Who is the miracle reformer of Colorado? Who wrote its law to evaluate teachers by their test scores? Who claimed that his high school graduated 100% of its seniors and sent them to college? Who so lauded by President Obama and DFER? Whose legislation became a model for ALEC? Why, Michael Johnston, of course.
Mercedes Schneider continues her portrait of the board of NCTQ by looking into Johnston’s history. NCTQ is the organization that tells the nation how to get high-quality teachers.
Previous posts by Schneider have included Wendy Kopp, Michelle Rhee, and Joel Klein, who have a cumulative teaching experience of three years among them (Rhee’s).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think Klein did teach for one or two years to get out of the draft.
What is amazing is how little cumulative teaching experience these “experts” have. I have just begun reading Diane’s Death and Life of the Great American School System 92010), and I am learning a lot about the history of the idea of bringing nonteachers in to do a teacher’s job. I did not realize the mess this made of the San Diego schools in the late 1990s. Even back then, Broad, Gates, and Carnegie pumped money into what essentially became a brittle, top-down slaughter of the educational process. I would even go so far as to call it a pedigogical police state.
Sorry about the typo above. I meant to note the year of publication, (2010).
Since I live in Denver, CO, I’ve heard a lot about this corporate shill! I find it amazing that so many people, while they realize the road kill these corporate wolves have reduced education to, often overlook the fact that they are leaders of major, globalist corporations who would NEVER force their companies to such obvious destructive policies! Gates, worth God knows how much and is being lauded for his humanitarian,
patriotism by promising to bring back jobs from the unbearable sweatshops of Asia, maybe… To me, reflects an agenda that is so dark, it’s breath taking. He has the audacity to wonder around public school classrooms and pronounce judgements on the teachers whose reasons for what they are doing with their students is of NO interest to him.
Farcical if it weren’t so destructive. Check out the Carnegie corporates and those who, along with Gates, shower $ on, and causes they are fronts for…makes for an interesting list! Carnegie’s name tells a little story of their ancestry which is anything but a history of philanthropic, pureness!
The founder of this global dynasty was a leader of the robber barons, who after he, and his elitist s had plundered and pillaged, spread around a pittance of their tremendous wealth
in “charitable” endeavors JUST to white wash their a moral deeds that showed no
goal except to fleece the country to limitless amounts. Sound familiar? Sure ought to!
How Rhee, who brags about her cruelty with children and shows her heartless seeming hatred for dedicated teachers and principals, truly makes one wonder that anyone would hold her up as anything but a bad example, shocks me! Her admitted, cruelties perpetrated on children, teachers and principals could be used as evidence of child
abuse, but instead those with a similar destructive agenda declare her a model of the new reforms! Her actions surely depict why she shouldn’t be around children OR educators whom she has a seeming, heartless vendetta against EXCEPT for that “wonder school” who raised their bogus scores up a satirical 40% in two years, and doubtlessly used boxes of the highest grade of erasers to accomplish that feat! As M.S. perfectly
en capsuled their corporate goal…”a pedagogical police state.”
Some good news,if any could possibly come out of this. The suburban Denver high school where I am employed is currently giving the evaluation system mandated by Johnson’s pet bill, known as SB191, a beta test: each administrator is practicing using the evaluation tool on a few teachers (2 or 3) in the building. The other day I asked one of them how that was going, and her response was something like “It’s a ton of work and I don’t see how we’re going to have time to do any other part of our jobs once we all take on a full load of teachers to evaluate.” Like NCLB, SB191 looks great on paper (especially a resume), but in the end will end up another underfunded, unrealistic, logistical nightmare. At least that is the desperate hope that I am clinging to.