THE CULT OF PERSONALITY V. EXPERTISE IN THE EDUCATION DEBATE
Rhee just keeps buying those ads– this time in Iowa
admin at RheeFirst! - 20 hours ago
admin at RheeFirst! - 20 hours ago
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/tag/studentsfirst/
Rhee’s Maine legislation called an ALEC bill cut and paste
*Rhee is pushing voucher, school choice and other corporate education legislation.* "Critics of the bills have also accused the administration of essentially cutting and pasting the legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate funded organization that drafts model legislation. The bills are supported by StudentsFirst, a nonprofit organization founded by former D.C. chancellor of public schools Michelle Rhee. According to lobbying records, StudentsFirst has dispatched two lobbyists to advocate for the bills. The LePage administration has dubbed its educatio... more »Michelle Rhee’s six figure television buy in CT
"[Rhee announced an] advertising campaign is a 'six-figure television buy' that includes broadcast and cable ads in the state's major markets. ... 'Why should CT citizens want to import outsiders like Rhee, when there are so many solid ideas for education reform right here in our own state? Why did the Florida legislature recently work in a bipartisan effort to reject Rhee's proposals? These are the kinds of questions everyone who cares about public education should consider as we work to ensure high-quality schools for all students who need to compete in a global economy.'"
No one at Rhee’s CT rally
admin at RheeFirst! - 2 days ago
[image: Photo credit: Rick Green, CTConfidential]
admin at RheeFirst! - 2 days ago
[image: Photo credit: Rick Green, CTConfidential]
Rhee likes right wing Gov. Branstad corp. education proposals
admin at RheeFirst! - 3 days ago
"Education reform advocate Michelle Rhee called Gov. Terry Branstad’s school improvement plan for Iowa “a step in the right direction” during a Monday meeting with Des Moines Register reporters and editors. An amended version of the governor’s legislative package for education is scheduled to be discussed for the first time today on the House floor. Several measures in the bill — including required annual teacher evaluations, an end to seniority-based job protections, and fewer restrictions on the creation of charter schools — are aligned with the goals of... Rhee." A commenter wrot... more »
Rhee hits CT airwaves with big $$ ad buy
"The ads by Michelle Rhee’s reform group, StudentsFirst, are the beginning of an aggressive campaign to support Malloy’s education reform plan."Interview: Rhee-placement claims ATL kid’s scores went up despite the cheating proves that they were learning
*Rhee's replacement, Kaya Henderson, states that no federal or DC investigator has contacted her about the suspicious scores. In the below Q & A, she tells Turque that the scores in Atlanta went up despite the cheating, because it showed that the ATL kids were learning.* "Bill Turque: The thing that concerns people is that there’s no player in this process who really has an incentive to get to the truth. KHenderson, Rhee's fmr asst and replacement: Why is it not in my best interest? Why do I not want to know the truth? Because if you’re cheating, you either have to keep cheating or ... more »New firm hired for DC’s cheating probe
"[The] decision to seek outside help with test security issues is a response to questions about the scope and rigor of previous investigations. DCPS retained Caveon to conduct inquiries into classrooms with high rates of wrong-to-right answer sheet erasures on the 2009 and 2010 Comprehensive Assessment System...But Caveon founder John Fremer said that DCPS never asked the company to use all the forensic tools at its disposal, some of which seem to be covered by OSSE’s expanded criteria. ...It is not known how much experience Alvarez and Marsal has in test security. Its Web site says...more »Florida Senate kills parent trigger bill that Rhee lobbied hard for
admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago
"Said Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston: 'The centerpiece of this legislation has nothing to do with empowering parents or giving children and parents options, or improving schools. We do all of that already. It has everything to do with laying the groundwork for the hostile corporate takeover of public schools across Florida — an attack on public education.'"
Right-wing attacks “media-hyped, Republican gov-backed” Rhee
admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago
"Wow. Media-hyped, Republican governor backed Michelle Rhee wants the public schools in America to be run by a central governing body. She not only wants to take elected school boards out of the picture thus removing taxpayer say over how the schools operate, she also wants to "nationalize" the schools. That can only mean one thing: a Department of Education which tells the states exactly how to run their business. From Teach for America to Harvard to The New Teacher Project to StudentsFirst, all of Rhee's work for the past 20 years has been to set up a framework to usher in the com... more »
Rhee’s former DC cheating investigator now a sacrificial lamb
"Local political analyst Chuck Thies said the city was replacing Caveon because the public still believes cheating in D.C. schools hasn't been investigated thoroughly enough. 'This is politics and this is public relations, and sacrificial lambs are a part of the business,' Thies said. 'If [Caveon is] getting thrown under the bus and losing business from the District, well, they're a casualty of this war.'"
Rhee’s StudentsFirst pretends to be grassroots, but $1 million of Walton money for paid lobbyists says otherwise
admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago"The fact that StudentsFirst is funded in million-dollar increments by billionaires, though, doesn't stop it from making two broad, laughable claims in a document (PDF) distributed when representatives of the organization spoke at a meeting (PDF) of North Carolina's Republican-controlled House Committee on Education Reform. The document highlights StudentsFirst's work expanding charter schools and the use of discredited "reforms" such as merit pay in Republican-controlled states such as Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Tennessee, and claims that "how we did it" was through grass... more »
How inheriting students-victims of ErasureGate doomed an excellent teacher’s scores: Creative, Motivating and fired – Wash. Post
admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week agoWritten by Bill Turque for The Washington Post. Read the entire article here. "Kamras said the disconnect between the observations of Wysocki’s classroom and her value-added scores was “quite rare.” Most teachers with poor ratings in one area, he said, are also substandard in the other. 'It doesn’t necessarily suggest that anything wrong happened,' he said. 'Sometimes it’s just not possible to know for sure.' Wysocki said there is another possible explanation: Many students arrived at her class in August 2010 after receiving inflated test scores in fourth grade. Fourteen of her 25 s... more »
Ultra-conservative Walton Family Foundation gives Rhee $1 million
Walton also funds other right-wing groups: Alliance for School Choice (Betsy DeVos), Foundation for Excellence in Education(Jeb Bush), and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Read an article about the release here, and see the list of groups funded here.
Now I understand why Rhee et al. didn’t want the value-added data made public
admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago
"The problem, for them, is that they don’t want the public to see for themselves that it’s a complete and utter crock. Nor to see the little man behind the curtain. ... In any introductory statistics course, you learn that a graph like the one below is a textbook case of “no correlation”. I had Excel draw a line of best fit anyway, and calculate an r-squared correlation coefficient. Its value? 0.057 — once again, just about as close to zero correlation as you are ever going to find in the real world. In plain English, what that means is that there is essentially no such thing as a t... more »
Parents await answers on D.C. schools cheating case; at least 12 teachers interviewed
admin at RheeFirst! - 1 week ago*Rhee's replacement says there was no widespread cheating. * "[but] Robert Wilson, the former DeKalb County, Ga., district attorney who co-led an investigation of Atlanta school tests, said, 'It did seem that possibly she was laying the groundwork that maybe the results from that investigation won't be as concrete as some people would like... If you do a really thorough and vigorous investigation … you certainly should be able to come out with some fairly concrete things,' Wilson said. ... The federal and D.C. inspector generals would not comment. ... Marvin Tucker, whose daughter a... more »
86% of teachers in the Atlanta cheating scandal were at schools led by cheating principals
"The 800-page Investigation Report on the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) cheating scandal involving 178 named school-based principals, teachers and other staff is a riveting and chilling anthology ... In 44 of the 56 schools, the principal was held responsible. ... In fact, 90 (86%) of the 107 teachers named in the Report (table, last page) were in schools where the principal was also named. The Report documents that some teachers did report cheating as well as the pressure to cheat. While the oversight bodies capable of intervening were asleep or in thrall to their celebrity superint... more »WashPost asks the hard questions of Rhee-placement on DCPS cheating allegations
Bill Turque asks Rhee's replacement, Kaya Henderson the hard questions about the cheating. Some interesting nuggets: 1. the DC Inspector General that is supposedly conducting an investigation has not contacted her [but note her involvement in various relevant areas, see for example at 102: Henderson's official statement: DCPS brought in Caveon to investigate after OSSE flagged "a handful of schools", and outlines future test security plans]; 2. behind all these allegations is the subtext that "a lot of people ... do not believe that kids in DCPS, or in Atlanta *[note: massive cheati... more »Former Mayor of San Francisco rejects Rhee’s ideas
admin at RheeFirst! - 2 weeks agoBy Gene Mullin is a former member of the California Assembly, the former mayor of South San Francisco and a former teacher. "[H]er credentials as an agent of change are somewhat slender, and her tactics subject to scrutiny. Some of her worthy ideas are submerged by her tendency to use an anecdotal evidence approach rather than verifiable results. ... She bemoans the “last hired, first fired” status in most school districts throughout the country. The assumption is, apparently, that newer teachers are better (and cheaper) and that it’s preferred to retain them. My experience has been ... more »
FL poll shows parent trigger that Rhee promotes is a bad idea
admin at RheeFirst! - 2 weeks ago
"Most readers of The Florida Current who responded to last week's poll thought it a bad idea to let parents be the finger on the trigger to start turnaround plans for failing public schools that could include a takeover by for-profit companies. Such authority would be granted by HB 1191, which is waiting for heard by the full House, and its companion, SB 1718, which is scheduled to be considered Tuesday by the Budget Subcommittee on Education Pre-K - 12 Appropriations. The measure has drawn opposition from Democrats and parent groups. Supporters include StudentsFirst, an organizatio... more »