DC Schools' Rhee talks of taping her students' lips shut, does minstrel dialect, TFA grads love it

[Hannah Bell]

I do hope everyone gets the chance now to be entertained with Chancellor Rhee's minstrel show. It does Al Jolson proud. She doesn't blacken her face but she does Black dialect as part of her routine. It was a big hit at this year's opening of school meeting.

The new white Teach For America missionary teachers just hooted when Rhee described a field trip she botched in her few days of teaching. She did her impression of one of her panic stricken children. "Lawwwd Ms.Rhee whatchu gonna do!!!!??" Rhee boomed, drawing a big laugh. "Lawwwd Ms. Rhee whatchu gonna do!!!!??" But a transcription doesn't do Michelle's racist comedy justice. You got to listen to it here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/08/13/VI2010081305444.html

I know recent events have really tested people's confidence in Chancellor Rhee. I mean everyone seems to be calling her a pathological liar or a degenerate sociopath incapable of human warmth or an enabler of sex with underage girls or a bumbling incompetent who was never qualified to run a convenience store much less the DCPS...

And remember how loyal she can be when her man, chicken-hawk charter school operator and Mayor Kevin Johnson, gives special tutoring to 16-year-old girls, lots of 16-year-old girls. You know when Michelle falls, she falls hard. How many other women in a position of great power would risk it all to cover up child molestation? It's the stuff of romance novels and indictments. Thankfully the one DC teacher that she said had sex with the student wasn't her betrothed and he could be let go along with 265 other teachers several months after the incident.

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/



The "FaBLE of rhee" is good too. Remember when she started teaching she said she had the earth-shattering revelation that she should sit her students in a circle? And that led to a complete turn-around for her classes?

And it was the first time any teacher had ever put kids in a circle, because all teachers before rhee were too stupid to think of such a thing?

[smalll]

1. This is the second time I've seen this on DU, but thanks for reposting it -- it is amazing --

and needs more play. This is just the kind of creepy, sadistic move that would get your average teacher bounced from the profession for life (rightfully so.)

I guess Michelle just never got caught. :shrug:

[Hannah Bell]

2. she seems to be proud of it.

[roody]

3. She loves the word "like." Does she know what it means?

What an incompetent teacher---taking kids out after school without knowing where they live. Did she have permission from their parents?

[LWolf]

4. But DC schools are so bad, we have to do SOMETHING, and she's going to save us!l nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. OMG what a fucking lunatic

And a bigot as well!

[Hannah Bell]

6. kik

[suffragette]

7. Speaks volumes that she and the TFA attendants

found it so amusing that the children's lips were bleeding from taking off the tape.

[Hannah Bell]

9. +100. that's what education for the lower classes means.

all the touchy-feely stuff is just for the precious children of elites.

charter schools for the poor = prison schools.

[suffragette]

10. Venture Philanthropy at work

The Waltons setting up a system to staff Walmart.

And that goes hand-in-hand with your other thread about Escambia Charter contracting children out to cut grass instead of learning in the classroom, calling that career training and pocketing the money paid for that contract. Imagine being a parent of an at-risk child, being excited at the prospect your son or daughter will receive a decent education and career training, only to find out s/he spent school days cutting grass.



And no wonder Rhee's approval has fallen so low for the African American community in DC. Parents are clearly getting the picture:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/31/AR2010083105065.html

The poll depicts the deeply divergent views of progress in the 45,000-student public school system, long regarded as one of the nation's weakest. Rhee also has failed to win over the city's African American Democrats. That is notable for a school system in which black students account for three-fourths of enrollment, and suggests a challenge no matter how long her tenure lasts.

Her standing in the black community has collapsed over the past two years alongside the mayor's. In a January 2008 Post poll, 50 percent of black residents approved of her performance, a figure that has dwindled to 27 percent. Among white Democrats, 68 percent said Rhee is a reason to support Fenty. Fifty-four percent of black Democrats cite her as a reason to vote against the mayor.

Fifty-nine percent of white voters say D.C. public schools have improved over the past four years, compared with 7 percent who say they have worsened. Among African American voters, sentiment is more fragmented. Thirty-four percent say that schools are better, 30 percent that they are worse and 26 percent that there has been no change.

In the African American community, goodwill generated by improved test scores, higher graduation rates and renovated schools has been eroded by other issues under Rhee. Last fall's teacher layoffs, for what she said was a budget crunch (an assertion that has been challenged in court by the Washington Teachers' Union), and the closure and consolidation of more than two dozen underenrolled schools resonate with poll respondents.

[Odin2005]

8. This woman is a monster.

[Brickbat]

11. Disgusting and shameful.

K&R.

[Hannah Bell]

12. kik