corporate education reform job openings

Corporate Education Reform Wants YOU!

Teach for America (TFA)

• Bachelor's degree required (any major is acceptable)
• 2.5 GPA or higher
• Education coursework not required 
• Teaching credential not required
• TFA Training Program: As a corps member, you will attend an intensive, 5 week summer training program to prepare you to lead our nation's most ghettolicious at-risk students in making substantial miraculous academic progress, while single-handedly widening closing the achievement gap.

• The Teach for America Paradigm:  We are arrogant enough to know we are gods.

• The TFA Motto:  Two years 'til Wall Street, then we're done with this shit!

The Broad Academy for Superintendents

• Teaching experience not required
• Administrative experience not required
• Administrative Credential not required
• Any background in education not required
Desired experience: senior level executive position in the private sector, government, military, ........or education 
Broad Academy Training: A rigorous 6 week training program (over a 10 month period) will provide Fellows with the tools necessary to totally fuck up succeed in a large urban school district.

• The Broad Paradigm: Collaboration is crap.

• The Broad Academy Motto: Fire. Fire. Then fire some more expensive experienced veteran non-TFA educators.

in a nutshell

No Child Left Behind is the status quo. The biggest single cause of low academic performance is not bad teachers, which is the current mantra of the US Department of Education. The biggest single cause of low academic performance is poverty.

Dr. Diane Ravitch

status quo

• the existing state of affairs
• large class sizes
• developmentally inappropriate curriculum (a.k.a. higher standards)
• narrowly focused, densely packed curriculum
• scripted curriculum
• vocational education classes
• test prep overkill
• high-stakes standardized testing
• intensive intervention services for struggling students
• inequitable funding for schools
• education policy being driven by corporate education reformers

"What keeps me up at night is the historic lack of urgency, the acceptance of the status quo. We need to change. Anyone who is defending the status quo is part of the problem."

Arne Duncan
US Secretary of Education

When corporate education reformers like Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee rail against those who defend the status quo, they should really start looking in the mirror. Dudes, you ARE the problem!

the importance of one little letter

In the blogoshpere this evening, I was reminded of the importance of each letter we use when forming words. While commenting on the MeFirst RheeFirst StudentsFirst FB page, a public education advocate, who shall remain acronymless, discussing charter schools posted, "Is any of that money pubic money?"


Oh my, what a difference a little 'l' makes!

911

NEWS FLASH:  Whole child being brutally dismembered by corporate education reformers.

338 words

Dear Mr. President,

Recently you spoke to students about education and said, “One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test. … young people do well in stuff that they're interested in. They're not going to do as well if it's boring." I absolutely agree.

Why then, Mr. President, do you want to continue to impose an inferior educational system based on high-stakes testing on the rest of the nation’s non-elite children? Why is it acceptable to subject children living in poverty, most of whom are children of color, to a punitive educational system that limits their curricula, kills their love of learning and fails to support the most struggling students, effectively making it impossible for these children to catch up to their more affluent peers. Why do you support a system that begins labeling children as failures at 5 years old, and makes it essentially impossible for those children to escape that label?

Research does not support the policies being advocated by your Secretary of Education. School turnarounds and charter schools staffed by unqualified teachers have been proven failures. Both you and Mr. Duncan need look no further that your former backyard, Chicago, to see the failure of those policies. High-stakes testing serves to dumb down curricula and encourage cheating. Look what happened recently in Ms. Rhee’s former school district.

Think of your own children, Mr. President. Would you want Sasha and Malia taught by highly qualified, experienced educators, or recent college graduates with no background in educational theory, pedagogy or child development? Would you want your daughters’ curricula limited to reading, writing, and arithmetic? Would you want your daughters sentenced to an educational system that is nothing more than a test prep assembly line? I am sure your answer would be ‘absolutely not’.

Please, Mr. President, we want our children to have an educational system like your daughters have. We want equitable funding in our schools. Those are goals that would be worthy of your administration.

Sincerely,

A Teacher Anon

RttT

Rheerase to the Top

rheeally????? spin, spin, spin, spin……

Rhee:  The Evidence Is Clear: Test Scores Must Accurately Reflect Students' Learning

Me:  Rheeally? How is the evidence “clear”? And “because you said so” doesn’t count. Evidence overwhelmingly indicates the opposite.

Rhee:  The reports, however, unfairly leave the impression that district

leaders unduly influenced or avoided an investigation into possible

cheating. Further, it implies cheating was widespread.

In D.C. schools, hundreds of classes flagged for 'erasures'. From 2008 to 2010, 103 public schools in the District of Columbia were flagged for having at least one class of students with statistically high rates of wrong answers that were erased and replaced by correct answers on their standardized tests. That represents more than half of the schools in the system.

 Jack Gillum and Marison Bello

USA Today, March 27, 2011

Me:  Well, considering that 103 DC public schools, representing more than half of the schools in DCPS, were flagged for uncommonly high erasures from wrong to right answers, I’d say that’s pretty “widespread”.

Rhee:  …we took immediate steps to investigate in a thorough, unbiased and transparent way. 

John Fremer, president of Caveon Consulting Services, the company D.C. hired, says the investigations were limited. ...Parents and some State Board of Education members say they were never told which schools had high erasure rates or other irregularities. ...D.C. officials declined to let USA Today visit schools or talk to principals.

Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello

USA Today, March 27, 1011 

Me:  Michelle, you’ve got Caveon admitting that the investigations were limited. Since parents didn’t even know an investigation was happening, and the press was denied interview access, I think it’s disingenuous to say the process was “transparent”.

Rhee:  …we secured an outside test security company, Caveon, to investigate unusual rates of erasure marks on tests in 2009. ….It is simply not true that district officials avoided doing an investigation.

Me:  Gee, what about 2008?

In 2008, the office of the State Superintendent of Education recommended that the scores of many schools be investigated because of unusually high gains, but top D.C. public school officials balked and the recommendation was dropped.

Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello

USA Today, March 27, 2011 

Rhee:  I believe that the vast majority of teachers in our district and across the nation would never compromise their professional and personal integrity to falsify the results of a student's test. That said, there certainly may be exceptions. In such instances, swift action must be taken.

Me:  I wouldn’t qualify 103 schools being investigated as ‘exceptions’.  It is interesting, however, that you didn’t say that the “majority of administrators in our district would never compromise their professional and personal integrity to falsify the results of a student’s test.”

Rhee:  Educators are used to being under tremendous pressure. That pressure doesn't come from test taking.

Me:  RUFKM??? I mean, seriously, what planet have you been living on????

BOTTOM LINE:  Anyone who argues that that many rheerasures from wrong to right answers does NOT constitute cheating is not being honest.  Gee, what a surprise… [sigh, eyeroll]

michelle rhee: a glossarhee, 2nd edition

Rheewrite:  to write something again in order to embellish or falsify an existing document

Rheelay:  to receive and pass on misinformation and/or lies

Unrheedeemable:  not capable of being cured or reformed due to vicious, destructive actions taken in the name of corporate ed deform

Rheesumé:  a page full of lies

Rheevise:  to prepare a newly rheerased, edited version of what rheelly was; to intentionally change or modify in order to mislead

Rheevision:  an illegally altered final draft or new version of existing material

Rheefudiate: to refuse to be challenged when telling lies, regardless of evidence

Rheetract:  to quickly take back or disavow incorrectly marked test answers or verifiable statements of intentional misinformation

Rheelly:  used to express surprise, interest or doubt as in “RUFKM?”  Serheeously!

Rheevile:  to criticize in an abusive or angrily insulting manner, often involving the word crap or crappy

Rheestate:  to state again the same lie in a new form

Unrheesonable:  having unsound judgment; unfair and insensible; often in regard to education policy

Rheehearse: to practice and repeat key phrases or sound bites for later public performance; e.g. status quo; dramatically change; change the trajectory; put adult interests ahead of students; rheesearch shows; a teacher’s value-added; I don't give a crap.

Rheeplay:  to play back a section of a rheecording in order to watch and/or hear one’s self again and again and again

Rheetaliate:  to seek revenge in an especially evil manner

Rheeplace: to change a wrong answer to a right answer; provide or find a substitute for an ousted quack or fraud

Rheemail:  an electronic communication generated by an education rheeformer

Rheephrase: to express a lie in a different way, especially with the purpose of inciting fear or deflecting truth when confronted with facts

Rheeview:  to examine facts then willfully and intentionally dismiss them

Rheeinvent:  to spin shamelessly in order to aggrandize one’s self

Rheemember:  to rheecall alleged facts based on hearsay

Rheeply:  an answer most likely untrue

Rheeism:  a lie

Rheeality:  an existence devoid of facts

Rheesist: to vigorously deny facts

Rheespond: to answer a question with a lie

Rheesult:  an outcome obtained through questionable, unethical, illegal, or immoral means

Rheerase:  a strategy employed to raise test scores

Rheerasure:  the outcome as a rheesult of rheerasing.

Rheeform:  drastic change imposed by clueless people and unsupported by peer-reviewed research or facts

Rheeformer:  an education deformer committed to imposing drastic change while willfully ignoring input from experts

Rheecommendation:  a suggestion made by a highly unqualified person

Rheesearch:  a billionaire-funded investigation initiated to support a predetermined outcome

Rheepeat:  stating a lie over and over in an attempt to create a truth

Rheetell:  to change one’s story multiple times; back peddle

Rheemove:  to fire without cause; to fire and replace with cheap, unqualified labor

Rheesign:  to leave a job after 3 years

Rheetire: to be forcefully driven from one’s position or occupation under a cloak of controversy

Rheegurgitate:  to spew out nonsense; usually done by education deformers

Rheeap:  to obtain employment, wealth or stature through the efforts and/or contributions of sugar daddy billionaires

Rheetard:  a devotee of Michelle Rhee; a member of the Michelle Rhee Fan Club

Thanks for inspiration and suggestions for the 2^nd Edition go to: Diane Hanfmann, Michael Fiorillo, McStowy, Bob Somerby, Venicelady, Sahila, Cindy Lane Sloan, Guy Brandenburg and Dale Rogers.

thought for the day...

Bubble tests create bubbleheads.

an education rheeform fable

TeacherSabrina fights for our schools

Our children, our teachers

All of them jewels

She steps out, she steps up

to fight for what’s right

Determined, courageous

Addressing our plight.

But TeacherSabrina is more than just that

She clearly loved reading the Cat in the Hat

She knew not that later an author she’d be

Writing of schools, some in Washington, D.C.

Much kinder, much smarter, than dreadful Ms. Rhee

What could she write for all people to see?

A cautionary tale she did pen and record

To be viewed by the masses who clearly adored

The pains that this advocate took on their behalf

So read it and listen

Get ready to laugh!

Rhee the Reformer, A Cautionary Tale
by Sabrina Stevens Seuss

michelle rhee: a glossary

Rheeism:  a lie

Rheeality:  an existence devoid of facts

Rheesist: to vigorously deny facts

Rheespond: to answer a question with a lie

Rheesult:  an outcome obtained through questionable, unethical, illegal, or immoral means

Rheerase:  a strategy employed to raise test scores

Rheerasure:  the outcome as a rheesult of rheerasing.

Rheeform:  drastic change imposed by clueless people and unsupported by peer-reviewed research or facts

Rheecommendation:  a suggestion made by a highly unqualified person

Rheesearch:  a billionaire-funded investigation initiated to support a predetermined outcome

Rheepeat:  stating a lie over and over in an attempt to create a truth

Rheetell:  to change one’s story multiple times; back peddle

Rheemove:  to fire without cause; to fire and replace with cheap, unqualified labor

Rheesign:  to leave a job after 3 years

Rheegurgitate:  to spew out nonsense; usually done by education deformers

Rheeap:  to obtain employment, wealth or stature through the efforts and/or contributions of sugar daddy billionaires

Rheetard:  a devotee of Michelle Rhee; a member of the Michelle Rhee Fan Club

US Department of Education: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DUNCAN FIRED. RAVITCH HIRED.