I came across an article in the Washington Post by Michelle Rhee, in which she chastised parents who opted their children out of state tests. This article made me happy, because it shows that the Queen Bee of high-stakes testing is worried. She is worried that the opt out movement is gaining traction. She is worried that parents are sick of the Status Quo of the past dozen years. If parents opt out, there won’t be enough data to fire teachers, to give bonuses, and to close schools. The Status Quo might collapse. How will we know how students are doing if we don’t test them? How will we know if their teachers are any good without standardized tests? How will we know if their school should be closed?
I must say that I was brought to a sharp halt in my reading of this article when Rhee spoke of what happened when her daughter came home from public school, relieved that the last test was over. This puzzled me because Rhee lives in Sacramento, and her daughters live in Nashville. I wondered, was she visiting Nashville that day? Then I remembered that one of her daughters goes to a public school, and the other goes to an elite private school that does not give standardized tests. How does she know how the daughter in the private school is doing? How can she judge her teachers? How will the principals in that school know if the teachers are doing a good job if the kids don’t take standardized tests? It is very puzzling.
And I wondered about one other thing: Michelle Rhee is a fierce advocate for charters and vouchers because she believes in choice. Why doesn’t she believe that parents should be able to choose to say no to state testing? Many voucher schools are exempt from state testing but I haven’t heard her demand that legislators include them. How will they know how their children are doing?
I wasn’t going to write about Rhee, because she seems so yesterday, but then Peter Greene sent me this hilarious post, and I realized I had to write too. But he is so funny! he calls it: “The WaPo Wastes Space on That Woman.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
She also states that parents in NY, CT and CO are “getting in the way”.
So parents, the kids you gave birth to and are raising right now, you are the problem, so step back, get out of their way and let Michelle tell you what to do.
As if the Rheeject knows best!
She doesn’t even live in the same state as her children and she’s preaching to us.
I thought that was amazing too. I don’t know how it got thru the ed reform marketing machine.
Probably not wise to tell parents they are “getting in the way” of Michelle Rhee’s child-raising expertise.
But there’s always been a background of that sort of sentiment in ed reform, that ed reformers are the ONLY people who are “working on behalf of the children”.
I always thought it was weird. I’m not surprised she now considers opt-out parents as opposed to the well-being of their own children.
It’s just her and the kids, bravely battling…..the parents of those same kids!
It’s bizarre. I’m innately suspicious of people who “lead” by declaring themselves the person who ALONE has my best interest at heart. It’s manipulative and divisive and it isolates me and sets me off “with” that person contra everyone else. Ugh. No thanks.
So Rhee has a problem with white suburban moms too? Let the War on Parents begin!
I support the opt-out movement but nowhere in this opinion piece by Rhee will you find the words “getting in the way”. Accuracy and clarity are key to a strong argument.
You have forgotten that according to Rheeject, parental choice means that parents can only choose what the Rheeject presents them with as choices. Parents absolutely are not allowed to decide on what the choices will be themselves or modify the choices they are presented with in any way at all.
Proof came from Chicago when parents protested that they wanted to keep their public schools open and those schools were closed anyway.
Poor Michelle Rhee.
Someone needs to put duct tape over her mouth, as the duct tape embalming her cerebellum is not quite so removeable, so there may as well be an exterior match to what’s going on inside and out . . . a public figure such as her should never go out into the spotlight without being color and fabric coordinated . . .
Rhee is getting worried. She is at the center of the pernicious and very pain-ridden social reproduction theory: Society gives birth, and the vast majority of those children are raised and spend their lives creating power and wealth that is harvested by the 1 or 2 percent, who use the offspring to continue the cycle. The offspring get only enough of that power and wealth to energize themselves and survive so that they can continue producing for the 1 to 2 %.
Rhee needs to visit more neo-natal wards, eyeing whose next in line to serve her policies, and perhaps she should just Rumple-Stiltskin her way into public education policy.
Right now, according to the article she smeared into the Washington Post, Rumple Stiltskin is stamping her high heels hard into the pavement out of frustration and anger.
She’s worried.
She should be.
Poor Michelle.
If Martha Stewart can go to jail . . . then _________________ .
You fill in the blank.
Correction:
” . . . eyeing who’s next in line . . . . “
Robert Rendo: as much as I enjoy your comments on this blog, I have—yet again!—been the recipient of a complaint from an aggrieved group, this time from the Business Roundtable of Masking Tape Manufacturers.
Michelle Rhee used masking tape, not duct tape, on her small charges; give credit where credit is due.
😡
And now on to a different matter. Please note the final paragraph of the Bee Eater’s ad copy [click on the WAPO link in posting]:
[start quote]
Rather than encouraging parents to opt out of testing, it would be much more productive for the leaders of this distracting movement to help improve the assessments. Make the exams more rigorous and more reflective of student learning. Ultimately, students and educators need test data — opting out does a disservice to both. And it risks endangering the progress that all of our children need.
[end quote]
Over 50 years ago [!] I read about a very old debate trick: when you are asked to talk about something you know little or nothing about, find some way to switch the conversation to a subject in which you are stronger.
I urge the viewers of this blog to read the speech that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave to the American Educational Research Association on April 30, 2013. He previews his compatriot’s remarks in two significant ways. First, he chastises the audience [literally composed of many of his harshest critics re high-stakes standardized testing] for not improving the testing programs he plays so great a part in mandating. Second, note how he is somewhat for/somewhat against/somewhat for & against high-stakes standardized testing—all at the same time.
The parallels are striking.
Link: https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/choosing-right-battles-remarks-and-conversation
Briefly consider the slight-of-hand, evasion of responsibility and straw men arguments: blame your critics for your mistakes because they haven’t fixed the problems you cause; change the topic from whether or not standardized tests should be used at all to assuming they should be used but need to be improved and your critics are too lazy and dumb to want improvement; and neglect to mention your own self-interest in promoting such destructive practices even though mounting evidence demands that they be discontinued forthwith.
This is what passes today for a leader of the self-styled “education reform” movement: parroting the one-year old lame talking points of a clueless charterite/privatizer.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Krazy, Whacky TA:
Thank you for your information.
I apologize to those ardent fans of masking tape and did not mean to defame or slander the folks who manufacture and use duct tape. I for one have solved MANY repair problems with the latter, ranging from wallet repair on an old Bisonte piece I’ve had for years to the shelf on my refrigerator door. Now that duct tape has come out in all sorts of wonderful colors, I’m afraid my wife might have to duct tape me into a chair to prevent me from buying up the whole duct tape aisle at Home Depot (I prefer to call it “Home Despot” of you know anything about its CEO).
And my deepest apologies go to Ms. Rhee, who – you’re right – indeed used a kinder gentler masking tape on her little students. I still would not mind wrapping up all of Ms. Rhee in duct tape, but I’m afraid I’d only be motivated to do so if there was a nearby shark tank she could be dunked in, tape and all.
It’s not happening.
😦
Anyway, before reading the juicy speech by Duncan, I will down a Dramamine with a glass of water to prevent nausea and vomiting from all the motion sickness caused by his evil, sick and twisted logic.
There is still another debate trick which Mr. Steven Krashen (one of my idols, I admit) recently pointed out, and that it, reformers hold tightly the parameters of debate, deferring only to THEIR paradigm. Then, they allow and even strongly encourage people to freely debate within those parameters, giving them the illusion that free thought, independent thought, and critical thought are all alive and well.
Well, they aren’t. Parameters that don’t consider other relevant realms are indicative of fascism.
I enjoyed what you had to say and will always look forward to your comments . . . . Keep on writing.
Here’s a link to a critique of another of Duncans jaw droppingly Orwellian speeches to AERA. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arnold-dodge/the-solution-to-a-bad-guy_b_3238930.html
Michelle Rhee is steeped in hypocrisy and a deep LACK of empathy. She will paint a “believable” picture, but because she builds her ideas based on “data” while glossing over the emotional needs of children, you cannot put too much stock into what she says. If one does not put the humanity of a child over his/her academic achievement, the argument will be based on false pretenses. Her “principles” are “bass-ackward.”
“. . . tests provide an objective measurement of how students are progressing — information that’s critical to improving public schools.”
“. . . the exams designed to measure how well our schools are teaching our children.”
Damn, didn’t mean to hit the post button yet. But those two quotes alone shows the underlying fallacy in her thinking: That the teaching and learning process can be quantified.
Hey Ms. Beeeater read and understand why you basic premise is false in Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
^^^ what Duane said!
@ Duane … Let’s just give Rhee a manual on how to operate a submarine and only allow her to read excerpts in a disjointed fashion and then teach her testing strategies on how to answer questions correctly. Give her a high stakes common core test where she must explain some extracted procedure from deep within the operating manual…”explain which of the following words best defines this particular excerpted procedure (and she can choose from letters A through D) a la common core style. She cannot review what she got right and wrong. But we all know that since she is such a “genius”, she surely will succeed on the exam and this definitely “PROVES” she has learned. So let us put her in a submarine in the Antarctic and let her drive it home (along with some other “choice ed reformers” who have been given the same “learning” followed by THE TEST). Since she is College and Career Assessment Ready (CRAP) she surely will make it home thus PROVING to the entire nation the merits of common core high stakes testing.
My new favorite post is by John Ogozalek (A Teacher Offers Sound Advice to Tom Friedman)… !!!
Duane, I love the 229 page dissertation and am reading and re-reading. I wonder if others have picked up where he left off in his research . . . . the study of construct validity and errors is fascinating and stands to “control” if not at least heavily color the research community . . . . .
Robert,
What do you mean by “stands to control”?
I find his point that any description of the student test/interaction cannot be “attached” to either the student or test, that the description is of an event or interaction. The implications of that concept are rather mind boggling to me in that the vast majority of people never realize/understand that very simple idea/truth and therefore much, if not damn near all, of what is done with the “results” of any test is more likely than not invalid in its descriptive attempt at the teaching and learning process.
Duane,
What I meant to say was that his thesis may well show that the flaws with tests, standards, and errors that impact testing validity will make the psychometricians think twice before they design an assessment.
It might also make people in general think about the test examiner’s role as being less than pure, which in turn can lead to better advocacy for those being examined.
There stands to be a “coloring” of the testing community and in theory, if his findings are not just justified beliefs but actual true facts (as I wax a little epistomological here), then his findings would logically control the end resulting products known as standards and the tests that utilize them . . .
This guy has cajones, and I am surprised more people don’t invoke his study. It is so relevant now.
Yo he proporciondao un poco de claridad?
Señor Swacker: as a complement to Noel Wilson, let me channel a bit of Banesh Hoffman (THE TYRANNY OF TESTING, 1964 edition of 1962 original, pp. 143-144)
[start quote]
The most important thing to understand about reliance on statistics in a field such as testing is that such reliance warps perspective. The person who holds that subjective judgment and opinion are suspect and decides that only statistics can provide the objectivity and relative certainty that he seeks, begins by unconsciously ignoring, and ends by consciously deriding, whatever can not be given a numerical measure or label. His sense of values becomes distorted. He comes to believe that whatever is non-numerical is inconsequential. He can not serve two masters. If he worships statistics he will simplify, fractionalize, distort, and cheapen in order to force things into a numerical mold.
The multiple-choice tester who meets criticisms by merely citing test statistics shows either his contempt for the intelligence of this readers or else his personal lack of concern for the non-numerical aspects of testing, importantly among them the deleterious effects his test procedures have on education.
[end quote]
😎
Thanks, KTA!
TAGO quote!
We haven’t started SBAC tests yet, but will next year. I already had a parent request to opt out of our state testing this year even though word isn’t really out about Common Core yet in Oregon. It makes me hopeful that people are starting to hear rumblings from other states and their reactions to the SBAC and PARCC tests and Common Core implementation. Parents and colleagues are beginning to share information like this video on Facebook:
http://commoncoremovie.com/
Hopefully it truly is the beginning of a revolution–real school reform. I fear the alternative.
Can you imagine an absentee mother and a failed teacher trying to give advice on educating children!!! We are truly in an absurd period right now.
Diane Ravitch, shouldn’t your response to Rhee be posted in the comment section of Rhee’s article in WAPO? Since Rhee won’t debate you live I suggest you respond to every article she writes in any media outlet that has a comments section.
I would love to see Peter Greene’s rebuttal there!
I looked for the comments option. I didn’t see one, did you?
There were posted comments at end of the article. That said I didn’t try to post a response.
How can anyone with so little substance, with virtually zero credibility, be so this full of themselves?.
This statement registers 9.8 Colemans on
the international scale of arrogance/ignorance
Sorry, my Sarah Palin syntax converter
was accidentally filtering my post.
lol
Sociopaths are like that.
Linda: I wish you and some of the other commenters on this blog would watch what you write. I keep getting complaints from aggrieved groups demanding that I register their disagreement with unflattering stereotypes.
I wouldn’t mention this one, but you should have seen the scary pictures that accompanied the email…
😧
A political lobbying group for a group that has received very bad press insists that even dictionaries have traded in on excessively negative portrayals of the term “sociopath”: “a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.”
I am not saying I agree, but they prefer the more innocuous “empathy-challenged” label. However, they insist that defining them as “people who think that cooperation, collaboration and consensus-building suck” is going way way over the line.
¿? Oops, my bad. The group calls itself Sociopaths First.
And they insist that associating Michelle Rhee with their members does all the Ted Bundys, John Wayne Gacys, and Jeffrey Dahmers of the world a disservice.
😏
Again, I’m not sayin’ I agree with them but if you could have seen those pictures…
Have a heart: even sociopaths, er, the “empathy-challenged” might have, er, definitely have feelings, and every careless association of them with the leaders of the self-styled “education reform” movement is totally unworthy of this most cage busting achievement gap crushing innovative twenty first century.
My treat next time down at Pink Slip Bar & Grille.
😎
And this coming from the teacher 9at the time) who started the erasure craze -opting out incorrect test answers long before it became a fad in Atlanta.
Students sitting in the back during the test after their parents sent in an opt out letter actually helped. I saw many confused and curious looks as those students read and put their head down to rest for 3 days while the others struggled. Keeping them in the room, with the intention to imply that they did not get off the hook, is probably the best advertisement for the opt out movement.
If I had children in schools at this time, I would not allow them to be tested. All this does is demean teachers, add profits to test publishing companies and demonstrate that wealthy districts have higher scores.
Put the money spent on testing into smaller class sizes, music, art, drama and quality pre school and after school programs for students.
We need to advertise the millions spent on testing. I’m sure most parents would rather see that money spent on the kids. They just don’t realize how expensive testing is.
Opt out is a bigger problem for her than most people realize. Prison doors are slowly closing every single day. Soon she may end up on the locked side!
oh such a sinfully satisfying read. I never understand WHY Michelle Rhee has anyone’s attention, except for the fact that she’s an apologizer for the “accountability” movement that seems to have attracted the attention and resources of big bucks.
I don’t see why “big bucks” are attracted to her. I find her quite a turn off, but then again I’ve been partial to long legged blonde blue-eyed nurses for years.
Unfortunately, she has access to national media like being on Bloomberg Channel the other day as the Educational Expert on how we need to implement her ideas if we are to be internationally competitive in the future and that our students continue to be outperformed by students in Singapore and Korea! Money buys media time and the message and now elections and we are in big trouble as a nation until something drastic happens!
How to “Bee” and Effective Schools Chancellor
Just channel Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen:
Stomp around yelling, “Off with their heads,” and practice believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast.
from the Reformish Lexicon:
bee eater. Unqualified but dependably Reformish sociopath in position of power
Do not misjudge Michelle Rhee. She is a neo-liberal weapon of mass destruction aimed only at the public schools. Her masters point her in the right direction and command her to attack. She must be convincing on stage. An actor. I don’t know. I’ve never seen her on stage or in a video talking. How convincing is she?
She has talked her way into being on the receiving end of a great river of Plutocrat green.
So, she has talent. The talent of the grifter, the con artist, the huckster, the shill, the sleight-of-hand man, the carnival barker, the mad man.
You left out that she’s a fake ed reformer carpetbagger flimflammer
for Lloyd: Michelle Rhee laughing about taping her students’ mouths shut: http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2012/03/failed-dc-chancellor-michelle-rhee_12.html?spref=tw …
and a fairly comprehensive account of some of her other unsavoury activities, personal and public: First activities in relation to her husband; http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/being_kevin_johnson.html
and there’s this: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/students_michelle_rhees_really_not_that_into_you.html
and this: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/is_michelle_rhee_good_for_stud.html
IT SUCKS TO BE ME.
Yes, the above is a teaser. Read on…
The leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time,” the self-styled “education reformers,” have always had teachers and students and parents and communities in their sights.
And yes, they have always felt and thought they know better than everyone else. That is why she makes the argument near the end of her advertisement about ‘grit’ and ‘determination.’ After all, picking on OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN in the interests of $tudent $ucce$$ can be tough sledding [e.g., just talk to John “Montessori” King or Cami “See Ya Later” Anderson]. So saddle up cage busters!
😡
To wit [click on the WAPO link provided in this posting]:
[start quote]
“Okay,” the opt-out crowd replies, “what about kids who are stressed out and suffering from anxiety because of standardized tests?” You know what? Life can be stressful; it can be challenging. The alternative is to hand out trophies just for participating, give out straight A’s for fear of damaging a kid’s ego — and continue to fall further and further behind as a country. I reject that mind-set.
[end quote]
Okey dokey, “in it to win it” and “when the going gets tough, the tough get going” and “winning isn’t everything it’s the only thing” blabhblahblah.
It is now almost exactly two months since Michelle Rhee showed her “grit” and “determination” by debating/discussing with Diane Ravitch at Lehigh University on Feb. 6 in a public setting.
Oops! My bad! After months and months of steely iron-willed dodging and redefining and changing the terms and conditions of that public dialogue—
She unceremoniously fled screaming from something that “can be stressful,” that “can be challenging.” Could she have been in fear of “damaging a[n]… ego”? Her own? Doesn’t she “reject that mind-set”?
And yet, and yet, from a 2011 interview:
[start quote]
“We’ve lost our competitive spirit. We’ve become so obsessed with making kids feel good about themselves that we’ve lost sight of building the skills they need to actually be good at things.
“I can see it in my own household. I have two girls, 8 and 12, and they play soccer. And I can tell you that they suck at soccer! They take after their mother in athletic ability. But if you were to see their rooms, they’re adorned with ribbons, medals and trophies. You’d think I was raising the next Mia Hamm.
“I routinely try to tell my kids that their soccer skills are lacking and that if they want to be better, they have to practice hard. I also communicate to them that all the practice in the world won’t guarantee that they’ll ever be great at soccer. It’s tough to square this, though, with the trophies. And that’s part of the issue. We’ve managed to build a sense of complacency with our children.”
[end quote]
Link: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/michelle-rhee/what-rhees-comments-about-her.html
So her children are far better at a sport than she has been, or ever will be, at ensuring a better education for OTHER PEOPLE’S but they “suck at soccer”???
😳
Perhaps the Karmic Gods of Retribution will gift her, for a few seconds someday, with a most horrifying present: genuine insight into her own words and actions.
With any luck, it will occur the moment she sits down for a cool one at Pink Slip Bar & Grill while Señor Swacker and Linda and Ang and Socrates and I are knocking back a few. And we are witness to those immoral, er, immortal words:
IT SUCKS TO BE ME.
One can only hope…
😎
P.S. Although in all honesty, Socrates sometimes takes these things much too seriously. He just might ask the bartender to surprise her with a mug of his best hemlock; when she asks who’s treating, he’ll just do that Socratic smile of his and say put it on his tab. Really, those old Greek guys have a deadly sense of humor…
😏
P.P.S. Dee Dee, you now have the definitive answer to your rheetorical question “Have they no shame?????”
Diane, you hit the nail on the head:
Michelle Rhee is a fierce advocate for charters and vouchers because she believes in choice. Why doesn’t she believe that parents should be able to choose to say no to state testing?
The emperor has no clothes!
It’s interesting that whenever Diane Ravitch posts about
Michelle Rhee or Walmart
Those posts immediately shoot to the top of her most visited.
What blows me away, continues to blow me away, is that anyone pays any attention whatsoever to what the clueless Michelle “Erase to the Top” Rhee has to say about education. She is not an educator. She plays one at staged Education Deform propaganda rallies. She is a highly paid SPOKESMODEL.
Listening to her talk about what we should do in our schools is like listening to the late Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church talk about astrophysics.
Just to discover who was more popular to Google’s search engine, I Googled “Michelle Rhee” and came up with 842,000 results in 0.46 seconds.
Then I Googled “Diane Ravitch” and the Google search resulted in 665,000 hits in 0.38 seconds.
Next, I turned to Alexa to discover the ranking of Diane and Rhee’s Websites and Blogs. Alexa ranks more than 30 million Blogs/Websites based on a complex algorithm.
Diane Ravitch.com’s global rank for her Website was 1.985 million and the site’s US rank was 290,570. But Diane Ravitch.net, her Blog, was ranked 82,035 for global and 14,901 for the US.
Next, I checked Michelle Rhee’s “Student First” site that includes both the Website and Blog on one site, to see its Alexa rank: 327,102 global and 74,071 for the US
Michelle Rhee may have more print and air time in the traditional corporate media the fake ed reformers seem to control but Diane rules the Internet when we compare her Alexa ranking with Rhee’s.
Then I checked YouTube to see who had more media coverage because the traditional TV news media often posts on YouTube. “Michelle Rhee” resulted in 15,900 hits.
“Diane Ravitch” 9,230.
From these results, here’s a suggestion for Diane to think about:
Diane might want to consider starting her own YouTube media network and video tape a three minute or less news segment each day to post on YouTube. The reason I suggest three minutes or less is because shorter YouTube videos tend to attract a larger audience and keep them.
Diane, trust me, it isn’t that difficult to film a short video and post it on YouTube. The software to do this comes with all Apple and Microsoft based computers and is very easy to learn and use and there are many tutorials on YouTube that teach how to do this.
Then you just have to have a high definition camera and a pleasant setting to talk to your public. Because you’ve been on the TV news many times, you’d be great at this but just keep the broadcasts brief.
Think of this. Every time you post a video segment on YouTube, every blogger who follows you may embed that video in a post on their Blog reaching a much wider audience. Just make sure you do not make your videos on YouTube exclusive.
You could even have guests and conduct a weekly or monthly round table that would run about 15 minutes (longer may scare people away—short is always better to reach a wider audience). And these guests don’t have to come to you you to them because they may film their segment from their home during a conference call and then send you (or whoever edits the videos before posting) the clip so it could be edited into one before uploading to YouTube.
Something to think about. In fact, you could embed those YouTube videos into posts on your Blog too.
:o)
The media is a weapon in this war. Use it wisely.
This is all excellent advice, Lloyd. I stand in awe of what Diane has accomplished. I posted yesterday the suggestion that some of us assist her in creating a home studio there in New York from which she could broadcast live to avoid having her risk life and limb traipsing around the country. To lapse for a moment into the Rheformish tongue, is at present U.S. education’s most valuable asset.
Thanks, Lloyd, for your gods ideas. I’m not competing with Michelle Rhee. Someone once advised me, “Never punch beneath your weight.” I don’t want to be a guru or a star. My goal is to encourage many people to see what is happening and to take the lead in their own school and community. I want thousands of people speaking up for what’s right. I want to build the Resistance Movement. I will be gone but the Movement will live and grow.
I understand but I don’t see this as competing with Rhee.
I see this as spreading the word through multiple media formats. As a teacher, we learned that we had to plan lessons that reached as many learning modalities as possible and many people are strong visual learners. Leave out the visual element and we lose that audience and those students. Video is a powerful visual media.
And as you spread the word and debate aren’t you teaching and America is your classroom?
Kids grow up to be adults and the modalities they learn through may not change all that much.
In addition, there are people who read others but you can’t read them when they are printed words on a screen or page. You read them when you see them visually. These same people may read that Michell Rhee is a fake while your passion and sincerity would reach out from the screen and grab them by the heart and the intellect.
Nowadays, I’m assuming that Diane’s public appearances get taped. Why not put bits on Youtube? NPE could be doing that and posting(?) other people’s appearances as well. I don’t think Diane needs anything else to manage.
Who is the bigger ignoramus . . . ?
Michelle Rhee?
or
the media that fauns over her?
Yes.
Obviously, it’s not an either or….it’s both.
There are many examples of the media diving down the rabbit hole chasing a false story that boosts readership followed by increased ad revenues.
The free press isn’t about honest and balanced reporting. It’s about profits.
And no better example than the NYTimes editorial page on education.
Has anyone seen this:
Welcome to the “New Normal”
The News Media and Neoliberal Reforming Education
The Intro starts:
“The manufactured crisis in education has been foisted on the American people by
reformers (Duncan, Rhee, Gates, Obama and others) brilliantly pushing the “public education crisis” narrative.”
The Conclusions start with:
Neoliberal school reformers have gained amazing control of the narrative, and the media has helped to bring this about by reinforcing a new hegemonic discourse with its longstanding attacks against teachers, teachers’ unions, and organized labor in general (Gerstl-Pepin, 2002, 2007; McLaren & Fischman, 1998; Wallace, 1997). That the Obama Administration is taking part in the attacks indicates a break with, and betrayal of, one of the Democrats’ staunchest supporters: organized labor.
http://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=jiae
I’m a retired teacher from NYC. I saw the disastrous effects of the neoliberal policies implemented by Bloomberg/Klein. My thoughts at the time which continue to the present were that Bloomberg couldn’t care less about public education. He cared about one thing and that was cutting cost. Cutting cost meant ending seniority transfer rights which went hand-in-hand with school closures leaving veteran teachers unwanted since they cost more. NYC DOE placed ads that it was unable to fire those unqualified (high cost veterans) teachers that were unwanted. Fortunately the NYC public didn’t buy into that smear campaign. Unfortunately the billionaire boys club (Diane Ravitch’s term) found another way to end due process (tenure): High stakes testing. If a teacher in NY gets a negative evaluation for two consecutive years said teacher would be fired. Voila! The end of tenure. I believe the regulations tying teacher evaluation to high stakes testing has been put on hold for now. One more comment: High stakes testing only makes up 20-40 percent of a teachers evaluation but counts as 100 percent if student test scores are inadequate.
This is a great idea! Not to compete with Rhee, but to get the word out in more ways. My Queens NY neighborhood started a community group to support our local schools and public schools as a whole. One thing that came up at our last meeting was, how can we expose Pearson in the media. The more media coverage of all types the better. Quick education news rundowns on YouTube is inspired!
Reading her column, I felt like I was listening to her interview on the Today show again. Is she Just going to repeat herself over and over and over again?… Actually, come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea. The more she does, the more incompetent she becomes and the more people will begin to see the shenanigans going on in this country.
Michelle Rhee has all of the characteristics of a narcissistic manipulative personality. She is clearly egotistical, and carries “an attitude of self-conceited arrogance.” She is concerned primarily with herself. Indeed, her organization might better be termed “RheeFirst” rather than StudentsFirst.
Rhee also suffers from a severe lack of empathy, and a lack of consideration for other people. That ‘s why she so coldly “invited a PBS film crew to watch her fire a principal.”
Manipulative people like control, and anyone who knows anything about Rhee knows that she is very, very controlling. Rhee lives in a world of fantasy, an imaginary world in which she is omnipotent and others should do what she says…or else. As a teacher, ” she controlled her restless class by putting duct tape on their mouths.” As chancellor of the D.C. schools, she fired or demoted those who disagreed with her or challenged her.
Like many abnormal manipulators, Rhee engages in extensive prevarication. It’s hardly a stretch to call her a pathological liar. Pathological liars exhibit certain common traits. They spew a “repeated utterance of untruths; the lies are often repeated over a period of years.” The lies become a “normal” way of life for them.
Some suggest that pathological liars are delusional. They cannot differentiate their lies from reality. Others suggest that many pathological liars are willful. Their lies are purposeful, designed to get them what they want. I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether Rhee suffers from grandiose delusions or she lies to advance her Rhee-first agenda, or a combination of the two. For Rhee, like most pathological liars, the “utterance of lies comes just as quickly and naturally as speaking truth comes to other people.”
People like MIchelle Rhee are not mentally healthy people. They really have no business in positions of leadership.
Michelle Rhee is all about MIchelle Rhee. She’s a prima donna. She’s vain. She is controlling and temperamental. She isn’t very knowledgeable.
And she’s just about the last person anyone should listen to regarding educational improvement. As the record makes clear, Michelle Rhee just cannot –– will not –– tell the truth.
One of the Rheejects most favored tactics is to politely pretend she has the permission and authority to “explain” her oppositions “real” motivations and positions on an issue, and to then take apart the straw man she has pulled out of her ass. She does this on such a regular basis that she needs to be called on the carpet about it regularly as well. This is a part of the reason she refused to debate Ravitch, her lame excuses notwithstanding. In a live debate with a competent opponent, her favored weapon would be instantly exposed and turned against her. And yes, this is also a strong indication that she is now just phoning it in as a way of having “shown up anyway” in spite of her loss of credibility with the public. This is to maintain credibility as a spokesmodel with the lame stream media and her funders while the real work of lobbying and buying politicians goes forward behind the scenes.
I appreciate the fact that Michelle Rhee is involved in her child’s education and can be vocal in opinions about what is best for her kids. However, as a teacher, one would think that she would first focus on how to provide the genuine learning activities and real-world problem solving experiences that the Common Core attempts to facilitate. Before an opt-out, I would have liked to hear how Michelle tried to support learning for her kids.
Long Islanders refused in record numbers: Over 20,000 Long Island students refused the first round of state tests this April. The leaders weigh in.
http://www.longislandpress.com/2014/04/07/thousands-of-long-islanders-opt-out-of-common-core-testing/
I appreciate the passion with which my fellow educators rally against the standardization of American education; nor do I wish to defend a woman whose policy positions I do not support. I would remind both Ms. Ravitch and my colleagues, however, that Ms. Rhee is a human, a woman, and a mother. Let’s not allow our vitriol to fuel personal, offensive, and out-of-line attacks on another human being and her private, family choices. Attack her policies and her positions, but leave her family and punning name calling out of your critique; it does not advance or legitimize your argument.
When classroom-allergic theoreticians can explain Common Core as easily as they can count their lobbying loot …
When politicians sit for 3rd and 8th grade assessment exams … in full public view … just like every 8 and 13 year old is required to do …
And when every business mogul, politician, and government bureaucrat enrolls their children in public school …
Then you can ask me why I’m refusing these assessments … and protecting childhood.
~ Denis Ian