USAToday has done an in-depth series on the rampant cheating behind Rhee’s school “reform,” yet she refuses to talk to them. Gee, I wonder why? Because the media for once actually did their job — instead of fawning on her and refusing to take her at face value?
This is a very enlightening piece. Everyone should read it:
WASHINGTON — Why won’t Michelle Rhee talk to USA Today?
It’s hard to find a media outlet, big or small, that she hasn’t talked to. She’s been interviewed by Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Oprah Winfrey. She’s been featured on a Time magazine cover holding a broom (to sweep away bad teachers). She was one of the stars of the documentary “Waiting for Superman.”
These days, as director of an advocacy group she founded, StudentsFirst, she crisscrosses the country pushing her education politics: she’s for vouchers and charter schools, against tenure, for teachers, but against their unions.
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.”
And yet, as voracious as she is for the media spotlight, Ms. Rhee will not talk to USA Today.
Rhee is a political opportunist much like Sarah Palin. She claims to be a Democrat yet was on Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s transition team and stood at Gov. Scott Walkers side at an event sponsored by the right wing DeVos group. She says that that makes her bipartisian. More likely she is just hiring herself out to the highest bidder. Isn’t there another more commonly used word for that?
speaking of school “reform”, cheating on standardized tests, grifters, and opportunists, Arlene Ackerman was shown the door today.
And I don’t mean taken to the Home Depot and presented with the best door in the shop.
In decades to come, when scholars are doing a post-mortem on the failed American edumacational system, they willl reveal that No Child Left Behind was nothing more than a license to print money. That license was given by the corrupted lawmakers to the private companies who print and grade tests, create test prep materials, and to tutoring companies that often hire the very same teachers who teach the failing children during the week to tutor them on Saturdays. It’s an entire industry unto itself. It was Teddy Kennedy’s baby and repugs and democats loved it equally because everybody got a piece of the pie. Except the kids, the teachers, the schools, and the nation, who all lose in the end. And who is it that is said to be failing? The schools. the kids, the teachers. But you know what? It’s No Child Left Behind that’s failing.
NCLB was a bastard begot by Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush.