Thursday Questions

What is Eva Moskowitz afraid parents, media and visitors will see inside of her Success Academies?

CPS teacher asks: Why is it wrong for Chicago teachers to shut it down on April 1st to demand school funding, but OK for Rahm/Claypool to use furlough day to close schools?

How did Sac's school privatization mayor, Kevin Johnson (husband of Michelle Rhee), ever get away with this?

Was Trump's speech at AIPAC really worse than Hillary Clinton's?

How did Arizona get away with calling this an "election"?

Pres. Obama says Ted Cruz' plan to "secure" Muslim neighborhoods is downright un-American. I agree. But then how does he explain this on his watch?

Gen. Tata led the efforts to re-segregate Wake County schools. But now...

Gen. Tata with his pal Palin. 

Remember Brigadier Gen.Tony Tata?

He was fast friends with Sarah Palin and Michelle Rhee's second in command in D.C. who then became the superintendent who led the school re-segregation initiative in Wake County, North Carolina.

For some reason, it became trendy a few years ago, to appoint former generals and colonels as school leaders. We did it here in Chicago when Rahm Emanuel appointed Marine Col. Tim Tyrrell and paid him $180,000/year to run his mass school-closing operation. Tyrrell also was charged with selling or finding new uses for closed school buildings, a project that so far has failed miserably.

BUT BACK TO TATA...After mass protests by the NAACP and court actions, the school board finally was forced to fire Tata. But he was then appointed by Tea Party fave, Gov. Pat McCrory to head of the State Dept. of Transportation.

Col. Tyrrell resigned in January.

It was Tata’s credentials as military man that helped him land the superintendent's job and become state transportation secretary, and the retired general continues to trade on his military experience as a TV news commentator and the author of action thrillers. But it turns out, Tata’s Army career included phony court order, at least 2 affairs, according to the News&Observer.

After Tata decided in June 2008 to retire from the Army, Pentagon officials were still asking questions about a mysterious, phony court document he had given investigators in 2007. An Army probe found that Tata had committed adultery with “at least two” women during his career, court and military records show. The adultery complaint against Tata involved affairs with three women and a son born out of wedlock.

Tata resigned as Department of Transportation secretary suddenly in July, citing the needs of his family and the demands of his burgeoning side career. He said he was considering a run for Congress.

According to Army investigators rejected Tracy Tata’s complaint that her ex-husband had failed to meet his court-ordered obligation to support their daughter, based on evidence in the general’s favor -- a court order that criticized Tracy for willfully burdening Tony with medical bills that “need not have been incurred at all” because Brooke qualified for free military health care.

But this court order turned out to be a fake. Military and court officials agreed later that someone had forged the signatures of two lawyers and the Georgia judge.

It remains a mystery.

Tyrell resigned from CPS in January to pursue an unspecified "opportunity in public service."

Rhee sentenced to 20 years for erasing grades -- Just a dream.

They're whistling Dixie in Atlanta this morning. 

I had a strange dream last night. Michelle Rhee was standing in front of a crazed, media-hungry judge who sentenced her to 20 years in the penitentiary under RICO statutes for "racketeering" stemming from her leadership role in the D.C. cheating scandal. He also confiscated her Mercedes. Alas, it was just a dream. When I woke up, Arne Duncan (who had promised to visit her in prison) hadn't even taken back the Blue Ribbon he awarded Rhee and the district for the amazing, but temporary bump in test scores.

This was not a dream -- Today's Daily News reports:

The entire structure of high-stakes testing in New York crumbled Tuesday, as tens of thousands of fed-up public school parents rebelled against Albany’s fixation with standardized tests and refused to allow their children to take the annual English Language Arts state exam.

FRONT PAGE NEWS: Albany unable to read petitions + polls but now have chance to do math following enormous protest pic.twitter.com/iv2w3wWbTk
— NY BATs (@NYBATs) April 15, 2015

Pay attention, Hillary Clinton.

Taking the fall for Duncan's testing madness

SEE A PATTERN HERE?...On their eighth day of deliberations, the jurors convicted 11 of the 12 Atlanta black educators and staff of racketeering, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison. 

One thing you can count on is that when student test scores become education's stock-and-trade, there will be more cheating scandals like the one it Atlanta. In fact, they've already reached pandemic proportions. You can also count on educators being the ones to take the fall and even go to prison when the system itself is set up to reward gaming.

Watch this powerful scene from The Wire to better understand how the whole system is built on official and unofficial cheating.



As I pointed out last week, the real law in operation here is Goodhart's Law of unintended consequences. It goes something like this: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Teachers are even being evaluated on high-stakes test scores from kids and in subjects they don't even teach, writes Valerie Strauss at WaPo:

For example, an art teacher in New York City explained in this post how he was evaluated on math standardized test scores, and saw his evaluation rating drop from “effective” to “developing.” High-stakes tests are only given in math and English language arts, so reformers have decided that all teachers (and sometimes principals) in a school should be evaluated by reading and math scores.

Sorry Arne Duncan, but using so-called "value-added models" (VAM) doesn't make things any better. So says the American Statistical Association .

Estimates from VAMs should always be accompanied by measures of precision and a discussion of the assumptions and possible limitations of the model. These limitations are particularly relevant if VAMs are used for high-stakes purposes.  — John Merrow (@John_Merrow) April 2, 2015

Taking back Dyett and Chicago

As I'm posting this, south-siders, CTU members and community activists from around the city are sitting-in outside the mayor's office demanding that Dyett High School not be closed. If Rahm and Byrd-Bennett carry out their plan to close Dyett and turn it over to private operators, they will leave Bronzeville, Oakland and Kenwood without a neighborhood public high school.

Community activist Bob George writes from the sit-in:

For three years now Dyett students have been without the courses, staffing and funding afforded “normal” High School. They are being phased out. Turned about. Taunted and tempted to attend alternative schools. Abandon your neighborhood school. Close the doors. Shut the windows. Leave your memories behind. Dyett, the Mayor, the Superintendent, and the School Board, deem will not continue to exist. At present, Dyett is the only remaining Neighborhood High School available to the students in the Historic Bronzeville Community. This school is the only one in which students have a legal right to admission. Other learning institutions  insist that students qualify for admission, win a lottery to enroll, or be selected to enter after a rigorous screening.

You can help by calling or texting 312 399-5370 to tell deputy @ChicagosMayor to #SaveDyett high school! 

Worth a read is John Warner's Just Visiting blog series, Excellent Sheep Run the World, Parts 1&2). Writes Warner:

There are perhaps no better exemplars of the products of our current meritocratic system than three of the most important recent figures in the education reform movement: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, “Common Core architect” David Coleman, and one-time chancellor of the Washington D.C. schools, Michelle Rhee.

They are also all near-perfect examples of what William Deresiewicz labels as “excellent sheep,” in his new book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite.According to Deresiewicz, one of the chief problems with this miseducation is in these so-called “elite” individuals mistaking “being in charge” with “being a leader.”

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

In Deer Trail, Colorado, it's hunting season. 

Denis McDonough, White House chief of staff 

"Let me tell you what this is not: This is not Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not Libya—a sustained air campaign. This is not boots on the ground." -- USA Today

Loretta Sanchez, Calif. Democrat

"Make no mistake about it, the minute that one of those cruise missiles lands in there, we are in the Syrian war." -- Meet the Press

Jay Rehak

 While some call for reducing benefits for our retired members, the actuarial reality says otherwise: reducing benefits, besides breaking a promise, will not solve the problem. A lack of revenue created this problem. Restoring revenue will solve it. -- Letter to Sun-Times

Michelle Rhee

 “Most of the teachers that I’ve talked to say that they feel like the reforms are being done to them instead of with them." -- L.A. School Report

Mike Rose

 The leaders of high-profile charter organizations and especially of Teach For America have a huge megaphone, lots of influence and media connections.  People listen to them. Perhaps this is not what these leaders really believe, perhaps they’re just trying to stir the pot, be “disruptive.”  But sometimes being disruptive is not transformative.  It is reckless, done without deep thought to long-term consequences.  And reckless is the last thing poor communities need. -- The Answer Sheet, "Forever young: the new teaching career"

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Potter (Sun-Times)

Jackson Potter, CTU

“We were promised a better day, not just a longer one, and that’s out the window. And that means you’re seeing 98 art programs either very much reduced or eliminated.” -- CPS layoffs hit arts, specialty subjects hard (Sun-Times)

Paul Krugman

The result is what we see now in the House: a party that, as I said, seems unable to participate in even the most basic processes of governing. What makes this frightening is that Republicans do, in fact, have a majority in the House, so America can’t be governed at all unless a sufficient number of those House Republicans are willing to face reality. And that quorum of reasonable Republicans may not exist. -- NY Times

Lisa Goldman on Bennett 

"That man has been distraction since the day he walked into the state," said Lisa Goldman, founder of Testing is not Teaching, an advocacy group in Palm Beach County. "He shouldn't have come." -- Parents cheer as Florida schools chief resigns (Sun Sentinel)

Larry Cuban on Vallas

Vallas’s operating principle, according to one journalist who covered his superintendency in Philadelphia, is: “Do things big, do them fast, and do them all at once.” -- The problem with the Paul Vallas brand of school reform (Washington Post)

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Diane Ravitch

The embargo seems as antique as the now ancient slogans.The sooner the embargo is lifted, the sooner there will be normal relations between our countries. -- My vacation in Cuba

Wendy Lecker, Connecticut Adocate

It is time for both parents and taxpayers to wake up. Millions upon millions of our hard-earned tax dollars will be wasted on a useless teacher evaluation system.  -- Connecticut's teacher evaluation plan - even worse than we thought

 David Bernstein, non-profit exec

Rhee’s approach to education reform makes no more sense in functional schools than it does in dysfunctional ones. -- The Answer Sheet

Marian Brady

Unwilling to trust teacher judgment, we’ve handed their responsibilities to machines incapable of making judgment calls. -- The Real Paradigm Shift in Education

Deb Meier  

Then–above and beyond–we need to assess as a society the deprivations that poverty itself inflicts–in country of great wealth we have the most astounding percentage of children in deep poverty. -- Ready To Learn

Change.Org dumps Rhee, Edelman

 Here's a video about the petition drive that led to Change.org dumping Rhee & Edelman

In response to an avalanche of protest, Change.Org, a progressive online website that enables activist groups to generate petition-based campaigns, has dropped two anti-union clients, Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst, and Jonah Edelman's Stand For Children. The move comes in the wake of a massive, angry response following Change.Org's circulation of a petition disparaging the Chicago Teachers Union and its members who voted overwhelming to give their union the authority to strike. The relationship with union-haters Rhee and Edelman was attacked  as a violation of Change's supposed progressive orientation.

Chicago teacher, Jennifer Johnson (Huffington got her name wrong and calls her Jennifer Jones) deserves lots of credit for initiating the protest with a petition which drew thousands of signatures.

No "payoff" so D.C. cuts "investment" in school libraries

Whittier School parents struggled successfully in 2010 for a school library

Taking their cue from Chicago's mayor, D.C. officials are proposing to get rid of 34 school librarians in the 2012-2013 academic year as part of a cost-cutting measure proposed by Chancellor Kaya Henderson.
Henderson, who replaced Michelle Rhee as D.C. schools chancellor, had this to say in a discussion with a local reporter:

“We have invested in full-time librarians for the last three or four years and we haven't seen the kind of payoff we'd like” with reading test scores, Henderson countered, adding she is not disparaging librarians. "We have pulled away from programs where we haven't received a return on our investment.”  -- Washington Post

What kind of "payoff" was Henderson looking for? Test scores of course. Standardized test scores, which correlate more with poverty that anything else going on in schools, have now become the one and only standard for public investment in schools. We're looking at the obvious here. The poorest of inner-city schools will continue to see cuts in that "investment."

Washingtonians would do well to take their cue from the Chicago parents who occupied this city's Whittier School for months, successfully demanding a library. There are still some 160 CPS schools with no library.

What we're up against

Here's what we're up against in Chicago. Stand for Children, the anti-union, pro-privatization group that bankrolled SB7, has been brought into town by the mayor and his corporate reform backers.

Catalyst reports:

Several hundred people, including many parents and dozens of members of Students for Education Reform groups at local universities, packed a room at downtown Roosevelt University on Saturday morning for the launch of Stand for Children's Chicago chapter. Jesse Ruiz, a member of the Chicago Board of Education, pledged to work with the group to "prioritize resources for quality schools," and a number of elected politicians made similar pledges. 

Outside, a group of teachers, organized by CORE, picketed the meeting.

Here's what they're up against in Connecticut. Michelle Rhee's group has a new name but the same anti-teacher, anti-public school politics and a billion-dollar budget. They are backing any candidate and any piece of legislation that will turn public schools over to private management companies.

Brian Lockhart writes on his Political Capitol blog:

A reader gave me this slick mailing he and his wife received this week from a new entry in the school reform debate – Great New England Public Schools Alliance or GNEPSA....What’s interesting is while GNEPSA is a new name in what some have called the “education reform alphabet soup,” it’s not. As others have also pointed out, GNEPSA’s filing with the Office of State Ethics lists seven in-house lobbyists on GNEPSA’s payroll with email addresses linking them to another group – California-based StudentsFirst. And one of those lobbyists is StudentsFirst’s founder, Michelle Rhee.

It's interesting how they paved the way for Rhee and her group by making Paul Vallas the interim supt. in Bridgeport and a big-time player in the state. Vallas has paved the way for school privatization in cities like Chicago, Philly, and New Orleans.

Diane Ravitch has a post today, "I don't understand Michelle Rhee", on he Bridging Differences blog. She writes:

Her organization allegedly has raised more than $200 million and is well on its way to raising $1 billion. This money will be used to attack teachers' unions; to strip teachers of any job protections; to promote vouchers, charters, and for-profit organizations that manage charter schools; and to fund candidates who want to reduce spending on public education and privatize it. I have heard rumors about big-name donors to Rhee, but can't verify them.StudentsFirst does not release the names of its contributors.

On the up side, the push-back against corporate-style reform is growing. Here's a great example coming out of Paul Robeson High School in New York City.

 

You can help build it by volunteering for and coming to the SOS Education Platform Convention in D.C., August 3-5.

Jeb Bush attacks SOS, League of Women Voters, over "Parent Trigger"

Former Florida governor and Bush family scion Jeb, has for some reason found it necessary to launch an  attack on Save Our Schools (SOS) as part of his campaign to import the Parent Trigger into his state.

Patricia Levesque, executive director of Bush’s Foundation, sent out a blast e-mail to supporters this week, asking them to contact their senators to urge them to vote for the so-called Parent Empowerment Act which comes up for a vote today. The proposed legislation would allow any group of parents at any public school to have their school closed and turned over to private charter school operators. It is a divisive act designed to pit parent against parent and open the way for total privatization of Florida schools.

Blogging at the Palm Beach Post, Dana Karn writes:

The controversial “Parent Empowerment” proposal isn’t just causing a bipartisan kerfuffle in the Senate where critics say the measure is a cash cow for for-profit charter schools and private management companies.

But the “parent trigger” measure could also make hay for Gov. Jeb Bush’s non-profit Foundation for Florida’s Future. Bush is backing the bill, pushed by Los Angeles-based Parent Revolution and education reformer Michelle Rhee and fiercely opposed by a teachers’ unions and a Florida coalition of parent-led groups, including the PTA.

Levesque's memo fires a shot at SOS and other groups opposing the Parent Trigger bill, calling them "vitriolic" agents of the "status quo."

You will not find the vitriol... surprising. Despite incredible successes over the past 10 years, those who seek to protect the status quo are as passionate as ever. This includes the League of Women Voters, AFL-CIO, Florida Education Association and local affiliates such as Fund Education Now and Save our Schools.”

I'm not sure what "success" Levesque is talking about. Florida's school system under the Bush regime, was a nightmare and the Parent Trigger has failed to do anything positive for California's schools since its conception two years ago.

How ironic then for Bush to label parent groups and grass-roots school activists as "status quo." His 8-year rule over the state's education system became notable for widening the so-called achievement gap. Bush gave his schools A or B grades, even while they were getting F's by his own brother's standards under No Child Left Behind. The state has become a prime example of testing madness, teacher bashing, and privatization of public school under current Gov. Rick Scott whose chief education adviser is Michelle Rhee.

The Parent Trigger is seen by Bush, Scott and Rhee as an essential tool in privatizing the state's public schools and breaking the back of the teachers union. Back in March, Scott, signed into law one of the first and most damaging of the current wave of anti-teacher, anti-union bills passed by any state legislature. Among other things, the new law took away teachers' collective bargaining rights and has them working for "merit pay" based on their student's FCAT scores. The bill was crafted with Rhee's help.

Bush may also be firing at SOS, the League of Women Voters, the unions, and parent groups in order to appeal to his conservative base and to gain T-Party backing for his own presidential run.

Surprisingly, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who also has presidential ambitions, has found it convenient to jump into the middle of the Florida "kerfulle." Rahm's pushing of the Parent Trigger in Chicago has long been met with vocal opposition from local national parent and community groups.

*See "Jeb's Florida 'miracle' coming to a state near you?" by Teacher Q in the June 30, 2011 Daily Kos. .

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Duncan's Race to the Top bus

Michael Winerip

In August 2010, Mr. Duncan visited the state union’s headquarters in his Race to the Top bus (he really has one) and told union and department officials that New York had won a grant “because of your collective leadership, your act of courage.” -- NYT, "In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom."

New York Gov. Cuomo

"If we don't do this, we lose the Race to the Top money, so the equation is simple at the end of the day," Mr. Cuomo told a packed auditorium near the state Capitol here. "No evaluation, no money, period." -- Wall St. Journal

Calif. Gov. Brown

"Second-graders take five days of tests. That's longer than I spent on the bar exam." -- L.A. Times

Valerie Strauss

Really, Ms. Rhee, how can a formula ever accurately factor in the impact of a sleepless night in a homeless shelter on a hungry student’s performance on a high-stakes test? Did you know that 22 percent of American children live in poverty and that low test scores are always correlated with family income? -- WaPo, "Dear Michelle Rhee: About that teacher evaluation study"

Charles Blow

But many Republicans are willing to forgive his [Gingrich's] flaws and his past because he connects with a silent slice of their core convictions — their deep-seated, long-simmering issues with an “elite” media bias, minority “privilege” and Obama’s “otherness.” -- NYT, "Newt's Southern Strategy"

Ericka Hoffman, 26, a junior at Cal State-Bakersfield

“People in positions of power, I think they believe nothing is going to happen,” she said. “We’re just going to yell and scream and hold up signs and nothing’s going to change. But you’ve got an entire generation of people that realize something is wrong and something has to change because the system is wrong. There’s more of us than there are of them.” -- The New Student Activism, NYT

Chicago mayor stars in right-wing, anti-public school video

Thanks to brother Fred I came upon this right-wing propaganda video targeting public school and teachers unions staring none other than Rahm Emanuel.

"A Tale of Two Missions," co-stars the head of the anti-union Michigan-based Education Action Group, Kyle Olson, and Juan Williams, who was fired from National Public Radio for making anti-Muslim comments on air.

The video is part of  National School Choice Week, the continuation of a campaign promoting vouchers and privately-run charter schools and attacking public education and collective-bargaining rights for teachers. The campaign began with the film, Waiting for Superman in 2010 and is backed by EAG and the far-right Heritage Foundation whose own video "What is School Choice," is featured on the NSCW website.

Backers of NSCW include usual suspects, Michelle Rhee, John McCain, John Boehner, Joe Lieberman, Jeb Bush, and FOX News regular, Dick Morris. Others offering NSCW testimonials include Liz Dreckman of the Arizona School Choice Trust, Andrew Broy of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, and Patrick Kaiser of the The Center for an Educated Georgia.

Surprised to see Chicago's Democratic mayor in the center of this right-wing campaign? I'm not.

Michigan's union-busters caught sending secret emails to pols

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, calls itself a "nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to improving the quality of life." But recently this far-right, free-market think tank has been exposed for its shady, very partisan, and possibly illegal lobbying of state politicians, aimed at nothing less than breaking the back of the state's teachers union and outlawing collective-bargaining in the state of Michigan.

According to Dave Murray, writing in the Grand Rapids Free Press, the Mackinac Center's true purposes were revealed in secret email communications with state lawmakers, including one from Mackinac's Jack McHugh to state Rep. Thomas McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, the newly appointed head of the House Education Committee. In his June 1 email, letting McMillin know exactly what was expected of him, McHugh wrote: 

“Our goal is (to) outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan, which in practical terms means no more MEA.”

McMillin, described as a "vocal school choice and reform advocate," was named head of the Education Committee after former chairman, Rep. Paul Scott, R-Grand Blanc, was recalled by angry voters earlier this month. Before being recalled Scott had become the darling of Michelle Rhee and Michigan's T-Party Gov. Rick Snyder, after leading the charge against teachers' collective bargaining rights and raids on their pension fund. Rhee's front group, Students First donated heavily to help Scott avoid a recall effort.

Doug Pratt, the MEA’s public affairs director, said the comment reveals the Mackinac Center’s conservative, anti-union leanings that he believes are often cloaked behind glossy publications.

“It’s right there in black and white, exposing the group for what it really is,” Pratt said. “That proves that the Mackinac Center is nothing but a front for corporate special interests intent on destroying the middle class.”

When Murray's story broke, McMillin, obviously trying to avoid Scott's fate, immediately tried to distance himself from Mackinac, claiming that McHugh's emails “don’t represent my views.”

For more on the Mackinac Center see Fred Klonsky's blog and the MEA's website.
Cross-posted on my Schooling in the Ownership Society blog. 

Aw shucks, Rhee First. T'wern't nothin'...

I got credit today for coining the term RheeFirst by the authors of the blog by the same name.

 Turns out Mike Klonsky thought of the name RheeFirst way before anyone else. So kudos to him. Read the entire article here.

“[Rhee has] named her new group, Students First, but a look at her website will tell you that it should have been called Rhee First. The kick-off is largely the work of her clout-heavy, tres expensive PR firm headed by former Obama white house staffer Anita Dunn working with former N.Y. Chancellor Joel Klein and Rhee’s fiancé, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. -- Klonsky blog

If there's some kind of monetary award, I will accept it proudly and use it to buy the next round over at the Heartland Cafe's Buffalo Bar. Instead, somehow, all it's done is put me in the middle of dust-up between the broom lady, Rhee, Politico and the AFT. Until today, I haven't been a regular reader of RF and was never that concerned about the anonymity of its author(s).  So I was taken by surprise when Huffington's excellent ed writer, Joy Resmovits called to ask me if I was aware of the mention.

She told me that Rhee's front group, Students First (have you noticed that the corporate reformers always put students or kids in the names of their front groups?) is going after the RF blog, calling it an "attack blog" and pinning it to the union.

Politico's Ben Smith reported last week, "that an anti-Michele Rhee website had been set up from an IP address registered to the American Federation of Teachers." Today, Smith quotes Rhee's SFers who are "disturbed" at the lack of civility around the whole debate.

"There are a number of disagreements between teacher-union advocates and student advocates about the future of the our schools that deserve serious consideration, but there's no room for these kinds of personal and duplicitous attacks."

I guess Rhee's acolytes have forgotten how uncivil she was when she fired hundreds of D.C. teachers and offered the media this explanation:

"I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?" (Fast Company)

As far as I'm concerned, that statement alone make Rhee fair game for the bloggers -- so long as they tell it straight. Smith, to his credit, also carried the union's response to SF:

It's revealing that StudentsFirst's spokesperson calls RheeFirst.com an attack site—yet doesn't challenge any of the facts on the site. That's because RheeFirst.com aggregates articles raising fair and legitimate questions about Michelle Rhee's agenda. Much of this information can't be found on Michelle Rhee's official website, such as her work with Republican governors to promote vouchers and to dismantle public education, her failure to acknowledge the seriousness of the cheating that occurred on her watch in Washington, D.C., or countless other examples you can find on RheeFirst.com.

Now I've got media folks calling me up and asking for my take on all this. OK. I don't mind. Here it is. I prefer bloggers to be open and above board, especially when it comes to directing (well deserved) fire at individuals. I speak here as someone who has faced the slings and arrows, as well as lies and distortions of my political past from Anonymous on many occasions, especially during the 2008 election campaign. I hate duck-and-runners.

If the AFT is behind RheeFirst, they -- or whoever is the individual blogger -- should proclaim themselves proudly and stand behind their accurately-aimed and obviously effective Rhee-barbs. Of course there are times when anonymous blogging is appropriate and when being open can lead to being fired or other forms of retribution. But Randi and the union don't have to worry about that. They should be able to dish it out and take it.

It bothers me that Weingarten at times speaks out of both sides of her mouth re. Rhee. As I pointed out in the post cited above, 

"Money-magnet Rhee claims the group will raise $1 billion from patrons Gates, Broad and other private corporate sources. That perked up the ears of ever-willing AFT prez Randi Weingarten who invited Rhee to “work with us.” 

The union can't have it both ways. If they are really going after union-busting corporate reformers like Rhee, they can't turn around and then ask them for a seat at their table.

Keep at it, RheeFirst, whoever you are. And thanks for the name recognition and the Rhee-post. Get it?

Obama should have walked over to the Whaling Church last night

I wish I could have been there. I wish Pres. Obama and Michelle would have made it over to the 1787 Old Whaling Church in Martha's Vineyard last night as well. The Post's coverage makes last night's  panel sound simply like a well-deserved verbal spanking of  test-and-punish Michelle Rhee by Diane Ravitch. Rhee's singular focus on bad teachers always pales in comparison to Ravitch's broader social critique.

Harvard prof Lawrence Bobo

Unfortunately, you have to scan this morning's skimpy media coverage of the event to find out that Rhee and Ravitch were not the only ones on this panel. According to The Root, Harvard sociologist Lawrence Bobo also lit into to Rhee. 

Bobo took Rhee to task for her hard line on ineffective teachers, arguing that students came to school with overwhelming social problems like poverty that teachers could not be expected to solve alone.  -- The Root

The Massachusetts forum is an annual event organized by The Root's editor-in-chief, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and took place just miles from where President Obama and his family were vacationing.  Other panelists included Yale professor James Comer, who said that teachers were not being taught enough about child development; and Angel Harris, who teaches at Princeton University and has used quantitative analysis to debunk many assumptions about a successful education.

One audience member is quoted in the WaPo story, cutting right to the chase:

“Public education here in Martha’s Vineyard is terrific,” one woman told the sold-out crowd of about 500 during the question and answer period. “We have really good early childhood [education], really good health care, and we have rich people who come here in the summer, so thank you very much.”

Another reason why teachers shouldn't fall for the old "bonus" scam

New York junks bonuses (for now)

In some districts it's called "merit" or "performance" pay. In others, it's simply called a "bonus." However they're branded, bonuses have become a center piece in corporate-reform strategies which are increasingly being used to undermine collective-bargaining agreements and pit teacher against teacher.

In D.C., these one-time-only pay bumps were used by Chancellor Michelle Rhee to get surviving teachers to accept the firing of hundreds of their colleagues. Rhee used private funds from Gates, Broad and other power philanthropists to underwrite the bonuses while foisting a horrible contract of D.C, teachers and their unions. The bonus offers could later be removed if and when corporate reforms were resisted, when the money dries up, or simply at the whim of the foundations. But the teachers who lost their jobs in the bonus deal, will never be called back to work.

In other districts like Los Angeles, performance bonuses are  tied to a value-added formula which supposedly shows how much each individual teacher adds to their students score on standardized tests. Similar programs have been tried as pilots in Chicago and across the state of Florida, but dropped as soon as corporate funding dried up, leaving in their wake busted contract agreements and a climate of mistrust, fear, and anger.

Yesterday's New York Times reports that the city's $56 million teacher performance bonus program has been permanently discontinued. The decision was made in light of a RAND study that found the bonuses had no positive effect on either student performance or teachers’ attitudes toward their jobs.

The results add to a growing body of evidence nationally that so-called pay-for-performance bonuses for teachers that consist only of financial incentives have no effect on student achievement, the researchers wrote. Even so, federal education policy champions the concept, and spending on performance-based pay for teachers grew to $439 million nationally last year from $99 million in 2006, the study said. 

Shamelessly, the same bureaucrats who had touted the bonus system are now saying, "oh, never mind" or even declaring victory and putting it behind them.

City officials did not dispute the study results, but they said they did not believe the money was wasted, and indicated that they would continue to seek a merit pay model that worked.

“In January, we suspended this program out of concern about its effectiveness,” said Barbara Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Education Department. “This study confirms that was the right decision, and provides us with important information as we continue to think about compensation models that differentiate among the performance of our teachers.”

DC Voices of Concern

Parker goes to work for Rhee

Remember former WTU sell-out prez George Parker who agreed to that disastrous contract with Michelle Rhee? The rank-and-file showed their disapproval by booting Parker in the last union election. Guess where Parker ended up? He's working for Rhee. -- Washington Examiner