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How to Win a Gift Card to Your Favorite Restaurant

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2012 //
13

A reader passed along this message. Since I too am a member of StudentsFirst, I am surprised that I did not get this email. Readers may recall that I unknowingly became a member of StudentsFirst when I signed a petition at Change.org supporting teachers or calling for higher pay for teachers. The petition did not mention StudentsFirst, and I learned about my “membership” only when contacted by someone from Change.org. See my post about it here.

I am glad to see that StudentsFirst is not offering its members prizes to post on this blog (yet).

From: Catherine Robinson <crobinson@studentsfirst.org>
Date: July 26, 2012 9:58:12 PM EDT
To: Catherine Robinson <crobinson@studentsfirst.org>
Subject: rapid responses needed – and a contest!

Hi all,

I’m going to be in Orlando all next week for the KIPP Conference. If you’d like to meet up and discuss ways you can get more involved in our movement, please let me know!
Also, starting right now, there will be a monthly contest for the best rapid response. The more comments you leave on blog posts, the more times you can enter! Post a polite and persuasive pro-reform comment and email me the link so I can check it out.
That’s all you have to do!
At the end of the month (August 26th at midnight) I will announce the winner. Not only will that winner get a gift card to the restaurant or store of choice, but he or she will also be promoting the cause of real and transformative change in public schools! What could be better?
Here are some links for your review:
(Regarding Polk County’s at-risk charter schools) http://www.theledger.com/article/20120725/NEWS/120729506?tc=ar
I look forward to reading your comments!
Have a wonderful weekend,

Catherine

—

Catherine Durkin Robinson

Regional Outreach Manager
Florida
Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, StudentsFirst

The Connecticut Watchdog for the Public Interest

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2012 //
12

A reader reminded me of a post by blogger Jonathan Pelto about Hartford, Connecticut, that shows how districts can “game the system” to meet testing target.

And that reminded me that Jon Pelto is someone you should know about. Subscribe to his blog if you want an insider’s view of education reform in Connecticut.

Pelto was a legislator for several years and cares passionately about public education. He knows how to follow the money and watches for conflict of interest and hidden lobbyists.

He has written many posts in opposition to Governor Dannel Malloy’s alliance with the hedge fund managers’ group called ConnCAN (now operating in other states as 50CAN). Pelto has called out all the players in the corporate camp, including the other Wall Street group called Democrats for Education Reform, the charter chain Achievement First, Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, and Teach for America, all of which took a role in shaping and pushing Governor Malloy’s “reform” bill to funnel more money to charters than to the state’s poorest districts and to strip teachers of tenure. It’s all “for the children,” remember. Malloy said he would be happy to see more “teaching to the test,” and also said the achievement gap in his state made it necessary to take away teacher tenure. This is absurd; Connecticut has a large achievement gap because it has outsized income inequality, with large concentrations of urban poverty and intense concentrations of extreme wealth. But let’s not talk about that.

Pelto has been critical of State Commissioner Stefan Pryor, who was a founder of a Connecticut charter school, Amistad Academy, and chairman of its board for five years. That charter school is the flagship in the Achievement First charter chain. Pelto has been fearless in criticizing the claims of the powerful Achievement First chain, showing what a small percentage of ELLs it enrolls compared to urban districts in the state, and pointing out how Malloy’s budget showered far more money on this wealthy charter chain than on the state’s neediest students.

Pelto has posted several times about what happened in Hartford during the reign of Superintendent Steven J. Adamowski.Adamowski was brought in to raise achievement, and he did get the numbers up. Here is his account from his own blog. Some school superintendents ward off charter schools, but not Adamowski. He hasworked closely with the politically powerful charter chain, Achievement First.After his tenure in Hartford, he was appointed as “special master” to run the schools of Windham, Connecticut. There, his moves have been controversial, such as cutting back on early childhood education and AP classes.

Not surprisingly, Pelto has been critical of Adamowski’s close ties to the charter school industry and to conservative groups like NCTQ. Pelto repeatedly exposed the ties between Governor Malloy and corporate reformers, as well as the lobbying activities of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst. Pelto has written scathing commentaries about the state takeover of Bridgeport and about Paul Vallas’s stewardship of the district. Pelto is one of the few commentators who has criticized the “reformers” in Connecticut for ignoring the impact of poverty on educational achievement. Please readthis.

Pelto has a dogged devotion to the facts and a well-honed sense of moral outrage: this article is the best exemplification of that combination, where he lambastes the state’s urban mayors for endorsing a budget that shortchanges their own city’s children.

Categories ConnCAN, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Malloy, Dannel, StudentsFirst, Teach for America TFA

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

Oh No! I Am a Member of StudentsFirst

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2012 //
23

After I blogged about Change.org dropping Michelle Rhee and Jonah Edelman, I got an email from a representative of Change.org asking me to explain its policy on my blog. I told him my concern was not with its policy, but with the deception involved in signing people up as members of an organization they did not wish to join. On our third exchange of emails, he informed me that I was a member of Students First. He said his records showed that I had signed one of its petitions a year ago. He gave me a website where I could view my member profile, but I was unwilling to click on the link for fear that doing so would reconfirm my “membership.” Maybe the second click would put me in a category of “active” membership.

This is horrifying. I never knowingly signed to join Michelle Rhee’s Students First.

When Rhee boasts of her huge membership, she is counting people like me who were snared without their knowledge. She is using my name to inflate her numbers.

This is deceptive practice. It is fraudulent. There ought to be a way to bring a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission or some other watchdog agency to protest the deceptive capture and misuse of my name and that of many others.

I choose the organizations I join with care and forethought. I didn’t choose to belong to Students First.

Michelle Rhee, take my name off your membership list!

How can I do it without clicking the website of the organization that entrapped me? Is there a place to click that says “remove my name?”

On a happier note, a reader informed me that a Chicago teacher named Jen Johnson started the ball rolling with a campaign called “Change.org: Stop Supporting Union-Busters” Petition.”

We must celebrate every small victory. We must remember that lone individuals can make a difference.

Change begins with one person.

Sometimes change begins with one writer, like Thomas Paine, or one speaker, like Martin Luther King Jr.

Change begins with one and then multiplies. Many people signed the petition, others wrote. I mentioned Aaron Krager in the earlier post. Another post may have played a part in changing Change.org.

Diane

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, Stand for Children, StudentsFirst

How Rhee Cons the Innocent

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2012 //
6

A reader submitted this post:

http://backburner-nkk.blogspot.com/2011/08/ive-been-conned.html

It tells the now-familiar story of how an unwary person was conned by Michelle Rhee’s Students First. The reader was going through her email, and along came a “puppies-and-kittens” petition from Change.org, and “Click!”

Too late: “And suddenly, there it was…the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the Trojan horse of all Trojan horses: Join the Fight to Save Great Teachers,  a petition initiated by Students First, the education policy lobby run by faux education expert, Michele Rhee.  Remember her?  The mythologized Bee Eater who got results in the Washington, D.C. schools, and then quickly ducked out when her mayoral patron was evicted from office?”

This blogger was repentant but not fooled:

Here’s what Students First says they’re for which sounds a lot like “kittens and puppies” at first blush:
  • Elevating the teaching profession by valuing teachers’ impact on students;
  • Empowering parents with real choices and real information; and
  • Spending taxpayers’ money wisely to get better results for students.
But Students First (SF) perpetuates a fraud on families through smoke and mirrors:
  • SF narrowly defines the value of teachers’ impact on students, equating impact with large scale test scores.  It devalues the impact of teachers’ relationships with students and their families by minimizing the effects of teacher experience and the trust that families build with teachers over time. It fails to recognize the strength and local knowledge that comes from commitment of and by the school community.
  • SF says that choice is good but is blind to the information on the demographic consequences of school choice. A National Education Policy Center study suggests that charters actually increase segregation of students. For many children excluded by charters through “cherry-picking” and “counseling out” there is no choice if they are to get the supports they need. And the children who are disproportionately affected by these tactics? The poor, those with disabilities, English language learners, the very children SF claims to be helping.
  • SF promotes responsible use of taxpayers’ money, but ignores the shell games played by commercial charter operators to profit at public expense.  Hedge fund investors capitalizing on the “crisis in education” have joined the fray.  Public school districts lose in this tug-of-war for resources.
Earlier today, another reader sent in a comment and chastised me for my description of D.C. test scores under Rhee. He said I should have written about the change in test scores during her tenure in office, not just the fact that D.C. has the largest achievement gaps for black and Hispanic students of any city in the nation. He was right.
So I looked up the scores  in fourth grade reading, which Rhee says is a disgrace to the nation, and recorded the changes over time in her district. This is what happened on her watch. The scores of higher-income students went up significantly from 2007-2011. The scores of lower-income students were flat from 2007-2011. The scores of white students, black students, and Hispanic students were flat from 2007-2011. Why is she telling the nation how to improve achievement when she didn’t do it?
Diane
Categories Education Reform, NAEP, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Who is David Coleman?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2012 //
53

A few years ago, I met David Coleman for lunch and we talked about education. At the time, I didn’t know much about him, but I knew that he was deeply involved in the writing of the Common Core standards, which were then in the formative stage. We had a wonderful conversation about books and education, and David reminded me that he was a classicist, that he loves ideas and reading, and that his values were the same as mine. I left the lunch feeling that I had met a kindred soul.

I saw him once briefly since then, at a meeting of the Albert Shanker Institute, where he encouraged the AFT to endorse the CC standards. The board agreed, though I demurred. I remain agnostic.

I thought I knew David Coleman. I knew that he had created a data and assessment company that he sold to McGraw-Hill. I knew that he had been a Rhodes Scholar. I knew he had all the right credentials. I came to realize that David was the architect of the Common Core standards, not just one of many hands. I also knew—from the accounts of others—that he disdains fiction and personal writing. I don’t like the idea that some disembodied national agency tells teachers to cut back on the novels, poetry, and short stories and focus on informational text. That shows not only a hostility to imaginative literature but a disregard for teachers’ professionalism. I mean, he can have his opinion but why foist it on the nation?

Last week, the College Board announced that David Coleman will be its new president. One assumes that David will integrate the AP assessments with his prized Common Core standards.

But I just discovered that I don’t know David Coleman at all. I just discovered that he was the treasurer for Michelle Rhee’s Students First. (http://kenmlibby.com/?p=300) I assume that means he supports what she advocates. One doesn’t join the inner circle of a group with which you are not in sympathy. So I assume he supports her well-publicized war against collective bargaining. He supports her opposition to seniority and tenure. He supports her battle to base evaluation on test scores. He supports her efforts to privatize public education. He supports her contempt for experienced teachers.

Not only is he the treasurer, but the other officers of her board are (or were) part of his organization, Student Achievement Partners. One of the directors wrote the math standards for the nation. His organization seems to be integrated with hers.

In the version of this blog that I published this morning–very early–I wrote that I had heard that he stepped down from his role as the keeper of the accounts for Students First. But a friend called to tell me that this was not true. He did  not step down. He is still treasurer of Michelle Rhee’s Students First.

Now I am certain that I don’t know who he is or what he believes.

Diane

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/education/david-coleman-to-lead-college-board.html

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2011/10/kick-off-of-parents-as-partners-week.html

http://www.dailycensored.com/2011/10/18/the-crocodile-in-the-common-core-standards/

Categories Coleman, David, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

How Does Rhee Sleep at Night?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2012 //
3

The latest report on Michelle Rhee shows her collecting millions of dollars from Wall Street financiers, assorted billionaires, and mega-foundations, all to redesign American education as she sees fit. www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-education-rheebre84e1oa-20120515,0,7834441.story

She has become a convenient vessel for the most rightwing governors who want to dismantle public education and reduce the teaching profession to at-will employees.

How can she sleep at night knowing that through her efforts, millions of teachers will live in fear and insecurity, knowing that their job depends on their students’ scores on lousy tests? That’s quite a legacy.

How can she sleep at night, knowing that she is promoting for-profit entrepreneurs whose first interest is profit, not children?

What exactly is her credibility for redesigning American education? She left behind a school district with the largest black-white achievement gap of any city tested by the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. The average black-white achievement gap for big cities is about 30 points; in the District of Columbia, after Rhee’s tenure, it was over 60 points.

Her IMPACT program is discredited by the day. Scores went flat after it was imposed by Rhee.

We have not heard the last of the massive cheating scandal that occurred on her watch.

In my one encounter with her, last summer in a panel discussion on Martha’s Vineyard, I found that she just repeated the same stale slogans about teachers and poor performance. She seemed woefully unaware of current research. She looks for applause by bashing teachers. She has chosen to be a tool for those who want to privatize public education and undermine the teaching profession.

It’s really a shame. She could have used her moment in the sun to improve public education and to help those who work in our nation’s classrooms. She has chosen not to.

Diane

Categories NAEP, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst
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