Oprah Loves "Warriors"

Associated Press today:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) -- Oprah Winfrey is donating $100,000 to a youth center on the south side of Syracuse.

Winfrey made a surprise stop Monday at the Mary Nelson Youth Center and said she was writing out the check on the spot. She called Mary Nelson a "community warrior" for doing the work she does on the city's crime-ridden south side, part of which borders Syracuse University.

Bill Turque in the Washington Post in 2010:

Oprah Winfrey gave Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee a heroine's welcome Monday when she appeared as part of a promotional push for "Waiting for Superman," the documentary that includes an account of her early struggles in the District.

Winfrey introduced Rhee to an adoring studio audience as the woman who "singlehandedly turned the D.C. public school system upside down," firing "over 1,000 teachers and principals" -- a number I'd never heard before.

"This is a warrior woman! This is a warrior woman!" Oprah declared.

And:

According to a transcript, Winfrey says Rhee’s drastic measures of firing teachers and principals has caused a firestorm in Washington. She says Rhee is “the warrior woman for our time.”

I'm not so sure being designated a "community warrior" by Oprah is a good thing.

Newark Star Ledger: Chris Christie And Cory Booker Share Same Key Donors

The corporate education reformers are coming out for both Christie and Booker:

Five dozen wealthy donors from Wall Street to Silicon Valley have placed their bets on both of New Jersey’s big political stars — Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker — this campaign season, a Star-Ledger review of state and federal records shows.

When the governor and the mayor hit the fundraising circuit in California this year, they collected maximum donations from many of the same tech moguls at gatherings hosted by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a friend to both men.

When they were home in the Garden State, the two celebrity politicians drew big checks from the same prominent real estate brokers and land developers.

And in New York, Kenneth Langone, the Republican billionaire who pushed Christie to run against President Obama in the 2012 race, has given $5,200 to Booker’s campaign for U.S. Senate this year and $3,800 to Christie’s re-election effort.

In all, 59 people in four states have given to both candidates this year, The Star-Ledger review found. From that donor base, Booker has received $300,550 and Christie has drawn $212,000 — a small portion of their total fundraising hauls: $8.6 million for the mayor and nearly $7 million for the governor.

...

Some of their support seems to be issue-based. Two billionaires — Alan Fournier of New Jersey and John Doerr of California — are prominent backers of some of the education policies Booker and Christie espouse.

"It’s really all about education. They both have very strong track records on education reform and trying to help kids," said Fournier, founder of a multibillion-dollar hedge fund based in Summit and co-founder of the nonprofit education group Better Education for New Jersey Kids. "New Jersey has the worst gap between minority students and upper-class suburban kids in the country, and we spend more in New Jersey than most states on a per-pupil basis, but we haven’t gotten the results."

Fournier, who was in the audience last week for Christie’s speech at a KIPP charter schools conference in Las Vegas, applauded Christie’s work tying teacher tenure to student achievement last year. Fournier, a registered Republican, stressed that education reform is a bipartisan effort and noted he also supports Democrats such as Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex).

"If you want to make change in New Jersey, it has to be on both sides of the aisle," he said.

Facebook spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg said Zuckerberg "is a longtime supporter of both Christie and Booker, dating back to Mark’s work with both of them on the issue of education reform."

The three worked on a $100 million education initiative for Newark schools — donated by Zuckerberg — that kicked off when they appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2010.

A vote for Cory Booker is a vote for Chris Christie is a vote for hedge fundie-backed corporate education reform as well as Wall Street-friendly policies that steal money from the little people to give it to the wealthy.

Same goes for Steve Fulop, Booker's Goldman Sachs buddy in Jersey City.

Gates, Bloomberg, Buffet, Oprah And Jeb Bush Meet At Gates Foundation Conference In South Carolina

From a local affiliate in South Carolina:

CHARLESTON, SC -Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft and one of the richest people in the world, is spending time in the Lowcountry.

  WCBD  confirmed the American business magnate is at the Sanctuary on Kiawah Island.

Suspicion was raised when nearly 20 very expensive jets were seen lined up at the Charleston International Airport on Johns Island.

Officials with the Beach Company confirmed to WCBD that other big names such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, TV host Oprah Winfrey and Billionaire Warren Buffet flew into the Charleston Executive airport on Johns Island Wednesday night.

Other prominent people said to also be staying there this weekend are  Jeb Bush and Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

 The famous guests were attending a two day long conference led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Officials say the meeting was about the foundation Gates and his wife Melinda run.

The meeting rented out the entire Sanctuary Hotel on the gated island. Security has been high throughout the entire week, keeping the public away from the hotel.

WCBD spoke to the Mayor of Kiawah by phone who said the town is happy to serve as host to the event.

"We wish them luck with what they're doing," Mayor Charles Lipuma said. "If they want to play golf, they couldn't have picked a better weekend. We are glad we could offer them great weather."

They weren't there to play golf, you can be sure of that.

They were there to continue destroying the public education system, among other policy goals

Shame they had to go to such lengths to try and keep their meeting secret.

Reminds me a little of these guys.

Or these guys.

At any rate, I love the line in the story about suspicion being raised that something was up when 20 "very expensive jets" were seen lined up at the Charleston Executive airport on Johns Island.

I wonder how that Save The World From Global Warming initiative Gates and Bloomberg are heading is going?

Private jets are good for the environment, yes?

The Most "Over-Looked Sign" Of Good Teaching

Oprah's Principal gives four "over-looked signs" of good teaching to OWN.

My most "over-looked sign" of good teaching?

Teaching kids how much bullshit the system is going to try and put over on them.

I think George Carlin put it best:

“Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.” -- George Carlin

Carlin elaborates here:




The most valuable lesson you can teach children these days is that every time someone in authority opens his or her mouth and says something to you, they're either lying to you, jiving you or selling you some crap you don't want and don't need.

The education reform movement wants to drive this kind of teaching and learning out of the system.

The movement wants schools to churn out obedient workers and compliant consumers, but certainly not children who grow up learning to question the crap the people in authority are trying to pull on them.

That's why they have promoted the Danielson rubric, with its 57 page checklist of "good teaching" that makes sure there is no room or time for teaching critical thinking skills that would question a system that puts a rigid observation rubric as a major measure of so-called good teaching into place.

That's why they have promoted so-called "student achievement" as measured by standardized multiple choice tests and essay tests graded by Microsoft/Pearson computer programs as a method for detecting good teaching.

They want to make sure that the only teaching that goes on in the classroom is the kind that teaches obedience, compliance, and FEAR - fear of failure, fear of authority, fear of the future, fear, fear, fear. 

I say, teach children how full of shit humans are - especially those in charge.

Start with teaching kids how full of shit the politicians and the business leaders and the media figures and the so-called Best and Brightest are.

You know, the people who brought us a country with Third World economic inequality, a dwindling standard of living for all but the top 1%, an oligarchical political system rigged by the wealthy, and a nation with a poisoned food system, a polluted environment and an exploitative economy.

That's a lesson kids need to learn.

And it's one you won't get from the full of shit Oprah Winfrey or the neo-liberal propaganda she promotes on OWN.

You won't get it from many other media sources either or from our politicians or business leaders or media figures.

But that is the most "overlooked sign" of good teaching - teaching kids how to detect and avoid the bullshit.

So Much For Her Midas Touch

Oprah's not adding value to her investors' portfolios:

The losses at Oprah Winfrey’s stumbling cable channel are approaching a staggering $330 million, according to a report over the weekend.

And now industry insiders are predicting the Oprah Winfrey Network will not be able to survive another year if it does not find a hit show and make a dramatic turnaround.

Discovery, which partnered 50-50 with Winfrey to launch the network and has been underwriting its costs, has invested nearly $600 million in it since 2008, according to an extensive report in Businessweek magazine.

But since it started on the air in January 2011, “OWN may have lost as much as $330 million,” the magazine reports.

The magazine quotes one Wall Street media analyst calling the channel the most “successful failure in television today.”

David Zaslav, the chief executive officer of Discovery Communications who talked Oprah into the idea of OWN, is famously impatient with money-losing operations within his company.

He closed a channel Discovery operated with the New York Times in 2008 and just last month killed Planet Green, an eco channel.


...

“I really can’t see Zaslav losing this kind of money for much longer,” one longtime business associate said last week.

Winfrey appeared before advertisers two weeks ago to, in effect, ask for more time.

“I am in the climb of my life,” she told them. “I am climbing Kilimanjaro.”

Though Winfrey herself has relatively little money invested in the channel, her image as the most successful TV star of her generation is on the line.

E-mails to OWN and Oprah’s production company, Harpo, were not returned yesterday.

I know most of this problem stems from Oprah's inability to clone her own (now off-the-air) show.

But I do wonder if just a few teachers who used to watch Oprah stopped after Oprah's teacher-bashing.

In the end, I have to conclude that Oprah's teacher-bashing didn't cause this, but it sure doesn't help her either.

Oprah Has Left The Building

Unlike Johnny Carson, who walked away from The Tonight Show in 1992 and made just a handful of public appearances afterwards (see here and here for two memorable examples), Oprah won't be going anywhere for long.

Not with her OWN network to hawk and her seemingly insatiable need for attention and adoration (what Alessandra Stanley calls her "messianic streak.")

I suspect we will see almost as much of her in the future as we do now.

In that way, she's more like Ed McMahon than Johnny Carson.

Starsearch, anyone?

Alpo?

Life insurance?

Oprah Magazine?

OWN?

What do you need?

It's all for sale.

All of it.

Oprah likes to play healer, prophet, political guru and The Christ all in one, but really, she was just another egocentric show biz personality with a ton of products to sell and a ready audience to buy them from her.

If you ask me, I prefer the way Carson walked away.

There was grandeur in it.

Thirty years on TV, then you never saw him again.

Oprah?

She may have left her show, but I saw her at the supermarket checkout line tonight on the cover of Oprah Magazine.

Oprah's Favorite Author Has A New Book Out

That's right - James Frey is back and he's better than ever!

He's got a new book out about a bisexual Jesus who helps out his prostitute girlfriend when she needs an abortion.

It sounds FABULOUS!

I am so sure that Oprah will make this a Book of the Month for her Oprah Loves Books Club or whatever she calls it.

Oh, and it costs $50.

So start saving those pennies, kiddies.

You wouldn't want to make Mother Oprah unhappy, would you?

No word on whether Frey is drinking and doing drugs again, but judging by the subject matter, uh, I'd have to say yes.

Fascism Comes To Detroit - Oprah and Obama Are AWOL

The corporate gestapo sent the police to arrest teen mothers protesting the closing of their school - the only one in the nation specifically created to help teen mothers graduate from high school:

Approximately a dozen teachers, teen mothers and their children were arrested and taken away by Detroit police while staging a peaceful sit-in protest at the Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit on Friday April 15th. Eight students, along with their children and some faculty members of the Catherine Ferguson Academy of Detroit, MI began the sit-in at the end of the school day in protest to Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb’s announcement to close the school for pregnant and parenting teens. The decision to occupy was made after many other attempts by students, staff and supporters to have their voices heard by EFM Robert Bobb through letter writing and petition campaigns, to no avail.


The protestors were told by police that they were trespassing and the building needed to be closed. The peaceful occupiers refused to leave and many were brought out in handcuffs. It has been reported by local news that “Some struggled, some screamed, all were put in squad cars and hauled away", while many more protestors and supporters outside watched in shock. The students themselves say they did not resist arrest. One told local reporters, "We just stood there and they just arrested us one by one ."

Hey, this building has to be handed over to the for-profit charter school industry, so teen mothers trying to graduate high school be damned!

Take a look at the videos of this at the Daily Kos, then ask yourself, "Where is Oprah and Obama on this?"

Nowhere to be found.

You know why?

They're on the side of the corporate fascists and gestapo.

The selling off of America and the feudalization of the populace continues unabated.

Gene Lyons Calls Michelle Rhee A Huckster

It's a good column in Slate, really gets at the jive that is Michelle Rhee and can be summed up by Lyons calling Rhee's StudentsFirst group MichelleFirst.

Give it a read.

More and more, we're seeing these anti-Rhee pieces showing up in the mainstream media.

And that's BEFORE the investigation into the test score scandal in D.C.

Still, Rhee hasn't done an appearance on Oprah a la James Frey to plead for forgiveness from the Queen of Daytime for perpetrating a Thousand Points Of Fraud onto the nation with her reform jive.

But there's still time for that.

There's still time.

The War On Teachers

Decided not to write a piece this morning because Accountable Talk said all that needed to be said in this post here.

Read it again and send it to your family and friends who are NOT teachers and might be susceptible to Oprah or Education Nation or any of the ed deform jive.

Particularly this part:

The war on teachers rages on. Frankly, I can't even believe it. Every day brings some new horror to teachers somewhere. If politicians had gone after Osama bin Laden with the same relentless vigor with which they pursue teachers, he'd have long ago been squatting in Guantanamo Bay.

When was it decided that teachers were the enemy? When did we become the bogey man and the scapegoats for every situation in the country? Obama wants to recruit 100,000 new teachers? Is he serious? Who in their right mind would want to become a teacher in this hostile environment?

Indeed.

Dead Baby Found In Student's Bag At Oprah's School

Oprah Winfrey, the woman who loves to pontificate about how harmful "bad teachers" and unions are, has yet another horrific scandal in her own school:

A student at Oprah's South African school is being questioned after the body of a newborn baby was found in the 17-year-old's bag.

The infant boy was discovered in the Leadership Academy for Girls student's bag on Wednesday at a hospital where she was being treated for excessive bleeding, ABC News reported.

Police suspect the unidentified girl gave birth at Winfrey's school and a case of concealment of death is being investigated.

According to CNN, police have not yet determined if the infant died of natural causes or if he was killed, but an autopsy is under way.

No charges have been filed.

Police Capt. Shado Mashobane confirmed to local publications that the girl is still recovering in the hospital.

A spokesperson for Winfrey’s school told ABC it would not comment on the incident because of the involvement of a minor.

The Academy, located in the small town of Henley-on-Klip, is no stranger to controversy since it opened four years ago. A school Matron, Virginia Tiny Makopo, was charged with sexually molesting several students soon after the school opened in January 2007.

At the time, the Queen of Daytime flew to South Africa to apologize to students and parents and to fire the school's headmistress, Lerato Nomvuyo Mzamane.

Makopo was later acquitted.

In March 2009, four students were expelled and three suspended after allegedly engaging in "sexual misconduct" towards other pupils.

Winfrey opened the $40 million school to provide education to South African girls who were unable to afford it.

This is the third scandal at Oprah's school in the last three and a half years.

Now if this kind of thing happened at a unionized public school in, say, New York City or Chicago, Oprah would be all over her show screaming about it.

But since it happened at her own school - the same school where employees raped students and some students sexually harassed other students - she has "no comment."

Well, I have a comment.

Hey, Oprah, why don't you get on your TV show on Monday and do an expose about what an awful school you have AND explain just why it is there have been THREE HORRIFIC SCANDALS in the three and a half years you have been running it.

Oh, and why don't you also STFU about ANYTHING to do with public education.

Seriously, Oprah.

Given the horrors that transpire in your own school, it's the right thing to do.

Oprah Says Critics Need To Show Obama "Respect"

The woman with the ego bigger than her bank account says critics need to show Obama respect:

Oprah called on President Obama's critics on Friday to show "a certain level of respect.”

"I feel that everybody has a learning curve, and I feel that the reason why I was willing to step out for him was because I believed in his integrity and I believed in his heart," the influential TV host said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in Chicago.

Of the negative mood of the country, Oprah added, “I think everybody complaining ought to try it for once.”

She said the presidency is a position that “holds a sense of authority and governance over us all,” and that “even if you’re not in support of his policies, there needs to be a certain level of respect.”

You know what, Oprah?

There needs to be a certain level of respect for the people who make this country run - the cops and firemen and teachers and other public workers who have been under the gun (quite literally these days with the Wisconsin governor threatening to use National Guard troops against public employees) by corporate-owned politicians like Obama and corporate-shill celebrities like yourself.

Instead of respect, public employees have become the scapegoat for all that is wrong with the country.

Meanwhile elitist celebrities like yourself yuck it up with elitist journalists like the Morning Joe crew on elitist-owned networks that promote elitist economic and political policies that the elitist (and corporate-owned) Barack Obama is happy to carry out.

Until YOU show respect for us, we show NO RESPECT for you, for Obama, or for any of the other corporate shills and overlords.

In fact, given how the corporate side is ratcheting up the anti-labor rhetoric, you can be sure that things are going to get a lot less respectful in the near future.

So why don't you take Michelle Rhee's faked test scores, Michelle Obama's Walmart pay stubs, Barack Obama's Gates Foundation payola and 20 years of sanctimonious soundbites from your OWN show and shove them up your fat elitist corporate ass.

Oh, and by the way, how's that Oprah Winfrey Network thing working out?

Here's Why Teachers Need Tenure Protections

Can't find a better example of why tenure is so important to protecting teachers than this story that even the anti-teacher NY Post calls "outrageous":

A Bronx principal who kept a so-called hit list of teachers she wanted swept out of the school instructed her subordinates to "get rid" of them by giving out unmerited bad ratings, a probe has found.

Even more shocking than Principal Iris Blige's apparent attempt to ruin the careers of nearly a dozen educators at Fordham HS of the Arts was the Department of Education's agreement to keep her in charge and levy just a $7,500 fine.

In a stipulation signed last month by Bronx high-school Superintendent Elena Papaliberios, Blige was even promised a "neutral letter of reference to any potential employer" should she decide to leave her post.

The two-year probe was conducted only after teachers lodged a host of complaints about Blige's wrongdoings, according to United Federation of Teachers officials.

"I think it's outrageous," said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. "If the price for ruining someone's career is $7,500, where's the accountability?"

Asked if Blige was getting off easy, a Department of Education spokeswoman referred a reporter to the signed stipulation -- which makes no mention of why a fine was deemed appropriate punishment.

...

The probe by the city's Office of Special Investigations included interviews with a half-dozen teachers -- and assistant principals who were asked to fudge the ratings -- who say Blige was unjustly gunning for staffers she didn't like.

One assistant principal, James O'Toole, made his boss' destructive directives sound like a hit job.

"Get rid of Mr. Herbert Drummond," O'Toole quotes Blige as saying about a teacher, according to the report.

Another assistant principal, Laurice Chambers-Blake, says Blige told her she wanted two teachers "out" by the end of the 2008 and 2009 school years.

Chambers-Blake said she was told "to start to write up the teachers" with negative reviews at the outset of the school year and to focus on another teacher's "weaknesses and deficiencies" rather than her positive skills.

Principal's Hit List

Directives from Principal Iris Blige to her subordinates on targeting teachers, according to an Office of Special Investigations report:

* “At the beginning of the school year, Ms. Blige directed [one subordinate] to “U” rate [unsatisfactorily] three teachers regardless of the outcome of his respective observations.”

* “[Another employee] stated that . . . Ms. Blige . . . told [her] that those teachers were to be ‘out’ by the end of the school year. Ms. Blige then instructed her ‘to start to write up the teachers.’ “

* “[Another subordinate] stated that Ms. Blige directed him to ‘Get rid of [teacher] Mr. Herbert Drummond.’ “

Ruin the reputations and careers of a dozen teachers as a principal?

You get to keep your job, but you do get fined $7,500.

Which Whitney Tilson or some other anti-teacher hedge fund criminal will probably pay for you anyway.

Unfreakingbelievable.

Oh, wait - it's not unfreakingbelievable at all.

This is EXACTLY why there needs to be shared power in schools and why teachers need tenure to protect them.

Because when there are few protections for teachers and when the powers that be are exhorting administrators to take the fight to teachers and "U" rate as many as possible, this is EXACTLY what happens.

Now Oprah may not think that, but then again, she engages in the same kind of self-centered, autocratic behavior the principal engaged in where the "little people" are crushed at the whim of the powerful.

More People Outraged At Oprah

This time over her promotion of alternative health practices and pseudo-science:

I'm still perturbed about yesterday.

I'm still perturbed that a cancer quack was able to convince a woman who had everything to live for that he could cure her of her breast cancer without surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation. I'm still perturbed at this particular cancer quack's attitude, where he tried to claim that he didn't know the woman who is dying, Kim Tinkham, and imply that her cancer recurred because didn't follow his regimen carefully enough, that she had stopped living the quack's "alkaline diet." I thought of my mother-in-law, who died in 2009 of metastatic breast cancer, and watching her decline.

And then I thought of Oprah Winfrey and her role in what ultimately happened to Kim Tinkham.

After all, it was Oprah who promoted the mystical New Age woo that is The Secret. It was The Secret that inspired Kim Tinkham, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, to refuse the conventional therapy that might very well have saved her life and opt instead for Robert O. Young's acid-base pseudoscience that claims that the tumor in cancer is not the actual disease but rather the reaction to cells "spoiled" by acid. Were it not for Oprah, Tinkham might not have gotten the validation and fame that she did. She herself said that being on Oprah made her famous enough that when she called various doctors and scientists they actually took her calls. Finally, it was Oprah Winfrey who, rather than trying to hook Tinkham up with real cancer experts, instead brought her on her show because it was good television. Yes, Oprah did make an effort to try to get Tinkham to see reason, but it was half-hearted and never challenged the credentials of the "practitioner" into whose clutched Tinkham had fallen.

And now Oprah Winfrey is on the verge of starting up her own "health network," the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), which will take the place of Discovery Health on January 1, 2011. At that point, she'll have an entire 24/7 cable network to spread her New Age woo, woo like The Secret that entrapped Kim Tinkham. That's why, on the eve of Oprah's new cable channel, I think it's time to remind Oprah of Kim Tinkham. Yes, Oprah has forgotten about Kim Tinkham. It was, after all, nearly four years ago that Tinkham was on her show. She made good TV for one episode. Now she's dying, most likely because of a course of action that had its roots in New Age nonsense that Oprah Winfrey promoted. It's entirely appropriate to remind Oprah Winfrey of what she has inadvertently wrought. Indeed, in the wake of Oprah's recent promotion of faith healer and "psychic surgeon" John of God, doing so is more imperative than ever.

Oprah needs to know what can happen when people choose quackery and woo instead of effective science-based medicine.

You, my readers, are just the folks to inform Oprah (or at least Oprah's producers), too. You can do it by heading to Oprah's contact page and letting her know what happened to Kim Tinkham. You might even, if you think it appropriate, send her links to the Caring for Kim website and, more heart-wrenching, the Caring for Kim Facebook page, where posts by the numerous well-wishers and several of Tinkham's friends and family describing what can only be considered a death vigil are bound to bring a tear to the eye. If enough people do it, Oprah's producers will take notice. Maybe they'll even look into what has happened to Kim Tinkham, at which point they'll learn that she doesn't have long to live. It's true that there is a risk to this strategy; Oprah might actually do a story on Tinkham and find that Tinkham, even though she's dying, is still completely devoted to Robert O. Young, the dubious practitioner whose nostrums brought her to this point by wasting time that could better have been used pursuing effective treatment. She might even bring attention on Young that could raise his profile. These are risks worth taking. There is even the risk that it may be that Tinkham is not dying of breast cancer; however, being a skeptic I would rather know that I was mistaken than continue to argue for something that is not supported by the evidence.

Be that as it may, this strategy requires a lot of people bombarding the Oprah website with requests. It's unlikely to work just from my readership alone. It needs other bloggers willing to urge their readers to do the same thing to have even a wisp of a chance of working. So, if you have a blog, consider urging your readers to remind Oprah's producers about Kim Tinkham. Let's put it this way. Even if nothing at all comes of this, at the very least Oprah should be made aware of the price of quackery such as that which is about to claim Kim Tinkham. Yes, I know that Tinkham is an adult. I know that she bears major responsibility for her own choices. Yes, I know it's true that no one forced Tinkham to go to Robert O. Young for help. On the other hand, I also know that it is true that the sort of wishful thinking that Oprah promoted "primed the pump," so to speak. Even so, Robert O. Young and, yes, Oprah also bear a major share of the responsibility as well. Robert O. Young is beyond shame, but maybe Oprah is not.

I agree with everything here except that last part about maybe Oprah not being beyond shame.

From the episodes of her show on teaching that she did with Chris Christie, Tony Danza, Michelle Rhee and Davis Guggenheim that promoted a top-down, corporate-driven, blame the teacher education policy to America, I can verify that she is, indeed, without shame.

Maybe people should stop listening to Oprah?

Davis Guggenheim Staged Scene In "Waiting For Superman"

Much of the criticism of "Waiting for Superman" has been how manipulative some of the scenes are and how reductionist the argument that charter schools are better than traditional public schools the movies pushes is.

But it turns out that the movie was even more manipulative than you might think.

The NY Times reports today that some of the "documentary" was staged:

One of the many affecting scenes in the documentary “Waiting for Superman” shows a mother on a personal tour of a high-performing Harlem charter school she wants her son to attend. She looks with perceptible longing at baskets of books and welcoming classrooms, and says “Wow” when told how children struggling with reading, like her first grader, Francisco, receive tutoring.

“It’s two different worlds,” the mother, Maria, tells the filmmaker in an interview interspersed with scenes of the tour, comparing it with her son’s Bronx public school. “I don’t care if we have to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning in order to get there at 7:45, then that’s what we will do.”

But there is something unsaid about the scene. Though the film makes it look as if Maria’s tour was a real event that occurred before the school held its admissions lottery, it was actually set up by the filmmaker after her son lost. By the time she sees the classrooms, in other words, she already knows Francisco will not be going there.

And the school, Harlem Success Academy, generally holds group information sessions for prospective parents, not personalized tours, like the one Maria is shown taking.

Davis Guggenheim, the director of the film, acknowledged that he had made the decision to set up the tour because his cameras, which had to shoot characters in multiple cities, had not been there during the information session. He defended the scene as still being true to Maria and her desire to attend the school.

“In the case of Maria, we met her at the school but the cameras weren’t there, so we asked her to go back and tour the school,” Mr. Guggenheim said. “And as a filmmaker, I wanted to see her reaction to the school, and her genuine emotion. So that scene is real; her reaction, her talking to kids touring the school, is how she would play it.”

Re-enactment and reordering has been part of documentary film-making since its start, and the Academy Awards for documentary film explicitly allow it. In fact, said Jonathan Kahana, a scholar of documentary film at New York University, the history of documentary is very much a history of re-enactment, “with blips, here and there, of something that we think of as vérité.”

That said, he and four other film experts and filmmakers interviewed said they were uncomfortable with the way Mr. Guggenheim inserted the scene, because there is no signal to viewers that it is anything but a real event, and because Maria’s emotional mindset is taken out of context.

Patricia Aufderheide, the director of the Center for Social Media at American University, did a study in which she and other scholars interviewed 45 documentary filmmakers about their ethical approach. “Documentarians firmly believe that altering chronology in itself is not a betrayal of a good faith relationship with an audience,” Ms. Aufderheide said. “But altering chronology when it fundamentally alters the interpretation of what happened, that’s when you get an ethical breach.”

Indeed, altering chronology is dishonest, manipulative and ultimately harmful to the cause the director of a documentary is trying to promote.

Since Guggenheim staged this scene without indicating he had altered reality, one wonders what else he staged in the "documentary."

It has already been pointed out over and over that he glosses over how many charter schools actually suck, how the CREDO study found that all but 17% of traditional public schools either do as well as charter schools or do better than charters.

Leaving out facts in a documentary isn't new, of course.

But staging scenes and bringing the ethics of a reality show like Top Chef or Survivor to the art form is.

One wonders if all the fans of this "documentary" - from Oprah to John Legend to Alec Baldwin to Arianna Huffington - will acknowledge that if Guggenheim staged scenes in the documentary, he might just have altered facts too.

Scratch that - I don't wonder about that.

I know they won't.

But they should.

Because if Guggenheim was dishonest in this way, you KNOW he was dishonest in others too.

And the NY Times acknowledges that:

And even though the staging of the scene appears to be a “minor and not a major sin,” and being troubled by it remains “a judgment call,” Ms. Aufderheide noted, knowing that scene was shot after the lottery “makes a difference to you as a viewer.”

“You feel a minor twinge of betrayal,” she said. “And that leads me to a sense of distrust about more stuff, and we never want the viewer to have that reaction; you want the viewer to trust you.”

Ah, yes, but for the viewer to trust Davis Guggenheim, he would have to be honest and forthright.

He is neither and his film is nothing but a piece of propaganda.

Now that we know Guggenheim staged at least one scene, it is time to pick this "documentary" apart and see what else he made up or left out.

The Times finds some of that as well:

The movie has been criticized for other oversights, including its narrowness in representing only great charter schools, not great public schools, and its flawed or misleading use of some educational statistics, which wash over viewers quickly, accompanied by child-friendly animation, with tiny writing on the corner of the screen indicating its source.

Though City Room did not examine many of the statistics, the few we looked at raised questions. Take, for example, the way the film portrays national reading and math scores.

The film correctly states that the goal of No Child Left Behind is for all students to reach proficiency by 2012. But those proficiency levels will be based on state scores, which are generally higher, not national scores, as the film portrays. It also appears to misinterpret the national eighth-grade reading scores.

“When eighth graders across the country were tested for reading, most scored between 20 and 35 percent of grade level,” the film states. While its not clear what that statistic refers to, it may be referring to the fact that 30 percent of students nationally tested proficient or better on the exam, a different issue. And there is no exact grade-level equivalent to proficient, as one critic, Diane Ravitch, who helped design the exam, has pointed out.

The statistic about Harlem Children’s Zone schools also appears to be misleading. “In Geoff Canada’s program, there are more than 8,000 students, 9 out of 10 are proficient in math and on track to go to a four year college.” While the zone does provide some kind of service — after-school programs, teaching assistants, pre-school to 8,000 children in a 97-block radius, the statistic appears to refer to the 1,200 or so students who are in the zone’s two charter schools. The district as a whole is still well below average on state proficiency exams.

So I encourage people to keep digging and come up with more examples of altered reality, phonied statistics, errors and the like in this "documentary".

But don't pay to see the movie to do it.

The ed deform movement already has enough hedge fund cash and government largesse.

They don't need your twelve bucks too.

Usually I don't suggest illegal downloading, but in this one case, I'd say that's the way to go.

Schundler: Christie Sacrificed RttT Money Rather Than Compromise With Union

Wow - Chris Christie really does hate unionized teachers:

New Jersey's former education chief said Gov. Chris Christie sacrificed a $400 million federal grant rather than risk appearing to have negotiated with the state teachers union over the application's content.

Bret Schundler told a legislative oversight panel looking into the failed grant application that Christie vetoed compromises on merit pay and layoffs that would have won the teachers' endorsement. Instead, the application was hastily rewritten and submitted without union support. The union's lack of buy-in cost New Jersey precious points.

Christie "found it utterly intolerable for him to be viewed to have given in to them (the union)," said Schundler, who was called out publicly by the governor after striking a deal with the teachers. "The money was not worth it."

Schundler said Christie was particularly upset at being portrayed on radio station 101.5 FM as having caved to union demands.

If Christie had accepted the consequences, New Jersey would have finished fourth and received funding, Schundler told the Democrat-controlled panel, where he testified under subpoena Thursday.

New Jersey was the highest-ranked state not to receive funding, finishing 3 points behind Ohio, which got money.

The state lost 5 points for providing school funding data for the wrong year.

Senate Democratic Leader Barbara Buono, who sought subpoena power to compel Schundler to testify, said after the hearing that many disturbing details of the application process were revealed.

"It's unconscionable that the Race to the Top application was rewritten more with an eye toward punishing the (teachers union) than it was toward rewarding our schools," she said. "It's unconscionable that the decision to scrap a hard-won compromise that would have propelled our application was based on the criticisms of a radio talk-show host. And, it's unconscionable that $400 million for our schools took a back seat to politics."

...

Schundler told lawmakers he had been happy with his agreement with the union, saying that the compromises he approved were "inconsequential."

One involved substituting the words "merit pay," which the teachers union abhorred, with the word "bonus" and referring to "bonus" provisions as a "pilot program" rather than permanent policy. Another was to scrap a provision to tie layoffs to performance rather than seniority.

Christie claimed in a news conference after the grant recipients were announced that Schundler had corrected the funding data during a grant review in Washington. The Republican governor then blamed the Obama administration for failing to accept New Jersey's corrected data.

However, Schundler said he could not have corrected the mistake because the grant rules restricted new information from being introduced during the interview. He said that is what he told the governor repeatedly before Christie spoke to the press. A video of the grant interview bore out Schundler's account.

"I never believed I needed to say, 'governor, stick to the truth, there's a videotape,'" Schundler said. "Maybe I should have."

Schundler said Christie misspoke publicly about the grant failure—either accidentally or on purpose—then erroneously blamed Schundler for providing misinformation.

Christie said he's done with Schundler and won't dignify any of these accusations with a reply.

I say the New jersey legislature ought to subpoena Christie himself to testify.

If Schundler's account is true, Christie needs to face the music.

Not only did he lie to the public about his actions in this mess, he needlessly sacrificed $400 million dollars because he didn't like what the radio talk show hosts on some winger show were saying about him caving to the unions.

On a side note, I wonder if any of this will wind up on an episode of Oprah?

After all, Orpah is a huge fan of Christie.

On second thought, I bet it won't end up on Oprah.

She's busy doing a show about Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal - 40 years after Love Story!

Now that's some hard-hitting journalism!

School Matron At Oprah Leadership Academy Acquitted Of Abuse Charges

From the Daily News:

JOHANNESBURG -- A woman accused of abusing teenagers at Oprah Winfrey's school for girls in South Africa was acquitted of the charges Monday, and Winfrey said she was "profoundly disappointed" by the trial's outcome.

Prosecutors had accused former school matron Tiny Virginia Makopo of trying to kiss and fondle girls at the school soon after it opened in 2007 outside Johannesburg.

Makopo also had been accused of assaulting one of the teens as well as a fellow supervisor.

Mthunzi Mhaga, a spokesman for South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority, said Monday that Makopo had been acquitted of the charges.

"The magistrate indicated that the state did not prove itself case beyond reasonable doubt on all the charges. We won't be appealing the judgment," Mhaga said.

Winfrey had called the allegations crushing given her own stated history of childhood sexual abuse and promised an overhaul of the school.

...

The lavish $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, which opened in January 2007, aims to give girls from deprived backgrounds a quality education in a country where schools are struggling to overcome the legacy of apartheid.

The school is spread across a 22-acre campus with neat lawns and garden paths decorated with mosaics. It has computer and science labs, a library and a wellness center. The school is home to about 300 girls from across the country.

...

In March, Winfrey had settled a defamation lawsuit filed in Philadelphia by the school's former headmistress, Nomvuyo Mzamane, who claimed Winfrey defamed her in remarks made in the wake of the 2007 sex-abuse scandal at the school.

Mzamane claimed that she was never told of any sexual abuse. However, Winfrey's lawyers said in a March pretrial memo that Mzamane failed to discipline Makopo despite her history of run-ins with students and fellow staff.

Mzamane said she had trouble finding a job after Winfrey stated she had "lost confidence" in her.

Lawyers for both sides in March said Winfrey and Mzamane met to resolve their differences out of court.

Notice two things from this story:

First, Oprah does NOT accept the court ruling.

As always, Oprah knows more than anybody else about stuff, including the magistrate and the prosecutor who is declining to retry the case.

Perhaps Oprah's right and nine girls under her care were raped and abused by somebody Oprah hired at her school.

But you can see the pattern with Oprah when it comes to this kind of thing - she has unique otherworldly insight that tells her the woman is guilty even though the court says not beyond a reasonable doubt she isn't.

Next, notice how Oprah opened her big mouth about the school's headmistress, but then had that mouth shut when the woman hit her with a defamation lawsuit.

Oprah settled the defamation suit out of court in March.

For cash.

But that certainly hasn't stopped Oprah from talking shit.

She's been defaming teachers for the last month.

Maybe we should file a defamation lawsuit against her too.

Oprah and Tony Danza

Tony Danza has a reality show that has him teaching part-time in a Philly public school.

He went on Oprah yesterday to talk about that show and his experience as a part-time teacher.

According to this post on Not Waiting For Superman, the interview didn't go so well when Danza tried to defend teachers:

Tony Danza on Oprah last night. Tried to defend teachers, Oprah railroaded him about "bad" teachers a la WFS...He opened his mouth about more pay, need to support, she cut him off every time. After the break, she was less friendly to him. Wonder what he said when the cameras weren't rolling?

I haven't seen any clips yet, so I'll have to take the word of the person who posted.

But if true, Oprah's hatred of teachers borders on the pathological.

Wonder if she'll compare us to Osama the way this ed deformer did.

As Usual, Education Reformers Ignore The Community

The shit eating grins on Governor Chris Christie, Mayor Cory Booker, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey yesterday at Winfrey's show to celebrate Booker's receiving both control of the Newark school system from the state and $100 million education grant from Zuckerberg say it all:

Look at us! Look how wonderful we are! Look what wonderful things we are doing for the kids!

But the Newark Star Ledger points out that many people in Newark are NOT happy about this deal:

When Newark Mayor Cory Booker walks off the set of the Oprah Winfrey show Friday with a $100 million gift to bolster Newark schools, there will be no raptured audience waiting for him back home.

As news spread through Newark today that Gov. Chris Christie will give Booker oversight of the city’s schools, and that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will help set up a $100 million educational foundation to support school reforms, political and community leaders here reacted with a combination of cautious optimism and outrage.

Many in Newark say the arrangement could be the spark that ignites true reform in the chronically failing district. Others cast the announcement as a classic backroom deal that skirts the will of the voters.

Booker, who has been fighting since July to regain his footing in Newark politics, will have to sell the plan to residents and marshal support for the city’s next superintendent. If recent battles over city water, layoffs, and police practices are any indication, it will be a tough slog.

"The outrage seems to be not about the $100 million deal, but about this backroom deal," said Wilhemina Holder, a longtime education activist, grandmother, and mother of current and former Newark schoolchildren. She said her phone began ringing Wednesday evening when news of the deal first broke on NJ.com and it hasn’t stopped since. "People are just outraged that the governor has ignored the Newark voters. Over and over again every phone call I got was about this."

In order to get full mayoral control over Newark’s schools, Christie would have to get approval from the Legislature. Newark residents would then get a chance to vote on whether the mayor should run the operation that has been under state control since 1995.

The deal that will be announced today is seen by many in Newark as an end-run around the law. Christie needs no approval from voters to simply appoint Booker as his "special assistant" for Newark schools, thus transferring responsibility to the mayor while maintaining the ultimate right to veto any changes that Booker makes.

"In terms of the state’s perspective of how it wanted to proceed, there wasn’t any meaningful engagement," said school advisory board president Shavar Jeffries referring to today’s announcement as well Christie’s decision to not re-hire Superintendent Clifford Janey.

Jeffries has repeatedly warned that without the blessing of the community, reform will be very difficult. "We cannot sustain a robust education reform agenda if it’s not supported by the people and parents of Newark."

Like Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee in D.C., Booker and Christie intend to push through their reforms without any input from the people who work in those schools, the parents who send their children to those schools, or the people in the neighborhoods where those schools are.

And just as Rhee got money from vulture philanthropists for the D.C. teachers contract that would only be provided if she stays on as D.C. chancellor, Zuckerberg's education grant only happens if Booker gets control of the school system.

Nothing like corporate entities calling the shots and subverting the will of the people, eh?

But as Oprah says, this is for the kids, you know, so who cares about niceties like democracy or community input.

What they are saying is: "We are in an education crisis and only strong-willing leaders like Chris Christie, Cory Booker, Joel Klein, Michael Bloomberg, Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee can get things done to fix the schools."

We who actually work in schools, especially schools run by those folks, know differently.

We'll see how this plays out.

Christie is under investigation for the Race to the Top mess in Jersey and is going to be subpoenaed to testify before the legislature.

He is currently declaring "executive privilege" and refusing to testify before the legislature.

This education deal and windfall financial gift from Zuckerberg (and the accompanying p.r. he received from Ms. Winfrey on her show) will divert people for a little while from the mess that is coming down the pike for the governor.

But the governor has lied in public about what happened during the Race to the Top process.

He blamed former state ed commissioner Bret Schundler instead.

Schundler has documents proving Christie lied.

But Christie thinks he can bluster his way through.

It's just another example of the arrogance Christie and other ed deformers have over reform.

They just don;t care what people think.

Even people who support ed reform - like Eugene Robinson, Bob Herbert, and Errol Louis in the media and Mike Petrilli and Rick Hess in the blogosphere - have warned that the hubris reformers are showing in their steamroll attempts to reform the system will come back to undo them.

We'll see.

But certainly the announcement that Christie was giving Booker control of the schools through a loophole and subverting the will of the people at the same time is more of the same from the ed deform movement.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey ran 48 minutes of straight teacher bashing today with her Waiting for Superman show - giving director Davis Guggenheim, Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee free rein to sling lies, distortions and half-truths about the "education crisis" in the country.

Jim Horn at Schools Matter responded:

Oprah looks and sounds the corporate parrot that she is, sadly. So much disinformation, where to start? You guys need to look up tenure to see what it is. Clue: it is not guaranteed employment for life, but, rather, is a due process protection to employees with collective bargaining agreements--something I know that Bill and Oprah and Michelle do not abide by. If you had had the balls to put Randi Weingarten on stage with your corporate cheerleaders, instead of the dark canned clip of her, she could have calmed Oprah down, perhaps, and offered some light to go with the heat. Perhaps.

The same people who voted down the hedge-funded charterites in NY and the oligarch-owned Fenty/Rhee machine have more votes waiting. The biggest vote your crony capitalist, Oprah, has to worry about is if everyone votes to switch channels before she makes her grand exit.

The only thing I disagree with in those statements is that Randi Weingarten was the person to put up against the propaganda-meisters.

I don't think that is so (though to be fair, Jim isn't so sure either.)

I think Diane Ravitch would have been a better choice.

There is a reason why Ravitch is not invited to these things, however.

They KNOW that.

Otherwise, I think Mr. Horn got everything right about that show.

As for Oprah, I wrote her a letter noting the CREDO study shows 37% of charters do worse than traditional public schools while 46% perform the same, that states with the lowest performing students have right to work laws and no teachers unions or weakened unions, and parents, not teachers, are the biggest influence on a student's life.

You know, they never mentioned parents on that show.

I guess kids are taken from their parents at birth and raised by teachers?

No, not in America they're not.

But in South Africa at Oprah's school, they are. That's actually part of the curriculum. Here's a partial description of the school:

Spanning 21 hectares (52 acres), the Academy’s 28-building campus offers a safe, nurturing and beautiful educational and residential environment for learners. All buildings are designed with learners in mind and built with natural material, to maintain the architectural integrity of the surrounding community.

Learners live in modern dormitory facilities along the Street of Living. Down the Street of Learning are 21 state-of-the-art classrooms and six labs, including art, science, computer and design technology. All classrooms have an outdoor study area, as well as SMART Board™ technology.

To support learning beyond the classroom, the Academy offers a computer lab, a 10,000-volume library, a more than 600-seat theatre and a multifunctional stage, music practice rooms, an outdoor amphitheatre, sports fields, a gymnasium and a wellness centre.

...

Learning is continuously encouraged in the Academy's boarding school environment. Teachers, staff and outside instructors lead the girls in a variety of extra-curricular activities, allowing learners to excel in their own unique ways.

Girls can participate in sports such as netball, tennis and track and field, while yoga, dance, choir and musical groups provide other outlets for the girls to express their creative and physical energy.

Gee, that sounds like a wonderful place for children to go for their schooling.

Like one big, beautiful charter school for underprivileged girls in South Africa.

Except that it isn't so wonderful:

The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa has suspended seven girls for sexual misconduct and the harassment of other pupils. The suspensions, first reported by the Afrikaans on Sunday newspaper, are the second sex controversy to plague the school, which opened with much fanfare in early 2007. According to the Telegraph:

According to the Afrikaans on Sunday newspaper, one 15-year-old "preyed" on a schoolmate and coerced others into lying to officials investigating the alleged incidents. Six other pupils have been excluded from the $46 million (£32 million) girls-only boarding school after being alleged to have touched each other intimately, or "intimidating others into partaking of inappropriate behaviours".

A letter sent to one of the suspended girls' parents is said to have read: "You have been found guilty of physical contact of a sexual nature with another pupil on campus, harassment, bullying other girls on campus and of being dishonest by not telling investigators the whole truth".

A prior scandal came just ten months after the Academy's January 2007 opening when dorm matron Virginia Tiny Makgobo was arrested for "indecent assault and soliciting under-age girls to perform indecent acts". From AFP (November 2007):

An emotional Oprah Winfrey said she was "shaken to the core" by sexual abuse claims at her elite girls' school in South Africa.

"This has been one of the most devastating, if not the most devastating experience of my life," the US talk show host told journalists in Johannesburg via a live satellite link from Chicago.

"When I heard the news I spent about a half-hour crying ... I couldn't wrap my mind around it."

Police aren't allowed onto the grounds of the Oprah school, btw, so who knows what else happens there:

Local police claim they are not welcome at the academy. John Samuel, CEO of the academy, states, "Yes, the police are required to patrol, but at public schools. We are not a regular private school. Ours is a unique school and we are working out what is in the girls' best interests." [Lumka Oliphant, The STAR, int.iol.co.za, March 27, 2007]

It's interesting that Oprah's school, which has had two sex scandals in the three years it has been in existence, isn't under the same Oprahesque scrutiny that traditional public schools here in America are.

Heck, can you imagine what would happen to a school like that here in America, especially if it were, uh, unionized?

Yeah, I think that kind of school would probably wind up on some kind of Oprah special on the Oxygen network as a horror movie of the week.

But I get why Oprah seems to believe that parents have little-to-no influence on their children's schooling - because at the Oprah school, that is just so:

The school rules are quite strict. Students may visit with parents once a month for two hours. Some parents compare the academy to a prison and not a girls' school. The girls are not to use cell phones or email during the school week, only on weekends. And, one girl was not allowed to attend a funeral of a relative because it was not "immediate family".

Wow - couldn't go to a family member's funeral because the relative wasn't "immediate family."

And parents only get to visit their children once a month for two hours.

What kind of deluded person would create that kind of school system and think it was healthy or right?

Seriously, between the sex crimes at the school and the policies on family visits, this is clearly the work of somebody with some serious, serious issues.

Maybe Oprah needs to get out of the education business, out of the education reform propaganda business too, and get some therapy from somebody other than Dr. Phil.

Because the travesty of Oprah calling out "bad educators" today on her show was a disgrace.

Seriously, Oprah, if you want to point a finger at "bad educators" who have harmed the children in their keep, take a look in the mirror.