Trump considering wildly unpopular cabinet choices for Education Secretary
Earlier in the election cycle, candidate Trump leaked some possibilities for his choice for Education Secretary. On the list were people like Ben Carson (talented surgeon, but not a student of education policy or process) and William Evers (who already served once in the U.S. Department of Education in the George W Bush administration.) Those across the country who fought Common Core were enthusiastic about someone like Evers being appointed. He has long been a fellow warrior against the Core and should have been an obvious choice for a candidate who campaigned saying Common Core was terrible and he would get rid of it.
So it was somewhat of a surprise to read yesterday that President Elect Trump has now placed Michelle Rhee and Eva Moskowitz on his list of potential appointees to the Education Secretary post, and that is putting it mildly. The nation of warriors against Common Core is spitting mad that he would even consider Rhee, a watergirl for the Core from the very beginning. Search the web for Rhee and Common Core and you will find dozens of articles showing her spouting CCSSI talking points, with conviction, even just two years ago, well into the revolt against the national standards.
Gretchen Logue wrote on MEW about her appearance on Fox & Friends talking about Common Core remarking, “She wasn’t listening a whit to what several people had said about the standards or the interviewer relaying other horror stories from citizens about the standards. She clearly doesn’t care. She is defending an agenda and could care less what it is doing to teachers or children.”
The New York Times wrote this about Ms. Rhee in 2011 when Washington DC schools were under investigation for the high rate of erasures and suspiciously high test-score gains. In one school the percentage of answers erased and changed to correct answers was 97%.
“Ms. Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington public schools from 2007 to 2010, is the national symbol of the data-driven, take-no-prisoners education reform movement… These days, as director of an advocacy group she founded, StudentsFirst, she crisscrosses the country pushing her education politics: she’s for vouchers and charter schools, against tenure, for teachers, but against their unions.”
Rhee’s greatest success has been her ability to raise money to become an education lobbyist for businesses who want to make money off of public education. Take Friends of Bedford, a private contractor who she brought in to fix Dunbar Senior HS in New York. FOB was not successful in turning around the failing school which, as most public schools do, had to take all eligible students, not just the ones they wanted as FOB had done at the much touted Bedford Academy. Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post wrote that it was unlikely one success would translate to another for FOB. “The schools have little in common, but there’s this: The head of Friends of Bedford, Chief Executive George Leonard, shares an ignore-the-parents management philosophy employed by Rhee when she ran D.C. schools.”
It seems Gretchen was right about Rhee’s complete disinterest in parent’s needs or perspective.
And this is someone Trump is considering for Education Secretary?
Then there’s Eva Moskowitz head of the vaunted Success Academy charter school corporation and at one time potential mayoral candidate in New York City. Her schools are noted for are two things: test scores and discipline. The test scores are high. The level of discipline is also high. This exchange between PBS’s John Merrow and Moskowitz paints a pretty clear picture of life inside a Success Academy school.Trump considering wildly unpopular cabinet choices for Education Secretary – Missouri Education Watchdog:
Big Education Ape: Success Academy Scrubs Their Public Video Page | Gary Rubinstein's Blog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/09/success-academy-scrubs-their-public.html