In this brilliant essay, John Prosser dissects Michelle Rhee’s attack on the teachers of Garfield High School in Seattle.

The teachers decided unanimously to boycott the MAP test for their students.

On March 6, Rhee wrote (or someone in her organization wrote) an opinion piece in a Seattle newspaper making false claims about the teachers and what they were doing and why they were doing it.

She first refers to them as “union members,” not as teachers, immediately suggesting that they are acting from selfish motives, to do something that their union wants, rather than acting as teachers, in the best interest of their students.

She claims that the teachers don’t want to give the test because they don’t want to be evaluated, but the tests don’t figure into their evaluation.

As Prosser shows, she engages in ad hominem attacks; she makes factual errors; she equivocates; she misleads; she uses the straw man argument and the red herring. Her article demonstrates how little she knows, how quick she is to attack teachers while pretending to praise them, and how little respect she has for teachers and students.

As the leader of a group called “StudentsFirst,” Rhee evidently thinks that what students need most is more testing. She thinks that she cares about students more than those who work with them every day in their classrooms. She, who pours millions of dollars into political campaigns for vouchers, charters, teacher-bashing, and high-stakes testing, has some nerve attacking the dedicated teachers of Garfield High School.

The teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle are our heroes. They have true courage. They truly put their students first.