On February 6, Michelle Rhee preferred to speak to the Minneapolis business leadership instead of debating me.
But fortunately, I got a first-hand report from someone who attended the event and explained who spoke and what they said.
Rhee, as is her custom, advised the audience that the path to excellence begins with eliminating tenure or due process for all teachers. That way, they can be fired immediately, for any reason, with no hearing. I wondered if anyone in the audience asked for examples of states or districts that have no due process for teachers and have achieved outstanding results.
There was, of course, a lot of talk about data, data, data. Big data will solve all problems since children are interchangeable widgets.
The last speaker, Kati Haycock, warned that low-income students were assigned far too many inexperienced teachers. The reporter wondered if she was talking about TFA, which is a dominant force in Minneapolis.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Kati Haycock is CEO of Ed Trust, a nonprofit that received multiple millions from Gates just to keep it going:
What employer thinks that bullying your employees is going to produce quality results? We hear about the jerks that get off on power trips, but it is seldom if ever in admiring terms. Why would we think that teachers would respond well?
Rhee and former mayor Rybak: Slicker than baby seals.
Always interesting to see what people will and will not write about. The meeting was in St. Paul and attracted business people, community members and educators from around the state, not just in Minneapolis.
The business leader who opened the meeting stressed that his children received an excellent education in a local district public school. He felt too many students did not graduate and thinks increasing the graduation rate is a high priority.
Kati Haycock stressed that income equality is a huge problem. She said that we need to work simultaneously on issues inside and outside of schools, not one or the other but both.
Here’s a link to the newspaper column that I wrote about the meeting:
http://hometownsource.com/2014/02/12/joe-nathan-column-informed-urgency-needed-to-help-improve-schools/
Read your column. Teacher performance pay. Really?That’s the best they can do? How about fully funding schools so teachers don’t have to buy supplies out of their own pockets? This conference from the look of the agenda was all about corporate reform. Kati Haycock cashes a paycheck from the Gates Foundation. Anything or anybody that comes from Gates is suspect in my book. From what fount of teacher knowledge or experience do you get your assertions?
Charlotte, you asked “what fount of teacher knowledge or experience do you get your assertions?”
I served as inner city public school teacher and administrator for 14 years.
Our 3 children all attended and graduated from urban (non-magnet) public schools. I served as a local urban public school PTA president and was on the state board of the Minnesota PTA. My wife just retired after 33 year as an urban public school teacher of students with special needs. Our 3 children all have worked for this public school system (and our older daughter is in her 10th year as an urban public high school teacher).
Our organization works with district and chartered public schools. 3-4 days a week I’m in urban public schools, talking with and learning from students, teachers and administrators. We received funding from a variety of sources, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (none currently) to work primarily to help 3 districts create schools within schools, plus to help create some small secondary charter high schools.
Also, there was a lot more to the recommendations (as I noted) that teacher performance pay.
Problem is, Joe, we still can’t tell what your background is since you don’t differentiate between public schools and charter schools.
Funny you should ask “2old2teach.” Often when I describe work I’ve done or am doing another person will complain about that. In any case, our 3 children attended and graduated from St. Paul, Mn (District) public schools. I was St. Paul district public school teacher and administrator. My wife was a St. Paul district public school teacher. I was a PTA President at a St. Paul district public school.
Hope that clarifies the situation.
I I I I
Relax, Linda, I did ask. He has an aversion to differentiating between public schools and charter schools. He hangs on to the fantasy that public funding alone makes a school public.
So, in other words, you and yours never worked for or attended a charter school.
Neither I nor any of our family have ever worked for or attended a charter public school.
I’ve helped start innovative district and charter public schools. We help promote collaboration among various schools. Much more info at http://www.centerforschoolchange.org
The only charter public school is one subject to the governance of the public schools approved by the communities which they serve. It is hardly democratic for someone else to tell a school district they have to give money to a school not subject to their jurisdiction. Given the horrendous examples of charter abuse that have been documented, I hope you are able to say no public school has been harmed by the charter schools you promote. I hope you can say that no child has lost the opportunity to attend a quality neighborhood school because of funding lost to a charter. As a suburban resident in the Chicago area, who thankfully escaped working in a charter school (that was handed to an outside organization) after the neighborhood raised money for a new public school, I hope you do not support what Chicago is doing to its public schools. Rahm is bent on solving the poverty problem by driving the least able out of the city. Destroy their schools, gentrify their neighborhoods and make promises you have no intention of keeping. Rahm is a master.
Is the Illinois Math and Science Academy – a statewide school with admissions tests, not controlled by a local school board, a public school?
The state legislature says it is. The school says it is.
https://www.imsa.edu/
It does not meet your definition of a public school.
State legislature have moved on from saying that the only public schools are those controlled by local boards.
IMSA does not meet my definition of a locally controlled public school. Nor is it a charter school. It is a state school supported by a public-private partnership of state and private funding. It is not siphoning money from local school districts, and if it wants to continue receiving state $$, it must provide an outstanding opportunity to students. It is not a chain proliferating across the state with the goal to provide STEM education on the cheap while sucking money out of local school districts. Now, shall we travel across the country cherry picking unique programs to try to slot them in as either public, private, or charter? Charter chains would be hard pressed to convince anyone that they had much in common with IMSA. A charter that fulfills the same mission as IMSA , is subject to public oversight, and DOES NOT jeopardize the education provided by local public schools could probably gain my support. I have no trouble with selective enrollment programs that are agreed on and subject to the oversight of the funding source.
It’s clear that you are fine with a public school that has admissions test, whether it’s run by a district or another group (like the Illinois State School).
I’m not. I’ll keep working to oppose any k-12 public school, district or charter, that uses admissions tests.
I am not fine with ANY public school having an admissions test. I am willing to consider instances where it may be appropriate. IAMS is really serving a gifted population, one that is often not well served locally. It would be wonderful if every gifted student who applied could be accepted. It would be wonderful if all special needs students had programs that truly met there needs. We do what we can. If charters were truly open enrollment, I would have less trouble with them although as you know I object to their separate governance while using public education funds. I am totally opposed to charters whose chief administrators make obscene salaries or profits off their management companies.
You and I agree that some people are making obscene salaries, including some who work with charters.
I know we agree on some things. Choices become black and white when fighting for one’s “life.”
Please stop posting your family history. We have read it a hundred times, at least. This is about YOU, Joe.
Linda, I was responding to a specific question from another person: “From what fount of teacher knowledge or experience do you get your assertions?”
I have more important things to do than explain myself to you. You have dropped your family story ad nauseum. Get over yourself please.
Isn’t not is
And if he did not answer the question asked he would have been condemned for not answering. That’s a hell of a catch, that catch-22.
People answer questions all the time TE without babbling incessantly about how wonderful they are, even you.
I did not see any claim to wounderfulness unless you think that a carreer teaching in urban public schools by a family and passing that tradition on to a child is wounderful.
It is disappointing when an ad homonym criticism fails and the merits of a position must actually be considered.
Thanks for the article Joe. Parker supports a strong base pay for teachers. I would agree that is the foundation of teacher quality, along with societal reverence for the job. Comments were good, Bill kNACK had an interesting perspective.
Rhee will only preach to her choir. Debate? Structured discussion with Ravitch? What, are you kidding. Rhee is a seld serving list, but she is no so self destructiveve to put herself in a situation where her ignorance will be in evidence for all to hear.
Ms. Rhee just wants to put a great teacher in ever classroom! What could be wrong with that?
A great teacher in every classroom! And a different great teacher next year , and a different great teacher the next, and some years two or three different great teachers, and then another great teacher….,
You see, great teachers grow on trees. And Michelle knows how to best make that tree flourish. Don’t feed it. Trim off lots of healthy growth. Dig up the soil from around it and move it to landfills. Cover it with a stifling shade to let no sun nor water in…
Can’t beat that. As Howard Kunstler says, the magical thinking of something for nothing which pervades American life.
And if all teachers are “great” then that becomes the average, so no one is great.
Rhee failed at the profession herself and she takes this out on all the real educators.
She will rot in hell someday.
“And if all teachers are “great” then that becomes the average, so no one is great.”
Love it!
Great report.
At every job I ever had I could have been fired for no reason. What’s special about teachers that they should have more security than the vast majority of the workforce?
Get a better job.
Too bad your employer could fire you for being old/Filipino/refused to provide a sexual favor etc.
Why do you accept that of every job you hold? Do you think you’re worthy of some basic level of protection so that you can’t lose your livelihood on a whim? Don’t you think everyone should have that? It’s not “why should teachers have due process?” but rather “why shouldn’t everyone have due process?”.
The special thing about teachers is that we (or at least most of us) wish better for you.
I think everyone should have right of fair dismissal.
The video at the RESET is a ten minute ad for charter schools:
http://reseteducation.org/about/index.html
Maybe they actually believe they are “agnostics” as between publicly-run schools and privately-run schools, but it is very hard for me to understand how they miss the bias in all of these marketing materials.
I think it would be easier if they would simply admit they’re promoting charter schools. There’s nothing inherently wrong with promoting a position. The truth is this website promotes charter schools. My objection comes in when you have people promoting charter schools and then a group of people claiming they are “agnostic” and “relinquishing” public schools to people who promote charter schools. I object to that, because that leaves public schools with no advocates.
Funny, at the rate they are going there will be no experienced teachers left. Will all teachers then be equally inexperienced, thus equally inept or skilled, thus fixing the problem? They will all have the same script, that should fix things. I really admire their convoluted logic. Reality will eventually intrude on this pipe dream gone bad.
Duncan gave a speech yesterday pushing blended learning. I could write these speeches at this point, I’ve read so many, and one of the constants is that the only school districts and states he promotes are those districts and states that are under some kind of “reform” authority.
Tennessee and DC are ALWAYS there, and now he’s added Newark and (remarkably) Detroit, although as many of you know there are HUGE questions on the Eli Broad experiment in Detroit with “blended learning”.
It’s just incredible how biased this stuff is. It’s as if publicly-run schools have simply disappeared, and there are no successful schools other than those run by a very small group of celebrity “reformers”. And this is the US Department of Education! You would think they could occasionally mention a school that isn’t run by one of a handful of “reformers” but apparently, they can’t!
http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/technology-education-privacy-and-progress
Duncan promotes the EAA? Seriously? This man needs to resign. This country is in dire need of good leadership.
As parents in Chicago predicted, charters make bid to go into the public schools that were closed in Chicago:
“CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett assured state legislators in fall 2012 that no charters would move into the shuttered buildings. That promise was then repeated by board members during the months of debate over school closings last year.
Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, says he predicted at the time that blocking charters from taking over the schools was impractical.
“I think adapted reuse of these buildings is important because we don’t need more boarded up buildings in some of these communities,” Broy said. “The most obvious use for these buildings is a school, and charters should be part of that discussion.”
Broy said that every year the district is adding eight to 14 charter schools and most of those privately run schools want to move into a CPS building because that’s more financially viable for them.”
FOIA the emails, or you’ll never find out if they planned on selling and privatizing these schools when they closed them.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-charter-closed-school-met-20140224,0,4437019.story
Same stale script.