A reader comments on the fact that StudentsFirst–the Michelle Rhee organization that is raising $1 billion to attack teachers and public schools– is promoting the parent trigger film:
Archives for category: Rhee, Michelle
A progressive website published a “leaked document” that allegedly shows bad blood between Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and Connecticut’s Parent Union.
Both are supposed to be working together to promote the parent trigger in Connecticut but it seems they got into a slugfest over money.
Read it for yourself.
Education Week has an article by the always well-informed Alyson Klein that speculates about Romney’s possible choice for Secretary of Education.
The possibilities include:
Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, who shaped the Romney agenda for privatization of the nation’s schools;
Tom Luna, the state superintendent in Idaho who is known for his allegiance to online corporations and his efforts to increase class size;
Joel Klein, the former chancellor of NYC, now selling technology for Rupert Murdoch, another supporter of privatization and opponent of unions, seniority and tenure;
Michelle Rhee, leader of a national campaign to remove all tenure, seniority and collective bargaining fromt teachers;
Chris Cerf, acting commission in New Jersey, who is leading Chris Christie’s push to privatize public schools in that state;
Here is the big surprise:
Arne Duncan, who is seen by Republicans as compatible with Romney’s agenda and, as the article, says, eager to stay on.
There are other names, but it is interesting to realize that at least four of the six listed here are allegedly, nominally Democrats.
A reader sends the video of the event at the University of Hawaii in which Michelle Rhee and her husband Kevin Johnson lecture on “Ethics in Education.” We were fortunate enough to have a description of that lecture soon after it was delivered, and it was posted here.
A reader sent a link to the CNN interview, in which Randi Kaye pretends for a few minutes to be Michelle Rhee:
in case this has not yet been posted. CNN News Room posted the Randi Kaye interview with Diane Ravitch. There is a comments section which I’m sure we’ll use responsibly. 
A teacher in Florida received an email from Students First inviting him to a screening of the parent trigger movie at the GOP convention.
He doesn’t know how he got on the StudentsFirst email list. He probably signed a petition to support “great” teachers and didn’t know he was duped into joining StudentsFirst.
This is the email he forwarded to me. Remember this the next time you hear Michelle Rhee claim that she is a Democrat. A “Democrat” who works for the nation’s most conservative Republican governors, attacking unions, tenure, seniority and promoting vouchers, charters, for-profit schools, and online schools.
StudentsFirst, Twentieth Century Fox & Walden Media
Invite You and a Guest to a Complimentary Private Screening
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis play two determined mothers, one a teacher, who will stop at nothing to transform their children’s failing inner city school. Facing a powerful and entrenched bureaucracy, they risk everything to make a difference in the education and future of their children. This powerful story of parenthood, friendship and courage mirrors events that are making headlines daily. WON’T BACK DOWN will be released by 20th Century Fox on September 28, 2012.
During the GOP Convention
Tuesday, August 28 – Tampa, FL
Further location information to follow.
12:30 PM Reception with Special Guests:
Blues Traveler Band & Caroline Kole
2:00 PM Private Screening of Won’t Back Down
Panel immediately following screening with:
Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Former Secretary of State
Gov. Jeb Bush, Chairman of Foundation for Excellence in Education
Michelle Rhee, Former DC Chancellor; Founder of StudentsFirst
Daniel Barnz, Director, Won’t Back Down
Campbell Brown, Moderator
STAND UP, SPEAK OUT, FIGHT FOR SOMETHING BETTER
Space is limited/first-come-first-serve
Click here to REGISTER NOW and see the trailer.
Save your access code, you will need it to register: GOPSF
For you & one guest; Invite is Non-Transferable
If you are unable to register please email: info@WizEventTech.com
Many readers have contacted me to ask why CNN has not posted Randi Kaye’s interview with me, rebutting Michelle Rhee’s assertions.
This reader, Michael Brocoum, made a copy of the interview and posted it on Youtube. Here it is.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the interview began with a question about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (you will note that it is misspelled by CNN as the National Assessment of Educational Process). I don’t recall the precise wording, but the question went like this:
“You claim that test scores on NAEP are at their highest point in history, but how do you explain that the scale score for fourth grade reading is only 221? That’s 221 out of 500. That’s less than 50%. Isn’t 50% a failing grade?”
I then tried to explain that scale scores don’t work like that, that the question itself was a completely erroneous interpretation of scale scores. NAEP has a vertical scale, and scale scores in the 4th grade are lower than in the 8th grade. They can’t be converted into a grade in the way that Randi Kaye asserted, although they are useful as measures of progress.
Consider this: the average scale score for 4th grade is 221, but students scoring at the 90th percentile–our top students–have a scale score of 264. By Randi Kaye’s fallacious reasoning, they are failing too! In 8th grade reading, the students at the 90th percentile had a scale score of 307 (on a scale of 500). She would convert that to a grade of 61, which is borderline failing.
Wouldn’t you think that the editor or research staff at CNN would have prevented Randi Kaye from making such absurd assertions?
But it was of a piece with all the questions that followed. I felt as if I were being interrogated by someone who worked for StudentsFirst, not by a reporter seeking to ascertain either my views or the basic facts.
Rhee said at the outset of my interview that the answer to what she thinks is the terrible performance of our schools is merit pay. So Randi Kaye drilled in on that with two questions (one of them was dropped from the show before it aired). She ended up with a quote from someone named Lucas who said he wanted merit pay. That wasn’t exactly definitive, since I was able point out that merit pay has been tried again and again and has always failed to make a difference.
The author of the article “Is Literature Necessary?” writes a comment:
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A reader writes that Change.org continues to offer deceptive petitions to recruit members for StudentsFirst (petitions like “do you support great teachers?” “are you against bullying?”). Frankly, I don’t think any of the organization’s membership claims are meaningful because no one pays dues, and no one knows how many names were added by deceptive petitions on websites like Change.org. I am still a member of StudentsFirst, even though I never knowingly joined. How many hundreds of thousands of others are there listed as members who are in the same boat? I was a “member” for over a year and never knew it. I was informed by a spokesman for Change. org when I complained about the same deception described here:
| Diane, you’ve written a lot about how Michelle Rhee’s group StudentsFirst recruits most of their members from Change.org. Two months ago, on June 19th (acc. to HuffPo article about it) Change.org very publicly said they were dropping StudentsFirst as their client, and would stop recruiting new supporters for StudentsFirst. Now it turns out that they were lying hypocrites of the most cynical kind. In fact, for anyone like me who has been paying attention, it seems that Change.org (which is a for-profit company, by the way) has actually DRAMATICALLY INCREASED how many people they are signing up to be members of StudentsFirst. Back on June 19th, the number of Change.org “supporters” for StudentsFirst was listed here… http://www.change.org/groups/studentsfirst …as about 1,100,000 people. I remember thinking that was a lot of people already. But if you check that same page today, you will see that it has increased over the past two months to 1.6 million people. That’s an extra 500,000 people that Change.org has recruited for Michelle Rhee’s group in only two months. (And some of us have noticed how many times when we sign a Change.org petition we are “invited” to sign up for Michelle Rhee’s email list). So instead of dropping StudentsFirst, as they so publicly said they were doing, Change.org has actually “stepped on the gas” to accelerate their work for Michelle Rhee over the past two months and earn a ton more money from her. I looked into Change.org’s pricing and was told they charge their clients $1.50 for each person who signs up. So that means that those extra 500,000 “recruits” were worth $750,000 to Change.org, in payments from Michelle Rhee over the past two months. Where is the outrage? Change.org should be held accountable for lying to progressives like this. They don’t deserve support from any progressive organizations if they are going to lie like this in a baldface way. Notice that none of this is insider knowledge. It isn’t necessary. It’s all out in the open for anyone to see. Again: Where is the outrage? The news coverage? The boycotts of Change.org? Let them go work for Romney if that’s the kind of people they are. |
Two different videos made by educators to satirize Michelle Rhee’s insulting Olympics ad, the one that ridicules America, teachers, students, obesity and gays.
Here is one. It is hilarious.
Here is the other. This creative video is from “the Chalkface,” where smart and funny educators use radio and video to get their message across to the public.
Social media give us the tools to speak up, laugh out loud, and ridicule the ridiculous ideas now being foisted onto educators by edu-deformers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 