Michelle Rhee, Wisconsin, and the Attack on Teachers

[texshelters]

Michelle Rhee, Wisconsin, and the Attack on Teachers

Michelle Rhee has proven she is willing to fire people. Her short but impactful (less than three-year) stint as Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools, where she earned $357,000 a year, proves that. I too could fire 300 teachers as Rhee did for that much money. If I could only fire 300 politicians who blindly support this “reform”, we would get somewhere. I would start with Obama’s Education Secretary Arnie Duncan.

Alfie Kohn explains how the desire to fire and blame teachers has developed in our nation and how Michelle Rhee and other “experts” take political advantage of this framing.
They emerge from a specific cultural context. Specifically, this double-barreled strategy seems to reflect:
* an arrogance on the part of decision makers that expresses itself in a predilection for top-down control -- doing things to people rather than working with them;
* the low esteem in which the profession of teaching is held. (It would seem outrageous for professionals in most other fields to be told how to do their jobs, particularly by people who aren't even in their field);
* a widespread tendency to blame individuals rather than examining the structural causes of problems -- something that distorts our understanding of such varied topics as cheating, self-discipline, competition, character education, and classroom management;
* the outsize influence on education of business-oriented models, with a particular emphasis on quantification and standardization; and
* the assumption that teaching consists of filling up little pails with information. If learning were understood instead as the active construction of ideas, it would seem odd, to say the least, to mandate certain teaching styles or a single curriculum for all students at a given grade level.
While there's no official name for the dual strategy of micromanaging teachers and trying to root out the bad ones, it might as well be called 'Operation Discourage Bright People from Wanting to Teach'.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alfie-kohn/operation-discourage-brig_b_777148.html
Can you imagine someone going into a hospital, looking at a few charts and then firing half the doctors because they weren’t performing to a set of medical testing data? Most members of Congress would lose their jobs if they had to perform to criteria many of them want to impose on teachers, and they would not put up with it.

Teachers are an easy target in our society that looks for simple solutions. They will be easier to control if Governors like Walker of Wisconsin and others can eliminate the collective bargaining power of teachers’ unions.

The full article here:
http://texshelters.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/michelle-rhee-wisonsin-and-the-attack-on-teachers/

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[Reader Rabbit]

1. Thanks for posting this.-n/t