Who Created Excuses for Michelle Rhee?
Educators are living an absolute nightmare of absurd accountability. Guided by the misguided notion that teachers are capable of singlehandedly overcoming the blight of poverty, "reformers" have created systems that have them evaluated based on test score growth, sometimes even for students they have never even taught. Yet when it comes for taking accountability for their own actions, some people are willing to give the reformers all sorts of excuses. It seems as if we have the soft bigotry of low expectations all over again.
The latest example of this is John Merrow's blog post, "Who Created Michelle Rhee?" He starts out well enough. Clearly, Michelle Rhee herself is a prime candidate. Nobody forced her to misrepresent her own students' achievement until she was called on it. She alone is responsible for her ambitious drive to dominate first a large urban district, and now an entire nation's schools, with her draconian policies.
Then he takes a bit of responsibility himself, for doing twelve segments on her - more than two hours of primetime coverage on PBS Newshour. While he deserves a lot of credit for his most recent report revealing the missing memo, he is correct that he should have been far more skeptical about her "miracle gains" the first year. This calls for more than a passing mention. Why was he willing to accept this without real question? It suggests a willingness to believe the driving reform narrative - that teachers can work miracles if properly motivated (or terrified!).
The latest example of this is John Merrow's blog post, "Who Created Michelle Rhee?" He starts out well enough. Clearly, Michelle Rhee herself is a prime candidate. Nobody forced her to misrepresent her own students' achievement until she was called on it. She alone is responsible for her ambitious drive to dominate first a large urban district, and now an entire nation's schools, with her draconian policies.
Then he takes a bit of responsibility himself, for doing twelve segments on her - more than two hours of primetime coverage on PBS Newshour. While he deserves a lot of credit for his most recent report revealing the missing memo, he is correct that he should have been far more skeptical about her "miracle gains" the first year. This calls for more than a passing mention. Why was he willing to accept this without real question? It suggests a willingness to believe the driving reform narrative - that teachers can work miracles if properly motivated (or terrified!).