After I blogged about Change.org dropping Michelle Rhee and Jonah Edelman, I got an email from a representative of Change.org asking me to explain its policy on my blog. I told him my concern was not with its policy, but with the deception involved in signing people up as members of an organization they did not wish to join. On our third exchange of emails, he informed me that I was a member of Students First. He said his records showed that I had signed one of its petitions a year ago. He gave me a website where I could view my member profile, but I was unwilling to click on the link for fear that doing so would reconfirm my “membership.” Maybe the second click would put me in a category of “active” membership.
This is horrifying. I never knowingly signed to join Michelle Rhee’s Students First.
When Rhee boasts of her huge membership, she is counting people like me who were snared without their knowledge. She is using my name to inflate her numbers.
This is deceptive practice. It is fraudulent. There ought to be a way to bring a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission or some other watchdog agency to protest the deceptive capture and misuse of my name and that of many others.
I choose the organizations I join with care and forethought. I didn’t choose to belong to Students First.
Michelle Rhee, take my name off your membership list!
How can I do it without clicking the website of the organization that entrapped me? Is there a place to click that says “remove my name?”
On a happier note, a reader informed me that a Chicago teacher named Jen Johnson started the ball rolling with a campaign called “Change.org: Stop Supporting Union-Busters” Petition.”
We must celebrate every small victory. We must remember that lone individuals can make a difference.
Change begins with one person.
Sometimes change begins with one writer, like Thomas Paine, or one speaker, like Martin Luther King Jr.
Change begins with one and then multiplies. Many people signed the petition, others wrote. I mentioned Aaron Krager in the earlier post. Another post may have played a part in changing Change.org.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Calling this organization “Students First” is a little like calling union-busting laws “Right To Work” legislation…
I feel your pain! Perhaps it was the same petition but a friend forwarded an anti-bullying petition and not only did I sign it, I fear I sent it on to others…only weeks later discovering that the action “added” me a a member of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst.
Considering StudentsFirst should really be called StudentsLast, I immediately thought about removing my name – but instead waited to see what they would write. No disappointment there – I received email after email about legislation here in Connecticut with some of the communications, I believe, taking place before StudentsFirst even registered to lobby – which would likely count as a violation of Connecticut law.
It happened to me also, but I had no idea where they got my name. Now I know. I kept writing replies to their emails that were antagonistic and they finally stopped contacting me. But I’m probably still counted as a member. Thanks for shining a light!
I have the same issue. I suspected I was unwittingly made a member of Students First when I saw them listed on my Change.org list of “My Organizations”, so I deleted them. However, I could not figure out how to opt out of the membership and feared doing so on their website. Well, I just attempted to do it now, but it seemed like I could only opt out of their mailings and not actually cancel the membership itself.
So, if anyone knows how to cancel the Students First membership, please be sure to share that with us.
Thanks!
i decided to write to them to ask how to opt out of these bogus memberships. Will report back if they reply.
thanks for letting me know. I’m afraid to give them another click.
When you consider how many of us, professional educators, have been duped into signing petitions and thereby suckered into memberships in organiziations we oppose, due to the “puppies and kittens” approach used by corporate sponsored deformers (who truly are wolves in sheeps clothing), it’s evident that the general public and mainstream media would also have a hard time keeping straight what side folks are actually on in the education saga, since that can’t be readily discerned by all the spin and enticing names of organizations and causes.
Does anyone know of a current, comprehensive “Who’s Who” list of key players and their affiliations, from both sides of the aisle, including corporate backers, that is online and which clearly delineates where organizations and people really stand on education issues for folks, including for parents and for those who might want to investigate what is happening to public education across the country? If so, could you please provide a link to it?
I don’t think a list like, “The Futures of School Reform: Who’s Who” is particularly helpful for most people, because it requires too much background knowledge to understand, such as requiring readers to already know that the Hoover Institution is uber conservative and that “human-capital” is corporate-speak: http://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/futures-of-school-reform/whoswho.html
I have heard that such a list is being compiled. A “who’s who” of the corporate ed reform sector. It appears there is a deliberate effort to use anodyne names to deceive the public. To use terms like “reform,” “equality,” ” excellence,” even “Democrats,” etc when the real purpose of the organization is to privatize schools, to crush unions, and to reduce the status of teachers.
I recently ran across this site on a blog it is called they rule http://www.theyrule.net/
I clicked the recent maps button and they were posted in 2011. I believe their is a disclaimer about the info on the map constantly changing so it is difficult to keep it totally up to date.
I am a visual person and this certainly helped me grasp the reality of the “network”- you might find it useful.
OK, I’m glad to say I’m NOT a member! Though I do recall them prompting me to sign a petition in support of Students First when I signed something else. It was very misleading!
You are undoubtedly familiar with Susan Ohanian. She has been documenting the “reform” movement for nearly a decade at her website, susanohanian.org. If anyone could compile such a list rapidly, it’s Susan. She is dogged in following the money and has encyclopedic knowledge on the standards/accountability movement and it’s various players.
Diane, we all make mistakes!
This is a first amendment issue: freedom of association and speech. A group can’t force its membership and speech on others. It’s worth consulting a lawyer on this. Maybe a class action can be had.
In my experience, teachers shrink from being aggressive and defending themselves, but that needs to change. Both Rhee and Edelman have been aggressive in their attacks on teachers, and if I’m not mistaken, they’ve used or threatened to use the legal system. Teachers need to be more aggressive and not be afraid to use the legal system to defend themselves when the opportunity presents itself.
It can’t hurt to look into it.
You are right but it would be hard to find the other members of the class.
Is it possible to obtain membership lists for Stand for Children and Students First? If the lists can be put online and linked, people can see if they are members. If someone finds he is a member, but he never consciously joined, but he signed petitions on Change.org, that person may be a potential plaintiff.
I don’t know. I’ve never done this sort of thing before. It’s worth a try, though, if someone out there with a stomach for this sort of thing wants to do the legwork and look into it. I’m just sick of watching teachers being victimized.
I truly believe that we are going to need a series of all kinds of different lawsuits from all angles for years, a la what was done in the years prior to Brown vs Board. Hopefully, culminating in a similar decision against the privatizing forces.
Diane, concerned citizens have been posting on Change. Org’s Facebook page to ask why Change has not removed a single StudentFirst petition:
https://www.facebook.com/change.org
These user comments included linking to your blog posts explaining how Change.Org has been used to trick people into siging Michelle Ree petitions. The links to your blog as well as comments on this trickery were all DELETED by Change.Org Facebook admins. At the same time, Change finally stepped forward on Facebook to offer this defense of why they have removed Stand petitions but NOT Student First petitions:
“Change.org here, hoping to clarify why sponsored Students First petitions are still live on the site. As you all know, we have been listening closely to the community of Change.org users, and we decided to end both contracts while our client policy is under review. The Stand for Children contract has already concluded, and we are taking steps to conclude the Students First contract. Given the legal terms of our agreement, that can’t happen instantaneously – that’s why you’re still seeing petitions on the site. But we have committed to concluding it, and that decision has been communicated to Students First. Thanks again for caring enough about our company to make your voice heard.”
They don’t offer any timeframe for the process. But at least this confirms the truth: all Student First petitions are alive and in full effect on Change.Org as of today, June 21, in spite of public comments to the media that these petitions had been removed.
Students First sent me (and all the other profs at my college, I guess) an email asking me to find a student to be the student leader of Students First on my campus. We already have TfA recruiting our students. What next? (But I didn’t answer it, so maybe they don’t know who I am…)
Diane, I had the same problem. http://msteacher65.tumblr.com/post/24901512311/michelle-rhee-no-friend-to-educators
Welcome to the Club of unintended members. I’ve written 3 times and even published an open letter to Students First in many Florida newspapers, on PAA’s site and elsewhere. But, I’m still on their list!
Everyone should publicly state – somewhere – in a blog, on facebook, on twitter, in an op ed — somewhere that they are not a member of SF Org. Parents Across America tackled this issue a year ago. We relentlessly contacted the Change.org management team as did other groups who also felt duped but to no avail.
About a year ago Change.org repeatedly told us (PAA) what we experienced was not happening–like a remake of Gaslight!
Imagine my surprise while sitting in Tallahassee at a Senate Hearing to hear from a FL Students First Director that Florida has nearly a “million members of Students First.” I haven’t met one. I make it a point to ask everyone I meet now since March 3, 2012. Not one member. I guess I have to get out more.
Students First claims 1.3 million members nationally–maybe more by now. It says it has 170,000 in California alone. That impresses politicians. If they are members the same way that I became a “member,” by clicking on a link to someone else’s petition or by clicking on one of their ads that asked simply, “Do you want great teachers in our classrooms” without identifying whose website it was, then the membership numbers are bogus. That explains what happened in Alabama. Students First sent people to lobby for a charter bill, claiming thousands of members in Alabama, but only 20 people showed up for a meeting in Montgomery. In Hartford, where Students First spent almost $1 million lobbying for Governor Malloy’s bill, Michelle Rhee called a rally and only 75 people appeared; many were journalists.
Dear Diane, your concern SHOULD be with Change.org’s policy as much as with Rhee’s deceptive tactics. The business model of Change.org enables the abuse, and so long as that’s true the progressive image of Change is nothing but a pitch to draw in more honest grassroots campaigns that can become automated recruitment vehicles for their (paying) opposition. Despite a statement to the press implying a response to concerns, Change. org continues to run 3 StudentsFirst petitions. Those active campaigns and all 34 StudentsFirst petitions on record on Change.org, whose 1,275,700 signatures (on last count) were obtained by misleading viral-marketing features provided by Change.org only to paying clients, ought to be disabled immediately and their contact lists withheld from StudentsFirst. And we ought to be asking, furthermore, how many other causes are being subverted in this way on Change.org. If we think of the sheer configuration of honest campaigns from around the country and the world that become the infrastructure for Change.org profits, routing for-pay campaigns like Rhee’s to identified supporters of “related” causes, the scheme passing as the Change.org policy begins to emerge in its disturbing fullness. As things stand now, Change.org is a bait advertiser’s (and a bait lobbyist’s) dream.