Students First Changed Their "About"

Students First, Michelle Rhee's billion dollar, billionaire funded lobbying/propaganda machine have changed the "About" section on their Facebook page:

They claim they are a "grassroots movement" while at the same time claiming one million members (most of whom were duped into signing up with a shady Change.org petition) and a billion dollars.  Grassroots? Really? As they line up with and take money from Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, the Broads and the hedge fund managers? Really?

In the beginning of Students First they had a blog. On their blog they allowed comments. Folks like me started pointing out their misinformation --like "teachers are the most important factor"-- when they forgot to mention they meant "in-school factor." I made them correct that, however reluctantly. Then they ended commenting on the blog.

They did allow it on their Facebook page, so I comment there now, and have created a shadow blog, Students?First where SF's blog-posts can be commented on. Nobody goes there though.

SF is NOT a grassroots organization. They are well-funded and well-connected. They don't have a million members. And they lie. Constantly.

Ignore the hype.

TFT's #SOSChat Radio Is Fully Funded!

We did it! You all donated and now I have a Premium account at Blog Talk Radio. Thank you so very much. I can now host whenever I want and for up to 2 hours! Awesome!

Many thanks to all who donated. In a year, I will have to ask for donations again, but don't let that stop you from donating today, or again! Do it frequently!

For the inaugural show I have invited Michael Butz (a fellow Deadhead and the reason for the picture above) to talk with me about education reform, especially as touted by Michelle Rhee and Students First. We will have an hour to talk and many guests have been invited to call in. We have a little community over at the SF FB page, and this show is an opportunity to actually speak with each other.

It was tough getting Mike to come on. I had to prove to him it would be okay. He now knows it will be fun. Good for him! He's right!

So, set the date: March 21st at 7pm PST.

This Is My Last Straw - Is It Yours Too?

By Dave Russell

As a teacher, I have sat and watched our children increasingly suffer needlessly as the life of the of the school day has been systematically suffocated to the pallor of a deathly grey. The gauntlet of NCLB has morphed into the scourge of the corporate take-over model which spawned a full on attack warrior in the form of Michelle Rhee and her "resistance is futile" lobby group, StudentsFirst. My blood boils every time she rolls out a new Madison Avenue savvy propaganda smear or full court press media blitz designed to further the Oligarch's planned agenda for education takeover, uh...I mean "reform."

As my anger and frustration has grown, nothing has enraged me to the boiling point more than the recent publicity buzz flying around the paper authored by Economists Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia. In this 92 page report, these economic experts claim to have tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years concluding that the kids with improving test scores had lower teen-pregnancy rates and higher college-enrollment rates than their peers. They also had higher earnings, lived in better neighborhoods, and even saved more for retirement. In a front page article about the paper, The New York Times concludes “test scores help you get more education, and that more education has an earnings effect" (how's that again...test sores do what now?).

It's not too surprising that nobody was quicker to pick up on this paper and trumpet the message from this cherry bit of propaganda than Michelle Rhee and the merry Jesters at StudentsFirst! The ballyhoo from StudentsFirst is as predictable as clockwork! Some kluged report jukes the data to develop erroneous conclusions that dance right into the laps of the Rhee/Duncan/Gates Cabal of reformists and BAM! it happens; you place the stick in their hand, they will bang the drum.

This report is hogwash and StudentsFirst should be ashamed for publicizing it. The authors admit that their conclusions are extrapolated from stale data that was gathered in bulk (not for individuals as the summary leaves readers to believe), run through an analysis tool that is so fraught with statistical noise (individual and often conflicting point-source influence on outcome) that their only conclusion --there is far too much noise to disaggregate (take apart) the most reasonable conclusion-- is that teacher quality HAS to be the driving force for the very gains that they couldn't actually track because it was stale and gathered, after all, in bulk. WTF?

But honesty and integrity are not the norm, nor are they qualities valued by this Reformers' Cabal. Instead, truth is denied, facts are skewed, research (real research - not this 5 and dime tinker-toy variety) is overlooked, and professionals at all levels across the nation are ignored and besmirched.

The agenda of StudentsFirst is to use well crafted rhetoric, propaganda and deceptive practices to create false hysteria, create mythic villains in teachers and unions, project horrific consequences should the fabricated travesty be allowed to continue unchecked, and then (wait for it!) charge in like the Knights in Shining Armor they believe themselves to be, carrying their Shield of Righteous Purpose, picture perfect, jiffy-tailored solution that not only sounds good and gives that ever so needed cozy-snugly feel of good satisfaction, but is hawked and carnival barked as the only effective, critical, and urgent fix, and to not support it dooms he world as we know it to inevitable implosion. By God! reading their agenda you would think StudentsFirst is single-handedly saving every child in every classroom every day from a hideous ordeal in the slash & burn world of the indifferent, self-important, selfish, ineffective teacher!

All StudentsFirst is interested in is changing the game so the new power brokers can continue to coerce states and districts into adopting unproven agendas such that expensive teachers can be arbitrarily, capriciously, and summarily tossed onto the curb like so much rubbish only to be replaced by unproven, untrained, two-year commit-me-not ivy-league Slam-Bam-Thank You Ma'amers.

And all this hinges on some snake oil smoke & mirrors algorithm called Value Added Analysis, which in and of itself hinges on students passing a test nobody has ever seen, nobody has ever ensured is aligned to the hundreds of varied curricula and texts, and not fact checked for accuracy or cognitive appropriateness. It is taken on faith by StudentsFirst and the rest of the Rhee/Duncan/Gates Cabal of reformists that the ENTIRE machine that sets the standards, writes the curriculum, formulates the textbooks, writes the tests, scores the tests is SO seamlessly perfect that all children, regardless of socioeconomic status, family (dis)function, language abilities, learning difficulties, or desire to participate, will excel if it weren't for the incredible prevalence of those damned ineffective teachers.

The most aggravating aspect of the agenda water-boarding perpetrated by the whole Rhee/Duncan/Gates Cabal of reformists is that the American public is either too drunk on their cool-aid, too stupid to understand the realities, or too apathetic to do anything but allow their children to be willingly led to the intellectual slaughter.

Too harsh you say? Ask any child in Florida or anywhere else in America how excited they are to come to school. Ask them how relevant the curriculum is to their lives. Ask them when the last time it was that they engaged in test prep - and for how long. Ask them why they even take the test. Ask them if they feel like the institution is encouraging them to live, learn, and grow according to their (student centric) needs as 21st century learners. You want harsh? Listen to these kids rail on the Bull Shit that is the result of decade of reforms designed by a Cabal of reformists who think that the best way to solve our problems is to use a white-hot blowtorch approach to intensifying the same thinking that created the problems in the first place.

To all the members of the Rhee/Duncan/Gates Cabal of reformists and to Race to the Top as well, you can kiss my ass and the collective asses of kids all across America!

Why So Few Posts?

I have a new job. Not enough folks have the money to hire me as a consultant, even with my sliding scale of fees, so I took a teaching job. Now that I am working for someone else I have much less time for blogging. It's kind of a bummer, but a steady income is not a bummer.

There does seem to be lots of movement in favor of questioning the current edreform policies and ideas spouted by know-nothings like Rhee, Gates and the rest (yeah, you too Tilson). Rhee's organization, StudentsFirst, is now touting partnerships with teachers because they realize that they need the support of teachers if they are going to get their agenda enacted. What they don't seem to realize is that hiring TFA quitters and former teachers who have chosen to leave kids and become policy gurus does nothing for Rhee and her organization's desire to become loved by actual teachers who have remained inside classrooms despite Rhee's unfounded vitriol against us.

Even Arne Duncan is trying to get on our good side by saying we should double teacher salaries. This sounds nice, but is just more of the same teacher-bashing--this time it's just veiled. There is no money to do such a thing, and even if there was enough money, higher-paid teachers cannot overcome the devastating effects of poverty on our low-scoring students. Hence, offering more money is a veiled claim that poorly paid teachers are slouching on the job. Um, no, we're not. Fuck you.

The movement to opt out of standardized testing is also gaining traction. We have seen some prominent educators publicly claim that they have opted their own kids out of the state test. If my kid's mom is cool with it, we will also opt our son out. The oligarchs don't need or deserve all that data on my kid. They are abusive as it is, and I don't need their abuse aimed directly at my son. Fuck those assholes.

My radio show on BTR is also suffering from my new job, as I can no longer do it in the afternoon. If I am to do more radio I must do it during prime-time, which requires a pro account that I cannot afford, hence the donation widget in my sidebar on your left there. I would love to do more radio, and if you want me to do more, I need your financial help to do it. Consider a donation, won't you? I am in contact with a few interesting education leaders who are interested in interviews, and I think they would be a valuable addition to the counter-reform movement that is gaining steam. Anyone who donates is invited to be a guest on the show!

Remember, poverty is the reason for the achievement gap. We've known it for 60 years, and we've been in denial for that long. The reformers have done a good job defeating this idea by saying poverty is not an excuse. They are right. Poverty is not an excuse, it's a goddamned diagnosis.

Interview With Diane Ravitch--An Hour Well Spent

How Discussions Go At Students First

I find it interesting and frustrating commenting and reading comments at the Students First Facebook page. There are some thoughtful people there, some batshit crazy folks, and some genuinely curious people too. There is also a lot of ignorance and bias.

Here is an example of a not-so-typical exchange between MTV, who I think opposes much of the reform agenda, and me. She seems to think there is something schools can do to improve outcomes for impoverished children while ignoring the poverty itself. I try to explain how poverty and being poor are not the same thing, necessarily.

My Teacher Voice-

Well TFT-What do you propose then? I happen to believe education can go a long way-but there have to be other supports as well-community supports, family supports, and often something within the person (a fire). How do you propose we end poverty if we can't provide a good education without it? Do you propose we don't waste our time on the education piece until we end poverty? I happen to think that a proper education IS part of treating the problem not a symptom. How have others done it? How have others gotten out of poverty?

I can't honestly say how far back poverty goes in my family, but I can tell you this...my mother and my father came from extreme poverty-especially my mother. Yes, her father was a DC lawyer until he died when she was five, but considering the fact that her grandfather hated her mother and the children from that marriage to that "Indian woman" (yeah-very little Indian but Indian none the less)...my mother had next to nothing growing up (no indoor plumbing...often no electricity....a step dad who drove over her mother with a tractor on purpose....). She did (and does) have a drive. No matter what, you just keep going. She was smart. She went to school. She met my father....blah blah blah. She's not wealthy-but solid middle class.

My dad-the eighth of nine children born to an alcoholic father...again not sure of the education levels of my grandparents there (I know my grandfather comes from a long line of moonshiners in southwest Virginia....and many factory workers), but my grandmother was on top of it-so were my aunts and uncles when it came to my dad. Every single one of those children either went into the military, college, or both and all are quite comfortable financially. My father is more than comfortable, and he grew up in a house with no indoor plumbing for a very long time. His parents cleaned the church for a living.

(My parents are no longer together...hence the different financial situations). I feel the need to mention too that it isn't just about money...money comes and goes. I have very little money right now...I had quite a bit more before I was divorced....I'm still pretty much the same; I just have to budget. I realize my money issues are NOTHING compared to people who have no health insurance, etc....which as a college student with a baby I also had very little and no health insurance.

I know...I know....they were white.....for the record, I"m not accepting that excuse...too many people of color find themselves out of poverty. So that being said, what do we do?

That is a typical way of thinking for too many. My response:

Tee Eff Tee-

MTV, poverty isn't about just money. Generational poverty in the social sciences, which is what we are discussing and should be the assumed level of discourse around here, is more accurately described as socioeconomic status, or SES.

When you look at families with low SES, they are the ones who do poorly in school. Poor people can have high SES--look at Obama's childhood, or your grandfather the lawyer--and still be poor. My grandmother was one of the first women in Boston to become a lawyer. Her dirt-poor family came from Russia to Boston in about '06 [1906] and immediately set sights on advanced degrees. Why? High SES, even without money. My grandfather was also a lawyer. As are about 5 of my cousins. And there are dentists and academics in the family, and a couple teachers and professors, and a loser or two.

Socioeconomic status is the only correlate to student success that exists in the literature. Nothing else correlates. And the correlation is powerful and sustained. It meets the threshold of causation.

Here is a good example if you don't get put off by it: Jews (I am one) arrived in America penniless, as did most immigrants. Jews as a group have done very well for themselves in America. Why? They have high SES. They value education. They worship it. The word "Rabbi" means "teacher" as I assume most know. Each generation of Jew has wanted the next generation to be more educated than the last. Jews are disproportionately represented in academia because of their notions about learning and study--it's part and parcel of the culture and faith.

Don't conflate poor with impoverished. They are often bound together, but can be mutually exclusive too.

And that is why poverty stifles--one generation passes their non-education on to the next, devaluing it. Schools and school leaders do nothing to try to change that--school is punitive, not welcoming these days.

Low SES and boring classes do not a successful school career make.

There's lots more over there. They need your input. Go there and comment.

And then, because I blame poverty for the poor test outcomes for impoverished kids (the only ones getting low scores) I get questions like these:

Jane Howard-

TFT- Do you think that there is anything we can do short term to improve education then?

To which I answer like this:

Tee Eff Tee-

Jane, yes.

We can eliminate NCLB sanctions that scripted teachers and return autonomy to them.

We can eliminate high-stakes testing and its attendant teaching to the test mentality.

We can end zero tolerance policies for young kids.

We can make sure kids with IEPs and 504s are given what they need and deserve and are entitled to by law.

We can give teachers the time to work together to improve outcomes for the most vulnerable kids instead of ignoring them in favor of the 2s and 3s.

We can improve school libraries by bringing back librarians (books have the largest positive impact on impoverished students--and it's cheap as hell).

None of these cost extra money.

Then, on the out of school stuff (which has magnitudes more impact) we should have universal health care, free high quality early childhood education programs, easy access to good food in impoverished neighborhoods (enterprise zones were one way to deal with this) and fix the inner city schools that are in a shambles, showing the community the larger community actually gives a shit.

Who would argue against anything above? Mike? Ramona?

I thought I'd share since not enough of you are doing any debunking.

Mind you, these two quotes from MTV and Jane come from 2 people I actually like and respect over there.

(Crossposted) TFT Has Something To Tell You About Students First: Updated

This was originally posted at my students?first blog.

Michelle Rhee's Students First Facebook page, like Education Nation before it (prompting my Miseducation Nation response), has stopped allowing people to post on their wall. It seems to have happened at around 2pm Pacific on Monday, July 25, 2011.

This tactic is popular with folks who are trying to get their lies believed. They need to obfuscate, cheat and squash any and all dissent, especially dissent with facts to back it up.

Students First is in the business of convincing the public that poverty is a choice and can be overcome. Well, to be fair, they say that since poverty is such a huge problem they have decided to focus on the one factor in a school they know they can get popular support for--teacher bashing. They admit poverty is a much larger problem, and they go on to admit that it's too big for them, so they will focus on teachers, or something.

They are confused. They have no good reason for ignoring poverty as they claim to want to put students first.

Bullshit.

Poverty's effects account for 60-90% of factors negatively impacting a child's ability to learn. Teachers and schools have effects that account for the other 10-40% (most researchers agree that the low number --10% -- is the more accurate measure of the effects. Ninety percent of factors fall outside of school. Rhee want to focus on the 10%, and she want one billion dollars to do it).

If it weren't so dishonest it would be funny.

Update: Here is the proof that my assumption about SF being responsible for cutting off access to posting to their page was on purpose and not a glitch as they first claimed--a claim which has been scrubbed and replaced with the truth:

1) Here we have two comments where the missing SF claim of a glitch used to be. SF's original claim, that is was a glitch, was transposed by Sahila:

"StudentsFirst is not responsible for the removal of wall posting privileges, nor do we sensor any material that is not deemed abusive or profane. Unfortunately, Facebook is experiencing technical difficulties across the platform. We are working on having the issue resolved, thank you for your patience."

It used to be between the 2 comments you see below, but it was removed.

2) Here we have the new comment from SF saying they did it, not FB, and they offer no explanation of the removal of their first comment that was a lie.

So, they lied, and were caught. And Michelle Rhee wants you to trust her. She lied. Again. Again? Yes, again. She lied about her students' scores as a teacher, she lied about all those screwed up teachers she fired as Chancellor (remember they were rehired at huge expense?), she lies about the negative effects of LIFO and tenure, and she lies about the root causes and solutions to poor school performance by our most vulnerable kids.

Why does anyone trust her? Oh, they don't. She's a tool of the Oligarchy, and trust has nothing to do with it.

Who Shut Me Down And Why?

I have a few Facebook pages. Arrest The Pope is the largest at almost 7800. Then there is Miseducation Nation with about 700 "likes" I started last year when NBC decided to shut teachers out of their discussions on education reform.

Back in March of this year I started Students?First, a Facebook page to counter Michelle Rhee's influence at her Students First propaganda machine.

Remember me? I used to be on Facebook @ Students?First

 Well, my Students?First Facebook page is nowhere to be found. I can't find out why it's gone. I suppose regular people can "report" a page, but there was nothing nasty there, just facts about education.

But, given Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million investment in education, if Michelle Rhee asks you to take down a page, you do what you're told to stay in the good graces of the billionaire boys club.

Remember to tune it at 3:30 pm today to Blog Talk Radio!

Michelle Rhee Admits Teachers Are "Immeasurable" Among Other Things

In this interview Michelle Rhee admits that teachers, great teachers anyway, are immeasurable. She also says that tons of standardized tests are a great way for parents to know, bi-weekly, how their kid is doing. She never mentions that parents can actually call teachers, visit the classroom their kid is in, schedule a meeting, look through their kid's backpack and see what is going on, or any other pro-active method of caring for your own child.

Oh, and she does some spinning of the investigation of her erasures, which can only be explained as cheating.

Sabrina Stevens Seuss: Rhee The Reformer

I have been getting lots of visitors linking from GFBrandenburg's site. Welcome! I must inform you that I did NOT create this video. Sabrina Stevens Shupe, known as @TeacherSabrina, created it. She is awesome and you should follow her blog and her Twitter feed.




Sabrina Stevens Shupe

Diane Ravitch On Rhee's DC Shenanigans

...

A computer analysis of erasures found a dramatic pattern of changing answers from wrong to right at Noyes. In one seventh grade classroom, students averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures on the reading test, as compared to a district-wide average of less than 1. When parents complained that their children's high scores didn't make sense, since they were still struggling to do basic math, they were ignored.

What will this revelation mean for Rhee's campaign to promote her test-driven reforms? Her theory seemed to be that if she pushed incentives and sanctions hard enough, the scores would rise. Her theory was right, the scores did rise, but they didn't represent genuine learning. She incentivized desperate behavior by principals and teachers trying to save their jobs and meet their targets and comply with their boss' demands.

...
Diane Ravitch

Michelle Rhee Makes A Dubious Claim

Americans also have strong opinions about how we should determine teacher quality. In fact, of the 1,510 voters surveyed, 75 percent believe standardized tests, individual student progress and principal assessments are the best ways to evaluate teachers.

Rheelink

Really? Who were these voters? How were they chosen? What was the method used to get the opinions? Can we have any information about your survey at all, like the wording of the questions?

Michelle Rhee's site -- studentsfirst.org -- was at first happy to have comments on her blog. When the comments got overwhelmingly negative about the direction Rhee would like to see education go, they began deleting offending comments. Then they reposted some positive comments and attributed them to others. Then they began to moderate all comments, which pretty much shut down any conversations that were happening, and there were some, and people's minds were changing.

Now it appears they have shut down comments completely.

Please go to the mirror site I set up if you would like to comment, unmoderated.

And I have a new free Android App (QR code in sidebar) for her site, and a $0.99 free app for this site you are looking at right now!

TFT On Blog Talk Radio Today With DC Parent

DC Parent and I will discuss Michelle Rhee's (and DC Parent's) obsession with firing veteran teachers in favor of retaining newbies (LIFO) and other reforms.

We confirmed last week, but I haven't heard back as of this writing. If I have no guest, I will play some music, read some comments from Students First, and respond to them. I will take callers, as usual.

Take a listen to my BTR show, today, live, at 3:30 Pacific time.


Listen to internet radio with Tfteacher on Blog Talk Radio

students?first, Come To The Mirror

I have created a mirror of MichellRheeFirst because Michelle Rhee has started moderating and deleting comments.

I will post each of her blog posts at the new site and allow people to comment unfettered.

Michelle Rhee Offers To Take Someone's Dignity Away

There is a scene in John Merrow’s PBS feature on Michelle Rhee and described in his new book, The Influence of Teachers, in which Chancellor Rhee is talking with members of Merrow’s film crew and casually announces that she is about to fire someone – and asks the crew if they would like to tape it. Fire someone on video. The person’s dignity is stripped away. But so is the humanity of Michelle Rhee.

Mike Rose

Rhee Is Wrong. Again. It's About Poverty, Not Teachers

...

With so many dollar to raise (a billion of them) before the 2012 elections, who can blame [Rhee] for pulling lines out of her broomstick to spice up the slick ads for potential donors. Here is a recent fabulous fabrication that Michelle offers during a staged discussion led by Rupert Murdoch's chief advisor on education, Joel Klein:

"When I travel around the country talking about these issues, I inevitably come up against, you know, wealthy folks in the suburbs who say, 'Well, but my kids are fine,'" Michelle Rhee, a former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor, said during a recent gathering at The Daily.

"I say, 'Did you know that the top 5 percent of kids in America, the top five — the ones that are going to Choate and Andover and all these great places, they are 25th out of 30 nations, compared to their global counterparts?''

Could Rhee have gotten her numbers from Klein's researchers over at Fox News, where they simply make it up when the facts don't support their agenda? Michelle certainly did not get them from the most recent international test comparison (PISA) published by OECD, which has been all over the media since early December.

...

• Of all the nations participating in the PISA assessment, the U.S. has, by far, the largest number of students living in poverty--21.7%. The next closest nations in terms of poverty levels are the United Kingdom and New Zealand have poverty rates that are 75% of ours.

• U.S. students in schools with 10% or less poverty are number one country in the world.

• U.S. students in schools with 10-24.9% poverty are third behind Korea, and Finland.

• U.S. students in schools with 25-50% poverty are tenth in the world.

• U.S. students in schools with greater than 50% poverty are near the bottom.

Jim Horn

Michelle Rhee Taped The Mouths Of Students Shut, Made Them Bleed (Audio In Her Own Words): Now With MP3 Version For Download!

Below is a shareable mp3 version:

Michelle Rhee's Policy Agenda Translated

The above is part of the introduction page to Students First's "Pretty Policy Agenda."  I have no idea why the file has such a silly name.  Perhaps "pretty" is all the good they could claim it contains?  Weird.

I will translate the bullet points for you:

1.  Value is a euphemism for (or did she just shorten) evaluating teachers based on the test scores of students.

2.  Real choices means vouchers.

3.  Spending taxpayer's money wisely means make states change laws to allow for more charters, which have been shown to be no better, and often worse than traditional public schools.

Her job is to privatize education for her benefactors.

Michelle Rhee Out As Of October

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee will announce Wednesday that she is resigning at the end of this month, bringing an abrupt end to a tenure that drew national acclaim but that also became a central issue in an election that sent her patron, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, to defeat.

Cal Berkeley Office Of President Uses "michelle rhee whore" As Google Search Term

Here is a screenshot of a visitor's search terms along with some other information. Notice that the person accessed TFT from the Office of the President at UC Berkeley, and they used "michelle rhee whore" as their search term.  Funny, I know!

Now, I am not trying to get anyone in trouble, and I don't think I will.  I also don't think this was Cal's president doing the searching (but someone in his office.  Or him!).  The search led him/her here.

I have another service I use for this kind of thing with more details, but I don't care enough to look into this any further.  It's just funny that the West Coast's premier institution of higher learning has faculty/employees who are just like the rest of us--foul-mouthed-Rhee bashers.