Discussion for article #227891
An excellent column, except that it doesn’t go half far enough in dissecting Conor Williams’ highly partisan screed.
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Proof that Campbell Brown is a liar.
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Thank you for this
I teach in a private catholic school and I have much more freedom to run a Deweyesque classroom than my public school wife.
I hear every night of the ridiculous counterproductive policies and standards she must overcome to do her job.
I just feel overwhelmed when I even try to write about this. Where to start?
Just one thing to illustrate my point. She is expected to have an engaging , student centered lesson that changes activity,focus every 15 minutes. Yet she has 3 preparations, and it seems that any time she may have at school to work on preparations is filled up with mindless meetings and other duties. She , like I, work at least 3 hours every night at home on our preparation and grading. The theories of education and school management that I find associated with the Rhee school of reform are typically rehashed corporate models which the business community has rejected and moved on from many years ago.
Case in point: emphasis on writing, parsing, fitting objectives into some cookie cutter template. This is the old “management by objective” theory which corporate america walked away form a long time ago. It is not a bad idea in itself but simply and rigidly applied does not work in education. A teacher needs to plan out his/her use of time, but when the production of these plans becomes the focus instead of what happens in the dynamic of a classroom the tail is waging the dog.
Case in point: holding teachers accountable for student outcomes, an imprecise goal at best, but taking away ( in my wife’s case) a month of instructional time to test student achievement !
Case in point: my wife is expected to manage every type of student from the wheelchair bound special needs learner to the college bound one in the same classroom with no assistance ( no teacher’s aide, no additional prep time etc.). That means her test must come in not one form but as many as 3, with adjustments for the various special needs kids. It means that the lesson plans must be “differentiated” for the various learning styles and needs every class period, every day.
It means that principles can pop in and write her up because her
“objectives are not written on the board” or she didn’t vary her lesson enough that day, or her objectives were not sufficiently student centered.
What all this tells my wife is that she is constantly in the cross-hairs, no help is coming, and failure is always her fault.
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I did not need Campbell Brown or Michelle Rhee to tell me there was something wrong with my daughter’s public school 15 years ago when I saw that some of her teachers did not understand the subjects they were teaching her and she was being cheated out of the education she deserved, requiring me to put her in a private school for thousands of dollars. (A few of her teachers told me it was the right thing to do given the way she, and other girls in her school, were being treated.) Brown and Rhee would not have an audience if many parents were not fed up with dealing with too many tenure protected teachers and administrators (I can’t say it is a majority, but I can say it is too many) who lord it over parents and their children who know that a good education comes second to obeisance to union rules and career advancement in a bureaucracy. Some school districts have taken the hint and have or are trying to change. Treating as idiots parents who see what Rhee and Brown say as a reflection of their concerns only hardens those parents’ negative views of the public schools.
So, Conor Williams, do you have an answer for this?
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Most excellent. The puff piece by Williams was just begging to be shredded. Rhee and Campbell need to be exposed as the harmful actors that they are.
And speaking of sleazebags - Robert Gibbs!
You know, the douchebag mouthpiece that thought leftists should be drug tested, and who destroyed Howard Dean? Like a big turd that refuses to flush, he’s back again:
Brown’s secrecy about her funders is especially unconscionable given her background as a journalist. Her organization claims it wants to encourage debate about public education. But if anything, the Partnership’s lack of transparency only makes open dialogue more difficult. Without knowing who is behind the effort to get rid of teacher tenure, it’s difficult to tell if they are acting in the best interests of students or whether they are among the for-profit education entrepreneurs looking to cash in on the privatization of public education, which has become a multibillion-dollar industry.
Brown’s caginess about her funders also runs against her group’s own interests. The Partnership has paired its lawsuit with a public-relations push by the Incite Agency, founded by former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and former Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt. But rather than focus on the plaintiffs behind the case or teacher-tenure policies, most of the media attention has centered around the organization’s financial backing and its celebrity spokesperson.
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I’m not a teacher, but I’m no stranger to administrators whose entirely one-sided concern for The Children® means I should brace myself for something about to come out of my hide.
The reforms of Rhee and Campbell have a similar enough flavor to them that I’m not surprised by teachers’ reactions.
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I appreciate this article.
The article referenced was a lame puff piece that came off as “concern troll.” I’m sympathetic to the side expressed here, but am open for reasonable debate from all sides.
That last article didn’t do much in that department though.
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Hmm, yes. You probably should send your children to Mississippi.
If teacher tenure is so, so horrible, and bad schools are the fault of those awful thuggish teacher unions, then the data should clearly show that the better and best schools are those without teacher tenure and without strong teacher contracts, right?
In fact, the worst schools in the United States of America, year after year after year, are in Mississippi, where there are NO teacher contracts and NO teacher tenure. In fact, the “right-to-work” (for the lowest possible wages) states tend to have the worst schools in the nation – Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Nevada. Interestingly, in these states comprehensive teacher contracts are very weak to non-existant.
By contrast, states with strong, comprehensive teacher contracts, that include tenure provisions, generally have the most excellent school systems. Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, New Hampshire, for example.
Of course, the finest public schools are virtually always found in wealthy neighborhoods in any states, while the worst schools in any state are in the poorest neighborhoods. And this is true regardless of teacher tenure and regardless of the strength of the staate-wide teacher union.
Explain that little wrench in your ideological mindset.
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Nice work, though one of the ironies in this exchange is the fact that Williams’ very lame defense of Rhee inspired hundreds of clicks, while this more fair-minded treatment will probably get less attention. Nonetheless, I’m happy that TPM is no longer simply handing a megaphone to Rhee and her supporters, and giving Stevens an opportunity to respond.
What I’d like to see TPM do in the future, though, is something more substantive that gets us past warring talking heads and into the substantive problems for public K-12. What did we learn from the implementation of NCLB and Race to the Top? How did schools, districts, states respond or readjust? I’m thinking about something closer to Dana Goldstein’s historical and journalistic work, or even the informed advocacy of Ravitch or Rick Hess, rather than the superficial PR stuff we saw in Williams’ work.
I saw on Williams’ Twitter page a bunch of his complaints about the amount of pushback he received on his (really pedestrian) work, and what he and TPM should notice is that there is now a much more organized and intense response to union-bashing, standardized testing, technology etc. in education than a few years ago, when his press release probably could have gone forward without as much controversy.
That sounds like an important story to me, and it’s affecting election races now, as we saw in NYC and NY state. Perhaps TPM could be covering it?
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“As someone who has been subjected to sexist and racist attacks from “both” sides of the education debate”
I don’t know what type of racist / sexist insults the author was subjected to, and don’t need to in order to completely discredit and deny them.
However, I doubt they rise to the know-nothing, vile attacks Chancellor Rhee was subjected to:
- Blatantly racist fliers by the outgoing (and thoroughly discredited race baiting Mayoral administration in DC)
- Charges of racism for removing teachers who had a demonstrated history of violence, sexual abuse of students, absence, and substance abuse at work.
- Innuendo that her motivation for protecting children under her charge from paedophile teachers was some byproduct of her own marriage.
Now, I realize most of the attacks against Chancellor Rhee are from well-meaning outsiders exercizing a reflective Manichean reflex to attacks on teacher unions (teachers good, criticism of teachers bad) this is however lazy and an incomplete analysis.
But don’t take my word for it – look at the 3 to 1 vote margin teachers gave her proposal once the bosses let it come up for a vote.
Charter schools have been a disaster in Michigan. The test results as reported in Bridge Magazine show that if the only thing a parent knows is whether the school is private or public, the public ones produce the better results. Devotion to hiring cut rate teachers in pursuit of profit produces predictable results.
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Lordy, you’re as bad as Williams when it comes to catty ad hominems. I can’t stand Rhee mostly because she’s a liar( who engendered a culture of cheating), as well as a shill for those who would deny the externalities of poverty, racism, and inequitable and inadequate public school funding, and instead put all the onus on the teacher, as if she or he could make every student from, say, Englewood in Chicago have the same test scores and achievement as a kid from Winnetka.
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It’s almost never mentioned that Campbell Brown never once attended a public school. Perhaps because of this people feel she is not showing sufficient humility when she appoints herself as some kind of savior of the free public education system. Also, as has been pointed out, she should maybe try not lying so much.
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There’s a fair chance she facilitated cheating on tests to boost her numbers in order to bolster her claims at being an effective reformer. Does that little episode every enter into your hero worship gumbo?
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Education grifters. These folks make money (a LOT of money) and get publicity for doing everything they can to ruin public education. That they are going after teachers, who are the hardest working people on the planet, makes them even slimier.
Of course there are bad teachers, we’ve all experienced them, but maybe if we did what other countries do, and encouraged the best and the brightest to go into education, paid them the respect and the money they deserve, and gave up saying stupid shit like, “those who can’t, teach.” we would have more great teachers.
We need to put more money into education, not just paying teachers, but providing safe buildings, the latest technology (because that is the world we live in now, not the 20th century, when you just needed a pencil and a paper tablet) and programs that reach all students, college prep, vocational programs, special education, internships with local businesses… Every politician says ‘think of the children’ but few of them ever do.
If we are not willing to invest in the future, in our children and grandchildren, we deserve their scorn.
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Fuck Arnie Duncan, Michelle Rhee and the rest of the privateers.
Taxpayers should never supplement Catholic or other forms of private education, no matter the ‘reasoned’ tortured logic.
ALEC and the Kochs are hard at work bargaining (bludgeoning) with institutions using the the hostage taking model of support.
There is no empirical evidence that that ‘charter’ schools do any better over time generally and this scam is rife with the turd stench of the Federalists.
Anyone who is paying attention knows from our recent past that societal ‘reforms’ designed or fostered by people who believe that fallacy (Federal government should be reduced to nothing), people who yearn for an era that predates reforms (anti trust laws, social security, labor laws) AND the clamoring attendant clown show now shoveling thier garbage (Rhee, Brown, Neel Kash N’ Carry, The Pauls, Teahaddists, Kochs) can smell and see plainly when the shit doesn’t fall too far from the bull it isn’t a good idea just to step in it because someone else does…
Perhaps once president Paul and the wet dream jihad congress eliminate all public funding, they expect the school marms to keep classrooms warm by burning said cow chips.
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There is no evidence that the charter movement has resulted in better education standards than public institutions, arm wrestling skirmishes over local policy aside. Ms. Rhee continues to rake in the dough from both sides of the political spectrum. She has been referred to as a stalking horse for corporate privatization of public education.
That is hard to ignore as she lauds her strengths which so far, have left mainly rubble in the wake.
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TomBlue, your response is blind and exemplifies the problem.
I live in the DC metro area, and grew up there. Although I don’t live in the city proper, I have many friends who do and who have elementary school age children.
HarryTruman’s argument is completely valid: problems in the DC school system were (and arguably still are) entrenched, and the bureaucracy of the school system largely was deaf to community concerns and existed largely to satisfy itself. That problem was by no means unique to the schools in DC, for a long time it was true of all DC city government.
Michelle Rhee may not have had the right solution, but treating the public school’s bureaucracy as the enemy and publicly signaling that business as usual was over – those were necessary steps for whoever was going to improve the system.
I don’t suggest that is the case with all school systems. Nor do I suggest that teachers unions are the problem – I come from a family of public school teachers. My mother was a high school biology teacher. But there needs to be an openness to change.
It is unfortunate that teachers have been made the scapegoats. It is also unfortunate that Rhee’s approach in DC – which was a unique situation – has been presented as a strategy that would work everywhere.
But the concerns are real. And the frustration of parents means that everything is on the table. Rather than fighting that, teachers should embrace it – and present their own positive vision.
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