video: Diane Ravitch vs. Michelle Rhee

Great video with edited excerpts from a panel discussion at Martha’s Vineyard in 2011, with Diane Ravitch and Michelle Rhee.  Diane is at her best (though she is always terrific.)  For more on this forum and how Rhee has refused to debate her directly,  see Diane's comments here;  here is a video of the whole event.

Journey for Justice and "School choice" week; just whose choices are being respected??

Last week was “School choice” week.  The entire concept of “school choice week” was invented by Jeb Bush  to promote the expansion of charter and vouchers,  supposedly to allow for more parental choice in selecting their children's schools.  Meanwhile, it was just revealed that Bush's organization, Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), promotes the business of for-profit companies, including several that donate to the organization and at least one corporation in which Bush has stock.

The reality is that the corporate reformers pushing “school choice,” including Arne Duncan, Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Michelle Rhee, are not interested in the real-life choices of parents;  but instead in privatization.

When thousands of parents repeatedly turn out across the country to oppose the closing of their neighborhood schools, are their choices listened to?  No, they are ignored, or else the people in charge, like Bloomberg, say that parents are too uneducated to understand the value of a good education.

When parents say that their first priority for their children’s schools is reducing class size, are their choices listened to?  No, instead, the same people who say they believe in parent choice vehemently oppose  lowering class size: Bill Gates insists that class size doesn’t matter, Michelle Rhee pushes for eliminating any caps on class sizes, and Bloomberg say he would double class sizes if he could.

When parents say their children are over-tested and they should be allowed to opt out, do the authorities listen?  No, instead they plan to subject them to even more frequent and longer tests.

Let’s all admit it; “school choice” is a myth,  meant not to give public school parents the choices they want for their children, but instead represent the choices of corporate raiders who want to give our public schools to private interests, like hostile takeover artists who took over companies in the 1970’s and 1980’s, in order to dismantle them and sell them off piece by piece.

Coincidentally during “School Choice” week, on Tuesday, as part of the "Journey for Justice" campaign, parents, students and activists from 18 districts all over the country traveled to DC, testified at the US Department of Education, and demanded a moratorium on the mass school closings that are occurring with the encouragement of the federal government, on the grounds that  their children’s civil rights were being violated.  See videos below by Jaisal Noor of The Real News of Tuesday's events. See also this week’s Village Voice, about the invasion of charter schools in Williamsburg, Brooklyn run by Eva Moskowitz and her husband, despite the vehement opposition of parents in that community.

Journey for Justice: Parents and Students from 18 Cities Demand Nationwide Moratorium on Schools Closings and demand US DOE investigate Civil rights violations

Part 2: Chicago Parent and Activist Jitu Brown at "Journey for Justice" Hearings in DC 

Part 3: New Orleans Parent and Activist Karran Harper Royal at "Journey for Justice" Hearing in DC 

Who is Bradley Tusk and why should we care?

On Sunday, there was a front page story about how Bradley Tusk is coordinating the campaign against Obama’s appointment of Chuck Hagel as US Secretary of Defense on the grounds that Hagel was anti-choice and anti-gay (apparently Hagel made an anti-gay comment in 1998).  Tusk’s campaign includes TV ads and sending mailers that push Sen. Schumer to oppose the nomination with the mysterious name of “Use your Mandate” as the return address. I’ve received two of these large glossy mailers in the last week.

Here is Tusk claiming that there is opposition to Hagel from liberals in Foreign Policy magazine:

"From the left, there's a lot of consternation about the Hagel nomination," said Bradley Tusk, former campaign manager for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and founder of Tusk Strategies, which is helping coordinate the campaign. "A lot of people worked hard to reelect the president, believe in the president, and don't feel like they raised money and knocked on doors to then have him nominate a defense secretary who is clearly is anti-gay and anti-choice. I think what you hear a lot from the progressive community is: Couldn't he find someone who is just as qualified on defense issues who doesn't have these other views that we find abhorrent?"

Though Tusk claims this campaign is being funded by progressive members of the gay community, LGBT groups have criticized Tusk for keeping his donors secret, and Rachel Maddow has suggested that it’s most likely funded by right wingers disguising themselves as liberal. The NYT article suggests that this campaign is really being financed by GOP forces allied with hawks on Israel and who may want to hand Obama a defeat.  According to the NY Times:

In an interview, Mr. Tusk would only identify its financiers as Democratic “gay and L.G.B.T. people who have been active in campaigns around the country.” Yet federal records show that Use Your Mandate uses Del Cielo Media, an arm of one of the most prominent Republican ad-buying firms in the country, Smart Media, with clients that have included the presidential campaigns of former Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah and Senator John McCain of Arizona; the 2010 Senate campaign of Christine O’Donnell, who was known for positions against homosexuality, in Delaware; and, as it happens, the Emergency Committee for Israel. 

Who is Bradley Tusk and why is this relevant to NYC education?

Tusk is the former Lt. Governor and right hand man to former Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who is now serving a 14 year sentence for corruption. Subsequently, Tusk became the manager of Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral campaign, which spent $109 million and won by only 4.5  percentage points, after inundating NYC voters will hundreds of mailers like those being sent out about Hagel.  Tusk’s website also takes credit for running the campaign that lifted the cap on charters for DFER/ERN and the hedgefunders, and states that he now works for Michelle Rhee’s StudentFirst NY and Eva Moskowitz’s chain of Success Academy charters:

With StudentsFirst, led by Michelle Rhee, we have played an integral role in the first comprehensive attempt to pursue and implement education reform across the country. This includes launching full campaigns in target cities and states across the nation. With the Success Charter Network, Tusk Strategies has helped introduce high performing charter schools to new neighborhoods across New York City.

Tusk was also paid $1.5 million of $2 million of the Facebook money for “community engagement”, that was supposed to go towards improving Newark’s schools. [Community engagement with whom, one wonders.  Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and the hedge fund community?].

His website brags that he helped organize an education forum in October 2011 during the Presidential campaign,  with four GOP candidates, co-hosted by the College Board and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation:  “While all of the GOP candidates were invited to participate, only former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum attended in person, with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Cain speaking via satellite.”  Who moderated?  None other than our former chancellor, Joel Klein.

As the mayoral campaign heats up, expect Tusk to engage in similar tricks, either openly or secretly on behalf of Bloomberg, Rhee, Eva and the charter lobby, to try to ensure they keep and enlarge their control of education policy and hold on real estate in NYC public school buildings.

Our parent report card for Michelle Rhee and StudentsFirst

credit:  Education Week

Michelle Rhee, former DC Chancellor and founder of the organization StudentsFirst, has come out with a new state by state report card, grading states on how well they adhere to the corporate reform agenda of privatization and “choice” (i.e. expanding charters and vouchers) , merit pay, and rigid evaluation systems based on test scores. 

Her grading scheme actually punishes states that have policies to reduce class size above grade three, or offer incentives to keep classes small – even though class size reduction is one of the top priorities of parents, and one of the few education reforms that have proven to work.  At the same time she gives points to states that either have mayoral control, support the “Parent trigger” or provide other ways to supersede the authority of democratically-elected school boards.

Even as Rhee often claims that student outcomes and achievement are what matters most, the two states with the highest student achievement in the nation, Massachusetts and New Jersey, received a “D-” and a “D.” California got an "F" for refusing to sign onto the provisions of "Race to the Top", including test-based evaluations of teachers; Richard Zeiger, the state's deputy superintendent, called the state's failing grade a “badge of honor.”

I thought it was a good time to reprint the Parents Across America report card for Rhee, where she received failing grades in categories important to parents.  See below.

Since our report card was produced, there has been more attention paid to the Rhee’s checkered past and recent failings :

• ·         How she most likely greatly exaggerated her own record as a teacher.

• ·         Evidence of widespread cheating in DC schools when she ran them, and her failure to investigate these allegations properly -- a special focus of a Frontline program due to air tonight [Correction: tomorrow night];

• ·        The voluminous research pointing out that evaluating teachers on the basis of test scores through value-added models, as she pushed for in DC and now in her state report cards, is unstable,  unreliable and unfair.  (See the most recent analysis from a group of statistical experts, concluding that “We cannot at this time encourage anyone to use VAM in a high stakes endeavor.”)

• The way she inflated the number of supporters of StudentsFirst, counting as members anyone who signed deceptively-phrased online petitions, calling for unobjectionable policies like paying good teachers more or stopping bullying in schools.

• ·        How she fired more than more than 5 percent of the teachers in DC, though at least some of these teachers may need to be reinstated because she did this improperly.

• ·        How the teacher evaluation system she relied upon, called IMPACT, was altered after she left by her successor to diminish its reliance on test scores, dropping that component from 50 to 35 percent.

• ·        How a recent report from the organization she used to run, TNTP, though predictably positive in its spin, revealed  that the IMPACT teacher evaluation system was  one of the top reasons that even “top performing” teachers plan to leave DC schools.  The report also cast further doubt on the system, saying that there may be a “flaw in the design or implementation of IMPACT [that] makes it easier for teachers working in low-need schools to earn top ratings.”

• ·         The documented predilection of StudentsFirst to fund right-wing Republican candidates, despite claims of bipartisanship.

• ·         Most recently, Rhee made a tone-deaf statement on the mass shootings in Newtown CT, calling such children “our most valuable assets”.

• ·         Finally, her refusal to oppose a bill in Michigan that would allow concealed weapons in schools, until the legislation had already been vetoed by the Governor. 

If we were updating the report card today, we would certainly give her an “F” for her position on school safety as well.  

Here are some of our comments below:  Michelle Rhee has said that “cooperation, collaboration and consensus-building are way overrated.” She has an overriding belief in test scores despite numerous documented problems with standardized testing: “People say, ‘Well, you know, test scores don’t take into account creativity and the love of learning.’...I’m like, ‘You know what? I don’t give a crap.’”   

We recommended remedial education for Rhee, to spend more time studying what parents want for their children, and what research shows works to improve education.  The report she put out today only reinforces our conviction that she needs to go back to school.

Michelle Rhee Report Card

Education Nation ignores parents but we make our voices heard at the premiere of "Won't Back Down"

Yesterday was NBC's Education Nation's "parent engagement" town hall, which turned out

Real-life public school parents

to be nothing but a big infomercial for the controversial film  "Won't Back Down" promoting the "Parent Trigger" and the privatization of our public schools. (See our review of the film and our FAQ about its backers and their political agenda.) The Education Nation parent engagement panels featured the stars of the film, along with privateers Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein, two people who have never shown any  interest in parent empowerment.

Movie poster starring Klein and Murdoch

Only two public school parents appeared on any of the panels, neither of them from NYC, and though the audience was full of real life public school parents, not a single one was allowed to speak. A more frustrating hour I have never spent. Rhee and Klein were pushing "choice" and charters, predictably enough, and Klein, who runs Murdoch's for-profit virtual learning division, was also hawking online learning, though weirdly the NBC host described him as running "an educational organization."

Fake public school parents

Afterwards, we bumped into one of the two parents allowed to speak, Chicago's Vanessa Bush Ford, who also expressed frustration at the lack of substance in the event (they kept showing us clips from the movie, some of the same clips twice). Then we joined the real-life parent protest outside the red carpet premiere at the Ziegfield, where we held our own "red carpet" event. One confused reporter asked us if this was an "actual parent protest" (unlike the fictional ones depicted in the film.)

Yes, this was indeed a real life protest, starring real-life public school parents. unlike the rest of the day's events, which featured  movie actors and corporate reformers who would like to spin their own illusions, while ignoring our priorities.  I was happy to find out afterwards by watching MSNBC's coverage inside the theater that our voices could be heard. Check out our video below of the protest. Short news clips about the protest were also run by WNBC and Fox News.




Wont back down protest from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

Michelle Rhee finally gets a real debate on BBC

Michelle Rhee gets blasted on the BBC by the UK teacher union leader on the unfairness of her teacher evaluation system, the cheating scandal in DC schools, and her decision to fire a principal on TV.

This is the sort of real debate sadly absent from NBC's Education Nation and US television in general, which treats Rhee with kid gloves. 

My "Klout" and how it went up even more, yesterday; how should I use it?

To my shock and surprise, as of late June, I was 11th on the  list of most influential education policy tweeters in the country, ahead of the NEA & Randi Weingarten, according to Mike Petrilli at the journal EducationNext. (see list to the right.)

This is measured according to something called “Klout” which analyzes “more than 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score” (whatever that means.)  

 Though the list had my Klout at 59, today it is "steady" at 64; which I suppose is a result of the article.  That puts me on a par with Michelle Rhee (if her score did not go up.)  And guess what?  Michelle Rhee started following me yesterday, among several others  on the list.

Diane Ravitch is #1 of course, as she should be. Apparently Petrilli left out some other prominent tweeters with high scores, like the SOS march and Rita Solnit of Parents Across America, among others.  But still!

I only signed up for twitter in March 2010, originally to follow Diane Ravitch, and soon found that I had several people following me, so I felt compelled to tweet to them. 

It soon became an addiction but obviously a useful one, since my tweeting has driven  people to the blogs, websites, and articles I think they should read, primarily those that serve as an important counterweight to the dominant education reform myth of our time, as promulgated by  #3,5,6, 8, 17, 20 and others on the list: that privatization and high stakes testing is the best way to improve our schools.

I seem to be the only real-life public school parent activist on the list; we need to get more parents tweeting to join me.  Let’s go gang!  Sign up to twitter, it’s easy at twitter.com, and then follow me at @leoniehaimson; you'll be able to check out many interesting news stories, commentary, and blogs; and you will soon find that you have followers (and "Klout") of your own.

So, readers, I ask you: how should I use my newly discovered Klout?  Influence is related to perception, so even if I landed on the list by mistake, I feel as though I should try to leverage my good fortune somehow.  Please give your suggestions, and help me to figure it out.

More about this list and how it was derived here.

Sexy time?

Amazing how sexy the education privateers find each other. In the NY Times , a few weeks ago, Joe Williams of the charter lobby group Democrats for Education Reform said that Joel Klein had made education "sexy" again.

In today’s Times, Joe compares Rhee to a “rock star” and Joel Klein says that “education has become sexy in America, partly because of Michelle.”

What a ménage a trois! ....next thing you know, they’ll be claiming Bill Gates is sexy too.

Funny, I don’t find them sexy at all, though I can see Michelle Rhee as an effective dominatrix.

I guess it takes all kinds….

Pre-Rhee and Post-Rhee

For those of you who believe that Michelle Rhee’s resignation today will hurt the achievement gains experienced by the DC school system; take a look at these charts (click to enlarge), with DC NAEP scores from 2003-2009.

It appears that DC schools were improving in terms of test scores at about the same rate pre-Rhee (before 2007) than after she got there, in every subject except 8th grade reading, where the improvement was greater before. (The source for these charts is the Rutgers report released today on mayoral control ).

Of course how much of this is due to her or her predecessors' educational reforms and how much to other factors (eg gentrification) is hard to discern. And many of Rhee's policies, such as IMPACT, the new teacher evaluation system, really won’t have show an effect until the next few years, if they are ever fully implemented.

A chat with the oligarchy of corporate education reform

Check out this from "Aunty Broad", one of our friends in Seattle: the education oligarchy (Rhee, Broad, Bloomberg, KIPP and Kopp) "should be cloned because they are so smart." More brilliant exposes from Aunty Broad are here.

Joel Klein tries to shake down the heavy hitters at Sun Valley... and provides an excuse for ridiculously expensive day care

Joel Klein is continuing his mission for world domination by hobnobbing with the media and hi tech elite at the annual summer confab hosted by Allen and Co. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find any photos of Klein at Sun Valley, but here is one from two years ago of Bloomberg whose appearance at the event earned him a position on the NY Daily News worst-dressed list.)

We posted earlier about the fact that Klein had made a presentation on his new vision of education reform, along with the other favorite of the business establishment, “Take No Prisoners” DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee. The response of one corporate insider, according to Media Bistro:

“Sony Corp.'s Katsumi Ihara called the presentation "fascinating" and said it broke down some of the causes and problems in the education battle in the United States and should yield interest from CEOs around the country. He added that Klein wasn't simply asking for money. He wanted their help in initiatives and projects to stimulate educational programs.”

Get that? “Not simply asking for money.” Presumably, Klein is not asking for money to improve the NYC public schools, which are still hugely overcrowded and burdened with the highest class sizes in the state, nor the “Fund for Public Schools,” a non-profit organization established to provide services and resources to our public schools, but now spending millions to run ads about the great job he and Bloomberg are doing.

I would guess – and this is pure speculation – that Klein is probably asking them to subsidize his new alliance with Al Sharpton, the so-called “Education Equity Project”, announced with great fanfare at a press conference in last month, which the Washington Post called “the kind of odd coupling that seemed more like the premise for a reality show than a news conference on education policy.” At the press conference, Klein and Sharpton announced that they would stage events at both political conventions this summer, to influence the agenda of the future President, as well as undertake other unspecified activities.

Whether or not Klein will raise major bucks at Sun Valley from Sony and the like to fund this operation is hard to predict; perhaps he has learned some tricks from Sharpton, well known for his success in “shaking down” corporations to fund his own operations.

Yet the need for more funding is clear, as the Klein-Sharpton alliance still seems to be primarily financed through our NYC taxpayer money, in the midst of a major budget squeeze that has made major cuts in social services for the elderly, housing, jobs for youth etc. In fact, Tweed’s very busy chief press officer David Cantor the main media contact on all its press releases, while also tasked with monitoring and responding to blogs and list servs like ours.

Not to mention Cantor’s primary responsibility of managing a large press operation that has to try to make it look like Klein and Co. actually know what they’re doing.

Apparently, Klein’s presentation did make an impact, at least with Sergey Brin, the head of Google, who sat down with reporters at Sun Valley to attempt damage control on their decision to cut subsidies and sharply raise the cost of child care for their employees – a blunder which made the front page of the NY Times recently. The full Times article is well worth reading, but here is a summary from InfoWeek:

… Google already had reasonably priced day care, when it decided to open a vastly more costly Euro-style operation, called the Woods, which uses something called the Reggio Emilia philosophy. Then Google also decided to upgrade the first, cheaper day care to mimic the Woods. Corporate push has come to shove because the more expensive approach is the pet project of Google VP Susan Wojcicki, who also happens to be Sergey Brin's sister-in-law.

The result? Google raised the price of day care to their employees by 70%, meaning that it will now cost parents with two children $57,000 per year.

How did Brin rationalize this? By referring to Joel Klein’s earlier presentation on the need for quality teaching. Apparently, the supposedly poor teaching in our public schools is now a blanket excuse that now can cover any management failure, from spending millions a year to keep more than a thousand teachers sitting in idle in ATR and/or rubber rooms, failing to address the ongoing crisis in class size, or the fact that the achievement gap still remains.

Perhaps Klein should advise Google to deal with this PR disaster by hiring Robert Gordon and renaming their efforts “fair student funding.”

See the latest update from the Silicon Valley Insider here: Sergey Explains The Crazy Cost Of Google's Day Care: He's Trying To Fix The Schools.