Here is Michelle Rhee, as reviewed by Mercedes Schneider in part viii of her study of the board of the National Council of Teacher Quality.
Mercedes Schneider is a teacher in Louisiana who holds a Ph.D. In statistics and research methods.
Here she is at her best, doing a close examination of the life and work of Michelle Rhee.
I just returned from an amazing week in Cuba. I went there legally, from Miami to Havana.
I wanted to go someplace warm in mid-winter but I didn’t want to sit on a beach in the sun. I wanted to learn. It took quite a lot of digging to discover that the U.S. government has granted licenses to a number of tour agencies to arrange trips to Cuba for U.S. citizens.
Last November, a high school chum in Houston told me she had just returned from Cuba, and she gave me the name of her agent, who is based in New York City. Her name is Myriam Castillo, and I found her via this article in Forbes because she doesn’t have a website. Some of the other agencies that organize people-to-people trips are mentioned in the same Forbes article.
Myriam planned a fantastic week for four of us. It was a customized tour, tailored to our interests in the culture, art, and history of Cuba. We visited museums, went to the homes of established artists, visited art galleries, toured historic sites, saw the countryside, ate wonderful food, and consumed countless mojitos. We were accompanied at various times by an architectural historian, an art historian, and various other experts.
We were excited by the sight of many vintage American automobiles from pre-1959–Chevrolets, Dodges, Oldsmobiles, Plymouths, Buicks–most in beautiful condition. We were amazed by the large number of tourists from Europe, South America, Canada, and yes, the United States. Last year, 400,000 tourists from the U.S. visited Cuba. When we departed the Havana airport on the morning of February 8, ten flights were leaving, and eight were headed for Miami. One of them was an American Airlines flight. Most, like ours, were charters carrying about 150 people.
The architecture of Havana is varied and wonderful, with some beautifully preserved buildings but very many in decrepit condition. A beautiful public square of stunning homes and apartment houses would be adjacent to blocks and blocks of squalid abodes. The magnificent and elegant Italianate mansion that houses an astonishing collection of Napoleonic artifacts is next door to a crumbling and ramshackle mansion built in the same era.
The Cuban people we met were warm and welcoming. The culture is vibrant. The music is fabulous.
Tourism is a major industry, probably the biggest in the country. And yet, the island is isolated in many ways, with no cell phone service and very limited access to the Internet. I was able to log on at a major hotel, but service was spotty.
There is no advertising, few shops, not much to buy, no billboards other than political slogans like “Defend socialism.” Everywhere, one sees Che souvenirs, so many that it seems like revolutionary kitsch.
And yet it seemed to me that Cuba is on the verge of a major transition. It won’t happen overnight but it will happen, it is happening already. A new generation is coming of age. They want opportunity. They want a better life. Little pockets of entrepreneurialism are opening up. Officially, the government owns everything, but there are many inconsistencies. Private restaurants called paladares offer excellent food (and pay heavy taxes). Because of a shortage of hotel space in some cities, many private homes rent rooms to guests. The old world is passing, dissolving, and a new world is beginning, shoots of grass breaking through the concrete.
The embargo seems as antique as the now ancient slogans.The sooner the embargo is lifted, the sooner there will be normal relations between our countries. As it now exists, cruise ships bypass Havana because they are not allowed to visit a U.S. port for six months if they dock in Cuba. Cuba’s isolation from the U.S. has impoverished many Cubans and done nothing to weaken the regime. If we wanted to weaken the regime, we would end the embargo and encourage open exchange among our populations.
We loved our trip. It was beautifully planned. It was educational. It was filled with surprises.
I hope that President Obama lifts the embargo and restores normal relations between our nations. This would be a major legacy for him, ending a dispute that began more than half a century ago. It is time.
This is not a new trick. It is proven to work. Remove students with disabilities from the mandated tests and the scores go up.
You won’t be surprised where this is happening. Read about it here.
After all, what matters most? Kids or test scores? In another era, we might have said without thinking twice that kids mater most. But in the age of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, that’s no longer true. The fate of schools, principals, and teachers depend on test scores.
This is sad. It’s wrong. It’s unethical. It’s malpractice.
Myra Blackmon, a columnist for the Athens, Georgia, Banner-Herald, explains how the state legislature is determined to destabilize and disrupt public education with a wacky “parent trigger” bill. Read her terrific analysis here.
It won’t do anything to improve education nor will it “empower” parents, but it will make ALEC and others advocates of privatization very happy.
Bobby Jindal went to Virginia to boast of the miraculous transformation of education in Louisiana, all attributable to the magic of replacing public schools with privately managed, deregulated charters.
This is an oft-told tale, repeated again and again by advocates of privatization in both political parties and endlessly regurgitated by an uncurious and credulous media.
But something amazing happened when the Associated Press reported the story. It included the inconvenient fact that most of the charters in the much lauded Recovery School District had received grades of D or F.
Here is the astonishing quote from the story:
“However, New Orleans schools run by the Recovery School District still have a D grade on average while those outside of New Orleans received an F in the latest round of grades released in October.
“We’re not where we want to be but have made great progress in seven years,” Jindal said.”
Honest reporting, not just the customary recycling of the politicians’ press releases.
Now THAT is a miracle.
A reader from Sacramento warns that privatization is moving rapidly in his city:
Here in Sacramento we are facing an all out assault by the privatisation armies. Sacramento City Unified School District has slated eleven elementary schools for closure under their “Children First” and “Right Sizing” plan. Instead of following the six month plan our state dept of ed suggests for closing a school they are pushing it to a vote in one month. We have about a week and a half until eleven of our communities are decemated. Our superintendent – Jonathan Raymond – is a big player in the republican hierarchy with no educational experience. He hired a local charter school bigwig as his chief of staff. To make matters worse our mayor – Kevin Johnson – is married to Michelle Rhee. We are doomed. Here’s a good synopsis from one of our effetced neighborhoods.
A few weeks ago, I posted a column by Mike Petrilli defending the idea that charters skim the best, most ambitious kids from public schools. The column was refreshing in that Mike abandoned the usual reformer pretense that charters enroll “exactly” the same children as public schools and get amazing results. Mike said that charters are for “strivers,” not for the others.
Here is a story about a non-striver and his teacher. Would the charters want him?
Note that his teacher is in Mayor Bloomberg’s ATR (absent teacher reserve) pool. These are teachers who lost their jobs when the mayor closed their schools. They float from school to school, at great cost to their dignity. Through no fault of their own, they are humiliated by the NYC Department of Education.
Anthony Cody advises Bill gates that test scores are not the best measure of effectiveness.
Here he tells Gates
what really matters.
An administrator in Louisiana writes about how the Jindal administration tries to strike fear in the hearts of all educators while boasting of their great success.
Dear Bridget, here is my advice: “Illegitimi non carborundum.”
Be there when their pathetic regime is toppled by the good and great citizens of Louisiana.
Bridget writes:
It definitely is getting more and more difficult for teachers to stay. As an administrator, I see the panic on their faces as the date of the state test looms closer each day. Here in Louisiana, our jobs are tied directly to their VAM score, which over-rides any evaluation score given to them by our team. As administrators, we do our best to help to empower them with information and resources, but it will never be enough. Our governor has set us up for failure. I often think about returning to my special education classroom to finish out my last five years before retiring. Then I realize there may not be a retirement system left in five years. The joke is on me. After dedicating my life to teaching, I will probably not have anything to show for it except memories and/ or nightmares. My starting salary years ago was around $13,000 a year. I definitely didn’t get into this career for the money. Thanks to this blog I stick it out. I now have a place to stay abreast of what is happening across our nation. Don’t know how long I can last… one day at a time. I agree with Jesse that it is unfair to leave in the middle of the school year.
Mark Zuckerberg paid out $100 million to fix Newark’s schools. Millions have been spent on consultants. Probably lots more charters too, free to push out kids they don’t want.
But couldn’t some of Mark’s millions be spent to clean this high school and bring in an exterminator to get rid of vermin?
Remember that a hot new superintendent was hired by the state to overhaul Newark’s schools? Why can’t she guarantee a clean, safe school to the kids?
