 percent of our children live in poverty, and that inequities in academic results are largely determined by income and home life of the child. This is not an excuse, it is a fact, and to expect teachers and schools alone to correct the deep and damaging inequalities of our society is irrational.
I call for an overhaul of school district administrations, to pare them down to the essentials, make them efficient and serving the interests of the school communities, not the whims of private foundations or vendors of standardized tests, text books or online learning products.
I call for the hiring of school superintendents and chancellors who have a local connection and commitment to the community they must serve which will in turn lead to greater accountability. I call to retain democratically elected school board members who must answer to their constituents and oversee the superintendent, and a paid position for school board so they can do their job thoroughly and well.
Public education is an integral ingredient in creating an informed public and a strong democracy. I believe we must keep our public schools free of private and political agendas and manipulations, strengthen our schools, not close them down, stop punishing and start nurturing.
If you agree that our nation needs a new vision for public education, I invite you to join a forum of parents from across the nation who are launching a new organization, Parents Across America, in New York on Feb. 7. Our keynote speaker will be education historian Diane Ravitch. The event is free and open to the public. It starts at 6 p.m. and will held at: PS/IS 89 – Liberty School, 201 Warren Street, New York, N.Y. 10282.
Help bring parents’ voices to the education debate and support progressive, positive, constructive education reforms that work.
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/why-i-am-not-a-defender-of-the-status-quo-in-education-because-the-status-quo-is-failed-ed-reforms/
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