She is definitely pretty though.
To summarize: Somebody retired who you donāt care about, providing a great opportunity to make straw man arguments against people who are trying to save education.
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- citation needed
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I guess the āsponsored contentā isnāt being bordered off with the box anymore, eh Josh?
Now itās just blending in like real stories.
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Rhee was the champion of a simple āsolutionā to a complex, systemic problem. Thatās an invitation to criticism right there, because simple answers - while popular - rarely work. They seemed to work for Rhee, but when people began to really investigate what happened on her watch, it became clear that it was all a dream.
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Perhaps Dr. Williams meant to offer a balanced assessment of Ms. Rheeās legacy on educational reform. If so his balance beam tilts right in praise of Rhee and with not so thinly veiled attacks on the AFT, NEA, and the vast labyrinth that is public education in the U.S. Case in point, āShe gave voice to frustrated educators, parents, and administrators who had become cynical after years of watching a stultified education system assign miserable teachers to its most vulnerable students.ā This line of thinking appeals to the anti-education crowd in much the same way that Rhee would use exaggerations to attack teachers rather than seek solutions. In addition his mention of Campbell Brown, and Rahm Emanuel were simplistic and inaccurate attempts to dis Ms. Weingarten and teacher unions. Reform is needed in education as a matter of improving performance, not as a means of partisan politics. Williamsā post is more of the latter, and that is too bad.
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Yeah the dishonesty begins early:
āTo disagree with her meant to stand up for the preexisting view of American education, a view that measures teacher quality by so-called āinputsāāwhether teachers have advanced degrees or a bevy of years in the classroomāand throws up its hands at the notion that these could ever be expected to yield tangible results.ā
Which, of course is a classic strawman argument, in that maybe, just maybe, critics of Rhee could (and did) harbor criticisms of the educational system. Then the author, maybe realizing that heās made a straw man argument, preempts any criticism by accusing the other side of that exact form of intellectual dishonesty:
āAt her peak, Rhee sparked such fury in her opponents that she became a sort of strawwoman incarnate.ā
By which he means, apparently, that her brand of hardcore grandstanding and teacher bashing was ascribed erroneously to other critics. I canāt speak for everyone, but what I found so infuriating about her was her pig-headed denial that social conditions have anything to do with educational outcomes, and that poor outcomes were all the teachersā fault. That, sadly, was a belief that she shared with many other āreformersā, and it lets our polity off the hook about dealing with with the social inequality which is the root cause of the disparity of educational outcomes.
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Headline writer did not read article.
In any case, the article is nearly useless (except to those already extremely well versed on the subject) as it doesnāt actually say anything of substance about Rheeās agenda or what is supposedly controversial about her.
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To summarize: You obviously just read the headline and not the article, which is in fact a major suck up to Rhee (and to the ācorporate reformersā who the author suggests do not exist but who in fact pay his salary) . I guess youāe too busy trying to save education."
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After reading this piece and scratching my head, all became clear after seeing that it was written by an academic. I learned close to nothing about what actually made Rhee controversial or the current policy debates surrounding education reform. Waste of time!
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Itās a dishonest piece of nonsense! The āto disagreeā¦ā and āto agreeā¦ā is so simplistic, childish and dishonest, it can only be the work of someone ideologically committed to the cause of privatizing education - and not actually thinking very hard about it. Fuck off with your thank for not being anti-Rhee. Itās about much more than that, kiddo. Itās anti-reality. It spits in the face of those who both agree and disagree with her, those who care about education. It furthers the dishonest attacks on teachers. Youāre fine with that? But, itās not anti-Rhee. Therefore, GOOD! Is this really how simplistic you need to get through the day?
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There are lots of reasons to criticize Rhee without being a pro-teachersā union partisan. For example, her belief that poor kids could have the same educational outcomes as rich kids just by having some sort of super-teacher for 6 hours a day lets the very same governments you criticize off the hook in their refusal to address social inequality in any meaningful way.
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This piece really needs to be looked at by the TPM editors. Iāve not seen such dishonest and disrespectful nonsense on TPM ever before. It belongs at Fox Nation, not here.
Those first few lines show instantly that the writer hasnāt spent a whole lot of time - if any at all - reading and/or listening to the education debate at all. I mean, wow - itās exactly the opinion of simplistic Red State and Free Republic commenters.
Josh are you really OK with this level of dishonesty on your site? Promoting it on your front Page?
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I had a landlady who was the body double to MR and while that says little about her personality I sense the same lack of empathy for anything other than her very own deeply ingrained beliefs; bulldog or donkey like. You do not exist. I am G-d. We can create reality. FU. You know like stopping a 747.
Sorry you misinterpreted my comment. I read the article, which I know is a major suck up to Rhee. I wish the article would have focused on the actual failures of Rhee, which is everything she did. Even more so, I wish the article would have dealt honestly with her critics, who have been proven correct. I do not view Rheeās job change as much of a switch, since she is going from selling horsecrap to selling horsecrap. Hopefully, this will add some context to my comment above.
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Exactly. She wonāt be missed.
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One only needs to look at this guyās twitter feed to see just how extremely dishonest and arrogant - not to mention and intentionally isolated from the real world, he is. Josh this is actually really shocking for a long time TPM reader to see this promoted on the front page. This a huge middle finger to your readers.
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What a weirdly terrible and confusing piece on Rhee.
Charlie Pierce wrote a far more accurate piece at Esquire some time ago:
THE EMPIRE MICHELLE RHEE BUILT
They have their own genre of richly financed propaganda, like 2010ās Waiting for Superman and this yearās Wonāt Back Down. There are an awful lot of hedge-fund gunslingers involved in the movement toward charter schools, a phenomenon about which, to his eternal credit, Bob Somerby ā who actually has taught in the public schools ā has been banging his tin drum at The Daily Howler for some time now. (It should also be said that Somerbyās knee does not jerk. He readily gives some reform programs, and even some of Rheeās work, the props he thinks they deserve.) Some of the hustlers, alas, have the ear of this administration, and one of those people is Michelle Rhee.
Rheeās entire (and very lucrative) career as a proponent of educational āreformā is based on her time as chancellor of the public schools in Washington, D.C. Between 2007 and 2010, she did everything that sends a thrill up the leg of the āreformā community. She bashed teachers, scapegoated principals, and shined up her own armor for public consumption every chance she got. She also instituted a system of standardized testing by which Michelle Rhee would be able to judge the awesome awesomeness of Michelle Rhee.
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Thatās an excellent observation. I have two siblings who are public school teachers, and they couldnāt stand Rhee, not because she criticized teachersā unions, but rather because of her insistence that they alone were the agents of the their students education regardless of what was happening in their homes and neighborhoods. Itās like denying someone healthcare, and then expecting oncologists to have the same results with someone who walks in the emergency room with stage 4 cancer as opposed to those with cancers caught early.
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