A Whiteous Cause
Introducing a new concept: “whiteousness,” the unshakable belief that one knows what’s best for others, especially those of other races or lower income brackets.
Achievement-gap-measures that are all the rage in education reform circles are often fueled by a sense of “whiteousness.”
Today I invite you to ponder one of the great questions of our age: How can I pull down some serious cheddar in the name of the achievement gap? How has the civil rights issue of our time turned out to be the source of so many civil wrongs? Last week, a patchwork of groups from across the country filed civil rights complaintsclaiming that school closures and turnarounds are hurting minority students. In what can only be described as ironical, officials from the same Obama administration that hatched the achievement gap closing policies will now look into the whether those policies have violated civil rights.
Whiteous wage
Just yesterday our favorite achievement-gap *crushing* friends were celebrating their success, albeit “humbly,” in the form of newly released memoirs and op-eds in which they put children first. So how is it that these same
Achievement-gap-measures that are all the rage in education reform circles are often fueled by a sense of “whiteousness.”Whiteous wage
Just yesterday our favorite achievement-gap *crushing* friends were celebrating their success, albeit “humbly,” in the form of newly released memoirs and op-eds in which they put children first. So how is it that these same
Let Them Eat Cake
Adell Cothorne has a message for Michelle Rhee and her successor, Kaya Henderson: “Let them eat cake.”
In case you’ve somehow managed to miss it, today marks the release of Michelle Rhee’s new advertorial,Radical: Fighting to Put Students First. So to mark this special occasion I’d like to propose a toast, although not to Rhee, whose ghastly edu-celebrity may at last be waning (see book sales, declining number of). Let’s raise our collective wine boxes in honor of the woman who has emerged as perhaps the sharpest thorn in Rhee’s side: former Washington DC principal and whistle blower extraordinaire Adell Cothorne.If you are a regular reader of Diane’s blog, you are likely familiar with Adell’s story; it’s one we certainly haven’t heard the last of. Adell has spoken out, boldly and bravely, about Erasergate, the epidemic of answer changing on standardized tests that took place while Michelle Rhee was in charge of the DC public schools. Her story stings in part because it was Adell’s admiration of Rhee that drew her to Washington in the first place. But when she witnessed what she was convinced was test tampering by teachers at her school she spoke up, and when