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."

WSJ critical of PA Republicans for being soft on vouchers

NAACP protest in Harrisburg, slams vouchers & Gov. Corbett's budget cuts.

There's no better place to get the Ownership Society viewpoint on school reform than from the Wall Street Journal (although lately EdWeek has been running a close second). A June 16th, WSJ article, "Keystone State Kop-Out on Education," by David Feith, lambasts Pennsylvania Republicans for not doing enough on passage of a  state-wide voucher bill which could also serve as a bailout for the struggling Catholic school system.

"Without vouchers, we simply can't continue to bear the heavy cost of operating schools that are financially unsustainable, despite the great service they provide to the wider community," wrote Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput in May. That's why the church sponsored "Voucher Sunday" on May 20, deploying students, parents and teachers to promote school choice at more than 1,000 Masses across the state.

Feith begins his piece quoting  pro-voucher Gov. Tom Corbett calling education "the civil rights issue of the 21st century," (how original!) blasting a system in which "some students are consigned to failure because of their ZIP codes," and identifying vouchers as his top educational priority. But unlike Louisiana's rabid voucherite Gov. Bobby Jindal, who just forced the nation's biggest voucher bill though his legislature, Corbett "has been missing in action—failing to endorse the Senate voucher bill at public events, for example, or over lunches with legislators." 

The best Pennsylvania is likely to get now, says Feith, is a bill introduced this week by Republican Rep. Jim Christiana, which would create $200 million in new tax credits for businesses that donate to scholarship organizations.

So even though, Philadelphia has now turned over much of its public schools system to private charter school operators, one-percenter ideologues want more. They believe there may never be a better time to resurrect their previously failed voucher strategy than the present, especially with Mitt Romney's campaign touting vouchers at the heart of his education platform. 

Ravitch on the Ed Show: The War on Public Education

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Corp. sponsorship of charter schools in exchange for student slots, board seats

BATON ROUGE -- Over the objections of some public school advocates, the Louisiana Senate voted 22-16 Monday to allow corporations to sponsor charter schools in exchange for controlling up to half of the enrollment slots and half of the governing board seats. House Bill 421 by Rep. Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge, must return to the House, where the lower chamber is expected to approve only minor changes and send the bill on to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who announced his support for the measure in January. The House approved the bill 72-23 earlier in the session.

The bill continues a recent trend of the Legislature embracing policies that redirect tax dollars away from traditional public schools to charter programs, private school tuition scholarships and tax breaks for families that pay private school tuition. A separate bill this session, which now awaits Jindal's signature, would allow a household to deduct from their taxable income up to $5,000 in private school tuition and expenses per child. -- Times-Picayune