Earlier today I posted a letter that appeared on the NYC parent blog, in which Students First was offering a gift to anyone who posted the most comments on blogs. I made no reference to the person who wrote the letter.
It has been reprinted elsewhere, including the blog of Coach Bob Sikes in Florida. Coach Bob got a response from the letter writer at StudentsFirst. She said she was the target of a well funded campaign of hatred and character assassination, apparently because her letter had been circulated.
I don’t know who assassinated her character. I find her reaction odd because she may be a fine person but the organization she represents spends millions to vilify teachers and unions and to urge legislatures to take away any job protection for academic freedom. It also just released an ad that not so subtly ridicules obesity and gays while presenting a humiliating and inaccurate portrait of American students and teachers to the world.
I wish StudentsFirst would consider the harm they do to hardworking educators.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well funded? If you have a computer, IPad
And Internet access you could send her your
Reform story. How is that well funded? Maybe
She should take a look at her own organization
First. Maybe she hasn’t met the Queen yet?
Sorry for typos. iPhone.
I have seen the pattern on many occasions and equate it to the school yard bully who is comfortable in his arrogance and meanness until confronted and then begins to whine and cry that he is being unfairly and ill treated. That and the fall back position that anyone who speaks out must be part of some liberal conspiracy. They could have said they made a mistake offering a gift to those who provided a story to their liking. They could have said it was their American capitalist right to pay someone to say something they wanted to hear, but instead they cry foul and allege a conspiracy against them. It says more about their lack of a moral compass then anything we on the “left” could ever come up with.
I sent a pro reform story, but I guess not what she was expecting. This is what she sent back…..H E L L O….pot calling kettle!
I guess her “super-supporters” are not as supportive as she thought.
On Friday, July 27, 2012, Catherine Robinson wrote:
I sent along an email to super-supporters called a Rapid Response Team, asking them to send me their best comments for the chance to win a gift card. I’m disheartened and dismayed that one of them would then forward my email and mischaracterize my intentions.
Whether it’s the Obama campaign offering to buy a supporter a round-trip ticket to Chicago, or me offering to buy someone what would be a $5 gift card out of my own pocket, recognizing volunteers for their extraordinary efforts is common in grassroots organizations.
I should know. I’ve spent my whole life organizing and advocating. And so now I’m organizing over 119,000 Florida parents, teachers and concerned citizens. This has subjected me to great levels of heroism and integrity. But it has also exposed me to organized and well-funded hatred and character assassinations.My record is clear.
As a 25-year veteran of campaigns to end apartheid, support animal rights, protect a woman’s right to choose, bring recycling to college campuses, champion the rights of the LGBT community… As an 8-year teacher of at-risk youth and ESE students…
As a canvasser for Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama in rural Pasco and Polk counties…
As a concerned mom and PTA officer……nothing prepared me for the level of nastiness and vitriol that descended upon me when I took this job and began to vocally advocate for policies that put students first.
But nothing will deter me or scare me away. Because last week I spoke with a mom
who’s only hope of putting her son in a good school is to break the law and pretend to live in another district. I’ll keep fighting against powerful union and school board interests. I’ll keep fighting…to help her.
And shame on the rest of you
FIVE dollar gift card out of my own pocket. That was the prize for a pro reformy story? FIVE dollars? All this for five dollars. Keep your money or donate it to UNICEF or better yet, buy one child in your town some pencils, pens and a notebook for back to school.
You can’t even make this stuff up….five dollars!
Catherine must not be a teacher or she would know better than to mess with teachers when they are already being messed with. There is nothing worse than a mad teacher except a mad teacher with a computer. Technology makes us dangerous because we can connect. But even before social networking and cell phones teachers in Atlanta could have a demonstration complete with signs and media organized and down at the Board Office within 24 hours. I had a bad principal who was always griping about the “street committee” . Scared to death of it. (Suburbanites would say “grapevine” but you get the drift.)
I have to say this was the best laugh I had all day today!
A representative of a group that receives funding from every far rightwing organization in the country to the tune of millions of dollars, whose founder sits on every rightwing Republican Tea Party governor’s reform committee, who works hand in hand with crooks like Jeb Bush, whining about a “well-funded” pushback? The martyr schtick doesn’t fit well here, does it?
Especially in light of the scandal Students First blew up around themselves over the Change.org scam. If this is how she handles herself when the heat turns up a little then maybe she needs to rethink getting involved with a corrupt PAC and toting water for discredited leader like Rhee. Politics today is hardball and you should really wear a glove. . . .
You want to see character assassination?
Try when Michelle Rhee claimed she fired 266 Washington D.C teachers for the following reason:
“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?”
That statement was factually incorrect. When pressed by the union and the D.C. council, Rhee eventually admitted that only one teacher out the 266 fired had been accused of sexual impropriety.
Oh, well – one teacher, 265 teachers — it’s close, right?
As you note in your post, Diane, Michelle Rhee engages in smearing and slandering teachers all the time – that’s her claim to fame, the broom that put her on the media’s radar, if you will.
If the woman claiming she has had her character assassinated wants to really see character assassination, she just needs to watch a Michelle Rhee interview.
Well you know the truth by the fruits according to the Bible, and from what I have heard the Washington DC schools are just as bad or worse than they were before Michelle Rhee.
You heard right. DC public schools have largest achievement gap between blacks-whites and Hispanic-whites in nation
Diane
She has posted a rant against all who didn’t send the kind of reformy story she wanted.
There is a pretty good response exposing her hypocrisy. She may be clueless.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2012/07/27/studentsfirst-asks-florida-allies-to-hit-the-blogs-win-a-gift-card/
Hum… My…This appears to be very interesting.
An individual who works for an organization that does more than its share of teacher bashing, trash and smack talking; now complains of being a victim of a ‘well-funded’ campaign in which she is the victim of hatred and vitriol. (Please share the details) Wow. Well-funded? Jeez. Sorry to hear that.
If true, well so be it. So far, Rhee and her minions (Katherine-you may include yourself) have been part of a multi-million dollar campaign of hatred, vitriol, and most recently, homophobia. They, and now you have something to answer for. As long as it’s civil, people don’t call or visit you at home, or make threats to you or your families’ well-being and safety- then I’m of the belief that all is fair in love and war.
All I can say is what my one of my old Poli Sci prof at Rutgers used to say, “don’t write or say anything that you wouldn’t want to appear on the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post.
You did, so please consider this a “teachable moment”.
Dishonestly vilifying Diane is a common right-wing media strategy in this recent period of conservative aggression. It’s a rhetoric of ‘the grotesque’ by which the target is turned into a monstrous distortion to control public perception of ‘the other side.’ This makes your adversaries disgusting and unappealing, someone no fair person would identify with. It’s very common on the right, ‘grotesquing’ feminists as “feminazis”(Rush Limbaugh, for example), Obama as a muslim, a socialist, a pal of radical Bill Ayers, etc. I’ve watched this attack rhetoric evolve for the past 30 yrs in the right-wing media. It paints “the other side” as violent, hateful extremists(recall the famous “outside agitators” preview in the 60s and 70s). Diane is making a difference, a phenomenal asset to all of us defending public education, so it’s not surprising her wise, scholarly, measured, and well-written posts are now the targets of such distortion. Keep going, it shows they are vulnerable.
What in the world is a “shit talker”?
Biography
Catherine Durkin Robinson is an opinionated columnist, writer, mommy, wife, best friend, rabble rouser, humorist, blogger, speaker, shit talker and cocktail connoisseur; how many I help you?
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/catherinedurkinrobinson
Like a crap whisperer, only a louder. Not a loud as a smack talker but around the same level as a bull-shitter. Like “talk around” but browner.
Anyway, is this how Rhee will then present the “Millions of concerned citizens and teacher” emails since Diane foiled her fake membership drive . That’s like, oh…what is it.. FRAUD!
I laughed out loud reading these comments, almost woke the baby. All I could think of is a new show, ” The Crap Whisperer” whereby the host(Catherine) would channel various featured dog feces. “the stool says its the teacher’s fault”, “whats that?Last In First out?”
I remember hearing somewhere that in social advocacy the amount of cheating, lying, evil over-lords/ladies attacks, mud slinging and hate lobbing being done is an indication of how good a job you are doing exposing them. Diane is letting in the sunlight and the cockroaches are running out of darkness to hid in.
Read the comments left for her at this site. She also was a Rhee plant for parent trigger…someone linked her plea for support from April.
http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/michelle-rhees-florida-rep-calls-for-astroturf-campaign-on-parent-trigger/#comment-3196
Sometimes it sounds like Diane is the MLK of the anti-privatization movement and probably loved and hated about as much as he was.
I remember well the “outside agitators” most of whom were from Birmingham or at least Alabama on our local news and also Huntley-Brinkley in the demonstrations there. Watching Dr. King on the news formed my politics that have lasted to this day. I was 10 in 1960, old enough to comprehend that something was wrong, but too young to be involved personally. Adults, my parents included, portrayed the demonstrators as something evil. Mama said that Dr. King was a communist and the colored people wanted to take over the world. She also indicated that blacks were violent and that if you said a certain n-word that they would stab you because all colored people (the safe term that could not be mistaken for that other word) carried knives and the old ladies carried hatpins. (Never did explain why it was ok for us to have a colored maid if they were so dangerous.) She was also quick to point out that they lived in the slums and their kids got roller skates instead of bicycles for Christmas, but they all had a TV antenna on their houses, apparently a sign of decadence. We heard this propaganda nearly every weekend going through the slums to Grandma’s and, by the way, past 16th Ave Baptist church. They blamed that on the outside agitators too. Of course. That was where the outside agitators planned their demonstrations—-like killing 4 middle school children was justified if they were outside agitators. My brothers bought it and became conservatives, the younger disgustingly racist, the older strong Religious Right. My sister kept her mouth shut and got along. Me, I was firstborn and thought for myself and was, as I explained, the only one old enough to comprehend that there was something desperately wrong.
I see the same efforts at destruction here where teachers are disrespected, even demonized, and the unions are portrayed as an enemy to education. This has been going on, creeping, longer than we might think. Remember, desegregation of the schools was a HUGE issue. The right wing lost on that and then on deinstitutionalization of people who were “different” and finally on special education in 1975. Then abortion. Now, slowly but surely on gay rights. And now, lo and behold, a black President. And the right has ALWAYS really blamed it on the teachers. The Texas GOP has put it in their platform that we must not teach children to think critically because it might change the beliefs they have been taught. And that goes back to the issue of Prayer in the Schools from a day when “whose prayer” was not even a thought. Of course it would be a conservative Christian prayer. What else was there???? Everyone else except conservative Christians go to hell, you know. Several years ago, Focus on the Family recommended that Christian parents homeschool or send their kids to Christian charters. (And what do we have in Louisiana? All but one of the voucher supported charters are religious!) They said they needed to do this because PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS WERE NOT CHRISTIANS. But it really goes back as well to desegregation because a lot of the “academies” were actually schools started so that they could keep white and black children separated. There was actually one in Georgia that accepted its first black students only 7-10 years ago, because they were trying to improve their football team. (Somewhere near Macon. Don’t recall the name.)
Our respect has been gradually eroded. A biggie was Zero Tolerance which essentially says that teachers don’t have the brains and judgment to decide whether something a child does is excusable or not. The result has been ludicrous rulings such as a kindergartener suspended for sexual harrassment because he kissed a girl classmate and a black 3rd grader suspended for having a weapon—a Tweetybird keychain on her backpack. It was a chain after all! Two inches long! (Cobb County Georgia, the bastion of the religious right in metro Atlanta and home of Newt Gingrich.) Then testing, then high stakes testing, alternate certification, Teach for America and scripted lessons and now privatization.
And in Louisiana, a charter teacher not only does not have to have a teaching degree, she does not have to have a college degree at all! So in-creeping is the de-professionalizing of education by the religious right and for profit businesses that support conservative politicians and the religious right and are out to make more little conservatives. Look at the uniforms that are becoming so common in low income schools. Dress them like conservatives and they will become conservatives. What do you think the Catholic Church has done for generations?
Reblogged this on teachingandlearningtoday.
Anybody want to tell me how to find the ad that Students First put out that is racist and homophobic?
You can find it here:
http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2012/07/22/first-ever-studentsfirst-video-that-did-not-make-me-laugh/
Despicable!
I did see that ad. I did not see it as racist or homophobic and Special Olympics kids are often a lot better athletes because their APEs work them hard and teach them right. But the slur on American teachers and disrespect for American kids was so obvious. We know now, using all our senses, what Rhee thinks of teachers.
And since she was a complete failure as a teacher maybe it is self hatred she is taking out on all of us.
Some past writings from Catherine Durkin Robinson:
Then the Latinos (who only had accents when they said the word Latinos) went all apesh*t on Todd. …
The Mexicans had Mexicans on the brain. They wouldn’t shut up about themselves.
Finally,
the air thick with nastiness and too many “my people were wronged
worser than your people” nonsense, I turned my baby blues to Officer
Todd and raised my hand …
Almost turned to the Latinos and said, “Put that in your mojitos and slurp ’em down, b*tches. Next time – show some g*ddamn respect.”
http://outinleftfield-temp.blogspot.com/2007/10/democratic-dinner-or-race-riot-you.html
Classy….love the pix by the pool!
OMG… she REALLY said those things…
She sounds like David Duke or one of the
Minutemen… Isn’t there like a huge
Latino population in Florida? This needs
to be spread far and wide… maybe so
it will lead to pickets outside STUDENTS
FIRST offices.
She unashamedly and freely admits that
she was fighting the urge tell off some
Latinos she disagreed with politically
in the following manner :
“Put that in your mojitos and slurp ’em
down, bitches. Next time, show some
goddamn respect”
This sound like something you would hear
on those MS-NBC prison life documentaries…
“Lockup” or whatever it’s called. From this
quote, she sounds like she’s spent time in
the pen herslef. Such thoughts would never
even cross a decent, moral, non-racist person’s
mind. In her case, however, she not only
thinks them, but proudly shares that
with the rest of the world.
How ugly and evil…
I’m sure she’ll come back and express
for regret for saying all those things…
I’m going start holding my breath while
I wait for that to happen.
I read some of her blog. I learned that she likes to pose in a bikini, has a really dirty mouth, and hates Mexicans but will eat with them if the food is free. That seems consistent for these educational “reformers”. I suspect she is a Republican although she did not come right out and say it. In Louisiana the Louisiana Family Forum head, Gene Mills, a close advisor of Bobby Jindal, tried to stick an amendment into the charter school law that would allow the charters to exclude homosexual and immigrant children. Fortunately, it failed. LFF is an affiliate of the AFA which is a certified hate group.
Unbelievable. You have the best stories! I can’t even believe something like that happening in 2012.
Yep! An anti-bullying law to prevent bullying in schools was presented to the Education Committee by one of its members at the request of a gay group based at LSU called Capital City Alliance. A black legislator from Baton Rouge, Patricia Smith, sponsored it. It enumerated the categories of school children who were not to be bullied and included sexual orientation and gender identity. Immediately Louisiana Family Forum jumped on it and stripped it of all the enumerations in order to get the glbt ones out and also put some kind of wording in there which protected the “free speech” that people engage in in schools for religious reasons. The gutted bill passed. This bill was discussed right behind the bills that privatized education and absconded tenure. Then Gene Mills (President of LFF) tried to get an amendment into the education bills that said that public charters that take voucher students could reject gay students and immigrants who did not speak English well.
The impetus of the antibullying bill came from the suicide of Tessa Middlebrooks a bullied high school senior (possibly gay) who was gifted in the arts and had a scholarship coming, in Pointe Coupee Parish (rural district north of Baton Rouge about an hour away) who had recently lost her mother to cancer. She hung herself off the stadium although there was speculation that it was a murder. Now get this part. POINTE COUPEE HIGH WAS A CHARTER. Yep! a low functioning Recovery District charter. Tessa had apparently been to the office several times concerning the bullying and was always just sent back to class. The basis of the bullying was reportedly because of her “accent”. She was from Nebraska and had moved here to be with relatives when her mother became ill. Her family had also complained, but nothing was done. (Shows how well charters deal with students in crisis, doesn’t it?)
That amendment failed, but it will be back. Two years ago they put a full page ad in the paper condemning the gay community and Baton Rouge Pride. LFF has also had campaigns to intimidate the Metro Council out of passing resolutions supportive of the gay community and did robocalls to the state legislature on the subject. Baton Rouge Pride has only been going on for 5 years and does not yet have a parade.(However, CCA did have a march this year.) A lot of high school aged kids come to Pride Fest which is intentionally family friendly, and which has gone up in numbers from 250 to 4000. It is sponsored by the local MCC church where the pastor, Keith Mozingo, is also a teacher who taught for 19 years. Pride is held indoors usually at a hotel but this year at LSU. Of course LFF supports anything that Bobby Jindal supports and Gene Mills is a close advisor to Jindal.
Oh, the charter that Tessa went to, mentioned in my other reply did not even know Tessa was missing from class and they did not find her body for 8 hours. Great job of taking care of the children in the charters, huh? Knew she was having problems with bullies and she was supposed to be on a watch list and checking in periodically.
Read the post called “Michelle Rhee Is Shameless.” you will see a flabby guy trying to do rhythmic gymnastics, a women’s sport.
Great comeback from the Purple Musings site:
In reference to the response written to TerryW above:
Dear. Good for you to have done so much for the causes you believe in. It is so nice to hear of your efforts which I am quite sure have been helpful to others.
So now you believe that an organization called “children first” actually exists to “put children first.” whatever that means. Dear. As an educator I am sure you know that children do not exist in the air for teachers to pluck out in order to impart all of their knowledge. Children exist in communities, in families, in neighborhoods. They are a part of a whole. It seems like such a lovely thing to say, “children come first.” But in reality children come “along side of”, they come “holding the hand of” they come “along with” the families and communities that support them. And when you actively try to destroy communities and neighborhoods which is what “children first” is actually trying to do, then no, you are not putting children first because you are undermining that which surrounds them. Why don’t you find an organization that calls itself “families first” or “communities first” because that is what really puts children first. Not some organization that has as its goal handing over our childen to interests that put money first.
http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/michelle-rhees-florida-rep-calls-for-astroturf-campaign-on-parent-trigger/#comment-3196
Will all of you go to 4:10 in this video and tell me if her claim is true…..DC was the ONLY district in the nation to improve in all subtests?
Also, listen to her downplay the cheating scandal.
At least Mary Bousted, ATL Union President (UK), saw through the facade. In this clip, she lambastes Michelle Rhee for her public firing of a principal in D.C. A joy to watch…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18592185
POST THIS VIDEO E V E R Y W H E R E!
Finally, someone challenges her…why couldn’t it be in our country?
Linda,
Good question. Why has there not been any front page, prime time news reports of all the lies. Maybe just a ticker tape thing along the bottom of the screen of them interspersed with the second by second count of teachers quitting and being fired, then a total of the monies stolen by charters being investigated, followed by a fact checker segment where the statements of Rhee, Klien, Pearson and Achieve execs, and all the other fact hackers compare and contrast their statements with the truth.
We could have “Breaking News” bits on there showing the latest Broad trained Superintendent who has quit or been run off, many be a concept map showing the connections between all these business people and their tentacles and the money they are making off each of their conflicting interests.
Great idea…sounds like a full time job. Who would have time? Maybe we could convince a retired teacher to send out press releases.
The fact that a still-unknown amount of cheating occurred renders any such claim invalid.
The USA Today series that exposed the cheating scandal counts as challenging her too. And the lineage is so interesting there. The cheating scandal was edited and directed by a USA Today editor who is the wife of Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews. Mathews has long been a cheerleader for any and all education reform fads (and built his career and undoubtedly his income with that cheerleading) — but he has vocally supported his wife’s project and made it clear that he’s no longer a Rhee-form promoter.
So I think that indicates some weakening of the enthusiastic support by opinion leaders of all things Rhee.
Did anyone check out the book it says she wrote… Learning Curves? It looks revolting. Did she really write that?
Looks like it is her:
Carolyn Reardon loved being a full-time mom, but after enrolling her children in preschool, she wanted to do more than just wait for them at home every day. Becoming a high school teacher seemed like the perfect career.
At first, Carolyn found meaning as an educator, helping students who grew to appreciate her enthusiasm and passion for learning. Carolyn’s caring and dedicated co-workers also became her closest friends. But she noticed a disturbing trend. Many teachers turned to drugs in order to deal with the stress of low pay and impossibly high demands. Others lost themselves in illicit affairs, conducted in unused or empty classrooms, and a few risked it all by seducing their own students.
Carolyn tried to ignore the sexually-charged atmosphere and cling to her happy marriage, but when an attractive and flirtatious teacher pursued her, Carolyn got swept up in a scandal of her own.
Learning Curves is a humorous, frightening, and semi-true tale about teaching, temptation, and the sometimes disastrous results – both in and out of the classroom.
Is it true?
Check out this one:
Olivia Foster is a beautiful, headstrong killing machine, shocked to find herself yearning for something different.
Olivia discovered a talent for killing men while in her teens, after shooting her abusive father in the head and watching him die. Unapologetic and dedicated to helping victims of domestic violence fight back, she built a wildly successful business. Now, a sophisticated young woman, Olivia travels the world pursuing bad men and making them pay.
When an unexpected vacation leads her home, Olivia reconnects with childhood friends and finds herself envying them. Like so many women approaching their thirties, and despite her most-wanted status, Olivia is startled by the unfamiliar urge and intrigued with the idea of settling down.
Max, her longtime love, proposes marriage and Olivia dares to wonder: Can she really trade guns and glory for gold bands and bath towels?
Harm to hard working educators? Why would Michelle Rhee and her folks care about harming educators? They are part of Teach For America which considers teaching a temporary job and a step to “better” things, something that looks good for your resume. Just the fact that TFAs are only contracted for 2 years when it takes 3 to learn your field, with an education degree, tells the story. Training “teachers” in 5 weeks tells the rest of it. And she clearly thinks anyone with a college degree can do it, especially when it comes to teaching minority, disadvantaged and special ed. kids. She obviously puts us on the same level as fast food workers and clerks at Walmart—which is where we send our special ed. kids who are mentally retarded to learn job skills–McDonalds and Walmart.