Tuesday, April 16, 2013

UPDATE: Duncan = Failed Testing and Accountability Policies Schools Matter: Michelle Rhee's Situational Ethics

Schools Matter: Michelle Rhee's Situational Ethics:



Duncan Celebrates Three Decades of Failed Testing and Accountability Policies

On April 16, it will have been 30 years since the publication of A Nation at Risk (ANAR), the discredited scare document produced by the Reaganites in 1983 to introduce the beginning of the end of public education in America.

Now here is your quiz to test your capacity to predict outcomes based on past history.

To acknowledge the beginning of fourth decade of failed education policies inspired by ANAR, Duncan will meet with

a) public school parents

b) public school teachers and students

c) public policymakers from local to federal levels

d) CEOs from the Business Roundtable at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

If you answered a, b, or c, you need your head examined.  If you answered d, then you have 


Michelle Rhee's Situational Ethics

The immediate takeaway of "Michelle Rhee's Reign of Error" is that PBS's John Merrow found “the smoking gun,” or the confidential memo warning Michelle Rhee of the extent of cheating that may have occurred in Washington D.C. schools in response to her draconian “reforms.” He concludes with the question that merits a real federal investigation, “What did Michelle know, and when did she know it?” In the long run, that is Merrow's third most important revelation.

Merrow has been reporting on D.C. schools since 2007 and, even now, his prime expose is the ongoing story about the nonstop test prep that was made inevitable by Rhee. In his latest, Merrow reports what an associate superintendent knew about principals who, as a result of Rhee's obsession with accountability,  had “no focus” on instruction, and when he knew that the total focus was on test scores.

The second most important story in Merrow’s ongoing reports is Rhee's situational ethics. He recalls her outrageous statement, “If there are rules standing in the way of that, I will question those rules. I will bend those rules.”

I don't want to sound like an old stick-in-the-mud, but Rhee reminds me of a lot of college buddies.  It used to be