Why Michelle Rhee's Education 'Brand' Failed in D.C.

[proud2BlibKansan]

The urban education reform movement just got a much-needed reality check as D.C. Democratic primary voters fired Mayor Adrian Fenty, and effectively along with him one of the movement's biggest superstars, District schools chief Michelle Rhee. Chancellor Rhee was as a key, polarizing figure in Fenty's reelection campaign, which ended when he was defeated in the Tuesday primary by his challenger, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray.

Rhee brazenly politicized her job as Schools Chancellor in a way that may be unprecedented for education bureaucrats. Back in the spring, the charitable arm of Wal-Mart and other corporate foundations threatened to yank millions they had donated to break the teacher's union if Rhee was not retained. Then Rhee not so subtly hinted to a reporter that she would not work for Gray. Finally, the weekend before the election, Rhee hit the campaign trail along with Fenty to round up votes in the wealthiest ward in Washington.

D.C. voters responded with a resounding rejection of her, her boss and their education policies. (Gray, who has no Republican challenger in this overwhelmingly Democratic city, has not said if he would retain Rhee.)

Some are already blaming racial identity politics and the ghosts of Marion Barry for the resounding defeat of education's Great Hope at the polls. But if education reformers think the election is the problem, they are missing some major lessons in an often racially charged battle for urban school reform. A majority of black voters cited Rhee as a reason to fire her boss, while a majority of white voters cited Rhee as a reason to vote for Fenty. But the stink swirling around education reform in D.C. goes beyond race. The hundreds of millions of corporate dollars used to break the D.C. teachers' union have dangerous strings attached.

more . . . http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/09/why-michelle-rhees-education-brand-failed-in-dc/63014/

[mzteris]

1. funny - a lot of the locals

don't like her because she's ANTI-CHARTER . . .

[Hannah Bell]

33. lol. rhee is pro-charter. that's the second -- uh -- "misstatement" in this thread.

[jpljr77]

59. Yep, and it's maddeningly bizarre.

Charter schools literally rob her system of money. And she has no control over them. Odd that she supported their expansion under her regime.

At least she's not for vouchers:

When specifically asked about vouchers after an Obama-McCain debate in 2008 (the one in which her name came up), she issued a statement saying, "While Chancellor Rhee hasn’t taken a formal position on vouchers, she disagrees with the notion that vouchers are the remedy for repairing the city’s school system."

[mzteris]

2. also interesting - 62% of parents with children IN

DC PUBLIC SCHOOLS (not charter), supported Fenty. . .

and this:
"All of this is not to say the Fenty/Rhee reforms are a failure; the District’s schools have been far more orderly under their tenure, more families—including those headed by college educated parents—are choosing to enroll kids in the public system, and the jury is out on student achievement and teacher reforms. Indeed, the tragedy of Fenty’s loss is that the Michelle Rhee reform agenda may now be aborted before it has been fully implemented, giving education reformers one less data point in their search for strategies that work." http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-15/adrian-fentys-loss-is-both-obamas-and-education-reforms/?cid=hp:mainpromo4

[Hannah Bell]

13. i don't see anything like that in your link. voters rejected fenty 45% to 54%

and it's already been demonstrated that those scores were bullshit, you gotta keep up with the news.

considering how rhee helped cover up her fiancee (also a charter school guy) getting naked & rubbing his weiner on a 16-year-old student & fondling others, i'm surprised if parents like her.

“She’s nasty,” 59-year old D.C. resident Sandra Wood said of Rhee, speaking to Bloomberg BusinessWeek reporter Tom Moroney. That is the outlook of many of D.C.’s middle-class black residents..

she sure is.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-15/adrian-fentys-loss-is-both-obamas-and-education-reforms/?cid=hp:mainpromo4

[JaneQPublic]

3. NBC Nightly News had a piece on Rhee Wednesday.

They showed figures that passing Math and Reading scores went from percentages in the 20s to the 40s after Rhee's program's were enacted.

That said, considering as many people as she has fired, there must be tons of pissed-off people in DC.

[YvonneCa]

6. And elsewhere. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

12. wrong place.

[proud2BlibKansan]

48. Sorry to see NBC buying the bullshit

Those gains are a lie. You can't compare different groups of kids and claim growth.

[chimpymustgo]

64. They went up when her PREDECESSOR'S programs were enacted.

Rhee came in mid-2007. And all this emphasis on test scores is bullshit. She is an awful person to boot. People in DC voted to get rid of her.

**********
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/rhees-problem-with-dcs-new-tes.html

Rhee’s problem with D.C.’s new test scores

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has a problem, and it’s not the fact that elementary school standardized test scores just went down (at a bad time for Mayor Adrian Fenty, who appointed Rhee and is seeking reelection).

The problem is that she has made rising standardized test scores a central measure for achievement -- hers, students and teachers.

When test scores go up, as they very often do when a great emphasis is put on the results and teachers “teach to the test” (either consciously or subconsciously), it is easy to claim credit. School reforms are working! Yeah!

But scores invariably go down after a time, no matter who is giving them and who is taking them, and they do so for reasons that may have nothing to do with the teacher, or the student, or the schools district chief.

My colleague Bill Turque reported Tuesday that reading and math test scores declined somewhat this year in D.C. elementary schools, halting a two-year run of significant gains and dealing a setback to Rhee. Middle and high schools showed continued gains in reading and math on the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System (DC CAS), administered every April. The decline, it should be said, was much less than the overall improvement in the past few years.

But a rise in scores doesn’t necessarily mean that more student learning took place, and a decline doesn’t necessarily mean that students learned less.

Researchers in the field say that it is the nature of standardized tests that they rise from year to year when the same design of a test is given in the same schools. And they go down when a new design is given, or when a different demographic of students takes the test, or a bunch of kids in a class had a cold, or... well, you get the idea.

There are too many variables that can affect the scores of a single test to make the result completely reliable, which is why scores should never be used as a sole measure for any high-stakes decision.

“Test scores going down can reflect less adequate teaching and learning but it may reflect so many other things that you can’t be sure,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the nonprofit National Center for Fair & Open Testing, or FairTest. “You can’t look at one-year test scores changes.”

So, feel free to judge Rhee on her insistence on placing so much importance on test scores (as have today’s other titans of education reform, such as Joel Klein in New York City). She believes they are so important, in fact, that she recently announced that she wants to expand their use in city schools, so that, in time, every D.C. student from kindergarten through high school is regularly assessed to measure academic progress and teacher effectiveness.

But judging her reforms on the actual test scores, well, as my kids say, “Not so much.”

Rhee said she and her team would “dig into the data” to find out why the elementary reading proficiency rate, which had risen 11 percentage points from 2007 to 2009, fell 4.4 points, to 44.4 percent, and why, after rising 20 percentage points from 2007 to 2009, the elementary math proficiency rate dipped 4.6 points this year, to 43.4.

The proficiency rate is essentially a measure of the portion of students who pass the tests.

-edit-

More at: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/rhees-problem-with-dcs-new-tes.html

[laughingliberal]

4. K & R nt

[sandnsea]

5. Teachers union won over the kids n/t

[Chan790]

7. No, I promise you...the kids are the winners here.

The kids will the winners everywhere if this murders this educational model. It's an abject failure churning out high-test score kids who can't think. It's the ultimate result of the flawed central premise of NCLB: "If we can statistically-measured education, we can emulate good education in place of failed education." You can't; it does not work.

Not everything that matters can be measured, not everything that can be measured matters.

[sandnsea]

10. Reading and Adding can be measured

I'm not accepting excuses anymore. These kids don't learn in the local public school. They do learn after the school is transformed or go to a different public school or a charter. I thought this should have been done 30 years ago. It's about time they shut down schools they continuously fail kids. Teachers can either work with the districts to implement change, or be fired.

I guarantee you these teachers won't win in the long run. Parents know better now.

[Luminous Animal]

15. Reading can be measured? And what is Adding?

[Hannah Bell]

18. she meant "addling". 'Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different

branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.

Not to mention Mystery, ancient & modern, with Seaography; then Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.

And classics: Laughing and Grief."

[Luminous Animal]

23. Fuck. That's funny...

You made me snort!

[Hannah Bell]

24. lewis carroll, not me. alice in wonderland. where we live now.

http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/aliceinwonderland.htm.

[Luminous Animal]

25. Ah. Thank you. It's time to reread my old copy that belonged to my grandmother.

It has been a long long time.

You are a good egg, Hannah Bell.

[Hannah Bell]

27. .:>)

[sandnsea]

28. Adding

add   /æd/ Show Spelled Show IPA
–verb (used with object)
1.to unite or join so as to increase the number, quantity, size, or importance: to add two cups of sugar; to add a postscript to her letter; to add insult to injury.
2.to find the sum of (often fol. by up): Add this column of figures. Add up the grocery bills.
3.to say or write further.
4.to include (usually fol. by in): Don't forget to add in the tip.
–verb (used without object)
5.to perform the arithmetic operation of addition: children learning to add and subtract.
6.to be or serve as an addition (usually fol. by to): His illness added to the family's troubles.

[sandnsea]

29. And yes reading can be measured

Good gravy if you don't think so please tell me you aren't in a classroom and don't have kids.

[Chan790]

37. I can't speak for him.

But I spent two years as a literacy activist and associate director of a regional affiliate of the 3rd largest national literacy organization at that time (Literacy USA). I know more about literacy testing and CASAS assessments than most anybody.

Suffice it to say, I knew the data was being cooked on the student achievement. Other achievement indicators were missing from the start.

[sandnsea]

42. At least you know reading can be measured

And again, we're all supposed to believe you just because you say so.

I think it's pathetic that you would fight efforts to give kids an opportunity to learn - in favor of decades of failure and status quo. Makes no damn sense at all.

You put the teachers union ahead of the kids and you know you did.

[Luminous Animal]

47. I believe the word you are looking for is comprehension. Reading is near worthless without it.

[MedicalAdmin]

61. What is your hard on for standardized testing?

The best private schools don't allow it and the best colleges don't give a shit about it.


So why do you?

[Luminous Animal]

45. I do have a child. I home schooled her. She started college at age 13.

Up until a few months before she started college, she was never graded or tested (I gave her tests and grades to prepare her for the experience.) I am also a friend to several public school teachers and I have helped them out many times in the classroom and through community activism. And they, in turn, helped me educate my daughter with freedom and creativity that they could never exhibit in the classroom. In fact, a math teacher, used a method with my daughter that broke her algebra barrier. A method that he was barred from using with his own students. I chose home schooling because of standardized testing. And I chose/choose supporting teachers because standardized testing was/is harming the profession and, in turn, harming children.

[Hannah Bell]

16. "These kids" == nice generalization about all the kids in the DC system.

Some of them definitedly *do* learn.

And those who don't haven't done any better under Rhee.

Because the teachers aren't the problem, get it?

[Chan790]

17. edit: Not worth the continued argument..

As a DC voter, my opinion matters to the exclusion of many of the "loud voices" in support of Rhee in this thread. It's pretty simple...DC voters and citizens didn't support Rhee's approach and we did something about it.

If you don't live here, your opinion and input on the matter was not requested or desired.

[sandnsea]

31. But the OP's is??

:crazy:

The teachers union ran a smear campaign against Fenty. If you live there, you know it, were happy about it, and probably helped. Not because you give two shits about the kids, because every measure available says DC kids are doing better with reforms. And I'm not about to shut up about it, no matter where the kids live.

[Hannah Bell]

20. if they support ed deform, they're stupider than ever. unless they're

in the top 20%: deform will benefit their wallets & keep their precious little darlings away from those nasty poor & colored people.

[PVnRT]

50. Good to see a school privatization advocate on DU

I remember when that would get you banned for being a right-winger. Not anymore, I guess.

[mzteris]

51. Rhee is NOT a "privitization" advocate -

she was anti-public charter and anti-private school - so that argument makes absolutely NO sense.

[Hannah Bell]

55. but her husband runs a charter school & she's the fixer -- she even fixed his perv

investigation, feeling up the students --

that;s the kind of woman we want running our schools

[MedicalAdmin]

60. Just one more right wing "logic" point.

"I'm not accepting excuses anymore"

So don't. But don't try to force your religion, your "views" on education, your disdain for abortion, or any other "beliefs" you have on the rest of us.


I agree that some schools are not as good as they could be. I used to be a teacher and I have attended schools overseas, but the clear trend is AWAY from standardized testing. Twits like Rhee are in support not only of standardized education, but the privatization of the testing and the delivery of the test prep (formerly known as public school). And that is not good for the kids or the country.

[Luminous Animal]

9. Yes. Teachers are always looking for ways to screwing over kids.

[sandnsea]

11. I never would have thought it

Until every teacher at DU blamed the parents for kids failing and insist on continuing with their same teaching methods that are currently failing the kids. I always thought the teachers that blamed the parents were the Republicans.

[Luminous Animal]

14. Teachers here have done no such thing.

[mzteris]

52. Then you haven't been reading the DU posts

from teachers on this subject. . .

[Hannah Bell]

21. oh bullshit. spin and crap.

[Nevernose]

22. By your own logic, the problem is with the kids

If, as you state, that the teaching methods have remained unchanged, yet the performance of students has declined, wouldn't that indicate something is different about the students?

For the record, I believe the problem is far too complex to lay at the feet of one group (parents, government, teachers, students, what have you). Blaming "the system" is just convenient, a way of oversimplifying a problem too massive for most people to want to deal with.

And just like you stereotype attitudes as typically Republican, I always thought people who grossly oversimplified complex issues and chose scapegoats were the Republicans.

[sandnsea]

26. The performance of students hasn't declined

These are schools that have been failing kids for decades. Enough already.

And nobody is laying the problem at the feet of one group, except for the teachers who are laying the problems at the feet of the parents. At least the ones at DU. They blame the parents every single day, day in and day out. Like you say, that's why I always thought the ones who did that were Republicans. Easy out blaming the parents.

[Hannah Bell]

30. no, actually, it's gone *up* -- until bush. you'd never know it from the spin, though.

such as yours.

[Chan790]

32. Why do you refuse to understand the simplest fact here?

The performance of the students has not actually improved regardless what the tests indicate.

A large part of why DC voters rejected Fenty was because they were not satisfied with the job Rhee was doing.

It's damned-near a QED proof that this "accountability-based" education model is a failure. The results don't match the benchmarks, the simple conclusion is that the benchmarks aren't actually measuring anything or giving meaningful data.

If you test something and the test tells you it's an apple but you can see with your own eyes its' a banana...you might want to consider that the test is the problem.

[sandnsea]

35. Because you say so?

Well that's tough to argue. Everything points to children achieving.

But the teachers union says they arent, well because they're teachers who know everything.

So the kids aren't learning, no matter how much better they do on tests than they did a few years ago.

Well alrighty then.

And with that kind of logic, I can understand what the problem has been in the DC schools for decades.

[Hannah Bell]

36. no, because it's true:

D.C.’s Education Miracle a Chimera?

Despite glowing reports from the adoring media, D.C.’s education miracle is a chimera at best. There have been dramatic drops in standardized assessment scores, and, on closer analysis, the highly touted increases in D.C. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores are a reflection of the changing demographics of the schools, not the result of any real improvement in the quality of education provided to D.C.’s poorest and neediest students.

...In March 2009, the district announced that the new NAEP scores showed dramatic student increases and progress in closing D.C.’s persistent achievement gap. Bergfalk decided to check it out for himself. Using NAEP’s own interactive website, Bergfalk deconstructed the data.

“These test scores are not the result of an increase in student achievement. Instead, they are a result of a change in who was tested,” says Bergfalk. He found that for the 4th-grade test, the percentage of African American kids in DCPS (the lowest scoring racial/ethnic group in D.C.) taking the test dropped from 67 percent of test takers to 53 percent of test takers between 2007 and 2009, while the percentage of Hispanic students (with average test scores 12 points higher) rose from 6 percent to 9 percent of test takers, and white students rose from 6 percent to 7 percent of test takers. Where aggregate scores appear to show improvement among DCPS students, the disaggregated data tell a different story. The district continues to have one of the highest achievement gaps among major U.S. cities.

Bergfalk found the same pattern on the 8th-grade NAEP reading test. The percentage of African American kids in DCPS taking the test dropped from 59 percent of test takers to 43 percent of test takers, which is why there was a statistically significant four-point increase overall from 2007 to 2009, but no statistically significant increase for any racial/ethnic subgroup. The overall increase, like that on the 4th-grade test, was again the result of a change in demographics rather than an increase in student achievement.

When DCPS released the results of local assessments in July 2010, the district touted what it called “unparalleled progress” in secondary school results. But at the elementary level, scores took a hit—in some schools dropping by more than 30 percent the past two years. Students in half of all D.C. public schools performed worse in the 2010 assessments than they did in 2009.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/rheeform.shtml


There is a larger story overshadowing the report on DC test score achievement gaps in the Washington Post dated Aug. 27, 2010 by Bill Turque: Michelle Rhee's "reform" program is a failure.
DC test scores, which began to improve under Mr. Janey's tenure, have flattened. The Post struggles to defend Ms. Rhee by pointing to the nationwide pattern of lagging test score gains; quoting Ms. Rhee's spokeswoman (Jennifer Calloway) cautioning against drawing broad conclusions from single-year test data; and in a last desperate line of defense, suggesting that perhaps there was "some anomaly in the tests."

I would like for the Post to stop cheerleading for Ms. Rhee and look at the facts: her "reform agenda" is not working. Demonizing veteran teachers, relentless teaching-to-the-test, imposing a flawed and overly-subjective evaluation system (which, hypocritically, places strong emphasis on single-year test scores) have not succeeded.

Ms. Rhee, Mayor Fenty, and the Post cannot have it both ways: if test scores determine whether a teacher receives a raise or loses his/her job, then they should rightly redound on our city leaders in the same fashion. Why are teachers not given 3, 5, or 7 years to improve their students' test scores? Ms. Rhee calls the disparity "unacceptable" and pledges to eliminate it, but she offers no new plans. Increasingly it seems she and the Mayor have succeeded in firing alot of teachers and building some new schools while achieving little educational impact.

http://realeducationreformdc.blogspot.com/

Michelle Rhee knows sooooo much about teaching, i mean she did it for all of 27 months as a Teach For America recruit.

How to tape children's mouths shut so tightly they bleed when the tape comes off,
how to take children on unauthorized field trips without asking their parents or finding out where they live,
how to imitate a "eubonics" accent,
how to cover up when one's boyfriend gets naked with a 16-year-old...

yeah, michelle is good at that stuff.

[Chan790]

38. Nice!

I was too tired to go find that myself.

I think someone just got owned.

I held off on putting my credentials out there but I kind of figured the tests were cooked. I used to be a literacy activist and work for a chapter of Literacy USA. Student reading scores and CASAS assessments of literacy for adults never move in opposite directions...so when I read that adult literacy in DC is falling, then I see the data being pushed by Rhee...I smelled something fishy.

[boppers]

43. So the sample group was significantly changed?

Statistics FAIL, *both* for those who claim success, and failure.

Posts like yours make me hate humanity. Nothing personal, it's just shocking to see supposed "experts" in a field who should have failed their Jr. High math classes.

....Or, in American terms, their Phd. Math classes (when do we teach statistics these days?).

I learned them in 8th grade, but I'm running into "college graduates" who can't handle a delta or a sigma, and it makes me want to stab out my eyeballs with a calculator.

[Hannah Bell]

44. uh, the sample group *always* changes in these bogus ed deform statistics.

maybe you can understand why the teachers are a bit peeved.

[Hannah Bell]

46. not only that, rhee is a proven liar where test scores are concerned, & a very public one:

I had a brief chuckle at reading it, but when I read E Favorite’s response, I found something interesting—the growing number of public figures who have quoted Michelle Rhee, who have had to issue apologies. E Favorite found three, “Specifically, they are John Merrow of PBS http://learningmatters.tv/blog/on-the-newshour/mi… , Jay Mathews of the Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2… and Michael Petrilli of Education Next and the Fordham Foundation http://educationnext.org/the-one-winner-in-todays…”

http://thatsrightnate.com/2009/11/24/catching-up-with-michelle-rhee/


Here's one of the cases of public apology, for your edification:

http://learningmatters.tv/blog/on-the-newshour/michelle-rhee-in-dc-episode-10-testing-michelle-rhee/2476/comment-page-1/#comment-322

This program quoted rhee on some improved scores at a particular school rhee took special care with as a model that would show off the merits of her policies -- but had to issue a correction:

"Correction: This report has been edited to reflect that test scores at Shaw MS declined 4% in math and 9% in reading."

and here's the respondent who caught the (cough) "misstatement":

August 18, 2009 at 9:07 pm
E Favorite says:

You got at least one thing wrong. Shaw’s scores did not stay about the same. They went down - reading scores declined from 38.52% in ’08 to 29.20% in ’09 and it’s math scores went from 33.33% to 29.02%.

This can easily be verified at the official website http://nclb.osse.dc.gov. Did you not check? Did you just take Chancellor Rhee’s or Principal Betts’ word on it? The fact that Shaw’s scores didn’t go up is a major embarrassment for Rhee. She installed a new principal, who hired a new staff, selected for being young and “unjaded” and he paid the kids for good behavior and attendance.

It seems imperative that Rhee is asked to re-examine her determination to pursue this method and not gloss over an obvious failure with a misrepresentation of the facts.

Part of me is grateful that you didn’t just drop the Shaw story or try to dress it up. But really — these are our children — you are educational reporters. I expect the truth and you didn’t tell it here.

[boppers]

39. "The performance of the students has not actually improved regardless what the tests indicate"

:rofl:

Wow, that's a doozy.

Hint: The performance of students on tests has improved, if nothing else.

[Hannah Bell]

40. the tests indicate it's not improved. nice try though.

D.C.’s Education Miracle a Chimera?

Despite glowing reports from the adoring media, D.C.’s education miracle is a chimera at best. There have been dramatic drops in standardized assessment scores, and, on closer analysis, the highly touted increases in D.C. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores are a reflection of the changing demographics of the schools, not the result of any real improvement in the quality of education provided to D.C.’s poorest and neediest students.

...In March 2009, the district announced that the new NAEP scores showed dramatic student increases and progress in closing D.C.’s persistent achievement gap. Bergfalk decided to check it out for himself. Using NAEP’s own interactive website, Bergfalk deconstructed the data.

“These test scores are not the result of an increase in student achievement. Instead, they are a result of a change in who was tested,” says Bergfalk. He found that for the 4th-grade test, the percentage of African American kids in DCPS (the lowest scoring racial/ethnic group in D.C.) taking the test dropped from 67 percent of test takers to 53 percent of test takers between 2007 and 2009, while the percentage of Hispanic students (with average test scores 12 points higher) rose from 6 percent to 9 percent of test takers, and white students rose from 6 percent to 7 percent of test takers. Where aggregate scores appear to show improvement among DCPS students, the disaggregated data tell a different story. The district continues to have one of the highest achievement gaps among major U.S. cities.

Bergfalk found the same pattern on the 8th-grade NAEP reading test. The percentage of African American kids in DCPS taking the test dropped from 59 percent of test takers to 43 percent of test takers, which is why there was a statistically significant four-point increase overall from 2007 to 2009, but no statistically significant increase for any racial/ethnic subgroup. The overall increase, like that on the 4th-grade test, was again the result of a change in demographics rather than an increase in student achievement.

When DCPS released the results of local assessments in July 2010, the district touted what it called “unparalleled progress” in secondary school results. But at the elementary level, scores took a hit—in some schools dropping by more than 30 percent the past two years. Students in half of all D.C. public schools performed worse in the 2010 assessments than they did in 2009.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/rheefo...


There is a larger story overshadowing the report on DC test score achievement gaps in the Washington Post dated Aug. 27, 2010 by Bill Turque: Michelle Rhee's "reform" program is a failure.
DC test scores, which began to improve under Mr. Janey's tenure, have flattened. The Post struggles to defend Ms. Rhee by pointing to the nationwide pattern of lagging test score gains; quoting Ms. Rhee's spokeswoman (Jennifer Calloway) cautioning against drawing broad conclusions from single-year test data; and in a last desperate line of defense, suggesting that perhaps there was "some anomaly in the tests."

I would like for the Post to stop cheerleading for Ms. Rhee and look at the facts: her "reform agenda" is not working. Demonizing veteran teachers, relentless teaching-to-the-test, imposing a flawed and overly-subjective evaluation system (which, hypocritically, places strong emphasis on single-year test scores) have not succeeded.

Ms. Rhee, Mayor Fenty, and the Post cannot have it both ways: if test scores determine whether a teacher receives a raise or loses his/her job, then they should rightly redound on our city leaders in the same fashion. Why are teachers not given 3, 5, or 7 years to improve their students' test scores? Ms. Rhee calls the disparity "unacceptable" and pledges to eliminate it, but she offers no new plans. Increasingly it seems she and the Mayor have succeeded in firing alot of teachers and building some new schools while achieving little educational impact.

http://realeducationreformdc.blogspot.com /


hundreds of teachers fired, & no improvement. the sex-criminal-protecting rhee (& hypocrite as well, while accusing teachers of sexcrime she protects & covers up for her charter-school-running fiancee) has got to go.

[boppers]

65. See #43 . Looks like cherry-picking.

I'm working on a problem with a paltry 243,000 data samples, and I'm *years* from publishing, because the sample size and testing regime is so small.

[Chan790]

41. Nope.

As Hannah Bell just pointed out...they actually didn't.

[mzteris]

53. The PARENTS of the students IN DC public schools

voted FOR FENTY (62%). How do you explain that?

[Hannah Bell]

54. the link you gave the first time you posted that bullshit says no such thing.

source it or quit saying it

fenty lost 42% to 57%

[MedicalAdmin]

62. I'm a (former) teacher.

And I have NEVER blamed the parents. Most I know are doing the best they can and the ones that are not should be reported to CPS.

Having said that, let me be clear, the blame goes with the responsibility and authority to do something. That means the administrators. Period.


"The system is the enemy" - Miyamoto Miashi

[Fire1]

63. That's not true, sandnsea. Every teacher on DU has not blamed

the parents for the failure of the kids. Parents are only 'part' of the problem, in which case, we've blamed them for their negligence and attitudes about schools and teachers. We also realize that there are alot of societal problems that accompany those attitudes. Further, teaching methods 'change' every time some researcher or research organization manages to sell their latest initiative to a school district, which happens just about every four or five years. School districts invest MILLIONS in these 'new' strategies/initiatives and the training thereof. So, NO! They DO NOT "continue with their same teaching methods that are currently failing the kids."

[Starry Messenger]

8. k & r

[snot]

19. K&R'd!

[EFerrari]

34. Good. This woman doesn't belong anywhere near school children.

K&R

[proud2BlibKansan]

49. Someone also needs to take her tape away

Bye bye Michelle.

[n2doc]

56. Rhee's definitely burning her bridges with gusto

As Gray weighs choices for divided D.C., schools chief Rhee calls election results 'devastating'

By Tim Craig and Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 16, 2010; 6:29 AM
On his first day as the District's presumptive mayor-elect, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray said he plans to spend the next two months trying to "heal" a city that seems sharply divided by race, class and geography.

"Yesterday's election results were devastating ... devastating for the schoolchildren of Washington, D.C.," said Rhee, who was hired in 2007 by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and, like Fenty, is deeply unpopular among the District's African American population but strongly supported by whites.

"We cannot retreat now," Rhee said. "If anything, what the reform community needs to take out of yesterday's election is now is the time to lean forward and be more aggressive and more adamant."

more

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/15/AR2010091507539.html?hpid=topnews

Rhee will find a nice, high paying job somewhere else before Gray takes office, I predict.

[LWolf]

57. This is a great read.

I hope Rhee keeps her word and refuses to work for Gray.

Her blatant pushing of the business model says enough for me.

"So if you look where the philanthropic dollars are going in this contract, you are looking at the pay-for-performance system."

Later, she explained how she planned to spend that money by applying business principles to the classroom, citing a study by an economist named Eric Hanushek. She said if the U.S. fired 6-10 percent of the worst teachers in the country and replaced them "not even with the best, but with average teachers," U.S. schools would move from 21, 25 and 26th in math to the top 5.

"Now let me just say, to all of you business people..." Rhee continued.

"Wait wait wait," the moderator, Harvard University's David Gergen, interrupted. "...Do you believe this?"

Rhee replied: "Yes, I actually do. If someone told you as a business, that if you removed the bottom 6 percent of your performers, that you would move from 25th in the market to top-5, you would do it in a heartbeat. You would not even think twice about it. But we have an incredibly hard time in this in this country. We like teachers. It is an incredibly noble position in this country. But we have to look at the reality...

"That seems like an incredibly easy thing for us to begin to tackle," she said.

"Philanthropic." :eyes: The Walton Family Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and the Broad Foundation are going to fund the "pay-for-performance" system, and are going to exert pressure on the district by threatening to remove those funds if Rhee is fired or if they don't like the scores. Sounds more like a bunch of privatizers than "philanthropists" to me.

Of course, she is only talking about removing 6% of TEACHERS. Teachers, in her business model, aren't firing the bottom 6% of the students in their classrooms to raise classroom performance. Why? Because education isn't a business. It's a public service.

My school always has a higher percentage of special ed students than the rest of our district. This year, though, I have an unprecedented 30% of my students with IEPs. That's not counting the ELL students, the students with severe health issues that affect attendance and learning, the students in foster care because they've been removed from abusive homes, the homeless students, the students whose parents are divorcing or unemployed or suffering from cancer or are experiencing some other form of extreme stress at home. In this economy, those numbers are increasing as well. All of those things are factors that affect their "performance" on standardized tests, and thus will affect MY "performance" when standardized test scores are used as a measure of my effectiveness.

In that kind of system, I should want to move to a school with more prosperous, middle class students so that I'll "perform" better. I care about my students, though. We're in the classroom, working together. No short-timing under-qualified TFA teacher is going to care about them more, work harder, or move them faster.

[leveymg]

58. Public schools and unions are solutions. Neoliberalism takes us back to 19th Century problems.