Archives for category: Rhee, Michelle
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Campbell Brown and Michelle Rhee: Another Odd Couple

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2012 //
4

Leonie Haimson is a leading parent activist in New York City and a co-founder of Parents Across America, which keeps tabs on the depredations of the corporate reformers.

Here is Leonie’s take on l’affaire Campbell Brown. One would think that Michelle Rhee and her organization StudentsFirst would be wary of getting too deep in the weeds with the issue of sexual misconduct. Yet they seem to want to exploit it to the full in a fact-free fashion.

The text of Leonie’s commentary follows, in full:

Campbell Brown was the first witness chosen to testify at the Cuomo Commission hearings last week,  all about how the UFT protects sex abusers.  She repeated the same claims in the WSJ a few days later. 

Bloomberg & Students1st NY (which essentially works for him, under the direction of Micah Lasher) are pushing a bill in the legislature, S.7497, that would allow him to fire any teacher accused of abuse, no matter what the arbitrator decided.

 Meanwhile, it has been revealed that Brown’s husband Dan Senor, a senior Romney advisor, is also on the board of Students1st. There is more on this here  and here – including about how Rhee’s own husband, Kevin Johnson has been accused of sexually molesting a minor under his supervision.

Here is the Students1st NY email blast sent out today:

We need your help, right now, to speak out against sexual misconduct in our school — and against sexism in the education debate.

On Monday, Emmy Award-winning journalist Campbell Brown — who previously served as White House Correspondent for NBC and as an anchor for CNN — wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about how New York law, supported by the teacher’s union, keeps sexual predators in the classroom.

Last night, the union responded — by attacking Campbell’s husband (who, among other things, serves on our Board).

National teachers union president Randi Weingarten took to Twitter and started republishing comments about Campbell’s “hubby” and his political views — as if Campbell’s accomplishments and perspective on this issue didn’t count. This morning, many of Ms. Weingarten’s colleagues have pursued the same line of attack.

Will you help us send a message that sexual misconduct has no place in our schools, and that sexism has no place in this debate?

Click here to speak out on Twitter. Tell Ms. Weingarten that she should focus more on protecting kids and less on sexist spin. Please use #protectourkids.

Of course, the union is looking for anything to distract from the issue at hand: that the union fights tooth-and-nail against giving school districts the authority to terminate anyone who engages in sexual misconduct.

Hopefully, if enough people speak out, we can convince the teachers union to put down the poison pen (and keyboard) and join us in trying to do something about this issue.

Click here to make your voice heard. Urge the union to put students first.

Chandra M. Hayslett
Director of Communications
StudentsFirstNY
http://twitter.com/StudentsFirstNY

 

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Parent Groups, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Why Does StudentsFirst Deceive?

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2012 //
10

A reader posts a particularly egregious example of the deceptive tactics used by StudentsFirst to enroll new members. I long ago reported that Change.org had decided not to allow Michelle Rhee’s organization to lure the unsuspecting into signing a petition that seemingly supports teachers, but actually enrolls them as in an effort to eliminate collective bargaining rights, tenure, seniority, and any form of job protection for experienced teachers. That’s what Change.org said, but it never acted on this new policy. It’s still enabling Rhee’s deceptive recruitment..

Diane, you have informed readers of your blog several times that you inadvertently signed a Students First petition because you did not know it was posted by Michelle Rhee’s organization.

In Philadelphia, the school nurses posted a petition to restore 100 positions that have been cut because it means nurses now have 1500 students they serve rather than 750, and most schools only have a nurse two days a week as a result. 

http://www.change.org/petitions/school-reform-commission-school-district-of-phila-restore-the-certified-school-nurse-ratio-to-1-nurse-to-750-students

When you sign the petition, you are taken to another petition which says vote on our petition “Good Teachers Deserve Decent Pay”. (I don’t know if this happens to everyone, it did to me.) In the fine print, it says this is a Students First petition. I’m sure many people click on it not realizing this is a vote in support of privatization.

By their deceptive methods, the deformers show their contempt for democracy. As far as they are concerned deception, lying, and stealing public property are OK as long as it promotes their privatization agenda.

Categories Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Michelle Rhee’s Shameless Ad, Again

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2012 //
19

I recently wrote a post about Michelle Rhee’s “Olympics” ad, in which she shows a flabby man doing rhythmic gymnastics and falling down because he is in such bad shape. This is supposed to be American education, in her view.

I wrote that she was ridiculing obesity and insulting our students, our teachers,  our schools, and presenting a humiliating picture of America to the world.

A reader wrote to say that the ad is also homophobic, and on reviewing, I agree. The man in the ad is engaged in a sport that is for women only in the Olympics. He is portrayed as effete and ineffectual. This is an insulting stereotype of a gay man.

If StudentsFirst has any wisdom, it would withdraw this ad.

Categories Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Michelle Rhee Is Shameless

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2012 //
76

I have resisted watching the ad that Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst created and played on NBC.

A reader sent it to me, and I relented.

It is disgusting.

It is a lie.

It smears America.

It smears our teachers and our students.

It makes fun of obesity.

It is homophobic (the flabby man in the ad is portrayed as effete and engaged in rhythmic gymnastics, an Olympic sport open only to women)

A few facts:

1) the US was never first on international tests. When the first test was given in 1964 (a test of math), our students came in 11th out of 12.

2) On the latest international tests, students in American schools with low poverty (10% or less) came in FIRST in the world

3) As poverty goes up in American schools, test scores go down.

4) The U.S. has the highest child poverty rate–23%– of any advanced nation in the world.

Michelle Rhee says nothing about poverty, which is the most direct correlate of low test scores.

She is shameless.

Categories Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle

Whistleblower in DC Is Suing Rhee, Principal Who Fired Him

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2012 //
10

A U.S. District Court judge ruled that a special education teacher who was fired for complaining about cheating may sue former Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee and his former principal Donald Presswood. The teacher, Bruno Mpoy, complained that the principal directed him to falsify test scores. He refused to do so, and he said he was subjected to harassment and suspended. When he brought his complaints to DCPS administrators and Chancellor Rhee, according to his testimony, he was “investigated, harassed, threatened, and ultimately terminated from his teaching position at the direction of Chancellor Rhee, DCPS, and Mr. Presswood.”

Mpoy originally sought to sue not only Rhee and Presswood, but also Mayor Adrian Fenty and the New Teacher Project. The judge decided that he could sue only Rhee and Presswood, based on claims that his First Amendment rights had been violated, and that the D.C. Whistleblower Law had been violated.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle

About Those Superintendents on Broad Board

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2012 //
15

At the suggestion of a reader, I posted a list of the board of directors of a Broad Center for the Management of School Systems, dating from 2009. It included several school superintendents.

Readers have commented on the track record of the superintendents on that board.

Let’s see:

Joel Klein: Resigned in 2010, after NY State Education Department revealed  statewide score inflation and New York City’s celebrated test scores collapsed

Michelle Rhee: Resigned in 2010 after D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty defeated, largely because of her divisive reputation

Arlene Ackerman: Resigned in 2011 in Philadelphia after tempestuous reign

Maria Goodloe-Johnson: Fired in 2010 in Seattle

Arne Duncan: His plan called Renaissance 2010 failed to lift Chicago public schools, now U.S. Secretary of Education

Margaret Spellings: Not a superintendent, but architect of disastrous NCLB

And to think that this is the organization that is training superintendents to “reform” urban education!

Categories Broad Foundation, Chicago, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Klein, Joel, NYC, Philadelphia, Rhee, Michelle

Where Power Resides

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2012 //
10

A reader sent this list of the board of directors of the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems for 2009.

The center is part of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which runs a training program for urban school superintendents.

Some (many?) Broad-trained superintendents have been involved in controversy, due to their non-collaborative management style.

Joel Klein, Chair, Chancellor New York City Department of Education
Barry Munitz, Vice Chair, Trustee Professor California State University, Los Angeles
Arlene Ackerman, Superintendent of Philadelphia Public Schools
Richard Barth (Chief Executive Officer KIPP Foundation)
Henry Cisneros, Chairman of City View America, former U.S. Secretary of HUD
Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education (on Board until Feb. 2009)
Louis Gerstner, Jr., Retired Chairman and CEO, IBM Corporation
Maria Goodloe-Johnson, Superintendent Seattle Public Schools
Dan Katzir, Managing Director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
Wendy Kopp (CEO and Founder of Teach for America)
Margaret Spellings, President and CEO of Margaret Spellings and Company, former U.S. Secretary of DOE
Melissa Megliola Zaikos, Autonomous Management and Performance Schools Program Officer, Chicago Public Schools
Michelle Rhee, Chancellor District of Columbia Schools
Lawrence Summers, Director National Economic Council
Mortimer Zuckerman, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, U.S. News & World Report; Publisher of the New York Daily News
Categories Broad Foundation, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Klein, Joel, Rhee, Michelle

George Will’s Surprising Take on the Chicago Battle

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
9

George Will is confused about who is right and who is wrong in the battle between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Teachers Union.

And that’s a good thing, because one would expect this doughty conservative to stand firmly, loudly, and uncompromisingly in opposition to the union.

But he didn’t.

Granted, he doesn’t know that CTU is part of the American Federation of Teachers, not the National Education Association. And he doesn’t know that the name of the NEA was settled in 1857, not just recently to deceive people and “blur the fact that it is a teachers’ union.”

Granted, he thinks the auto industry was fatally wounded by its unions, not by its shortsighted managers, who never figured out that American consumers wanted fuel-efficient cars, not gas-guzzlers.

And then too, he makes the common error of claiming that spending on education in the nation is up while “educational attainments have fallen.” One of his researchers should have looked at the latest reports of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and told him that test scores are at their highest point for every group in history.

But he then does something startling. George Will rejects the central premise of the reformers’ argument. He abandons the “no excuses” philosophy of Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan. He says that poverty and family collapse affect students’ ability to succeed in school. He says that social order in Chicago is in disarray, even though Arne Duncan and former Mayor Richard Daley proclaimed their plan to be “Renaissance 2010.” Reminder: 2010 is past and gone. There was no Renaissance. What remains of those “reforms”? Little progress, if any, and a legacy of crumbling families and weakened communities.

Says Will:

The city is experiencing an epidemic of youth violence — a 38 percent surge in the homicide rate, 53 people shot on a recent weekend, random attacks by roving youth mobs. Social regression, driven by family disintegration, means schools where teaching is necessarily subordinated to the arduous task of maintaining minimal order.

Emanuel got state law changed to require unions to get 75 percent of the entire membership rather than a simple majority to authorize a strike. Some people thought this would make strikes impossible. The CTU got 90 percent to authorize. Lewis’s members are annoyed, and are not all wrong.

If you count only those members who cast a vote, Karen Lewis won authorization to strike by 98 percent of the members.

George Will is right. Karen Lewis’s members are “not all wrong.”

Quite an admission from the nation’s most eminent conservative columnist.

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle

Fraud Alert! Beware of Change.Org

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2012 //
19

From a reader:

Change.org & Students First are STILL at it! Yet ANOTHER Students First petition is attached to a valid one. This petition is titled
“Good Teachers Deserve Decent Pay.” REALLY??  Can someone out there get them to stop loading these phony petitions? It
says that 1,300,000+ people signed!!! To whoever can do anything–THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Note: I am still a “member” of StudentsFirst, having signed a petition without knowing that I was joining an organization that I did not wish to join.

I assume that a significant portion of the alleged 1.3 million “members” are like me. I’m guessing that over one  million of her supposed members are like me: Duped into joining.

Don’t count anyone as a member who has not knowingly signed up.

I have been listed by StudentsFirst as a “member” for over a year without knowing about it. It was only when I complained on this blog about Change.Org facilitating this deception that a staff member of Change.Org contacted me, and in an exchange of emails, told me that I had signed one of the petitions that made me a “member.”

Shame on StudentsFirst for continuing to deceive innocent people who want to show their support for teachers, not to join Michelle Rhee’s campaign to undermine the teaching profession and promote the privatization of public education. And shame on Change.Org for allowing this deception to continue on their website.

Diane

Categories Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

A Letter to Change.Org

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2012 //
24

Dear Change.Org,

You told the world that you stopped collecting the signatures of unknowing people for StudentsFirst.

You didn’t tell the truth.

You informed me that I was a member of StudentsFirst because I signed a petition on your website a year ago.

I never knowingly  signed on as a member of StudentsFirst.

I was duped.

Apparently StudentFirst has cynically used your website to dupe a million other people as they duped me.

When will you stop facilitating this deception?

The letter below says you are still running three different StudentsFirst petitions.

StudentsFirst claims 1.3 million members. According to the letter sent to my blog, 1.275,700 of those members were gathered at Change.Org, using the same deception that fooled me.

Michelle Rhee uses these numbers to raise millions of dollars from rightwing donors and to intimidate politicians to accept her agenda. She then spends these millions to bash teachers and promote privatization.

If my math is right, StudentsFirst has 24,300 members nationwide, not 1.3 million members.

No one can tell me how to resign as a member.

Enough is enough.

I will report you to the Federal Trade Commission and to consumer fraud agencies if you don’t sever your ties with these deceptive tactics.

Please contact me as soon as possible to let me know how to get my name off the rolls of StudentsFirst. It was put there by Change.Org.

Diane Ravitch

Dear Diane, your concern SHOULD be with Change.org’s policy as much as with Rhee’s deceptive tactics. The business model of Change.org enables the abuse, and so long as that’s true the progressive image of Change is nothing but a pitch to draw in more honest grassroots campaigns that can become automated recruitment vehicles for their (paying) opposition. Despite a statement to the press implying a response to concerns, Change. org continues to run 3 StudentsFirst petitions. Those active campaigns and all 34 StudentsFirst petitions on record on Change.org, whose 1,275,700 signatures (on last count) were obtained by misleading viral-marketing features provided by Change.org only to paying clients, ought to be disabled immediately and their contact lists withheld from StudentsFirst. And we ought to be asking, furthermore, how many other causes are being subverted in this way on Change.org. If we think of the sheer configuration of honest campaigns from around the country and the world that become the infrastructure for Change.org profits, routing for-pay campaigns like Rhee’s to identified supporters of “related” causes, the scheme passing as the Change.org policy begins to emerge in its disturbing fullness. As things stand now, Change.org is a bait advertiser’s (and a bait lobbyist’s) dream.
Categories Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst
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