Peter Greene writes a farewell letter to Michelle and dissects Campbell Brown’s talking points.
Peter speculates on Michelle’s departure and hopes she understands why she provoked the reactions she did::
“Maybe education was providing too few rewards and too much tempest. People have called you some awful names and said some terrible personal things about you, and though I have called you the Kim Kardashian of education, I don’t condone or support the ugly personal attacks that are following you out the door. But I understand them– you have done some awful, awful things, and I’m not sure that it’s ever seemed, from out here in the cheap seats, that you understand that teachers and students are real, live human beings and not simply props for whatever publicity moment you are staging. I’m not saying that you deserve the invective being hurled at you; I am saying that when you poke a bear in the face repeatedly, it eventually gets up and takes a bite out of you.”
As Michelle leaves, stage right, she hands off the baton as leader of the campaign against “bad teachers” to Campbell Brown, who explained her goals in an opinion piece. Since she is not an educator, he feels he must explain that her effort to take away tenure from “bad teachers” will take away tenure for ALL teachers. He asks how she will judge the quality of teachers. If she really wants to protect those who are caring, dependable, and inspiring, how can she be sure that these are the same teachers whose students get higher scores?
Ultimately, he wants know how removing employment protections will attract more “great” teachers to the classroom.
Campbell would do well to listen to Peter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Michelle Rhee became too toxic a figure to be effective in leading the privatization/anti-union campaign. She is an embarrassment and a liability to the billionaire boys’ club, so she has to retreat into a safe corporate job at Scott. Rhee provoked so much opposition, outrage, and suspicion of illegality that a new face and indeed a new strategy were needed; enter the Vergara Campaign faking civil rights advocacy for the poor kids and the new leader of this fake offensive, non-educator Campbell Brown, whose photogenic appeal gives the attack on unions and public schools a new vehicle. Brown’s secretly-financed litigation war on tenure is a much simpler strategy than the previous effort to organize a mass base for billionaire reform(the failed Parent Revolution); also, Brown is not undertaking the task that sank Rhee, namely whole-district reform for which metrics must be produced showing success and which is impossible to achieve by non-stop high-stakes testing and by Rhee’s slash-and-burn attacks on students and teachers. Rhee’s leaving the school wars she lost and changing her name are tacks similar to the pulling back of provocateur Wendy Kopp from TFA who handed off CEO to two unknowns without her tiring and toxic profile(20 yrs in the public eye unable to produce the great outcomes promised from TFA). Similar situation with Bill Gates pulling back too, murmuring publicly that CCSS implemented too quickly, testing being used for too many high-stakes purposes. Pulling-back of first-generation school war leadership also visible in disarray between right-wing GOP politicians like Gov. Jindal of Louisianna wanting out from CCSS/PARCC; CCSS and anything associated with “Obama” are toxic items demonized by rising Tea Party, making conservative GOP not conservative enough if they stand by CCSS, etc. Lastly, the shifting power politics of this school war are also driven by strong opposition of some parents in NY and other states; NYS parents forced NYS Ed Comm King on the defensive and led him to cancel his planned public forums; pro-CCSS Gov Christie of NJ is also greeted with protesters when he travels. Such growing opposition to CCSS/PARCC has forced personnel changes as well as strategic changes on the billionaire’s side of the war. Excellent time for advocates of the public sector to increase opposition and keep the other side on the defensive.
Now what might UNCF’s Michael Lomax do?
For example,
http://www.studentsfirst.org/blog/entry/Michelle-Rhee-Michael-lomax-call-for-charter-suit-to-be-tossed-out
These women are not interested in the quality of anything or anyone. Michelle’s gig has been suspended by the puppet masters due to insufficient success so she has been ordered to change her name and step into a different assignment, wrapped up in a fresh persona. Brown is then pulled from the back bench and sent in to give it another go, targeting public employee unions, using children as her cover story, while plotting for yet another financial windfall that benefits her husband and his cronies. I don’t think we are in the cheap seats. Instead, we are paying dearly for front row access to this little shop of horrors.
Good riddance.
After the #supportthecore revolt yesterday, we are trying to make #evaluatethat trend on twitter. If you have a positive story about a teacher or teaching you’d like to share and are on twitter, consider posting today. Keep fighting!
Brown left CNN as a result of poor ratings. Now her husband’s hedge fund friends are paying her to bash teachers for the purpose of funneling public education funds to the 1%.
Rhee has only retreated from the East coast. She is very much alive in Sacramento, CA. She was just appointed as chairwoman of the board of the St. Hope Public Schools, the independent charter schools started by her husband, Kevin Johnson, the present mayor of Sacramento (who plans to run for a 3rd term).
She is here to help him win a November ballot measure to make him a “strong” mayor in the image of former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg. Additionally, she is working with her StudentsFirst group to elect school board members, on the same ballot, who are sympathetic with their corporate school reform.
Johnson and Rhee are busy putting in place the steps necessary to take over both the city and the schools.
Florence,
In other states, nepotism on the school board is considered a conflict of interest.
Campbell Brown is back on this morning, 8/14, with Jane Pauley for an interview on “how best to educate the kids”. CB is relentless and her “hedge fund friends” are fully exploiting her access to media like CBS or Chris Matthews on MSNBC. Her Dance Card is so full, that we could assign a full-time band of Roving Pickets to follow her around on her propaganda blitz. Roving Pickets come from the East Kentucky union wars of the 1960’s, a wonderful bunch of activists who stayed engaged and supported by sturdy shoe leather.
Diane,
The St. Hope Public Charter Schools are “independent” charters which take state education funds and create their own rules. Even though it is chartered within the Sacramento City Unified School District it has its own separate board and decides who will serve and how it will operate. No members of the Sacramento City Teachers Association work in them so it’s really difficult for the greater community to know how the board operates or how the schools function.
This is what makes “independent” and “dependent” charter schools different in the Sacramento School District. “Dependent” charter schools create their own charters with parent and community input and operate with union teachers.These public dependent charter schools are responsible to the parents, community and school board.
Although, in theory, the Sacramento School District has oversight, it really has no authority over the “independent” Kevin Johnson/Michelle Rhee schools.
I guess nepotism is OK as long as your charter doesn’t prohibit it.
So Michelle Rhee is leaving education altogether? That may be too good to be true, considering what Florence posted.
Regarding Campbell Brown, I think those who want to get rid of tenure are actually the ones who are trying to silence teachers because teachers won’t be as likely to speak out without it.
Excellent comments on this thread.
First, small change. From my POV, Michelle Rhee changing her name to Michelle Johnson is just corporate-style rebranding. It is also reminiscent of Newt Gingrich who declaimed loudly his beliefs and marriages while skipping merrily from one faith to another and hopping on—er, best to follow Diane’s quite sensible Rules of the Road here—or rather, moving from one wife to the next while not quite keeping his relationships separate and apart [is that polite enough?]. And all the while criticizing others for doing (in lesser measure) exactly what he was doing! But hypocrisy is the least of it…
Second, something a bit more important. Michelle Rhee will always be that same Michelle Rhee that used masking tape on dozens of small children, made their lips bleed, and faced [or so it seems] not even a single word of criticism from her coworkers or the parents or her principal. Speaks ill of the atmosphere of the school she worked in; anything went, and apparently she wants to make every school a safe harbor for those like herself that shun responsibility for such egregious actions.
Third, something that recently occurred to me. When you allege that your principal told you in person [absolutely no documentation to back this up and the principal has never confirmed Michelle Rhee’s account] that you had taken “your” [the co-teacher miraculously disappeared in MR’s account] students from the 13th to the 90th percentile in one year—
What person in his/her right mind with good sense and diversity of life & job experiences and even a slight sense of self-awareness and humility would take seriously such an outlandishly bizarre statement? Leading directly to…
Fourth, the kind of person who would publicly tout such a delusional and self-serving allegation is exactly the type that populates the ranks of the educrats and edubullies and edufrauds who make up the self-styled “education reform” movement. But even in such “august” company she stands out.
Which brings me to my last point.
Fifth, from this point forward she will not be able to claim that she doesn’t have the powerful political connections, necessary family support and heavy-hitting financial backing to carry out her business plan that masquerades as an education model.
Evasion is no longer an option. Remember the famous comment from Joe Louis re “he can run but he can’t hide”? Well, she’s got absolutely no place to hide now. If she can’t demonstrate her brilliant cage busting achievement gap crushing 21st century disruptive innovative skills under optimum conditions—
Well, she said it best. She will just have to admit she “sucks” at education. [See her comments re her two girls and soccer.]
Or perhaps she’ll just demonstrate that when it comes to “put up or shut up” she is a big advocate of “rigor” [mortis, that is] in action.
Ah, Michelle [fill in the blank], we hardly knew ye.
😎
Wish that she would fade into oblivion, but she will not allow that to happen. The rebranding as Johnson is hilarious, to me, never having used Huffman, tho married to him with 2 children with his name. Students First said with her, it was able to put “person of color” as its face, to deflect the accusations that it was run by powerful white men. I’m paraphrasing that, but one can find in press releases and write ups the similar quote. Michelle Rhee never was an underprivileged person of color–lets get that straight. To equate her with the brown and black children that Students First purports to want to save is a stretch.
Regardless of the name changing nonsense and working for her husband (what a gig) and getting the Board appointment at Scotts (again, these were her old cronies), she will forever be known for her lack of accomplishments, her complicity with the deform movement, her party line of democrat who almost always backed republicans, and the litany of lies that is her record. She should have been indicted for the cheating scandal, she should have been arrested for abusing her students, and for the life of me, with 2 daughters, I will never understand how she could go to the defense of her current husband with the sex scandal(s) revolving around him. I just don’t get it. I make no apologies for myself or anyone else in their opinions on this awful human being. She won’t go away because her ego won’t let her, but good riddance to her; the world KNOWS, and that speaks volumes against her and her ilk.
Diane,
See front page story of today’s Sacramento Bee on Michelle Rhee’s departure from Student’s First, her future plans, and her and her husband’s plans for his political future.