Get sick, get well
Hang around a ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin' to sell
-- Bob Dylan

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Rhee: Hire me as a consultant and I will give you at least a 'B+'

Gov Scott and high-prices consultant, Rhee, visit a privately-run charter school in Opa Locka, FL.
In the crazy, mixed-up world of Michelle Rhee, the states with the best performing schools get poor grades while the worst ones  are on the top.

Louisiana and Florida, two of the worst states when it comes to providing support for public education and educating all of its children, got the highest marks on Rhee's so-called "report card." Massachusetts, a strong teacher union state, which usually ranks near the top, is downgraded by Rhee.

A quick glance (which is all this sham report deserves) reveals that top states are the ones that hire Rhee as a consultant and promote her StudentFirst agenda of school privatization, the parent trigger, and union busting. Not much research required there.

Because no self-respecting educator will be fooled into believing that T-Party govs, Bobby Jindal's and Rick Scott's states lead the nation in anything except polluting the Gulf and giving tax breaks for the rich, I will leave the point-by-point debunking to the media, the AFT, or the pros  at NEPC (I'm sure they will get around to it). Suffice to say, that after Rhee's test-cheating debacle in D.C., her credibility rating as an objective grader is somewhere between a D and an F.

In the meantime, here's what the AFT's Carolyn Fiddler has to say:
"The real issue with these report cards is that they fail to measure what matters most to parents, teachers and students. The report cards are silent regarding student achievement, school safety, small class sizes, early childhood education, investments in education, graduation rates or reading instruction."
But aside from that...

Louisiana Voice, a blog covering "graft, lies, and corruption" in JindalVille informs us:
The DOE on Monday "may have thrown a damper on Piyush’s [Jindal's] premature party with its own news release that shows Louisiana not faring so well in high school graduation statistics.  Louisiana, the U.S. DOE said, "is lobbing its own stink bomb, ranked sixth from the bottom in public high school graduation rate.
Also, see Diane Ravitch's post from yesterday, "Rhee: The Mask is off."

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