Last week, I reported that StudentsFirst had departed from Minnesota and Florida. I assumed the pickings were slim in the former, and the “reform” camp had saturated the state of Florida. Well, there is more to the story, as I learned when I discovered a week-old politico.com in my spam box.
StudentsFirst has also pulled out of Maine, Indiana, and Iowa. It has laid off six staff members. As politico.com reports:
“It’s still active in 10 states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and New York. The organization hasn’t brought in anywhere near the $1 billion that Rhee confidently predicted she would raise when she founded the group in 2010. But she has collected more than $60 million in donations in the past few years. That’s been enough to make sizable contributions to candidates and political committees around the country, to run TV, radio and web ads promoting her education reform agenda and hire top lobbyists to work state capitols from coast to coast. StudentsFirst also maintains a staff of 110 people — up from 75 in 2012.”
If you judge it by its actions, not its rhetoric, Rhee’s organization exists to elect advocates of charters and vouchers, as well as avowed enemies of teachers’ unions, tenure, and seniority. It would be nice if its ads and literature made clear that it raises money for privatization and opposition to any contracts rights for teachers.
Which reminds me: I received an email from a virtual friend in Mississippi today, pointing out that the state had no teachers’ unions and no tenure. He thought that was a good thing. He also mentioned that Mississippi was last in the nation in academic performance. I asked him which part of the state’s agenda should be a national model. I don’t think that unions or tenure necessarily lead to high performance, but there’s no evidence that getting rid of them is a recipe for success.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So much for the $1 billion she’ll raise. She was always prone to exaggeration.
The house of cards is falling down. Guess that’s what happens when you build an organization based on lies and half-truths.
Layoffs due to budget issues: Sounds like SF is getting a dose of some traditional public school district reality.
Sounds more like a lie to me.
Reformers at Pasadena City College
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/a_lack_of_leadership/13067/
“Faculty relations and shared governance have become a joke,” one faculty member wrote in a recent anonymous survey taken of faculty members. “Morale is at a 25-year low and yet it feels like the president and board are turning a blind eye and blaming the faculty for being whiners. I am a good, loyal, valued faculty member who has never voiced any complaints until this regime.”
That staff member met with Rocha several times, according to the survey comments, and left those meetings without hope of improvement. “I have come to the rather frustrating and hopeless conclusion that positive change is not possible while Dr. Rocha and [Vice President] Dr. [Robert] Bell are in their positions. Dr. Rocha is a bully and Dr. Bell is incompetent. Please, somebody hear our comments and help.”
Thanks Susan for this far more informed report than that of the LA Times today. They did a credible job last year when they reported that students were dropping out of community colleges due to lack of classes necessary to graduate. These were too packed to accept enough students who required them for their degrees. We do not need more hyperbole but PCC and others of the California CC system must direct funding to increasing mandated classes…and it should not take 6 years, rather then two, to get an AA degree.
Here is another article on Rocha and PCC. I posted the link earlier, but it’s still in moderation.
Beginning of the end
Leaked memo allegedly written by PCC president criticizes students and school
By André Coleman 05/13/2014
Rocha goes on to praise his PCC Senior Leadership Team of administrators, which he put together shortly after coming to the college four years ago.
“I’ve never been around a better group of leaders than you,” the memo states. “I take some pride in having a hand in putting this team together. The essential prerequisite for success — getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus — has been accomplished … Make no mistake, we will keep our jobs and pensions [well maybe our jobs]. But as TS Eliot said ‘it doesn’t end with a bang, but with a whimper.’ In other words PCC will never go out of business, but it will slowly devolve into its pre-1988 state: small and decrepit.”
Ross Selvidge, a member of the PCC Board of Trustees, told the Weekly that Rocha left for vacation shortly after the Friday evening commencement ceremony and is aware of the memo. Rocha did not return five calls made to his office Friday seeking comment about the memo.
Rocha has not denied authenticity of the memo, Selvidge said.
“I don’t have any reason to not believe it is from him,” Selvidge told the Weekly. “That is a terribly incorrect characterization of PCC. I went here in the ’60s and nobody would have considered PCC to be small and decrepit.”
A faculty member who wished not to be named also placed blame on the Board of Trustees.
“The Board of Trustees is just sitting by and watching this happen in my opinion,” the professor said. “Rocha is not proving to be a competent leader because our student success is down, enrollment is down. All of this mess he has caused is bringing our school down.”
When asked if the board should remove Rocha, the professor responded “Yes, please. He bulldozes over policy and does what he wants without following procedure.”
Can’t buy me love. . . .
Everybody tells me so.
Can’t buy me love. . . .
No. No. No. No. No.
Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa is running for the Republican nomination for Governor in AZ. He is the most moderate of the other very far right candidates. But he brought Michelle Rhee and Kevin Johnson to AZ for a fundraiser. Smith was never a contender for me. I’ll be voting for Fred Duval, the Democrat.
http://vamboozled.com/rhee-coming-to-az/