A reader sent this comment and a link to Chris Hayes’ interview with John Merrow:
“MSNBC’s Chris Hayes had John Merrow on his 4/12 evening show, ALL IN and the conversation was simply brutal towards Rhee….Chris very articulately pointed out how M Rhee rose to the top of the Ed Reform movement with only 3 years of limited personal experience in education. He ended his commentary by noting, in detail, how DC schools are in far worse condition today because of Rhee’s questionable policies……… like a cool breeze in a desert!
John was fabulous….Chris Hayes noted he would be following up with John Merrow in the future…stay tuned! ”
This is a must-see interview. The only question now is, why is Michelle Rhee not answering?
Wow! Everyone must watch. Maybe she is finally going down.
love Chris’ “UP” show, an intelligent alternative to the master narratives of the major networks.
Look at this news, Hearing Set on Cheating Claim in Capital: “The City Council in Washington will hold a hearing next week after a memo warning officials of cheating on standardized tests during the chancellorship of Michelle A. Rhee surfaced Thursday night.”
I will take your comparison of my screed to a piece in The Onion as a compliment. I do am to entertain, but for a serious purpose. Think of it as hyperbole in the service of liberty and human dignity.
But you are right about my finding the 21st century scary. The utter profligacy of the current administration is frightening, as is its use of social policy scare tactics to divert so many otherwise educated people from becoming aware of the creeping tyranny. I’ve seen the charges of misogyny, racism, and homophobia directed at the tea party so often that I have learned to ignore them as red herrings.
If you want to give up your liberty under a delusion, you will. I can only lay out my perceptions of the entire scam you are being sold in an effort to persuade you to step back and see what’s really going on. Once you’ve eaten the apple of utopianism, you WILL be deprived of what liberty you have, unless your hated countrymen can save the nation in spite of those who are drilling holes in the bottom of the boat of liberty and calling it progress.
“utter profligacy”?!?!
You ARE talking about the Obama Administration, yes?
While I have multiple reasons for disliking the policies of the Obama administration, the idea that they practice “utter profligacy” is absolutely delusional.
This—arguably the most conservative “Democratic” administration since Grover Cleveland’s.
What is this obsession with guys like you, Harlan? If you hate Barack Obama, you’re entitled to do so, for any reason. Or non-reason.
But you have an obvious need to subscribe to this preconceived notion of Barack Obama as some sort of “liberal”. If only you were right about this—I’d be doing cartwheels.
Anyone who still sees Barack Obama and his policies as “liberal” is either seriously obtuse or living in an ideological bubble of denial.
Which one of the two describes you, Harlan?
Don’t have to settle for one as both describe quite well.
Thank you, PSparent,
As an actual liberal, I cannot wrap my head around those who hate Obama be because he is “too liberal” or a “socialist”.
What world are these people living in?
I suppose they are just spouting the “Faux News” party line…with the effect of repeating a lie often enough makes it true outcome. And gullible people begin to see a very moderate, wall street, corporate type as a liberal. Anything to the right of that is then, by definition, moderate. Anything slightly left of that is far left, out of the ball park, off the table, will not be considered.
Planned pendulum shift?
Obtuse is a possibility. Denial, not. More likely, I’m right. Look at the news stories about his recent DOA budget, spend, spend, spend, tax, tax, tax. Oh, he’s liberal all right. To the Left of liberal. All the way to socialist tyranny, Pugy.
“I’ve seen the charges of misogyny, racism, and homophobia directed at the tea party so often that I have learned to ignore them as red herrings.”
Here are some examples of your “red herrings” that many people here have problems with and which are contrary to your claims about the Tea Party’s stance.
Tea Party Platforms
“Platform Item 10: Homosexual Marriage
We regard the traditional definition of marriage, the union of a man and a woman, as the core unit within the American culture. We oppose any aberration to the definition of marriage.”
“Platform Item 6: The Right to Life
We believe in the sanctity of life and dedicate ourselves to changing the hearts and minds of all those who believe that abortion is an answer to any unplanned pregnancy where it does not threaten the actual life of the mother. We will also spare no effort to see Roe v Wade overturned and the issue of abortion returned to the state legislatures where the issue belongs.”
And, in case some people here don’t know about these Tea Party positions:
“Platform Item 15: Labor Unions
1. Labor unions have no place in the public sector.”
“Platform Item 2: Global Warming
We expect our government to do absolutely nothing to combat Global Warming and we reject the notion of any government being able to affect Climate Change. Total budget cost = $0”
“Platform Item 25: Environmental Protection Agency
Eliminate it.”
Many people here do not support the Neo-Liberal policies promoted by any of the parties, but know that a commitment to social justice is important for all, especially historically marginalized groups. Go spew your hate mongering somewhere else, HU.
http://theteapartyplatform.com/categories/263/platform.aspx
Nice catch Cosmic Tinker….
Thanks, Democracy.
I forgot to include this relevant Tea Party platform:
“Platform Item 8: The 2nd Amendment
The federal government does not have the power to deny any citizen his/her right to bear arms. The federal government must also not be given the power to require registration of firearms as this is the first step toward providing a powerful government the opportunity to later confiscate weapons.”
Good job cosmic!
You know, people have a right to believe/support those platforms if they want to…but I am damn tired to the disingenuous types claiming to not support those things but voting/supporting/joining groups that have that (IMHO utter rot) as part of the platform.
Come on, HU…jack up your jeans, and tell the truth. If you believe that stuff, say it out loud. Name it and claim it. Quit hiding behind the disguise of being moderate/reasonable.
If you don’t buy those things, then that is not your party. Get off the bus.
Many people believe that affirmative action is an example of social justice, because it is intended to level the playing field for disadvantaged minorities, and that being against it could be construed as racist. Tea Party
Platform Item 21: Affirmative Action
The Congress shall create no law that demonstrates a preference for one group of citizens over another.
This would seem to include laws covering people with disabilities, too.
Social justice does not mean that everyone gets the same thing. It means that everyone gets what they need.
I used to support affirmative action comprehensively until research showed that a number of black kids were overmatched to the universities to which they were admitted and didn’t graduate but that if admitted to colleges for which they were able to qualify on strict merit, they would finish and graduate and do well and be legitimately employable. Univ. of Michigan had a point scheme for undergraduates until it was ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court. I still think diversity is a necessary and desirable policy, but there is a stigma to being thought an affirmative action admit which is really pretty nasty. Other students used to assume that if you were black at the U of M you were affirmative action, even if you weren’t. It’s a dilemma. One wants to promote full compensatory opportunity. But there are downsides to it as well. Justice O’Connor wrote in her opinion upholding the U of M’s Law School admissions policy that 25 years from then, affirmative action would, probably, not be necessary. I buy the white privilege argument, although it has fallen into disfavor recently. So, being against affirmative action is not, in my opinion racist, or being against social justice, and I still support special effort by all colleges and universities to get as many black students as possible on campus consistent with likelihood of graduation. That the tea party platform quoted is for meritocracy and against discrimination doesn’t seem to me to be out of line with general American thinking. So much “social justice” rhetoric DOES wind up meaning ‘everything equal.’
As for hiding behind anything, at Diane’s request I have been posting under my real name with my real face. Most here do not, but those who don’t should be. I suspect acid throwers like Linda, and DeeDee may have reasons for concealing who they are, and possibly legitimate reasons, but it looks to me as if they like the anonymity in order to be hateful and mean. Given the virulent personal hatred by so many posters here of even sweet souled conservatives like myself, I am still a little nervous about doing so. But I have no illusions about the morality of liberals. Verbal terrorists with scarves over your faces.
As Diane knows and understands, unlike retired teachers like you, most people here are employed teachers who risk losing their jobs, if they post their truths using their legal names, including me.
YOU call it hate mongering. I call it common sense. I dare you to define “social justice” explicitly. Nothing racist in the platform, you notice.
But thus far, absolutely nothing from the “Paper of Record”, the “Old Gray Lady”, “All the news that’s fit to print”?
Why?
Ever since Michael Winerip was forced to resign his education beat, the NY Times has been very disappointing when covering our schools.
Does anyone know the education editor at the New York Times? Does one even exist? Why aren’t they paying attention to this major scandal?
Is the New York Times biased in favor of Rhee and her funders? Why would they be silent here?
The NY Times was not silent. They were the first to report the good news last night that there IS going to be a hearing next week in DC regarding the DC cheating scandal:
Hearing Set on Cheating Claim in Capital: “The City Council in Washington will hold a hearing next week after a memo warning officials of cheating on standardized tests during the chancellorship of Michelle A. Rhee surfaced Thursday night.”
At the beginning of the interview Chris Hayes includes a video clip of Michelle Rhee saying there was an “investigation” of the cheating scandal in the DC schools. But that’s simply not true, as John Merrow points out. There were only severely restricted peek-a-boo “security audits.”
Rhee says most of the USA Today investigative piece was only about one school. That too is untrue.
Let’s review the USA Today findings:
1. D.C. school officials were very reluctant to have any kind of investigation, and
2. more than half of all D.C. schools had irregular erasure answer patterns on tests, and
3. ” the odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance”, and
4. the inquiries that finally took place were quite limited, and
5. the school system refused to release the names of the schools that were investigated, and
6. the school system refused to release the investigative reports, and
7. for a school to be “flagged” for possible cheating a “classroom had to have so many wrong-to-right erasures that the average for each student was 4 standard deviations higher than the average for all D.C. students in that grade on that test, meaning that ” a classroom corrected its answers so much more often than the rest of the district that it could have occurred roughly one in 30,000 times by chance. D.C. classrooms corrected answers much more often.” In fact, ” the odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance,”
John Merrow notes that in Atlanta, the city newspaper (the Atlanta Journal Constitution) dug hard into the cheating scandal, and the political establishment launched an investigation with resources and subpoena power. In DC, however, The
Washington Post and the DC political powers-that-be failed to look at all.
So, now we know that Rhee received the memo on cheating, and she failed to do anything. Nothing. Rhee says now that she doesn’t “recall” getting that memo, even though Merrow has written that “”A reliable source has confirmed that Rhee and Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson discussed the memo in staff gatherings.” Not surprisingly, Henderson –– Rhee’s top deputy and now chancellor of the DC schools –– doesn’t “recall” the memo either.
But here’s the real kicker, as Merrow relates it. The DC schools are now worse in virtually every measure under the Rhee-Henderson reign.
Why is anyone at all still taking either of these clowns even half-way seriously?
You know it’s got to be a lie that Rhee didn’t recall the memo. Who could forget a memo like that? I love how Charles Pierce put it yesterday in Esquire, “Michelle Rhee’s Terrible Awful Day.” First he quotes Rhee:
“As chancellor I received countless reports, memoranda and presentations. I don’t recall receiving a report by Sandy Sanford regarding erasure data from the (DC Comprehensive Assessment System), but I’m pleased, as has been previously reported, that both inspectors general (DOE and DCPS) reviewed the memo and confirmed my belief that there was no widespread cheating.”
Then he responds:
“Yeah, there was this report right here on how much floor polish we needed, and this one right here about the possibility of changing dairies that supply our milk, and there’s the annual assessment on crayon-munching and paste-eating, especially among my own personal staff. I am a busy woman. I can’t be expected to remember every report, especially one that might indicate that the things upon which I have based my entire career, and which have brought me considerable fame and fortune, are the functional equivalent of swampland in Polk County.
Who do you think I am? Superman?”
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/michelle-rhee-cheating-scandal-041213
You’re spot-on here, as Ross Perot used to say.
The Caveon investigators were strictly prohibited from asking administrators and teachers questions such as:
“Did you take part in any changing of answers?”
“Do you know of any administrators or teachers who took part in and changing of answers?”
“Have you heard anyone discussing the changing of answers or the possibility of such?”
and on and on…
Instead, they asked questions such as—and I say “such as”, because I don’t have the exact wording, just the essence— …
“Now, we know there was NO cheating or changing of answers, right? Right? RIGHT??!!!
“Well, as you consider that this is the truth that THERE WAS NO CHEATING, what other possible causes might there be for the erasures?”
The administrators and teachers that Caveon interviewed then replied with cockamamie stuff like:
EXPLANATION #1: “Well, maybe students skipped a question because it was difficult, hoping to go back later and try again. Then, by accident, forgot to leave that answer blank on the answer sheet, and mistakenly put in the answer to the next question in the wrong place on the answer sheet… for example, bubbled in the answer for Question #6 in the place for Question #5, Question #7 in the place for Question #6, etc…. then later discovered this, then had to move all the answers down one place… that would lead to a lot of wrong-to-right erasures….”
EXPLANATION #2: “Well, we instructed our students to go back and check every single question and answer, hoping to catch any mistakes you might have made… perhaps when you jumped at an answer that at first, seemed like the right answer, but in actuality that first instinct was wrong, and you see where you went wrong, then tried the question again, and got it right.”
Could you imagine a homicide investigation where the detectives were not allowed to ask:
“Did you murder so-and-so? Alone, or with someone else?”
“Do you have any knowledge of who might have murdered so-and-so?
“Did you ever witness any evidence that might indicate who might have murdered so-and-so?”
BUT INSTEAD… they had to ask questions like,
“Now, we know that so-and-so WAS NOT MURDERED… and that the cause of HIS DEATH WAS NOT THE RESULT OF MURDER IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM, right? Right? RIGHT??!!!
“Well, as you consider that this is the truth that THERE WAS NO MURDER, what other possible causes might there be for so-and-so’s death?”
Then you’d get answers like, “Well, now that I think about it, you know the gun WAS loaded and lying on the table where the cat likes to walk around and play… and the cat may have been playing with the gun, and accidentally pulled the trigger with his paw… causing the gun to go off and the bullet to fly into into my wife’s head… and then the cat continued his playful pawing, causing the gun to shoot a few more times, each bullet also entering my wife’s head.. my wife’s known to have bad luck, you see… ”
It’s all in the USA Today article’s documents. The investigators from Caveon were explicitly and absolutely prohibited by D.C. Public School officials from asking questions that would lead to a conclusion that there had been cheating… but were only asking questions that would give alternative explanations for the wrong-to-right erasures.
Please send requests for a full investigation to Arne…see email here:
arne.duncan@ed.gov
Dearest Arne,
Have you noticed Arne is very quiet? Also President Obama. Would love to hear an offical statement from both of them.
Only if walls could talk.
Read the memo. Rhee is cooked in reality not her fantasy world. The Morrow video is great. We need more “Real Reporting” nationwide like this and like we used to have. What are you supposed to think when the memo says Keep it Quiet and do not let anyone see it and do not print it.
Here is the full transcript of the Hayes interview on MSNBC ALL in with John Merrow, posted below the video:
>> as michelle rhee in march 2011 interview with tavis smiley dismissing allegations of cheating in washington , d.c. schools when she was chancellor of the school system . this included firing 56 principals and firing or laying off 700 teachers. there was an amazing piece of reporting that revealed wrong to right answers on standardized tests at d.c. schools. one school specifically touted by rhee herself and by whose faculty received bonuses for test results and new in addition to audit release today finding cheating in 11 d.c. schools during the 2011 -12 school year, there’s another absolutely bomb shell report on rhee ‘s time in d.c. a previously unreported document obtained by john mario indicating a widespread cheating problem across the district. 2009 memo from an outside investigator starts with a security note to please treat this document as confidential. don’t make hard copies and leave them around. there are 191 teachers representing 70 schools implicated in possible testing infractions by the study. usa today reports the 2009 memo was written by an outside analyst, fai sanford, then invited by rhee to look at math and reading gains. the memo contradicts what legal rhee said about allegations. washington , d.c. is one example in a litany of schools across the country with reports of high stakes cheating. we brought you the story last week with the superintendent of atlanta schools who was involved with 39 teachers for widespread cheating in atlanta schools. they are looking into two dozen teachers in long island for the same thing. what is so remarkable about michelle rhee specifically is she has gone to the peak of redcation without having to answer to the reports of possible cheating surrounding her tenure. rhee and her organization did not respond to our request for an interview. joining me tonight, john mario, education correspondent from pbs. thank you for being here.
>> thank you.
>> let’s set this back to the 2011 about these wrong to right. what is the significant nance.
>> standardized tests have different levels of difficulty. if they ran an analysis and see that most kids got easy answers wrong, the hard answers right, and there were erasers and if you find patterns then you know this is not kids doing erasers. and sandy sanford ‘s memo warned michelle rhee that she add problem.
>> one of the things we saw in atlanta in the beverly hall case was that reporters there looked at the eraser rates and took them to statisticians and said kids are foif six times per test erasing things and statisticians said, this cannot possibly be.
>> in atlanta , the superintendent denied all that. the difference is that the atlanta newspaper stayed on the case. that didn’t happen in washington . and the political leadership in the state of georgia stayed on the case and that did not happen. no one wanted to get at the truth into n washington , d.c. , unfortunately.
>> what do you mean by that?
>> exactly that. when it was such wonderful news, michelle rhee was such a breath of fresh air when she arrived in washington . schools were not great. my kids went to public school in washington , so i know a little bit about it. she was seen as this whirl wind who would do everything in the best interest of children. then after her first year there were dramatic increases. she celebrated, gave out huge bonuses and then got bad news from sandy sanford and from state superintendent that there with is a problem here. she was about to be on the cover of “time” magazine. just praised by obama and caine. just given o out a million and half dollars in bonuses then was presented with evidence that adults might have cheated.
>> that’s what is in these documents. this is a memo that an independent consultant who brought in to analyze this data wrote to her —
>> in just four pages, dr. sanford twice raises the possibility that her principals might have done the cheating. in my reporting today, by the way, not just me, four other veteran reporters among us, 175 years of experience in journalism and the 40-page document has got 40 foot notes. i urge folks to read it. he warns, he said, the principals might have done this. it is an open invitation to investigation. he also, by the way, proposed strategies of how to avoid investigation. this is not all pure of heart.
>> so then michelle rhee is presented with with this document. at least her deputy is —
>> i know she saw it. i have a reliable source . we verified this — incidentally, people are very afraid of michelle rhee . a source high in dcps confirmed authenticity of this. i’ve been reporting for 39 years. when i took it to this source’s home, that person was trembling, as i presented it to this person. i’ve never seen anyone quite so scared. the other came from the inspector general. we know that chancellor rhee saw this and talked about it.
>> so the question is what happened after this memo was written?
>> no investigation. there’s never been an invest gafgts 2008 erasers. there have been five semi investigations. none of them involved the serious important work of a deep eraser analysis. they were all limited and they were more after security audit . but of course, the chancellor was able to say, this investigation proves that the d.c. inspector general spent 17 months. during 17 months he interviewed 60 people. you interview 60 people in a week. in atlanta they spent a year and interviewed 2,000 people. he went to one school. there were 91 schools implicated by that time. he never looked at the first year.
>> of course the special in atlanta , what finally broke it open, was the governor appointing a special investigate investigative group that had resources —
>> subpoena power.
>> subpoena power. and took a lot of time. and an 800 page report that was damning and led to the grand jury .
>> what is intriguing is that michelle rhee had carte blanche and her deputy for five years. if you look at the d.c. schools now, they are worse by almost every single imaginable measure. graduation rate is the worse in the nation. truancy is ep dommic. typical teacher stays two years. it is five years nationally. it is a disaster.
>> let me just say, miller rhee isn’t here to defend herself and i wish she were. i would love to have her talkback on to talk about this stuff and anyone from her organization. pbs correspondent john peril, thank you. i’ll be right back with click 3. businesses more than
“…incidentally, people are very afraid of michelle rhee . a source high in dcps confirmed authenticity of this. i’ve been reporting for 39 years. when i took it to this source’s home, that person was trembling, as i presented it to this person. i’ve never seen anyone quite so scared.”
Is anyone else annoyed upon learning this? The woman scares people? It’s time to take this up with her henchmen. The tactic, as the corporate privatizers know it so well, is called “divide and conquer.” Investigate them all just like they are sending people into our classrooms ad nauseum to investigat– I mean, evaluate us with a magnifying glass..
An real investigation would go all the way to the top…Arne, Barack, Eli and Bill. The buck stops at the very top. Those with the most money and most power will control this. May they throw her under the bus.
LG,
This is not “divide and conquer.”
This is “intimidate and silence.”
That’s exactly what they will do if they start feeling serious heat that threatens their political clout. There are a lot more of us, and every one of us is a potential vote. I would think that even DFERs would change some of their positions on reform if it is connected with scandal. Politicians whither and die at the very hint of it these days.
A culture of fear and intimidation. This is classic ed reform bullying. Totally evil
The fear that is so prevalent springs from the viciousness that is inherent in so-called education reform.
After all, what are the means and ends here? Disenfranchisement, destruction of the neighborhood school and a priceless public resource for private profit, busting unions, transforming a noble profession into temporary, at-will employment, reduction of children to commodified data…
This project and the people behind it are a nasty piece of work, and it’s to be expected that the poster child for it would be a sociopath such as Michelle Rhee.
“incidentally, people are very afraid of michelle rhee . a source high in dcps confirmed authenticity of this. i’ve been reporting for 39 years. when i took it to this source’s home, that person was trembling, as i presented it to this person. i’ve never seen anyone quite so scared.”
I still stand by my original comment coloring these tactics. Those in power are trying to cast shadows upon the credibility of educators who, by sheer numbers, still have some small influence on the public school system.
To incite the public with–and yes, I agree with the characterization as well–fear tactics of “failing schools” and the so-called “financial raping of public resources” in the way of COL raises and compensation packages for public employees, these powerful people are running a smear campaign against public school educators by pitting them against the general public: Divide and conquer the public. The powerful have even succeeded in convincing some bleeding-heart public school employees that they are compensated too much already by playing upon their sense of concern for others: Divide and conquer the public employees.
This issue is not so cut-and-dry. There are many reasons for the education “reform” movement–some noble, some evil. The bottom line is: The public system is not perfect, and we all want to improve it. It would not be a stretch to see their thinking as such, “Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if the edu-preneurs made a killing off of snowing the public into handing over its money to them while cutting down unions?” Division conquers unity.
Sounds like a win-win for the powerful…and a lose-lose for the rest of us lowly peasants who are trying to support the people of our society.
Apologies for quoting that passage twice. I attempted to respond to Michael above:
“After all, what are the means and ends here? Disenfranchisement, destruction of the neighborhood school and a priceless public resource for private profit, busting unions, transforming a noble profession into temporary, at-will employment, reduction of children to commodified data…”
Hayes is very good. He’s the only anchor on MSNBC’s regular lineup who seems to be even mildly interested in debunking some of the mythology of the education reform movement. This is an excellent piece. Thanks for the link!
Rhee can claim all she wants that she’s a Democrat but people in Arizona think otherwise and call her a conservative:
“What will we tell the children — and the conservatives who still believe in Michelle Rhee?”
http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2013/04/what-will-we-tell-the-children-and-the-conservatives-who-still-believe-michelle-rhee.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BlogForArizona+%28Blog+For+Arizona%29
I don’t think Rhee is either a Democrat or a conservative. She is what she calls herself: a radical.
She is a loyal and radical member of the Opportunist Party ….
How can the soon to be Total Rheeject be considered a conservative when she is actually a plant by the North Korean Spy Agency trained to destroy American public education and consequentially the USA in one of the most diabolical plots since Dr. Evil wanted to have “‘frickin’ sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their frickin’ heads,”
Merrow finally points out the most explosive point in this memo, one that’s being passed over in commentaries. Fay noted that specific erasure patterns occurred across many classrooms. That would indicate that systematic cheating occurred at the building level, and point toward the principals.
Massachusetts has never requested erasure analyses, so far as I know. I wish they would. My own district is in an odd bind, because it was an education reform superstar, ranked at level I (the top 20%), in 2009. We’ve been data-driven for a decade. This year, we are flagged as level 3, the bottom 20%. I’m concerned our new principal will be blamed for testing a higher percentage of our actual students, but maybe there’s something more.
I’m walking on eggs here. The state assistance team that came to our building quoted an improved graduation rate, and I want so much to believe it, but it didn’t make statistical sense. They told me they couldn’t divulge the denominator they used, because of confidentiality involved in tracking students after they left the building. The gap between the number of kids in the testing rooms and the number of scores reported makes actual data analysis impossible. I have no idea what any “data” anywhere means, even if the tests did measure anything worthwhile.
History is chock full of egotistical maniacs who have eventually crashed and burned. Their arrogance and greed usually fuels their downfall. Rhee is a classical example. Justice would be served if Merrow is allowed to film her dismissal from the reform industry just as he filmed her dismissing a principal. I for one am looking forward to her fraud trial on Tru Tv
Yes, unfortunately she’s left a lot of damaged people in her wake.
Cosmic Tinker gave link to NYTimes article about Rhee/DC situation, and in it I find another example of infuriatingly bad reporting…
In their article, they say there is some dispute among test security experts who have looked into DC cheat allegations. They go on to talk about how Caveon Consulting conducted an investigation for DC and concluded there was no widespread cheating.
So here I am, just a hometown Atlanta girl (whose kids are not in APS but who followed the test fraud story closely in the AJC) and I think to myself, “Well, isn’t Caveon Consulting the same firm who claimed the same here in Atlanta and shouldn’t their findings therefore be seen suspiciously? Perhaps even be DISCREDITED?” Then I google Caveon and Atlanta Cheating Scandal and conclude that I remembered correctly. After Caveon (Fremer as president ) shared their conclusions of no widespread cheating, our governor decided to do his own thing and get people who would actually investigate thoroughly with the power of the law behind them. The link below provides more detail about Caveon findings being set aside here.
It is called INVESTIGATIVE reporting for a reason. You would think the NYTimes would have at least added a sentence mentioning that Caveon had done the work in Atlanta and found “nothing to see here folks…just a few isolated cases of evil teachers but no systematic issues.”
I don’t know the reasons our then governor decided to take it further, but I do know that without our paper’s reporters pushing, this travesty of justice for children would never have come to light here in Atlanta.
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/test-fraud-detectives-drawing-scrutiny/nQLRT/
Kay,
Thanks for that information on Caveon. Sounds like a whitewashing rheephormy group.
Duane
Wow, Kay! Great investigative reporting by YOU! That’s incredible!!
Merrow wrote that Caveon later claimed to the Washington Post and USA Today that they didn’t do an investigation in DC, just a security audit. I wonder if Merrow even knows about Caveon’s involvement in Atlanta’s cheating scandal, too, because he didn’t mention that. You might want to bring this to his attention on his blog: http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6232
Kay, I posted that Caveon info on John Merrow’s comments page for you.
Finally! Good to see MSNC addressing this issue.
MSNBC was one of the worst channels for promoting charters and teacher bashing. It’s nice that someone is actually reporting the truth instead of spin.
I wonder how Rhode Island’s Deb Gist will fare? She is the one who brought the problem to Rhee, but them “kept her mouth shut,” when nothing was done.
Thanks to Merrow, MSNBC, USA Today and most of all Diane Ravitch for highlighting this reporting. Lesson: When money rewards to adults are granted for students doing well on tests, corruption results. Ed reform organizations blame “tired older bad teachers” for struggling urban schools. Turns out testing more and more is not the way to help kids learn & improve schools. Instead it exposes the human failings of adults. Rhee among these.
Rhee is more corrupt than you realize. She intervened on behalf of her then fiancee Kevin Johnson for inappropriate conduct with minor girls and paying them off with Amercorps money. That is the reason President Obama fired Gerald Walpin.
Rheetract RttT!!!
Has anyone studied micro-expressions? On the Frontline program, “The Education of Michelle Rhee,” did anyone see how when presented with the question, “What’s your reaction to that? The gains are phony, ” (referring to why the test scores dropped significantly after security was tightened during her reign as chancellor) Rhee replied, “Should it be investigated? Absolutely!” while shaking her head “no.” Micro-expression analysis is both science and art (like teaching!), and takes practice to improve (like teaching!)… however, this one was rather blatant. Her words say “yes” while her head shakes “no.” I’m not an expert by any means, but this example of word/body-language mismatch was glaring. It happens right around minute 48 (give or take a few seconds). If anyone’s interested, check it out. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/education-of-michelle-rhee/
Oh oh oh! Might be seeing another one! 4-5 seconds into the “All In” with Chris Hayes… there’s an extremely swift microexpression of scorn (similar to the one that Paul Ekman shows as an example in here: https://www.paulekman.com/ – play the video entitled “Lie Detection”) … another “tell” perhaps?