In a further sign that education reform will be the big issue during this session of the legislature, the CT Parents Union says it is joining forces with former Washington D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and her StudentsFirst group. StudentsFirst, founded by Rhee, aims to “mobilize parents, teachers, students, administrators, and citizens.” It is based in Sacramento.
Rhee is also a lightning rod for her aggressive, fast-paced school reform initiatives and her confrontational strategy with teacher unions. In a press release, Rhee stated:
We’re excited about the hunger for change we’re seeing at the grassroots. There is a lot of momentum in Connecticut for the kind of changes that will greatly benefit students. There is a clear push for reform coming from state leaders, moms and dads, teachers and the business community … Together we can make sure that the policies implemented and decisions made in Connecticut schools are centered around the needs of children.
With former Chicago/Philadelphia/New Orleans school chief Paul Vallas now in Bridgeport, charter-school founder Stefan Pryor serving as commisioner of education and nation teacher union leaders focusing on the state, Connecticut is emerging as the new education battleground.
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6 Responses to Michelle Rhee Takes Aim At Connecticut
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Michelle Rhee is in bed with the Maine Governor Paul LePage too! He dubbed his reform initiative “Students First” after the name of Rhee’s organization.
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2.8.12
AUGUSTA — Gov. Paul LePage on Wednesday unveiled sweeping reforms to the state’s education system, including public funding for religious schools and a school choice initiative.
The proposal also includes teacher and administrator evaluations and an expansion of career and technical education.
One group includes the national organization StudentsFirst, a nonprofit organization founded by former D.C. chancellor of public schools Michelle Rhee.
http://www.maine.gov/education/first/index.html
Moms, Dads Teacher prepare for the bait and switch.
Rhee’s reforms really aren’t about your students.
Your being sold a bill of goods.
If we don’t regionalize, I think most of this is meaningless.
Anyone who wishes to include parents in the “schooling” process gets an applause from me. I taught school the students whose parents came to conferences had children who were TRYING even if they struggled they tried-the parents who did not participate usually had children who did not participate; in the classroom. Children have to believe that learning is important.
Mr.Green you need to look into this about Michelle Rhee.
Michelle Rhee Responds to D.C. Testing Scandal
Thursday, March 31 2011, 2:14 PM EST Tags: education, Michelle Rhee
This week Michelle Rhee, the face of an education reform movement sweeping across the nation, was called to answer for a possible cheating scandal that happened under her watch as the former chancellor of the Washington, D.C. schools. After initially dismissing the study, Rhee acknowledged this week that cheating may indeed have taken place in her district, calling her earlier criticisms “stupid.”
“It isn’t surprising,” Rhee said in a statement, “that the enemies of school reform once again are trying to argue that the Earth is flat and that there is no way test scores could have improved … unless someone cheated.”
News of eyebrow-raising testing irregularities rocked the education world this week, and gave more ammunition to critics of the education reform movement who say that an obsession with numbers-based evaluation systems of both teachers and students has consumed education. A USA Today investigation found wildly improbable test erasure rates in some Washington, D.C. schools that led to inflated test score results. USA Today singled out Crosby Noyes Education Campus, which had posted laudable gains in its test scores and was recognized by Rhee, awarded extra money under new policies Rhee instituted, and received national accolades for what appears now to have been false academic progress.
Standardized test scanning machines scan both the final answer a student bubbled in, as well as any previous marks the student eventually erased. The USA Today investigation found that at Noyes, students were posting very high erasure rates that were far above the district average. Not only that, but a large number of the erasures were from the wrong to the right answer.
“Often times when the academic achievement rates of a district like D.C. go up, people assume that it can’t be because the kids are actually attaining higher gains in student achievement but that it’s because it’s something like cheating, which in this case was absolutely not the case,” Rhee told Tavis Smiley earlier this week, insinuating that the attacks against her education reform agenda were rooted in people’s insulting low expectations of students.
The district’s acting school chancellor Kaya Henderson this week asked the inspector general to look into possible misconduct.
Also Mr.Green you need to look in into this.
Rhee bragged about taping students’ mouths shut while she was a Teach for America ‘teacher’
John Kugler – September 22, 2010
In a recent Washington Post audio posting, Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is shown admitting that she taped shut the mouths of her young students because she could not control their talking while she was working in the Baltimore Public Schools as a Teacher for America teacher. Rhee then laughs about taping her students mouths shut with masking tape and then walking them to the lunchroom. According to Rhee, she tried the tape method after she was unable to keep the little ones from making noise when she marched them through the hallways to lunch.In an even more disturbing revelation heard on the tape Rhee laughs about when the tape was removed hurting the children and some even started to bleed. Michelle Rhee, along with New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Chicago’s Ron Huberman, have been held up by the corporate news media as examples of the new breed of school district executives, the type of education leaders that public schools need to “shake things up.The audio tape of Rhee’s speech was obtained and authenticated by The Washington Post, which until recently had supported Rhee and her methods as D.C. schools chief.
Here’s the link to the audio from The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/08/13/VI2010081305444.html