Michelle Rhee's group to show Parent Trigger movie Won't Back Down at DNC convention. Unforgivable.

[madfloridian]

This angers me so much I have little to say. Just posting it is all I can do right now.

From karoli at Crooks and Liars:

Michelle Rhee Infiltrates Democratic Convention With Right-Wing Film

Not that this surprises me much, since Michelle Rhee pretends to be some kind of "different Democrat," but it's really pretty nervy of her to show up at the Democratic National Convention with a film funded by right-wing education deformers and pretend she's "one of us."

StudentsFirst is screening the film "Won't Back Down" in the middle of the Democratic National Convention in an effort to convince everyone her brand of education deform is the best pathway forward.

I wrote about this last week. The film is financed by Philip Anschutz, notorious winger. And StudentsFirst is spearheading an effort to deform New York schools in concert with right-wing funding sources.

...No self-respecting Democrat should be caught dead at this screening. I plan to be out front with my camera to see who supports public schools and who doesn't. Please reach out to anyone you know who is attending the convention and encourage them to stand firm for public education.

If karoli takes the pictures, I will most surely help share them everywhere I can on the internet.

Here's the link to the Students First DNC sign up sheet.

Join Us Won't Back Down Screening at the DNC

Even as our party is so totally on board with Michelle Rhee's type of education reform, those of us who speak about it out loud are as much as told our type of one note postings are not welcome.

[Enthusiast]

1. I share your outrage....nt

[madfloridian]

2. Not only that, but Rhee is being interviewed by Chelsea Clinton at DNC convention...

along with George P. Bush.

https://twitter.com/madfloridian/status/238879913116041216

There appears to be no one on earth who is more loved by the media and publicized by both parties as Michelle Rhee.

She is like the golden child, and no one in the party dares criticize her publicly.

[Enthusiast]

5. It just proves that the political parties

aren't much more than window dressing at this point.

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."
— Frank Zappa

[No Elephants]

3. All part of union busting and privatization. War on teachers, war on post office, etc.

All the wonderful institutions the founders of this country revered and wanted for all of us.

I can understand why that appeals to Republican politicians. Why it also seems to appeal to Democratic politicians is well beyond me.

[No Elephants]

4. P.S. Rhee's wiki says she taught for all of 3 years. I guess being an expert is easy to come by.

Inspired by a PBS special that she saw when she was a senior in college, Rhee signed up with Teach For America, went through their training, then worked for three years as a teacher in Baltimore, Maryland.<4>
Apparently, she lied about her results, too. And, on the basis of that, she founded her own organization, where she probably made more money than she could have made teaching.


<6> She was assigned to one of the lowest-performing schools.<5> She had difficulty controlling her classroom the first year.<5> She has said the stress gave her hives,<5> and that she once put small pieces of masking tape on the children's mouths so they would be quiet on the way to the lunchroom.<7><8> Rhee told Washingtonian magazine that she was demoralized by her first year of teaching, but said to herself, "I’m not going to let eight-year-old kids run me out of town", and took more courses in education and received her teachers' certification.<4> Rhee first year test scores showed a precipitous drop in her class: Average math percentile dropped from 64% to 17%. Average reading percentile dropped from 37% to 21%.<9>

She told The New York Times that the students she taught her second and third years had national standardized test scores that were initially at the 13th percentile—but at the end of two years, the class was at grade level, with some students performing at the 90th percentile.<6> Earlier she had said on her resume that 90 percent of her students had attained scores at the 90th percentile.<10> In 2010, a retired math teacher unearthed test score data on Rhee's Baltimore school which indicated that her students' scores went up during the 2nd and 3rd years, but that the percentile gains were less than half what Rhee claimed:<10> In Math her scores went from 22 percentile to 52 percentile, an average increase of 15 percentile annually.<9> In reading, her scores went from 14 percentile to 48 percentile, an average increase of 17 percentile annually.<9> Rhee claimed that the discrepancies between the official test scores and the ones she claimed on her resume were because her principal at the time had informed her of the gains but those results may not have been the official state tests that were preserved.<10>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Rhee



I wonder if anyone has ever interviewed any of the students from her classes.

[Enthusiast]

6. Yeah.

Looks like a good place to apply some good old fashioned investigative journalism. Maybe Rhee isn't so highly thought of by everyone.

[senseandsensibility]

7. Thanks for this. I am horribly disappointed,

and foresee no challenging questions coming from Chelsea Clinton.

[madfloridian]

8. How did Rhee get such prominence? A nagging question.

Who put her in this national spotlight where nothing she does is wrong?

I guess the same people who allow teachers to be treated with contempt.

:shrug:

[senseandsensibility]

9. I'm just going to put my two cents in here (off subject)

Please start posting at DU3. You are missed there by almost everyone, if not everyone. At least you are missed by anyone with sense. You educate good liberals with your posts, people who need these things pointed out to them because even the progressive media does not do a good job of covering it. There was a thread there recently about how you are missed. Think of it as a public service.:loveya:

[Jakes Progress]

10. +100

If and when they ban your posts on 3, they will show that their souls have been sold. But until they do, your posts will reach more people, and your truth will reach some that are buried in the love fest but who really have principles.

[Jakes Progress]

11. I just got back from 3. I see why

it would do little good to post there. They have formed a little hole to drop all education threads down. By making it a "special" interest forum, they can shovel all the information away from the general public. The cowards and defend the president on this without joining hands with rove and norquist, and they can't possibly let the truth about the president's union busting, school system sell out to the corporate right. DU3 has become a tool.