Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee are working Tennessee, with grandiose claims about the great results that charters and vouchers can accomplish.
The good news is that the reporter shows skepticism about thei claims.
Why don’t they tell their audiences about Milwaukee, which has had vouchers and charters for 20+ years? On the NAEP, Milwaukee is one of the nation’s lowest scoring cities, and state scores show no difference between the public schools, the charters and the voucher schools.
Saddest of all is that the performance of black students in Milwaukee is very low.
Remember that line about “the civil rights issue of our time”?
Vouchers and charters are not it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Public schools and teacher unions are DEFINITELY not the answer. We have GOT to keep trying something until we hit a winning formula. Doing what we always have done because it is familiar is NOT what children need.
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Vete de aquí.
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Spare me! Public schools were the answer that had us rated much higher in comparison to other countries until businessmen and shysters found another way to take a public, functioning institution and turn it into a money grab for plutocrats who don’t give a royal rip about education, but sure do pursue every sneaky money source they can subvert! Teachers are NOT the enemy, only greedy corporations are. Obviously you haven’t investigated the false claims and rigged scores that make a mockery of truth!
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Your opinion is important to us. Please write again!
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Maybe you’re right, Terry, except for the fact that the “somethings” they’re trying are not really new. Charters have been in my state (Michigan) for 20 years and our state has had declining test results since. Vouchers have been in Milwaukee for over 20 years with no discernible evidence that schools improve. Merit pay is thoroughly researched with no evidence that it changes student scores. NCLB has been around for over a decade and there is no improvement.
These ideas are repeatedly the ones used to bludgeon schools. They’ve been around long enough to have a respectable sample size and they have failed to move the needle.
There is plenty of research on best practices in instruction in the classroom. But it isn’t really about instruction. It’s about money and who gets it.
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http://www.susanohanian.org/show_sarahsnotes.php?id=29
Terry F, this link a must read for you! Children need to feel SAFE so they feel comfortable taking risks. Risk of trying their best without being judged. Knowing they are CARED about. That making mistakes is part of learning. Perfection is an illusion.
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I meant are part of the learning process.
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http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2013/01/15/michelle-rhees-studentsfirst-spent-big-on-education-committee-members
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If ever there was a poster child for what is wrong in public education, Jeb and Rhee sure fit the bill! A highly wealthy, NWO advocate and a bloodless, ignorant administrator who knows zip about teaching strategies, motivating anyone and loves to shred teachers careers! No need to wonder what the future holds if those two covert clowns get their wish!
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“If ever there was a poster child for what is wrong in public education, Jeb and Rhee sure fit the bill!”
Mary,
No, they aren’t as they really aren’t products of the public school system.
From Wiki: “She was raised in the Toledo, Ohio area and educated in the public schools, through the sixth grade.[5] Her parents then sent her to South Korea to attend school for one year.[5] Upon her return, they enrolled her in a private school because they felt the public school was lacking.”
And: Following in the footsteps of older brother, George, Jeb Bush attended high school at the private Massachusetts boarding school, Phillips Academy Andover. At the age of 17, he taught English as a second language in León, Guanajuato, Mexico, as part of Phillips Academy’s student exchange program.
Damn, didn’t know I had something in common with a New England blue blood person. When I was 18 (1973) I substitute taught two classes (56 girls in each class with those old fashioned wooden desks bolted to the floor) of English 4 in an all-girls Catholic school in Trujillo, Peru for a couple of months. What a trip that was-many stories. Helped me learn a little humility about just how little I knew about both English and Spanish at the time.
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I couldn’t care less to know Jeb’s and Rhee’s resume or where they went to school!
What I do care about is their unity in pushing, by hook or crook (or bogus test scores)
their mutual passion for turning education into a money mill for the elite, like the Bushes
(MORE than Bush 1 and 2; the profiteers of this Shrub family are into the cousins, etc. with their fingers in stupid test prep books, etc.) and Rhee’s cabal of vultures. To focus, to what purpose I haven’t a guess, on the Bush prep school affiliations is just a red herring! Please focus on their real drive in public ed. and that’s all about $!
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