Larry Cuban says it’s all over for Michelle Rhee. She has become so radioactive that she has lost all credibility.
Despite all the publicity, she is on a downward trajectory, he says.
Soon, people will wonder who she was.
But he has an idea about how she can recoup her reputation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just wave —
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Rhee is a sociopath. Her unsupervised return to the classroom would be horrible for the children– and should she gain any authority, the adults– involved:
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M. Schneider: your link to your online posting is, IMHO, quite restrained.
I write the following with the sincerest respect for the honorable administrators out there like Carol Corbett Burris but truth be told…
I worked under an AP at my last school who was just like Rhee; I am certain she possessed an advanced degree in DDD [Demeaning, Demoralizing, Disorganizing]. Bitter, screaming, arrogant. Her great singleminded campaign in her last years on the job? Root out all the sexual predators at the school. Naturally, the one real sexual predator we had [found out not by her, of course, but by a SpecEd TA, later convicted and sent to prison for three years] attached himself to her. She loved him! A staff member who Rheeally appreciated her for all her wonderfulness! I can still see them both walking down the hallway during school hours, arm in arm, lamenting the poor quality of the school staff and she telling him how we needed more good teachers like him.
Yet as loathsome as this AP was, even as warped as her judgment was, even she would have kicked out a Michelle Rhee for her despicable masking tape stunt! To this day I cannot understand the reactions of Michelle Rhee’s principal or the other teachers or parents in that Baltimore school. To remain silent, sit on their hands, actively refuse to advocate for and protect their children! I can only imagine that there existed a toxic atmosphere that supported, allowed and protected what even a bottom-of-the-barrel LAUSD administrator wouldn’t have tolerated. **Remember, Michelle Rhee’s big/only proof that she took her students from the 13th to the 90th percentile was the word of her principal—who to this day [to my knowledge] has never ever confirmed that she said anything like that.**
KrazyMathLady, keep blogging, keep posting, keep using your powers for good: “Truth is powerful and it prevails” [Sojurner Truth]
🙂
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I also loved her adventure in insect cuisine, a.k.a., “Wanna see me eat a bee?” A science lesson right up there with Chris Christie’s spider squashing! (The last–an article and a video on The Answer Sheet by Valerie Strauss) Both very nice examples of teaching children to respect nature, as well as the misuse of a teachable moment. But, what can we expect from those who are not educators?
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Still writing, KrazyTA. Just finished this one yesterday. Perhaps you have read it:
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Folks,
Early Sunday morning (at least here in the CST) and a few hardy souls are still up and at it! The three folks above this are some of the best posters on this blog. Thanks to you all.
Worked most of the day in a “community” garden helping put in almost 100 pepper plants (we still have a couple of hundred more to go) and help planting watermelon, cantalope and other seeds, and then went to our high school graduation, outside and not too hot fortunately. The first person to receive his diploma was a student that five years ago fell out of his tree stand, with his father also falling the same day (and they were not in the same stand). The father is now a paraplegic and the student is making a bit of a recovery as from his spinal/brain injuries. He can’t speak, has to have a washcloth in his mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue and has a trach. But he managed to barely get out of his wheelchair and stand to receive his diploma (brings tears to my eyes now). You should have seen the joy in his eyes. Got the loudest applause of the evening.
Is that measurable? Is that what the deformers have in mind when they bash dedicated professionals? Isn’t that what public school teachers do everyday to help all students?
Duane
P.S. The only problem today is that the Cards lost when they should have won. And that’s pretty minor compared to what many of our students go through on a daily basis.
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I just started a petition on the White House petitions site, We the
People. Will you sign it? http://wh.gov/Sj8y
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This is a serious question (actually, to anyone out there who has had any prior experience with this)–has the signing of petitions on this site (when the required # of signatures are gathered) really ever resulted in any action on the part of the federal government?
I would like to see some proof of prior action taken in this direction
before I open up “a White House account.” I honestly don’t see the point–it has a pop-up that is supposed to explain “why,” but does not. I have signed numerous petitions–and some have gotten results (Avaaz, Emily’s List). Therefore, I’d like to know if this would get any. I’m primarily asking this not because of paranoia
(because I am NOT afraid to put my name out there on petitions), but because–as we all know–past writing to the White House
(POTUS) and/or to Duncan/the D.o.Ed. has not made a whit of difference–a form letter reply (which most of us never received) from the W.H., and NO reply from Arne, who couldn’t even be bothered to meet with the original S.O.S. March Leaders in 2011
(and certainly hasn’t met with anyone since). So–why should we sign this petition again?
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We can ask the same question about constantly complaining about issues on blog sites and then sitting back on our couches and watching TV. Nothing gets done. At least, by signing yet another petition, we are trying to accomplish something.
I have received many emails since posting this petition asking your question. of these, many fear government retribution. My response to everyone is simple:
The only way to fight government retribution against those who take a stand against abuses is for more people to take a stand. Without Rosa Parks doing so, we would still be stuck with Jim Crow. I’m sure that she feared some form of retribution but she had the courage to act.
People asked the same question even then (and throughout American history), “What can I do? I’m just one person.” But, time and again, one person was able to spark change. Diane Ravitch and Jonathan Pelto are trying to spark change with their respective blogs, but they will be unsuccessful if their readers and posters are unsuccessful in getting people to act. At least, my petition is attempting to do that.
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I admire Larry Cuban but I have to strongly disagree with him on several points.
First, Rhee serves a purpose for the likes of the Koch Brothers and ALEC, in that when it comes to education she draws the media attention and allows them to continue to run under the radar. As long as she has money she will continue to be player in a number of states, and they might funnel her money for just that reason.
EXCEPT – if there were a MEANINGFUL investigation of what happened in DC on her watch, including subpoenas, requiring statements under oath, and doing a complete erasure analysis, then she would have a real problem, especially if she is not able to run out the clock on statute of limitations for an indictment.
But that is minor.
I do not think Rhee has ever been dedicated to anything except Michelle Rhee and I would not want her anywhere near a classroom of kids. All I need to know are the stories she told about herself to an assembly of first year DC teachers. 1) She taped mouths shut. That is assault and she should have been prosecuted. 2) She got tired of waiting for one child to be picked up so drove the child to its neighborhood, asked an adult if s/he knew the child and then left the child in the custody of that unknown adult. That is child endangerment. Doing those two things is bad enough. The total lack of judgment demonstrated by thinking that was appropriate to share with new teachers is unbelievable – except that Rhee apparently thinks rules do not apply to her – and totally unacceptable.
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To summarize, Michelle Rhee is a real tool.
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Also, another group that she helps keep under the radar is the Broad Foundation.
She was on their Board in 2008 (See their 2009/2010 Annual Report Page 25 http://tinyurl.com/6w5sps2 ) In the 2011-2012 Annual Report she is still listed as being on their Board (See http://tinyurl.com/9wqv9um page 41)
Rhee’s ideology and tactics are straight out of Eli Broad’s philosophy of business management.
See ” Who is Eli Broad and why is trying to destroy public education?”
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
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one more thing – the Walton Family Foundation, according to the May 23 edition of a journal that tracks philanthropy, just committed to $8,000,000 to Students First over the next two years.
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Michelle Rhee is illustrative of a serious problem in public schooling, and that problem is that many of public education’s “leaders” are, in fact, not leaders at all, but merely followers – even stooges, perhaps. They do not have a personal, defined philosophy of education, and are clueless about the historical origins and purposes of public education.
Many of them – like Rhee – had very limited experience in the classroom. Some of them weren’t very good at teaching. Some of them didn’t like it.
[I recall the story of a high school principal who told the faculty at the very first meeting of a new school year that he’d only been a teacher for six months, wasn’t good at it, so he moved on “to bigger and better things.” The associate superintendent of a central Virginia school district was a lousy math teacher, but now he’s in charge of “student learning.” The superintendent of another school district now sits on the board of the Northwest Evaluation Association, which produces (and pimps) the MAP program, which a DOE study found “did not have a statistically significant impact on students’ reading achievement in either grade 4 or grade 5.” The NWEA is in the bag for the Common Core, and like the College Board, says it has “aligned” its products with it.]
Larry Cuban may be right that MIchelle Rhee is “damaged goods.”
But in the crowd that she runs with (the corporate “reformers”), that label is like a medal.
Rhee is anathema to anyone who cares seriously about public education, but she’s still a darling to conservatives and those who want to milk public schooling of its funding.
And she will never, ever go back to a public education classroom. Neither will Randi Weingarten (who rakes in nearly a half-million dollars a year in salary and benefits). It’s too hard, There’s not enough money in it (for them, anyway). And perhaps most importantly, they cannot do what they are asking (or telling) others to do.
And therein lies one of the great ironies and paradoxes of education “reform.” Those who are “leading” the effort(s) could not implement on a daily, weekly, or yearly basis what they are demanding of teachers. Nor would they care to.
I have a lot of respect for Larry Cuban. But Michelle Rhee as been “damaged goods” for quite a while now. And she’s still in circulation. She’s still collecting cash. She’s going to piggyback on Common Core “reform.” She’s saying that the discussion must be reframed as one of global competitiveness. As she said in Florida recently, “This is about China kicking our butts. Do you want China to kick our butts? No!”
[Note: This is perhaps THE favorite canard of the corporate “reform” crowd. I’ve already established the vacuousness of that claim in multiple venues. To take just one example, when the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in the 2010-11 World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings, four factors were cited by the WEF for the decline: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) suspect corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt. But corporate “reformers” refuse to take, much less even acknowledge, any responsibility.]
Sadly, many of public education’s “leaders” will go right along, and recite the stupidity. As I noted in a comment on the College Board’s AP program (more hype than not), high schools even tout the nonsense on their web sites, saying students must be “truly prepared to be highly successful in a globally competitive society.” And that means “rigor.” And SAT prep. And AP courses. All the College Board crapola…and the Common Core.
Watch and see. Michelle Rhee will position herself right in the middle of it.
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The “global competitiveness” line took an ominous turn in Pennsylvania last week.
http://tinyurl.com/ax2r3ba
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Yeah, here’s what they say (boilerplate stuff):
“We must do more to ensure our students are prepared for the 21st century global economy, prepared to be productive citizens, prepared to serve in the Armed Forces should they so desire, and prepared to inherit the leadership of this great country. The rigorous PA Common Core Academic Standards will help ensure our young people are able to do just that.”
The global economy citation is canard#1. As I point out above.
But if we really want to prepare students to be citizens committed to democratic leadership, then we have to (1) acknowledge that education for democratic citizenship is the central purpose of public schooling; and (2) we have to understand and commit ourselves to the core values in the Constitution, such as popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, and promoting the general welfare of the nation; (3) we must abandon the current corporate “reform” mania and its attendant policies like high-stakes testing, charters and vouchers, and merit pay; and (4) we have to engage in genuine reform that is not test-centered, but student focused, thus
the classroom “must be physically, psychologically, and socially safe, and must support the pupil’s health’ so that “the objective is to increase pupils’ curiosity and motivation to learn.”
Ideally, we would recommit ourselves to Horace Mann’s view of education as “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society. You can almost hear the conservative and corporate howls of protest now.
University of Chicago social scientist Earl Johnson wrote that “the supreme end of education in a democracy is the making of the democratic character.” (So did Aristotle, by the way.) Gordon Hullfish and Philip Smith considered the development of critical intelligence –– “reflective reconstruction of knowledge, insights and values” –– essential to the maintenance of a democratic society.
And John Dewey subscribed to the belief that “the democracy which proclaims equality of opportunity as its ideal requires an education in which learning and social application, ideas and practice…are united from the beginning and for all.”
Common Core boilerplaters will say this is what the Common Core does (wink).
I respectfully – and strongly – disagree.
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democracy: two excellent postings.
I add only that you have put your finger on a crucially important fact: the leading educrats and edufrauds and edupreneurs can’t lead by example. I mean that literally.
They are exemplars of what many a WWII vet told me about in my first full-time job: the highest-ranking officers who often gave disastrous orders from the comfort and safety of their offices behind lines but would have been lost on an actual battlefield. What the ‘leaders’ were good at, though, was reprimanding and punishing those in harm’s way [after the shooting was over] who didn’t strictly follow orders, no matter how nonsensical or suicidal. In practice—and what won the war—was that frontline staff (commissioned and non-commissioned officers and soldiers) often creatively reinterpreted incompetence writ large and small for reasons both of self-survival and success.
Of course, just like the edubullies of today, guess—clock is ticking on a timed answer and there is only one correct response!—who frequently took all the credit for military successes? Your choices are: a), generals; b), generals; c), generals; or d), all of the above.
I hope you answered “D.” Good. Now for education, who is the fairest in Edulandia? Is it: a), parent with a child in Harpeth Hall; b), parent with children in Sidwell Friends; c), parent with children in U of Chicago Lab Schools; or d), all of the above?
If you can’t get this right, I am afraid you will have to reapply to The New Teacher Project or TFA for a classroom position.
😦
But cheer up: I hear the bees are better when served up on masking tape!
🙂
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Democracy friend–can you pls email me a link to the WEF report you mention? thanks, irashor123@gmail.com
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Ira,
Here’s the link:
Click to access WEF_GlobalCompetitivenessReport_2010-11.pdf
The early pages explain the methodology. The information you likely want is at page 23.
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Mr. Cuban,
The only way for Ms. Rhee to redeem herself is by getting in touch with her inner Diane Ravitch and rotating her philosophy about school reform a full 180 degrees. She could then take her show on the road and spread the word about how wrong this whole movement has mostly been.
Ms. Rhee’s capacity to renounce all the rhetoric that has driven – and compensated – her these last 8 years will never live to see its potential.
The evil queen can never transform herself into Snow White, and if she does, the snow with come from humidity tainted with acid rain.
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@Robert.
I suppose Rhee conceivably COULD change her mind about her brand of school “reform,” but then she’d have to admit that she was wrong all along.
Rhee could have undertaken a strong, in-depth, and independent investigation into the cheating scandal that took place under her watch. But she didn’t. And she could still call for such an investigation, with full subpoena power. But she won’t.
So, she’s not going back to the classroom. Pigs will fly before that ever happens.
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By the way, Randi Weingarten is not going back to the classroom again either.
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Don’t underestimate her influence. She’s the “shock and awe” that is supposed to make you happy that someone less insulting and demeaning, but implementing the same policies, will run your school system.
If she is not influential, how did her Students First officer, Coleman become head of the College Board? Of course, it’s not her alone, but the reform network and its players who call the shots.
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Any look at the facts concerning her entire so called career shows someone who is nothing but a puppet and is totally unaccomplished in the world of “Real Education” not “False Education” in which enriching your masters is the only goal. A straight up look is quite revealing and do not forget she gave up custody of her own children. What kind of mother does that? If there is a real investigation of the test cheating, and if the pressure is kept up there will be one, she is toast. Let’s take her, Gates, the Broadfather, Walton and the entire group out with the truth. They have nothing to stand on. If you want to watch closely Mayor Villaraigosa’s people wilt on the vine once again come to Santee High School tomorrow at 4:00 P.M. and watch Villaraigosa’s people, PLAS, melt down once again with the truth about their failure at that school. One step at a time.
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To Bill Morrison, 8:21 AM comment: Bill, you don’t get what I’m asking. You did NOT answer my question about exactly what the outcome of this position will be. Main point–will it result in a government response, or is it all for show? I’d explained about all the e-mails to Obama & Duncan, some that were orchestrated by Diane and Anthony Cody. The best people received back from Obama were form-letter type e-mails; other writers received no response at all. Same with Duncan. So–once again–is this petition actually going to lead to some government action?
With regard to excoriating me about my “fear,” as you put it–I was asking that collectively, as I think numerous people might be wondering the same. Please do not insult me (or any other blog readers who might be wondering the same thing) by bringing Rosa Parks & “inaction” into this. I can’t speak for others, but you can rest assured that I have taken PLENTY of action (which, by the way, speaks louder than words!) to help stamp out injustice, particularly in my chosen field, education. People who know me know what a big mouth I have & what a doer I am, and, in the past, I became involved in situations where I have been in danger or had nearly lost my job (3x!). So, please, do not compare signing a petition to Rosa Parks on the bus. I/We are asking you a specific question: what results come from signing a White House petition? Can you just please answer that question? Thank you. (Or perhaps another reader can answer.)
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I am trying to get Obama to conduct an in-depth investigation into Rhee’s scandal. Period. Will it work? I have no idea; I have no crystal ball to foresee the future. Nor can I predict the behavior of the President in this matter whether or not we get the 100,000 signatures.
All I can do is to try.
As for the rest, I WILL invoke the name of Rosa Parks and her heroic action. We teachers as a group have sat by far too long with no real resistance being offered to the corporate reformers. I applaud the heroic resistance being offered by Garfield High teachers, but where is the national follow-up? There has been none. No one else has followed suit. We sit and complain on blogs, but we make no real noise.
But, are we having any impact? Not really. Where is our collective follow-up to Garfield High? Is Michelle Rhee in jail two years after the scandal? She is not. Has any reformer been seriously taken to task in the media? I can’t recall any. They still plunder on in spite of our blogging. We are whispering in the wind.
My petition is an attempt at doing something to get an investigation going. I have also written to each of my U.S. Senators and Representatives and have yet to even get a form mail in return. I have written to various newspapers, and have been interviewed by two newspaper reporters in my state on other issues related to the corporate reformers; no story has appeared in spite of my having provided hundreds of documents showing their fraud. I have approached the President of AFT-CT to try to elicit statewide union action, and was brushed aside. Our own unions do not want to help; they must be part of the problem.
Then, in posting my petition, I seem to have antagonized you. I do not know why. It is obvious why I’m posting the petition. I, too, am a doer. I sincerely applaud your actions. And, I meant no insult to you or to anyone else. None was stated and none was implied. And, where did I state that you were fearful? Please read my comment fully. I did not do so. All I am doing is trying to get your help. If you don’t want to help me, don’t. But I will not quit.
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I wish I could, but I live in TN, her next project state.
Keep TN in your thoughts and prayers.
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