Ever since D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty took control of the D.C.public schools and named Michelle Rhee as its leader, corporate reformers have hailed the long-struggling district as a model of school reform. Rhee was a blazing meteor in the world of reform, appearing on the covers of national magazines and as a frequent guest on national TV. She starred in “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” and prominent reform-loving journalists burbled in print about her miraculous achievements.
She “knew” that “bad teachers” caused low student test scores, so she set about firing teachers and principals and designed an evaluation system tied to test scores to weed out the bad apples.
Her stle was mean. She gloried in her lack of empathy and her contempt for collaboration.
Now, Tom Ultican (like John Merrow before him, whom he cites) dismantles the Rhee legacy as a fraud, an exemplar of the Destroy Public Education Movement, a testament to the failure of the “portfolio model.”
Inflated test scores, inflated graduation rates, doctored data, a regime of deception and boasting. A model of corporate reform. Educators in Atlanta were sentenced to jail for the same things that happened in D.C. yet D.C. was hailed as a model.
Rhee is gone. Her successor Kaya Henderson is gone. Her successor Antwan Wilson is gone. But the hype and spin survives. When will the Mayor and City Council and people of D.C demand accountability?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Tom Ultican is right.
The people who CAN demand accountability in DC all send their children to private or religious schools. What’s left in DC is the poor/ working poor and those folks can’t afford the time that it takes to demand accountability. It will continue until ALL teachers across the US walk out and strike….not just for better pay and benefits, but for respect, for their profession and for doing what is right to educate the children left in their care. That’s when ALL of this will change.
A nationwide strike? I think you’re on to something.
Mmm… a national strike against DPE, organized with the support of students and parents, without the help of unions to show the non-political prescience of it… Love. That. Idea.
I don’t know why ed reformers do this- exaggerate successes. It always, always blows up in their faces.
One of the schools that inflated graduation rates was ordered to go from a 50% graduation rate to a 100% college acceptance rate in ONE year.
That’s a ridiculous target. They may as well just pull numbers out of the air. No wonder they inflated graduation rates. The goal was impossible to meet.
and so often truly unrealistic “goals” are pushed by reformers onto unsuspecting teachers who, then, become the targets for blame when the goals cannot be met
Shit flows downhill, eh!
And guess who ultimately ends up in it all. . .
Yep, you guessed it, the students.
“a regime of deception and boasting”
Wow, that is a fitting definition for the Koch brothers, their Kochtapus, the entire GOP and the Trump administration and the orange, malignant viruse’s family.
It’s called deflection and passing the buck. it’ll never change.
Perhaps it’s time form those fired teachers to ‘lawyer up’ and sue for damages. Money seems to be the only think people like Rhee understand.
Read about Marshall Tuck, who is running for CA state superintendent
Tell me that the following (from Wikipedia) does not sound too good to be true
“In 2007, Tuck became the founding CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a groundbreaking collaboration between the Los Angeles Mayor’s office and the Los Angeles Unified School District to operate 17 struggling elementary, middle, and high schools serving about 15,000 students.[5] Under Tuck’s leadership, these schools raised four-year graduation rates by more than 60%, and had the highest academic improvement among California’s school systems with more than 10,000 students.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Tuck