Sacramento in the Trump House

Sacramento outgoing   first lady Michelle Rhee and  outgoing Mayor Kevin Johnson met with President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday as Rhee is in contention for education secretary for the incoming Republican administration.

Associated Press photos show Rhee and Johnson departing from the meeting at a Trump-owned golf club in Bedminster, N.J., smiling and shaking hands with the President-elect. Crystal Strait, chief of staff to Johnson, could not confirm if the mayor was in the room during Trump’s discussion with Rhee. See Bee article and photos here. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article115941728.html

Johnson was unavailable for comment, Strait said. According to the Bee, 

"Rhee gained prominence as an education reformer while she was chancellor of schools in Washington, D.C., from 2007-10. In 2010, she formed StudentsFirst, a states-based education reform organization that advocates for school-choice initiatives and has been active in elections." She has been an ardent opponent of teachers unions and a supporter of efforts such as the defeated Vergara   decision.  ( see prior posts on this blog). She was a significant advisor to the Broad Academy for school leadership which trains and places school superintendents including a former Sacramento Superintendent Jonathon Raymond. Graduates have  advanced a corporate view of school "reform"  in Sacramento, Los Angeles, and around the nation.

Walton Family - Walmart- Pushes to privatize public schools

Advocates of education privatization—whether through voucher programs that send tax dollars to private schools or through charter schools—like to market their ideas as "choice" or even as a civil rights struggle. But as soon as you start to follow the money, you see the reality. When you have a new system of education that's being funded by billionaires at the expense of a truly public education system that serves all kids, it's not about choice or civil rights. And when the Walton family, the Walmart heirs who make up four of the 10 richest Americans, is one of the biggest voucher and charter funders out there, it tells you a lot.

The Waltons have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into remaking American education for decades now, and a new report from In the Public Interest and the American Federation of Teachers connects the dots. On more than one occasion, the staff of Walton-funded advocacy organizations have made the agenda clear: weakening public schools to the point of collapse. That's the project the Walton Family Foundation is pushing with hundreds of millions of dollars, putting its stamp on charter schools and corporate education reform as much as Walmart has put its stamp on big box retail:

Michelle Rhee involved in the California Calderon Scandal

National education reform advocate sought Calderon'€™s influence

Al Jazera America. 

by Trevor Aaronson

 

October 31, 2013  5:41PM ET

A private meeting with lobbyists for Michelle Rhee occurred before the CA state senator sponsored education reform bill

Topics:

 

Politics

 

Crime

 

Law & Justice

Michelle Rhee, founder of StudentsFirst and former chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools, at a discussion on education reform in September.

Danny Moloshok/UPI/Landov

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Lobbyists representing the nonprofit founded by education reform activist Michelle Rhee met privately with Thomas Calderon, a political dealmaker here, the day before Calderon’s brother, state Sen. Ronald Calderon, introduced a controversial bill that would have toughened teacher performance evaluations, according to people familiar with the matter.

The meeting with lobbyists for StudentsFirst, Rhee’s nonprofit lobbying organization, occurred on Feb. 20 of this year. The next day, state and other public records show, Senator Calderon introduced the bill championed by Rhee’s group. There is no indication that Rhee attended the meeting, and she did not respond to requests for an interview.

Michelle Rhee Flunks Bill Maher's Test

Video located by the new website. BadAss teacher.  http://www.badassteacher.org

Chicago Teachers Give Us All a Lesson

Two-thirds of parents supported the Chicago school teachers' protest in spite of the inconvenience caused by the strike.

by Dean Baker

We don't know the final terms of the settlement yet,
but it appears that the Chicago public school teachers
managed to score a major victory over Rahm Emanuel,
Chicago's business- oriented mayor. Testing will not
comprise as large a share in teachers' evaluations as
Emanuel had wanted; there will be a serious appeals
process for teachers whom the school district wants to
fire, and laid off teachers will have priority in
applying for new positions.

If these seem like narrow self-interested gains for the
teachers and their union, think again. Teaching in
inner city schools is a difficult and demanding job.

Most of the children in Chicago's public schools are
poor. Their families are struggling with all the issues
presented by poverty. Many of the schools are in high
crime areas and serious crimes often take place on
school premises. It can be a lot harder job than
working for a hedge fund.

It will not be possible to get committed and competent
people to teach in the public school system if they
cannot be guaranteed at least a limited amount of job
security and respect. The $70,000 annual pay that was
ridiculed as excessive by so many pundits would not
even be a week's salary for many of the Wall Street
types who do nothing more productive than shuffle
paper.

U.S. Schools Not Failing - data

Richard Rothstein,

Education “reformers” have a common playbook. First, assert without evidence that regular public schools are “failing” and that large numbers of regular (unionized) public school teachers are incompetent. Provide no documentation for this claim other than that the test score gap between minority and white children remains large. Then propose so-called reforms to address the unproven problem – charter schools to escape teacher unionization and the mechanistic use of student scores on low-quality and corrupted tests to identify teachers who should be fired.

The mantra has been endlessly repeated by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and by “reform” leaders like former Washington and New York schools chancellors Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein. Bill Gates’ foundation gives generous grants to school systems and private education advocates who adopt the analysis. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel makes the argument, and in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has frequently sung the same tune.

And now, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has joined in. On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday last week, the governor cast attacks on unionized teachers as a defense of minority students against the adult bureaucracy. “It’s about the children,” Mr. Cuomo said. Because of failing public schools, “the great equalizer that was supposed to be the public education system can now be the great discriminator.”

But this applause line about school failure is an “urban myth.” The governor, mayor and other policymakers have neglected to check facts they assume to be true. As a result, they may be obsessed with the wrong challenges, while exacerbating real, but overlooked problems.

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.

Kevin Johnson and Students First ?

Image via Wikipedia

“We need to say it's wrong, and if that doesn't work, engage in direct action, it's time to organize, demonstrate, and agitate…”  ~  Diane Ravitch, in Sacramento 1/20/12


Diane Ravitch’s extraordinary visit to Sacramento on Friday, Jan. 20,  left the 3000 people in attendance with a clear message of what those of us who care deeply about public education must do to stand up to and reject the privatization of our schools and the treatment of our children as commodities whose value is measured by “bubble tests.”   Michelle Rhee, disgraced former-chancellor of the Washington D.C. public schools and wife of Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, is the standard-bearer of the privateers, raising millions of dollars through her organization, StudentsFirst, from the likes of the Koch Bros and Rupert Murdoch to advance an agenda of  union-busting, school vouchers and public school give-aways to private interests.   The national headquarters of StudentsFirst happens to be located right here in Sacramento. 
See prior posts on Ravitch.

Rhee- Kevin Johnson talk about school "reform"

Rhee;

University of Arkansas | Clinton School of Public Service

Mayor Kevin Johnson on the State of Public Education

Kevin Johnson; Michelle Rhee, founder Students First.

Presentation-Discussion held on Feb.25, 2011. At University of Arkansas.

I watched this program with interest.  I am glad that I did.  You can read on this blog several posts criticizing Rhee and her work in Washington D.C.( see below)  What I found interesting was that I agreed with at least 70% of what she said about the need for school reform.  I also watched Mayor Kevin Johnson’s descriptions of school change here in Sacramento. Since he was describing local events, I had the background needed to assess his statements.

While I agree with the issues of the crisis in schools, I don’t agree with the assertions blaming the teachers unions.  However, putting that aside there is another issue.   Mayor Johnson ( who it turns out  chairs a committee of Mayors advising Arne Duncan) entered the issue of last hired first fired- or the use of seniority to lay off teachers.  Now, why is that the  issue?

We have serious budget cuts that are eliminating important programs for students.  The budget cuts come from an ideology about economics that argues we can cut our way out of a recession. But, Mayors and educational leaders should be opposing the budget cuts. Instead, they are selecting and creating a fight about who gets laid off first.

This may well be a consequence of the funding of such advocates by conservative foundations.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/18/1008309/-Rhees-StudentsFirst-received-Murdoch%C2%A0money

and, www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/walton-family-foundation-invests-49-million-in-teach-for-america-126247638.html

Why won't Michele Rhee talk to the press?

By MICHAEL WINERIP

N.Y. Times.— Why won’t Michelle Rhee talk to USA Today?

Ms. Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington public schools from 2007 to 2010, is the national symbol of the data-driven, take-no-prisoners education reform movement.

It’s hard to find a media outlet, big or small, that she hasn’t talked to. She’s been interviewed by Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Oprah Winfrey. She’s been featured on a Time magazine cover holding a broom (to sweep away bad teachers). She was one of the stars of the documentary “Waiting for Superman.”

These days, as director of an advocacy group she founded, StudentsFirst, she crisscrosses the country pushing her education politics: she’s for vouchers and charter schools, against tenure, for teachers, but against their unions.

Always, she preens for the cameras. Early in her chancellorship, she was trailed for a story by the education correspondent of “PBS NewsHour,” John Merrow.

School "Reformers" most went to private schools

In Public School Efforts, a Common Background: Private Education

by Michael Winerip  New York Times  April 18, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/education/18winerip.html

Ten years ago, the No Child Left Behind bill was passed by
the House of Representatives, 384 to 45, marking the first
step toward a major transformation of public education in
America. The law has ushered in what its supporters like to
call the "reform movement."


No longer did a person with a clipboard have to spend days
observing a school to determine whether it was any good.
Because of the law, it is now possible for an assistant
secretary of education to be sitting in his Washington
office and, by simply studying a spreadsheet for a few
minutes, know exactly how a school in Juneau is performing.

Each year since then, researchers have found new things to
assess. The New York City Department of Education, a pioneer
in the science of value-added assessment, can now calculate
a teacher's worth to the third decimal point by using a few
very long formulas. (No word yet on whether department
researchers have developed a very long formula to assess
chancellors and mayors.)

For a while it appeared that the Republicans were way ahead
on the reform front, but in 2007, Whitney Tilson, a hedge
fund manager and Democratic fund-raiser, founded Democrats
for Education Reform to help his party catch up. By all
accounts, it has worked. Today, the consensus is that there
is little difference between President Obama and former
President George W. Bush when it comes to education policy.
Nor is it easy to distinguish differences between the
secretary of education under Mr. Bush, Margaret Spellings,
and the current secretary, Arne Duncan.

Those who call themselves reformers are a diverse group, men
and women of every political stripe and of every race and
ethnicity.

But there is one thing that characterizes a surprisingly
large number of the people who are transforming public
schools: they attended private schools.

Which raises the question: Does a private school background
give them a much-needed distance and fresh perspective to
better critique and remake traditional public schools? Does
it make them distrust public schools - or even worse -
poison their perception of them? Or does it make any
difference?

Rhee the Reformer-Erase to the top!

Mayor Johnson active in school criticism

Feb.28,2011.

SACRAMENTO, CA – Today Mayor Kevin Johnson and STAND UP held the first ‘State of Schools’ meeting in Sacramento at the Guild Theater. Mayor Johnson was joined by Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil
Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, in a conversation on the urgent need for reform in Sacramento’s
public schools.

Today’s meeting focused on the condition of public schools in Sacramento and issued a call to action. The
meeting was sponsored by the Black Parallel School Board, Greater Sacramento Urban League, Sacramento
Chapter for 100 Black Women, Sacramento NAACP, and the Sacramento Observer in honor of Black History
Month.

Currently, less than half of Sacramento schools are meeting academic targets. While Sacramento’s public schools have shown slight increases in academic achievement over recent years, Mayor Johnson believes that the gap is not closing quickly enough.

Johnson stated, “Over the last seven years, city school third graders have improved by an average of two percent per year. This may sound positive, but think about it from this perspective: at the current rate, it will take 20 years before close to 80 percent of our third graders are on grade level. That’s an entire generation.”

Michele Rhee ( of Sacramento) continues her assaults on teachers

Though all modern presidents like to think of themselves as leading the national education debate, they rarely are; most important decisions are made at the state, mayoral, or school-board level. But if this decentralized uprising can be said to have a leader, it is the youthful, tough-talking, and telegenic Michelle Rhee. Four years ago, Rhee was chosen to run Washington, D.C.’s troubled school district by a young Democratic mayor, Adrian Fenty. She resigned just as abruptly this past fall, after Fenty was thrown out of office. But while Rhee’s head-cracking, heresy-spouting attempt to revamp the school system was a major contributor to Fenty’s electoral defeat, she left in a blaze of martyrdom, reveling in the extravagant admiration of national ­opinion-makers, as well as her commanding role in the polemical pro-charter-school documentary Waiting for “Superman.”

Over the past few months, rather than taking another municipal gig, Rhee has been campaigning through flash-point states, like a sort of wonky Che Guevara, lending celebrity, credibility, and covering fire to political leaders who endorse her vision of school reform. Last week, she was touring Ohio, as Governor John Kasich, a big fan of Waiting for “Superman,” promised “more choice, more accountability, more dollars in the classroom instead of bureaucracy.” The week prior, she was in Tennessee and Michigan; before that, she testified on Scott’s behalf before the Florida Legislature, where she was hailed as a “movie star.” At each stop, Rhee promotes her platform: expanding charter schools; connecting teacher pay to performance; revamping a pension-and-benefit system that “ends up excessively rewarding longevity”; ending tenure and seniority-based layoffs.

Rhee opens office in Sacramento; Campbell responds

Note: Michele Rhee opens a lobby operation and gets a front page coverage in the Bee and a photo.  She certainly is effective at getting free media for her positions and her new agency.

Link.  http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/21/3340369/former-dc-schools-chief-to-headquarter.html

We  too have opened an educational advocacy organization with essentially the opposing views.  The Democracy and Education Institute;  link. https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/

Dr. Duane Campbell is the director. 

Starting from over 40 years of working in schools, preparing teachers and teaching, we advocate for a democratic approach to education.   Our  primary researchers have already  prepared  over 700 teachers in the Sacramento region, most of them Chicano, and over 100 educational administrators and leaders throughout the state. 

There are many  available advocacy  strategies.  However, the most important is to share and magnify teacher voices.  Politicians make bad decisions – such as the current budget cuts, or an over reliance on testing- because they are not listening to teachers voices.  Instead they are listening to paid consultants, and “experts” from the corporate establishment.

Newspaper writers and other media writers make the same mistake.  They call their favorite “source” which just happens to be a corporate promoter like Arne Duncan, Michele Rhee,  or one  of the “experts” at elite universities.  Note:  few professors in the elite universities work with  teachers.  They are several steps removed from the classroom.  You can read more about this on the blog Choosing Democracy http://www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com.  

The most basic  strategy is to insist on teacher participation in the development of policies.  Get the politicians and the corporate shills out of the classroom. – they have failed our children.

Michele Rhee in Sacramento

The Sacramento Bee has an interesting news/ promotion piece   about Michele Rhee and her new foundation. It is here. http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/08/3241311/michelle-rhee-brings-her-fix-the.html

Yes, Michele Rhee is controversial.  More important, while firing and evaluation changed, there really is no solid evidence that her approach improved schooling for kids in D.C.  Please look at the data.

Just because Michele Rhee and her cohort make unfair and uninformed attacks on U.S. Schools, that does not mean that there are not serious problems in our schools.

I encourage you to read Diane Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System; How Testing and Choice Are undermining education. (2010).  She used to be on their side, until she looked closely at the evidence.

How to fix our schools: a manifesto

Manifesto' should be resignation letter

 By Kevin G. Welner

For a concise compilation of today's fads and gimmicks in education, go read "How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders," published in the Outlook section of Sunday's Washington Post [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100607123.html].

The sort of nonsense about education found in the new manifesto [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/school-turnaroundsreform/the-bankrupt-reform-manifesto.html] has become astoundingly commonplace, but this time it came not from a Hollywood filmmaker or a Washington think-tank advocate but from the leaders of 16 of the nation's major city school districts.

According to the manifesto [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/willingham-manifesto-more-like.html], "It's time for all of the adults -- superintendents, educators, elected officials, labor unions and parents alike -- to start acting like we are responsible for the future of our children." Absolutely. Members of each of these groups can do more - a lot more.

In fact, we should start by removing the irresponsible signers of this manifesto from any position of power over "the future of our children."

Are the adults who signed this manifesto acting responsibly when they bash teachers, and only teachers? What about the "superintendents" and "elected officials" who are conveniently never mentioned again in the Manifesto but who actually have some control over the resources available to students and their teachers?

Are these adults acting responsibly when they advocate for even more test-based accountability and school choice? Over the past two decades, haven't these two policies dominated the reform landscape - and what do we have to show for it? Wouldn't true reform move away from what has not been working, rather than further intensifying those ineffective policies? Are they acting responsibly when they promote unproven gimmicks as solutions?

Are they acting responsibly when they do not acknowledge their own role in failing to secure the opportunities and resources needed by students in their own districts, opting instead to place the blame on those struggling in classrooms to help students learn?

Teachers' Unions as an agent of school reform

Baltimore teachers union is the hero, not a villain

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

After that, the new Davis Guggenheim movie "Waiting for Superman," which merely asserts that teachers unions are to blame for the deficiencies in American education, is almost a letdown.

 In the world of "Waiting for Superman," every public school is a disaster, every charter school is a rigorous (but nurturing) little Harvard or Oxford, and the blame for the plight of public schools and the paucity of charter schools can be laid entirely on the unions' doorsteps. You'd never know from the film that charter schools produce test results that aren't any better than those of public schools, or that the teachers at a number of charter schools -- including charter schools that do produce high test results -- are, horror of horrors, unionized.

Still, the narrative that education reformers and teachers unions are eternal and implacable enemies is a hardy one, and one that Washingtonians in particular may well believe after four years of pitched battle between Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the D.C. teachers union. The intensity of the local battle might blind them to the experience of cities where the school district and the union have jointly embraced a reform agenda, even including a version of merit pay. And yet, such an agreement -- an impossibility, if we are to believe the conventional narrative -- was reached just two weeks ago in the faraway city of Baltimore.

Michele Rhee and school reform

I post this piece from the Washington Post because the approach pushed by Michele Rhee, and featured in the new film "Waiting for Superman," is often copied in California and in the Sacramento Region, including in the school reform  suggestions of Meg Whitman and the role of the media.

A chance to learn from Rhee's mistakes

By Mark Simon
Washington

Post editors and reporters appear to have latched on to every possible explanation for the public’s rejection of Mayor Adrian Fenty. Racial politics this week. Fenty’s personality. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s failure to communicate.

But Fenty’s defeat isn’t about race or personality. It’s about bad decisions, particularly on school reform. His school reform strategies, as shoved through by Rhee, alienated the voters.

Rhee certainly rates as smart, charismatic and bold. But she made decisions early in her tenure that alienated every constituency she needed, and she rested her “reforms” on strategies that national education researchers have repeatedly warned against."
Read the entire post here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/18/AR2010091803166.html
Update. Here are additional  alternative sources;
Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Election-2010/2010/0915/Vincent-Gray-beats-Adrian-Fenty-What-does-it-mean-for-school-reform
Related: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/sarameads_policy_notebook/2010/09/parent_opinion_and_the_dc_mayor_elections.html#recommend

The writer, a member of Teachers and Parents for Real Education Reform, is a DCPS parent, an education policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute and a former president of the Montgomery County teachers union.

Michele Rhee to lose her job?

Tonight NBC news with Bryan Williams advanced a  controversial opinion as fact tonight.
Bryan Williams described Michele Rhee as a leading voice of school reform.  In fact she is a major voice for one particular view of school reform- the corporate-test driven model.
Here is the transcript.  The oral statement was even stronger.  I encourage you to contact NBC and to protest. Please request a balanced report. The e mail is at the end of the transcript.

;Bryan Williams  NBC . Tonight.

washington, d.c., voters fired their mayor. while it was just a city mayor's race, that washington election result last night was heard across the country by those who follow education reform. that's because the defeat of mayor fenty means the departure of a big reformer. michelle ree is the chancellor of schools in d.c. this comes just as her profile is about to explode even bigger because of a new film called "waiting for superman." that premieres tonight in washington. our own tom costello is there for us.