Archives for category: StudentsFirst
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Talk About Nerve!

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2012 //
25

A group of 30 organizations associated with corporate reform wrote a letter to Secretary Arne Duncan to insist that he hold teacher education programs accountable for the test scores of the students taught by their graduates.

Groups like Teach for America, StudentsFirst, Democrats for Education Reform (the Wall Street hedge fund managers), The New Teacher Project, various charter chains, Jeb Bush’s rightwing Chiefs for Change and his Foundation for Educational Excellence, and various and sundry groups that love teaching to the test stand together as one.

Their views are in direct opposition to those of the leaders of higher education, who oppose this extension of federal control into their institutions.

Read Gary Rubinstein’s blog about it here, where you will see the full cast of corporate reform characters, many of them funded by the Gates Foundation.

They are certain that what minority students need most is more testing. They want the test scores of the students to determine the career and livelihood of their teachers. And they want the federal government to punish the schools of education that prepared the teachers of these children.

If Duncan takes their advice, he will assume the power to penalize schools of education if the students of their graduates can’t raise their test scores every year.

The vise of standardized testing will tighten around public education.

These people and these organizations are wrong. They are driving American education in a destructive direction. They will reduce children to data points, as the organizations thrive. Wasn’t a decade of NCLB enough for them?

They are on the wrong side of history. They may be flying high now, but their ideas hurt children and ruin the quality of education.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, ConnCAN, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Higher Education, StudentsFirst, Teach for America TFA, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Student Protest Video Disappears

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
5

Yesterday I posted a video of students protesting against StudentsFirst.

The students carried signs and spoke on camera.

They objected to that organization’s support for high-stakes testing and for charters invading their communities. In addition, they complained that StudentsFirst had honored a Georgia state senator as “education reformer of the year,” when he was known as virulently anti-immigrant.

StudentsFirst said the students were pawns for the union.

The video has been taken down.

I will try to locate it.

Categories Education Reform, Students, StudentsFirst

StudentsFirst Objects to Student Protest

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2012 //
18

Here is a video of students protesting against StudentsFirst because it supports:

1) charter schools (which in NYC do not accept a fair share of ELLs)

2) high-stakes testing

3) an anti-immigrant Georgia state legislator

The response of StudentsFirst: It claimed the students are just pawns of the teachers’ union, obviously not intelligent enough to be part of a discussion of education issues that matter.

But note that all three points that the students made are correct.

Why does StudentsFirst think that students are too dumb to have valid views about their own education?

Categories Charter Schools, NYC, Students, StudentsFirst

Oops! StudentsFirst Honors Anti-Immigrant Legislator

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2012 //
12

According to Laura Clawon of the Daily Kos, StudentsFirst selected a Georgia legislator as its “reformer of the year.”

Unfortunately this gentleman is known as vehemently opposed to immigration, and StudentsFirst is now facing protests from immigrant groups.

At some point, people will figure out that Michelle Rhee claims to be a Democrat, but she is known among educators for supporting the governors of the right. Like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and Mitch Daniels. She enjoys firing people. She stands with the for-profit corporations. If she is a liberal or a Democrat, where’s the evidence?

 

 

Categories StudentsFirst

Is This Ironic?

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2012 //
18

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:

I find it more than slightly ironic that Michelle Rhee, a woman who has openly joked about putting tape over the mouths of young children to keep them quiet, has been chosen to promote “Won’t Back Down.” Apparently, one of the fictionalized events in the film that triggers the parents to revolt against the school is a nasty unionized teacher who locks students in closets. Surely, any parent who heard about this abuse would want to rise up and take action. But any parent who heard about a teacher taping their child’s mouth shut would also rise up and take action. It wasn’t a corrupt union that kept Michelle Rhee in the classroom, it was TFA. Maybe teachers in the Charlotte area can show up to the DNC screening of “Won’t Back Down” with tape over their mouths and signs that say “Won’t Shut Up.” Just a suggestion…
Categories Education Reform, Parent trigger, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Reformer Squabble in Connecticut

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2012 //
13

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.

Categories Connecticut, Parent trigger, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Here is My Interview on CNN

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2012 //
36

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.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Michigan, NAEP, Privatization, Ravitch, Diane, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Change.org Did Not Drop StudentsFirst

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2012 //
10

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.
Categories Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Educators Push Back Against Rhee’s Insulting Ad

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2012 //
4

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.

 

Categories Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Teachers and Teaching

Michelle Rhee Is Wrong and Misinformed

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2012 //
47

My article with the title above appeared on CNN.com.

They heard from you. They invited me to respond and this is the article I wrote.

I think that if we all speak up again and again and again and again, and tell the truth, supported by facts and experience, our voices will be heard.

Write letters to the editor, comment on blogs, speak up at public meetings, do what you can, when you can, where you can.

Your actions will encourage others.

And that is how a movement is built.

From the ground up.

Not with billions of dollars, but with millions of willing hands and hearts and minds.

Categories Parents, Ravitch, Diane, Rhee, Michelle, Students, StudentsFirst, Teacher Evaluations, US Education
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