Cheating scandal catches up with union-busting education 'reformer'

Michelle Me and someone else.

We know it's wrong to revel in the misfortunes of others, but we just can't help ourselves when it comes to Michelle Rhee.

If Michelle Rhee hasn't registered on your radar screen yet, she's a union-busting education "reformer" backed by for-profit education companies. She made her bones as the tough-on-teachers DC schools chancellor. Now she's running something called "Students First," which seeks to blame teachers for students' poor academic performance.

But this is all you really need to know about Michelle Rhee. According to the New York Times,

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.

At one point, Ms. Rhee asked if his crew wanted to watch her fire a principal. “We were totally stunned,” Mr. Merrow said.

She let them set up the camera behind the principal and videotape the entire firing. “The principal seemed dazed,” said Mr. Merrow. “I’ve been reporting 35 years and never seen anything like it.”

Rhee (aka "Michelle Me") is the darling of the Governors Gone Wild.  Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder thinks she's great. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Koch whore  Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker shared a speaking platform with her in May. Corporate stooge Ohio Gov. John Kasich aligned himself with her extremist anti-teacher policies. Of course New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tried to cuddle up with her, so to speak. And just last week she joined Florida Gov. Pink Slip Rick Scott at a charter school pep rally that turned out to be not so peppy.

Rhee's attacks on teachers ignore the reality of why kids aren't learning. It's because THEY'RE POOR. One out of every five kids in this country is living in poverty. The official child poverty rate grew 18 percent in the past decade. And 17 million American children go hungry. Parents working two and three jobs don't exactly have enough time to help with the spelling lesson. And they certainly don't have enough money to pay for Junior's math camp or flute lessons.

All that should be pretty damn obvious to everyone, but corporate education interests and loony billionaires prefer to blame teachers unions. It's all part of their quest to kill public education. Their heroine is  Michelle Rhee, who they've embraced because test scores improved in Washington under her leadership.

Only they didn't.

USA Today broke the story a while ago that there was lots of evidence of cheating in our nation's capital. (Cue Claude Rains in Casa Blanca.)

In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its "shining stars.

Standardized test scores improved dramatically...Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of D.C. schools, took a special interest in Noyes. She touted the school, which now serves preschoolers through eighth-graders, as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes' staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.

You know what they say about something that sounds too good to be true. Turns out the odds were astronomical that Noyes and other schools were cheating.

A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.

Noyes is one of 103 public schools here that have had erasure rates that surpassed D.C. averages at least once since 2008. That's more than half of D.C. schools.

At some schools the odds that so many answers had been randomly changed were 100 billlion-to-one.
As Mike DeBonis understates in the Washington Post, 

...the existence of widespread test cheating poses an existential threat to the Rhee brand of school reform.

We predict Michelle Me will be doing a lot less preening for the cameras in the future.

Rhee calls union-busting legislature "courageous"

Michelle Me Rhee, the former D.C. school chancellor and darling of Republican governors, is taking on education reform yet again. Rhee recently spoke in Memphis before the education committee members of the Southern Legislative Conference.

Rhee picked an interesting place to speak about the importance of quality education. Memphis City Schools have laid off 150 teachers in the past month, including 46 teachers recruited last year. The Tennessee Legislature voted earlier this year to end collective bargaining for teachers. They also attempted to pass school vouchers, which passed in the Senate but failed in the House. Rhee praised the legislature for its “aggressive and courageous laws.”

Rhee told the committee that in the past she believed “vouchers weren't good and you shouldn't even discuss them.”

Rhee went on to become a staunch supporter of the school voucher movement, largely funded by wealthy privatization supporters, like the DeVos family, who hide behind astro-turf organizations that attack teachers, unions and public schools.

In her speech, Rhee also said that to turn around education, kids need to stop being rewarded, regardless of their achievement:

“My two girls play soccer. They suck at soccer. But you would never guess that if you went into their rooms. There are trophies and medals everywhere.”

Rhee's daughters, who were in the audience, cringed.

Rhee is currently denying allegations of widespread cheating on standardized tests during her watch in D.C. The District's inspector general is currently investigating. Under Rhee's chancellorship, in 2008, more than half of D.C. schools were flagged for high rates of wrong-to-right erasures. USA Today reported in one school, Noyes Education Campus, the number of erasures were so high that the odds of winning the Powerball were greater than the erasures occurring by chance.

A+ effort.

Young protestor speaks his mind at education rally

Noah Williams-Morrill, a fourth grade student at Wyomissing Hills Elementary School in Wyomissing, Pa., is at the Walker-Corbett-Rhee protest right now. While the trifecta are busy discussing how to gut education, Noah came to D.C. to speak out for public education. This bright young man has already learned to speak his mind and stand up for what he believes in. Here's what he had to say:

"Tom Corbett is making stupid cuts and isn't giving children rights to learn and grow up to be smart adults."

Go Noah!  

Ralliers say "no" to corporate-run education

There are some great signs and chants coming out of the Walker-Corbett-Rhee protest, which has taken over both sides of the street now.

Rally Girl reports:

People are chanting and holding signs that say, "Say 'no' to vouchers." "Save our schools, Corbett is a fool." "Do you want hedge fund managers running our schools? No!"

Rachel Tabachnick, one of the speakers, is explaining the interlocking network of right wing think tanks that are funding efforts to turn education over to corporations. She says go to http://www.keystoneprogress.org/.

About a dozen supporters from Sierra Club are here. Two busloads of folks from Pennsylvania are here. There are also about seven obnoxious Koch whores carrying "Support SB1" signs.

The Twitter is abuzz. Go to: #SavePublicEd.

Walker, Corbett to face protest today in DC

Today in Washington the loony billionaires who want to destroy public education are hosting a trifecta of their favorites: Koch whore Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker,  Chainsaw Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Erasergate star Michelle Rhee.

Their front group, "America Federation for Children" is holding a confab at a hotel in Washington, D.C. Teamsternation will be outside on the pavement with a sign, along with students, parents and teachers from Pennylvania. Also present will be our Teamster brother Rick Smith, folks from Save Public Education and union allies from the area.

You may wonder why this particular unwholesome trio was invited. Here's why:

• Corbett wants to slash funding for local schools to pay for tax giveaways to millionare CEOs. He's hurting the hardest hit kids in order to hand over taxpayer dollars to the corporations who run for-profit private schools.
• Walker wants to yank resources from public schools and spend them on vouchers so taxpayers are forced to subsidize wealthier private schools. When Walker was Milwaukee county executive he started a failed voucher program, so now he wants to get rid of the measures that hold voucher schools accountable.
• Rhee is standing with the politicians who want to gut public schools while they reward their donors with tax giveaways.

Here are the deets on the protest, if you happen to be in DC at lunchtime today:

WHAT: Standing Up for All Our Kids
WHEN: Monday, 12:00 – 1:00p
WHERE: Washington Marriott, 1221 22nd St NW Washington DC