We Won't Give Up- Attacks on Teachers

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel is angry at people who would treat our children as commodities in order to yield profits, attack educators and create conflict rather than actually work to improve public education for all our students. Watch and hear what he has to say.

Essay on Michelle Rhee which no major newspaper will accept.

by John Merrow:
Michelle Rhee lobbies across the country for greater test-based accountability and changes in teacher tenure rules.  She often appears on television and in newspapers, commenting on a great range of education issues.  Easily America’s best-known education activist, she is always introduced as the former Chancellor of the public schools in Washington, DC, the woman who took on a corrupt and failing system and shook it up. The rest of the story is rarely mentioned.

The op-ed below has been rejected[1] by four newspapers, three of them national publications. One editor’s rejection note said that Michelle Rhee was not a national story.

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CAVEAT EMPTOR: MICHELLE RHEE’S EDUCATION REFORM CAMPAIGN

Today, too many of America’s children are not getting the quality education they need and deserve. StudentsFirst is helping to change that with common sense reforms that help make sure all students have great schools and great teachers.(StudentsFirst press release, emphasis added)

Michelle Rhee created StudentsFirst after leaving her post as Chancellor of Washington, DC’s Public Schools in the fall of 2010. She announced her intentions on “Oprah” that December: to fix America’s schools by enrolling one million members and raising one billion dollars.[2]

Easily America’s most visible education activist, she has been crisscrossing the country lobbying for change and donating money to candidates whose policies she supports. StudentsFirst claims to have helped pass 110 ‘student-centered policies’ in 18 states.

What do parents want from schools ?

by Jeff Bryant

A mantra recited by those who pride themselves as adherents to a movement known as “education reform” is that for too long policies governing public schools have favored “the adults” in the system at the expense of children. This rhetoric has framed any objections that classroom teachers may have to new education policies as being overly concerned about teachers’ interests and being negligent of the students.

That rhetorical positioning has been used by political lobbying groups promoting themselves as putting “students first”  (Michelle Rhee) and taking a “stand for children” in order to claim a higher moral ground. These organizations assert that teachers who object to the continued degradation of their working conditions are really being selfish and inattentive to the needs of the students in the public education system.

However, there’s always been a group of adults who’ve been imbued with the power to understand best what students in public schools really need.Parents, legend has it, occupy a sacrosanct position of having an exclusive right to determine the education destination of their offspring.

The whole idea that parents should have a “choice” over where their children attend school is deeply grounded in the notion that parents know best about the education destinations of their youngsters. And school districts have been called “government monopolies” that are opposed to the “free choice” all parents should have in a “market-based” system.

Michelle Rhee's group takes in $28.5 million

Michelle Rhee’s group tripled its budget By: Byron Tau July 2, 2013 02:01 PM EDT

Former Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s advocacy group tripled its budget in the second year of existence, while spending heavily on politics across the country. According to tax documents obtained by POLITICO, Rhee’s group StudentsFirst raised $28.5 million between August 2011 and July 2012. The group spent more than $3.6 million on political activities during the same time period. That fundraising number — released more than year later because of lag time in Internal Revenue Service reporting requirements — smashes the $7.6 million haul the group raised during the first nine months of existence and positions Rhee and StudentsFirst as a major outside advocacy group on the issue of education. Since their launch, StudentsFirst expanded into 18 states and claims to have helped pass over 110 new policies. Their 2011-2012 fundraising haul is far short of the group’s initial ambitions — Rhee once promised to raise $1 billion in the first year. The group has since scaled back its fundraising ambitions. Rhee received a salary of about $300,000 for her work with the group, for which she serves as founder, CEO and director.

Rhee strikes again - in California

This morning's Sacramento  Bee has a full page ad directed at the California Senate Education Committee.  It claims to be in favor of improving teacher quality.  The ad is signed by a group SupportCAteachers.com
Well, if you follow the link, you end up at Rhee's own Student First an advocacy organization recently criticized in national media for their interventions. I guess that Students First, and Michelle Rhee who receive massive donations from the Waltons ( WalMart, Broad, etc)  don't want to be too public about their positions this week.  You can follow the the trail of who funds Rhee below.  Similar to their advocacy in other states, supporting anti immigrant groups and anti Gay legislators, Rhee's campaigns are duplicitous - at best.

Michelle Rhee's group endorses anti-gay legislator

Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst is putting together quite the record as far as legislators it selects as "reformer of the year." Last year, StudentsFirst came under fire from immigrant groups angry that Georgia state Sen. Chip Rogers, author of several harshly anti-immigrant bills, including one that would have kept DREAMers out of public schools, had been dubbed reformer of the year. Rogers hasappropriate company as StudentsFirst reformer of the year in Tennessee state Rep. John Ragan, who is an author of legislation as anti-gay as Rogers's legislation was anti-immigrant.

From Daily Kos.  Labor. 

The Fight Against Teachers Unions

by Leo Casey

Michelle Rhee and others, on teacher unions.

How does that compare to the resources and spending of the leading education reform actors? In a matter of days after she publicly announced the formation of StudentsFirst, an explicitly anti-union political lobbying organization, Michelle Rhee had raised pledges of more than $100 million, with a goal of raising $2 billion over five years. Rhee’s donors list includes many high profile corporate leaders and foundations with an anti-union bent, including Murdoch (NewsCorp), Walton Family (Wal-Mart), Fisher (The Gap), Langone (Home Depot), Tepper (Appaloosa), Arnold (Enron), New York City Mayor Bloomberg (Bloomberg Inc.), Fournier (Pennant), Loeb (Third Point), Tudor Jones (Tudor Investment) and Broad (SunAmerica-AIG). [8]

And StudentsFirst is only one of many such organizations. Wealthy individuals and foundations are literally pouring billions of dollars into various anti-union, privatization and corporate “education reform” efforts on a scale that teacher unions could never hope to match. [9]…

As one examines the issues, the struggles over the future of public education and teachers unions in America comes to resemble the classic populist conflict of wealth and money on the one side and masses of ordinary people on the other. One cannot understand the real power and role of teacher unions, nor the balance of political power between unions and their corporate-funded opponents, without coming to grips with this central premise. And, in truth, when attacks on pubic education and teacher unions are cast as a concerted campaign by the rich and powerful against ordinary working teachers, they lose a considerable portion of their potency. [16]

By Leo Casey.  The Shanker Institute.

Read the entire essay. http://shankerblog.org/?p=8177

Rhee's Student First rates school districts based upon ideology

Laura Clawson. Daily Kos/Labor 

Michelle Rhee continues her descent into parody. You might have thought that teaching students to read would be a good way to evaluate educational performance, but no. Rhee's StudentsFirst organization has released a report card grading states—on their education policies, not their educational results. In fact, not one of the states StudentsFirst ranks in the top five is in the top half of states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, "the nation's report card," when it comes to eighth grade reading scores, and only one is in the top half when it comes to eighth grade math.

• Louisiana is the top-rated state, according to StudentsFirst. It ranks 49th of 51 on eighth grade reading scores and 47th of 51 on eighth grade math scores.
• Florida is StudentsFirst's second-best state according to ideology. According to educational results, Florida is 35th on reading and 42nd on math.
• StudentsFirst says Indiana is third. The "nation's report card" says it's 30th on reading and 23rd on math.
• The District of Columbia, where Rhee had her way from 2007 to 2010, comes in fourth according to Rhee's ranking system. According to the NAEP? Dead last.
• Rhode Island is fifth in Rhee-land. It's 29th in both reading and math on the NAEP.

By contrast, of the 11 states Rhee rates as having the worst policies for education, three are in the top six for eighth grade reading scores on the NAEP, and four more are in the top 20. Another contrast: The three highest-scoring states on reading are Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Rhee scores them 14th, 21st and 18th.

Michelle Rhee and Kevin Johnson protested for corporate agenda

“Silent” protestors" with their mouths taped shut  confronted Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and corporate education proponent Michelle Rhee as they entered a  carefully promoted and controlled  discussion about education issues at the Tsakopoulos Library Galleria, 828 I St, in Sacramento on Wednesday, January 25.

The demonstrators held a news briefing with local media outlets.  The Sacramento Bee did not cover the demonstration.  This protests occurs as Wall Street corporations and foundations are funding not only the privatization of education.  The protestors set up a ‘gauntlet” of protestors with their mouths taped shut –something Rhee admitted to doing to her noisy students when she was a teacher. She later said some of the students were hurt when they removed the tape.

The “Town Hall” organized by Rhee and Johnson gained positive press coverage on local news channels.  They covered Rhee’s views and the advocacy group without describing her connections to right wing groups.  In interviews Rhee did not support replacing the money for public schools lost in recent budget cuts. 

Why do many reporters not report on the realities of the corporate sponsorship of  one group of  “school reformers”?   They too often  rely upon the wisdom of selected “spokespersons” such as Michelle Rhee.  The media  has  been sold a framework of  a corporate view of accountability. Corporate sponsored networks and think tanks such as the the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Broad Foundation,  the Bradley Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute,  and the Olin Foundation provide “experts” prepared to give an opinion on short notice to meet a reporters deadline.  Most reporters assume that these notables are telling the truth when in fact they are promoting a particular  viewpoint. Who do they not talk with?  They fail to interview experienced teachers and professionals who have worked for decades to improve the quality of inner city schools.

Rhee's group contributes to anti union efforts in Ohio

The spokesperson for Michelle Rhee's "Students First" organization would have you know it's not that Rhee and Students First really wanted Ohio's SB 5 to pass and eliminate collective bargaining for public employees—it's just that they saw it as an opportunity to slip in some of their own, somewhat more subtly anti-union measures, and hired an ally of John Kasich to work on that:

Between January and April of 2011, StudentsFirst employed Robert Klaffky, the president of firm Van Meter, Ashbrook & Associates and a close adviser to Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) to help push various aspects of education policy.

In particular, the group, established by Rhee after she left the D.C. school system following then-Mayor Adrian Fenty's defeat, had Klaffky work on SB5, the infamous anti-collective bargaining bill passed into law but already facing the likelihood of referendum.

According to the Rhee spokesperson,

"She has never spoke specifically on SB5," said Hobson. "I know our first meeting there when we had a press conference she and the Governor were very clear that there were things she didn't agree on. People think she is against collective bargaining and that just isn't the case."

Gee, it's a mystery why people think Rhee is against collective bargaining just because she works with the most anti-union governors in the country and adds amendments to the most anti-union legislation in the country. It's true that her style is not always the full frontal assault of Kasich and Scott Walker (though bear in mind that she did basically make her name by bragging about firing teachers without due process). But banking on the worst of the worst as a vehicle for passing her own, largely complementary agenda shows where she really stands. See more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/24/michelle-rhee-ohio-teachers-bill_n_866252.html

Students First -California Public Schools and the legislature

In the recent report Students First: Renewing Hope for California’s Future by the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence ( Nov.2007) the committee notes that California’s students rank 48th. out of the states in 4th. grade reading, 47th. in 4th. grade math, and 43rd. in 4th. grade science. California ranks 48th. in 8th. grade reading, 45th. in 8th. grade math, and 42nd in 8th. grade science.
This is not a problem of our unique demographics. California White students rank 29th. in 4th. grade reading when compared to White students in other states, Black students rank 29th. when compared to Black students in other states, and California Latino students rank 43rd. when compared to other Latino students.
That is, our schools are in crisis, particularly our schools serving Black, Latino and economically disadvantaged students. And, after 20 years of “school reform,” there has been no real progress.
So, what does the Legislature, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, and the state’s Schools of Education do about this crisis?
They create a new video based test for new teachers (TPA or PACT). This new test no relationship to the crisis in school achievement. It will cost over $10 million per year. It does, however, provide career advancement for test writers and professors at Stanford and elsewhere, and keep them from having to work with real teachers in real classrooms to deal with the problems of real schools.
The Commission on Teacher Preparation has advises, and the Legislature has bought the notion that the testing-accountability model which hasn’t worked for the last 20 years in the k-12 system should be applied to teacher preparation. ( Fuller, 2007)
Perhaps someone will start to make sense some day.

Duane Campbell
Professor of Education
Calif. State U-Sacramento

Students First - California

From; Students First: Renewing California's Future. The Governor's Committee on Educational Excellence. Nov.2007.

NAEP results show that California’s overall results rank low among the states
48th 4th grade reading
47rd 4th grade math
43rd 4th grade science (of 44 states)
48th 8th grade reading
45th 8th grade math
42nd 8th grade science (of 44 states)
And all student groups lag behind similar students in other states
4th grade reading:
29th Whites
29th Blacks
43rd Latinos
8th grade math:
35th Whites
33rd Blacks (of 40 states)
38th Latinos (of 42 states)
37th Children of college graduates
(of 49 states)
Comparing California to Other States
Source: California
Department of
Education and
National Center for
Source: California
Department of
Education and
National Center for
Education Statistics