Well, this is a relief:
This morning, StudentsFirst CEO Michelle Rhee drafted a memo to the organization’s senior staff — it was later sent internally to the entire StudentsFirst staff — regarding the organization’s opposition to any and all proposed laws that would allow guns in schools. That memo is printed below in its entirety.
MEMO
TO: SF Staff
FROM: Michelle
DATE: December 18, 2012
RE: Gun Control Laws
As an education reform organization, we try hard to remain singularly focused on those issues that directly affect student achievement, and to abstain from broader policy debates and political discussions that are outside our mission.
It is for that reason we did not take a position on measures like the one on the governor’s desk in Michigan that would allow guns in schools. There are organizations whose sole mission is to fight gun violence, and which are far better equipped than we to engage on these bills.
However, like many of you, I continue to be disturbed by the violence that took place last week in Newtown, Connecticut. I am disturbed by the dozens of shootings that have taken place in recent years at schools across the country.
It should go without saying that guns have no place in schools. Schools must be safe havens for teaching and learning — that is a basic obligation to children that comes before anything else.
Accordingly, I have come to the conclusion that StudentsFirst must publicly oppose legislation that would bring firearms into schools, anywhere. That includes opposing SB 59 in Michigan. We urge our members to voice their opposition as well. While gun control issues fall outside our direct policy agenda, I have absolutely no reluctance taking this position. I am convinced that allowing firearms in schools cannot help advance student achievement or put the interests of students first.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is right when he says that our nation’s leaders must not let this moment pass without taking strong action.
If you have any questions about our position or our thinking in taking this position please don’t hesitate to contact Eric Lerum or myself.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why in the world would anyone want advice from her or care what she thinks?
Crappy teacher, crappy chancellor, liar, tell me again why anyone who works in schools everyday needs any tips from the Rheeject?
But apparently there is a slight improvement in her message….here she didn’t refer to our precious children as a$$et$.
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About time!
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Especially since she is a “national leader”. Must have taken a long time to confer with her handlers. Well she said the right thing. Now let’s see her do the right thing.
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Good point, Karen. Rhee’s “handlers” must have recommended damage control to rehabilitate her public image, since she came across as self-serving in her failure to recognize how courageously Sandy Hook teachers put their “students first,” and insensitive in her characterization of children as “assets.” And declaring as important a safety matter as legalizing guns in schools to not be within the scope of her organizations’s mission just looked like political pandering to her right-wing allies.
It had struck me as bizarre that, initially, she did not take a stand either way, which got me to wondering… since when does Rhee NOT see virtually everything regarding education as under her purview?
Then I remembered what she does not include: In her single-minded perception of students’ test scores as the most important barometer of teacher effectiveness, she overlooks a number of critical cognitive and affective teacher characteristics –all of which are important every day in the classroom, but according to recent reports, were also key factors in reducing the number of casualties at Sandy Hook.
These include organization, creativity, problem-solving, especially under extreme stress, as well as care, dedication and selflessness, among others. Maybe you have to be a genuine educator, not a “missionary” teacher temp, to comprehend the full importance of such teacher qualities, but one would hope that someone who has involved themselves so thoroughly in dictating education policy would have taken the blinders off and looked at the whole picture by now..
Funny, I don’t see you as having “handlers.” Am I right?
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Anyone who believes a thing she says is not knowledgable or in their right mind. She gave up custody of her children. Students Last backed those crazy people in Michigan who are putting up those crazy laws. She is late to the table and has had a lot of blowback. Is it any wonder that her handlers told her to make a statement like this. Students Last is an organization against teachers. If you want to watch her uncut speach in L.A. just go to George1la on You Tube and you can watch her and Gloria Romers who is head of the DFER in California uncut. Watch Romero try to answer real questions at her press conference.
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Regarding the sentence, “If you have any questions about our position or our thinking in taking this position please don’t hesitate to contact Eric Lerum or myself.”[Reflexive pronouns] can often be found within text where the writer has tried to formulate a more professional looking letter without a true understanding of the language they are using.” (Wikipedia) Yes, Ms. Rhee TRIES… WITHOUT A TRUE UNDERSTANDING. Myself vs.me is merely one minuscule example.
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Given the tragedy and the loss of life in CT, one would think she could muster up more compassion in her statement. Someone with her background and current position in education, not a comment of compassion, just self-preservation. All the her focus is on achievement, achievement, achievement.
I may offend some by saying this, but dead children cannot be tested and raise achievement scores.
Good teachers always do good things for and with children. Please always remember that it is about children. The surviving children most likely will not perform well on tests. This may interfere with the Master Plan.
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This is a little off topic, but there is a school in Texas which has armed the staff, not everyone:
December 18, 2012 7:15 PM
Texas school district encourages armed teachers for protection
ByAnna Werner .Play CBS News Video
Elementary School Rampage
Complete Coverage »
.
HARROLD, Texas — There’s at least one school that welcome firearms to class.
It believes nothing makes a school safer than teachers who are armed,
The Harrold Independent School District is one building with 103 students. It’s 20 minutes away from the nearest sheriff’s station. Superintendent David Thweatt created what he calls a “guardian plan” after the attack at Virginia Tech.
“These people that go in and do these horrible acts, they’re evil. But they’re not that crazy — they always know where they are going to get resistance,” Thweatt said.
Teachers and administrators here carry concealed handguns. They won’t say how many faculty members are armed. They get extra training, but the district would not give us details.
Some people are horrified when he starts talking about putting guns in schools with children, but Thweatt said it’s important to be safe.
“Sure, but it’s a pretty horrific thing that happened the other day.” Thweatt said. “And quite a few people are not horrified. Quite a few people we have in our district, since we have a high-transfer district, people bring their students to us for that protection.”
Texas law allows concealed weapons in schools with a district’s permission. Harrold was the first district to do it. A similar proposal was vetoed by Michigan’s governor Tuesday.
Thweatt says allowing the firearms into the school will dissuade anyone who wants to hurt the kids.
“That’s the bottom line,” he said.
Since the shootings in Connecticut, Superintendent Thweatt has gotten calls from districts around the state and as far away as Missouri from school administrators asking whether they might be able to implement similar plans.
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It’s nuts, we are living in armed camps. When teachers are carrying guns in school, we have failed as a society, as a civilzation.
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And I suspect that the last thing an elementary teacher wants to be is armed. They are in the job because they love small kids.
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It’s interesting how Students First makes their decisions. Like 50Can, these are pretty top down organizations. Her memo contains no reference to a board or members or anyone other than herself in the decision making process. Though I agree with her on this one, I wonder what kind of positions they’d take if they were truly the grassroots organization they claim to be.
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Disturbed? You’re disturbed? And it took you five days to let people know.
Disturbed? Michelle, you get disturbed when your steak is medium and you ordered well done. You get disturbed when the dry cleaning isn’t ready when you go to pick it up. You get disturbed when a few bad questions get included in a standardized test.
TWENTY. TWENTY children and six courageous adults were murdered. You’re not OUTRAGED? You’re not out of your mind crazy over this? You’re not going to schools to hug kids and see kids hug adults? You’re not providing advice to parents on how to listen to kids and turn off the television? You’re not going to talk to every teacher you know and say “I get it – I am so sorry – thank you.” You’re not going to the secretaries who sit at the entrance desk buzzing strangers into buildings and saying I know what you must be feeling?”
Well, myself and a lot of me colleagues are outraged and as outraged that you even have a voice in this matter miles from the trenches.
Oh – wait – you need to be careful that the Senators and Reps below and the others in the linked blog who receive NRA $$$$ don’t stop funding you, too.
John McCain, $481,765… Marco Rubio, $46,689, John Boehner, $45,075, Michelle Bachmann, $36,852…
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Thoughtful response, Jere. “Well, myself and a lot of me colleagues are outraged and as outraged that you even have a voice in this matter miles from the trenches.”
Couldn’t agree more. It is an outrage that this failed educator is dictating so much policy! That is what she is — a failed teacher. She was in the classroom for a few years, only. And those were not successful years! Didn’t she tape kids’ mouths shut, and weren’t there erasure scandals?
We need to repeat, over and over again that some of these ed policy makers are in no position to be there, because they were not successful teachers in the first place. Michelle Rhee was a failed teacher.
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Read about her on Wikipedia. She fired teachers for “allegations” and not for convictions. Wikipedia paints her as a dictator.
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So Rhee comes out against SB59 on the same day that Rick Snyder vetoes the bill.
Golly, I wonder if she had an inkling of what he was going to do…
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http://thinkingaboutschools-jhstlny.blogspot.com/
link of two lists worth skimming quickly in relation to comment above
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Rhee had to wait until her financial backers came out against guns in schools before she did.
Dora
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I suspect you are right.
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I think Poverty Pimp Rhee was having anxiety because she realized that all eyes were not focused on her for a couple of days. She would say or do anything to keep her name and Student Last front and center. Her response was not sincere, it was self serving, and it was just attention seeking behavior. PP Rhee is like those students who try to take a teacher down by going on and on and on!
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Presumably, after conferring with her funders, Ms. Rhee concluded that the destruction of assets (formerly known as “children”) results in a net loss in production (previously called “education”).
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Rhee says her organization only focuses on the betterment of a child’s education. Well guns, violence in schools and on the streets of neighborhoods, affect student achievement. Children being murdered in their classroom making children afraid to go to school or damaging the survivors affects student achievement. If they are being killed, they are not achieving. A real teacher knows this.
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What is Rhee’s stance on banning Duck Tape in the classroom?
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Or banning Kevin Johnson from the classroom?
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If the US media had a modicum of integrity no one would know this woman’s name.
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Her message was just damage control, so we don’t focus on the fact that her movement is all about improving test scores. I don’t see this message as much of a relief, just PR. Would she take still take that position, if it were not politically feasible, and there were some public pressure to allow guns into schools?
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The comments here about the position of StudentsFirst, a position that virtually every poster agrees with, are very disturbing. If you treat the other side in a policy debate as being subhuman, not ever acknowledging that they are correct even when they agree with you, there is no hope of coming to a consensus,
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The whole point of organizations like StudentsFirst is to stifle democracy. The only point of view that matters are those already given plenty of power in policy.
StudentsFirst is not some organization which lacks power. It has a lot of money and political support, quite disproportionate to what teachers have, and Rhee’s impact has been real.
Let’s not victimize Rhee and her group. Any group with that much influence is not a victim. They have worked to stifle professional voices and the democratic process. These are inconvenient truths,
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How does it stifle democracy? Is it taking power from legislatures? Is it suppressing the vote?
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By pushing to privatize schools, and diminish unions. These are democratic hallmarks — the right for public and community control of schools, and the right to organize,
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Community control of schools has not been without problems. The government can always step in with appropriate regulation of charter schools.
Is a group of parents organizing to create a charter school like Community Roots in NYC undemocratic?
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They push charter schools, which do not have democratically elected boards, as well as mayoral control of schools –also with appointed not elected school boards.
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Is the mayor unelected?
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Democracy doesn’t end with an election. Simply being mayor does not mean you can impose your will without community support. Remember when NYC Bloomberg tried to make Cathie Black head of NYC schools, although most New Yorkers were against it?
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The same is true for the virtuous elected school boards of the post I was responding to.
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In places like Chicago, where dead people voted for decades, schools have been under mayoral control for 17 years and there has never been an elected school board. Machine politics run by Democrats is entrenched in Chicago. The last Republican mayor was elected in 1927.
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And the machine. In Chicago did not involve itself in school board elections?
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There have NEVER been school board elections in Chicago. There is an initiative to have an elected school board and machine politicians prevented a referendum from being added to the ballots in every ward in November. Instead, an “advisory measure” was added to ballots in some precincts, where 85% of the people voted to have an elected school board.
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That 85% support for an elected school board probably means machine politicians won’t ever let a referendum be added to a ballot. So, people are turning to the state, since it’s state law that exempts Chicago from having an elected school board.
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How exactly are public school teachers, whose profession, unions and even place of employment are under attack, supposed to reach “consensus” with those who seek their destruction?
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How about applauding an organization that will join your fight to keep buns out of schools?
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Is that hot-cross-buns?
Yes, they get credit for finally saying something right!
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Don’t be willfully naive: Rhee came late to this because of the bad publicity she received over her opportunistic response to the shootings.
It’s hypocritical, political optics, which is the story of her execrable career.
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By focusing you power. Read all the posts responding to Diane’s post that Ms Rhee had issued her statement on guns and SB 59. There may have been two that reflected anything other than anger and two that even addressed the issue her letter pertained to. There was virtual noise enough to drown out anything remotely positive. I see that a lot on this blog unfortunately. I am not a teacher but I have watched three great children graduate from our great local public schools. I am 66 years old and new to Twitter. I serve on our Public School Foundation and we raise money and work to give our students and teachers what they wouldn’t get given all the cuts in funding. As someone who first visited Diane’s blog because I was interested in the opinions of teachers, I can say that I am seeing less positives and less focused constructive ideas every day. In my view we are only powerless when others don’t take us seriously. We are powerless when we are so predictable that people stop listening. In this one case I was thankful to everyone who gave our governor any reason at all to veto a gun bill. He did because enough people from a diverse group agreed the gun legislation was bad law and very dangerous. I am glad Ms Rhee agreed. I hope you understand what I am saying. I respect and support teachers and our public schools but when the noise in the room rises to the point where nobody is heard, it is impossible to succeed at anything.
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If Ms Rhee’s statement had any impact on MI Gov. SNYDER’S decision to veto SB 59, I am personally grateful. I don’t care where it came from or why. We needed ALL hands on deck to pressure the Governor and we will need that pressure to continue. The gun lobby will not relent and the rest of us can’t pick and choose our allies on this one.
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The fact that Rhee had to think about and construct a “position” says a lot. I could not imagine having a gun in school. By the way, am I the only English teacher who can’t stand the way she used the word “myself” at the end?
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The Voting Rights Act (VRA) must be upheld by the supreme court:
The numerous despicable attempts to restrict voting made during the last election cycle are proof of that. Anyone who truly believes the VRA is obsolete needs to recognize, given last year’s voter suppression efforts, the Jim Crowe era is biding its time.
Now even if you are dumb enough to believe that all is OK with the world and there are no reasons to have the voting rights act on the books. Then why are the the parties at opposite end’s on this? Why are the Republicans in America trying to keep people from the poles ?
The argument is that VRA is discriminatory against Southern states to require them but not other states to seek pre-clearance for voting laws; I actually agree. The Voting Rights Act should require *ALL* states to seek pre-clearance. After what we’ve seen the GOP try to pass in states all across the nation prior to the last 2012 election, I see no reason this safeguard against voter suppression should be limited to just Southern states as suggested by VRA of 1965 but now should be expanded to apply to ALL 50 states.
Ajay Jain
ajain31@gmail.com
1209 Creekwood Drive
Garland TX 75044-2421
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