[Net-Gold] Red Flags Regarding Michelle Rhee,Stop the Canonization by the Press
David P. Dillard
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Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:29:32 -0500
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Subject: [Net-Gold] Red Flags Regarding Michelle Rhee,
Stop the Canonization by the Press
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December 18, 2009
Red Flags Regarding Michelle Rhee,
Stop the Canonization by the Press
Posted by Bonnie Bracey Sutton All
Site Blog
<http://siteblog.aace.org/2009/12/18/
red-flags-regarding-michelle-rheestop-
the-canonization-by-the-press/>
A shorter URL for the above link:
December 18, 2009
There is a large and vocal support
of Michelle Rhee in the press. I beg
to differ and to offer an opinion
and some research that the reporters,
and her friends have not examined to
think about her policies. No one
speaks for many who have worked in
urban, or rural or difficult education
for years without any support, funding
or publicity. Maybe some of these people
should attend the Think Tanks on
Scholarship to tell their truths or at
least question the soothsayers.
I am a citizen of Washington DC.
I have taught in a school in my
neighborhood in South west. No,
I am not one of her victims.
I taught in Arlington, Virginia for years,
I taught in DODDS schools in Baumholder,
GDE, and I have taught using technology in
every state in the US but Montana, and
North Dakota. I am not unaware of the
plight of the Native American students, nor
the Hispanic students. I am the digital
equity chair of two educational organizations
Empowerment and Enterprise Zones
I taught in an initiative for the White House
that crossed the country in areas of need and
especially in urban areas. I have friends wo
have invited me to Mississippi to teach and it
was a wonderful experience, I have worked in
22 countries in educational technology during
WSIS and for the GAID. The work in developing
nations is not much different that
the problem of the places without broadband.
The key to successful education is teacher
professional development of a quality nature.
My Beef, The Canonization of Ms . Rhee as the
only Educational Leader The Wall Street Journal
recently wondered out loud why Michelle Rhee is
not supported by the President.
Heavens forbid such a thing should happen!
Ms. Rhee is a business entrepreneur. She has
worked her way into thethink tanks of the rich
and famous along with Mayor Bloomberg.
She had a very brief teaching experience in
Baltimore. She admits that in her short time of
teaching that she was not very good.
Her plan works well economically, dump the older
teachers, close and consolidate the schools and
save the mayor money. Oh and get rid of the
Union influence. This has been brought before the
think tanks of the US. You know, the ones that
most of us cannot afford. They cost anywhere from
$4,000 to $10,000.
Regular people are not able to attend these thought
police programs. The programs bring her out as a
provocative speaker. She is their rock star.
Her project is Teach for America. The ideas of the
project are not bad. That students go to the best
schools and then dedicate their time to schools in
need is not a bad one. There is some conflict for
the jobs within the grasp of those who finish in
the Minority Serving Colleges and Universities,
but that is a minor blip. Teach for America is less
expensive than hiring the recent graduates of the
colleges and universities in the regions and who
may have very dedicated students who are hoping to
be the base of broadening engagement for America
as well.
The economic base works. If you are not one of the
older teachers or one of the minority teachers
seeking to work in your own area. Achievements?
Depends on What you Read!! Who Do you Believe?
ONLY ONE CONCLUSION can be drawn from national tests
showing D.C. public schools outpacing many of their
big-city peers in bettering students math skills:
The reforms being undertaken by Chancellor
Michelle A. Rhee are working. But even as the
District celebrates the loss of its dubious status
as one of the nation's worst school systems, the
sobering reality is there is still a long way to go
before it can boast about its public education
system.
New findings released Tuesday by the U.S. Education
Department showed the District making dramatic gains
in fourth- and eighth-grade math on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Of the
big cities studied, the District was the only one to
post gains of more than five points in both grades;
only two other big cities have ever done that, with
the last having done so in 2005. D.C. now ranks 11th
out of 18 urban school systems at the fourth-grade
level, and 13th out of 18 at the eighth-grade level.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/
article/2009/12/09/AR2009120903940.html>
Red flags regarding Michelle Rhee
Regarding the Dec. 10 editorial
Doing the math in D.C.:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2009/12/13/AR2009121302446.html>
As a former D.C. public schoolteacher,
I find it perplexing that The
Post's editorial board continues to
participate in Chancellor Michelle
A. Rhee's cult-of-personality campaign
despite a body of evidence, some
reported in these very pages, that
much of what has been accomplished
is an illusion.
Ms. Rhee has gone as far as to comment
that previous test gains were
the result of picking low-hanging fruit.
Moreover, the recent internal and
external investigations into cheating
and the changes in the number of students
who can be given alternative assessments
are indicative of an administration that
is scrambling to educate itself in the
realities of the classroom.
Chancellor Rhee says, Students [defied]
naysayers who told me two years ago that
the school district of D.C. was a lost
war for the prosperity of children's
minds.
The low Hanging Fruit..?
The work done by Clifford Janey!!
This from the Washington Post
<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2009/12/
janey_says_footprint_still_fre.html>
When Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee met
with reporters last week to tout
the District’s improved math scores
on the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) , she did
it with a nod to her predecessor,
Clifford Janey. It was under Janey,
who was dismissed by Mayor Adrian
M. Fenty after Fenty took control
of the public school system in 2007,
that the six year rise in NAEP scores
began.
In Janey's view, the shout-out wasn't
necessary.
The Janey footprint is there and
it needs no excavation to be seen,
he said in a phone interview last
week from his office in Newark, N.J.,
where he has served as superintendent
of schools since mid-2008. Those
in-the-know, know. I don’t need
affirmation to know we made some
incredible acts of transformation in
Washington D.C. over a short
period of time that is evidenced now
much more publicly through the
NAEP.”
Janey said that one of his first
tasks after he came to the District in
2004 was to find a new standardized
test to replace the Stanford 9,
which he said lacked rigor.
The first thing I did in he first
month of my tenure was organize a
group of teachers, administrators
and community advocates and members
of the business community, Janey
said. I tasked them to research the
very best content standards and
curriculum frameworks at the state
level and to see who was making
faster improvement on the NAEP.
Permission?
What Michelle Rhee is good at is
holding NCLB, as the mantra for her
doctrine of what should happen in
schools. We DC citizens are crippled
by the lack of an active voice on the
hill that matters, and in DC by a
lack of interest in school policies
as to what the community wants.
You have only to read Bill Turque's
columns to see the difficulty.
Hidden problems are the moving around
of school populations , not that
gang territories should be the map of
the way schools are designated
for closure.
There have always been members of
the minority populations who have
given their all to upraise their
race, culture and minority group.
There have always been those who
stood in harms way to make a
difference. There have also been
those who have not had a Harvard, or
Brown education, nothing from the
Ivy League, but they have soldiered
on working with students who have
been in the direst need. The
implications of the press are that
none of us have ever made a
difference and that we have been
weighed in the balance and found
wanting.
Ms Rhee holds the doctrine of
No Child Left Behind as her mantra
for chance.
The National Academy, National
Research Council, Washington DC neither
Republican, or Democratic in nature
examined the assessment practices
of NCLB , both negative and positive
and found them wanting. The testing
specialists are called pyschometricians.
You can find all of their presentations
on this home page and reach your own
conclusions.
The goal to reach all children was a
great one. But there were problems
that exceed the positive impact of
reaching out to every child. The
system is broken
Education needs change in many ways.
As we use the participatory
cultures in technology we are aware
that there is a digital, a content,
an information and a technology
divide.
Here is where educators are now, we
share formal and informal learning
practices using participatory cultures
that foster and motivate student
development of the skills needed to
achieve in a new media learning
environment that will lead toward
workforce readiness for the 21st
Century.
We feature broadening engagement in
the use of emerging technologies
with referential case studies,
research and books, as well as videos
from the George Lucas Educational
Foundation, the National Academy of
Sciences and provide examples of
how digital media empower youth, and
encourages self-directed learning,
unfolds in three stages of
progressively greater immersion and
learning: what they label as
hanging out, messing around, and
geeking out.
Finally, we connect the dots to
STEM and the computational sciences
with games, and virtual learning
initiatives that go from data to
discovery and scientific learning
that identifies and nurtures pools of
potential STEM talent ?
Since No Child Left Behind was
created testing has taken over our
schools. Not just the testing for
the program , the state tests, the
interim tests, the practice tests,
the grade level tests, and the
school focus tests. Even in the best
of teaching situations, testing
has become out of control. Think AYP.
Thinking about it is one thing
individualizing it for a school a
difficult problem.One has only to
look at the matrix of the tests that
have been created in Washington DC
to see that testing has become
teaching. The board said that
innovation had been strangled in our
schools and offered new ways or
working. People who should be brought
forward with new ideas in education,
are people like Dr, Chris Dede,
Dr. Shirley Malcom, Dr. Norm Augustine,
Dr. Paul Resta, Dr. Robert Panoff.
But maybe they are not sexy enough.
Maybe the Barbie doll syndrome even
fits in education. Maybe you have
to be cute to get a voice.
Maybe reporters don't do their
homework even through contacts with
their own networks?
Food for Thought
Best Practices workshop last Thursday
and Friday, December 10-11. The videos
are now posted, and the links appear on
the attached agenda. As a reminder,
here is the link to the project site
with power points.
<http://www7.nationalacademies.org/
bota/Best_Practices_Homepage.html>
Please feel free to share these links with
anyone you think might be interested.
Best Practices for State Assessment
Systems: Improving Assessment while
Revisiting Standards
<http://www7.nationalacademies.org>
Board on Testing and Assessment The
National Academies 500 5th Street, NW
11th Floor Washington, D.C. 20001
Tel: 202-334-2353
Fax: 202-334-1294
E-mail: bo...@nas.edu
So we are on another journey to find
a solution. State Standards are
the New Movement.
Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Outreach GLEF.org
http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/bbracey
My communities
http://www.digitaldivide.net/community/summitforchildren
http://www.digitaldivide.net/community/gendergap
CyberEd Resources : ICT's and Education (owner)
Games and Education (owner)
Science without Frontiers STEM Initiatives K-12 (owner)
http://www.digitaldivide.net/blog/bbracey
Portal Work
http://edreform.net/
Technology Applications for learning in the portal
applications.edreform.net
Technology Applications for Learning
The Technology Applications for Learning Network
is a catalog of technology applications for learning.
http://www.digitaldivide.net/community/STEM
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