Why Wasn't Michelle Rhee Investigated For Assault And Endangering The Welfare Of Children?

From the NY Times:

The popular leader of an after-school band program in Brooklyn has been charged with assault after putting duct tape over the mouth of a 9-year-old student, the police said on Wednesday.

The program leader, Kenyatte Hughes, 39, revived the Soul Tigers Marching Band, based at Intermediate School 292 in the East New York neighborhood, more than a decade ago with the goal of steering children away from violence by teaching them music.

Mr. Hughes, whom officials said was a volunteer, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with assault, endangering the welfare of a child and criminal possession of a weapon (the duct tape), the police said. He was arraigned in Criminal Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday and released without having to post bail, despite prosecutors’ request that bail be set at $20,000.

Law enforcement officials said Mr. Hughes put tape over a male student’s mouth on Monday, and that after it was removed, the boy’s lip was cracked and bloody and his face was swollen.

Devora Kaye, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, called the charges “deeply troubling” and said, “Mr. Hughes will no longer be allowed in I.S. 292 or any of our schools.” The school principal, Evelyn Maxfield, declined to comment.

Bill Turque in the Washington Post in August 2010:

Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's talk to the new DCPS teachers Wednesday included two anecdotes I had not heard before -- one remarkable for its content, the other for its delivery. They described her struggles 18 years ago as a fledgling second grade teacher at Baltimore's Harlem Park Elementary.
"The worst and in many ways definitely the toughest year of my entire life," she said.

Rhee had poor class management skills, she said, recalling that her class "was very well known in the school because you could hear them traveling anywhere because they were so out of control." On one particularly rowdy day, she said she decided to place little pieces of masking tape on their lips for the trip to the school cafeteria for lunch.

"OK kids, we're going to do something special today!" she said she told them.

Rhee said it worked well until they actually arrived at the cafeteria. "I was like, 'OK, take the tape off. I realized I had not told the kids to lick their lips beforehand...The skin is coming off their lips and they're bleeding. Thirty-five kids were crying."

Hughes arrested for taping child's mouth shut, Rhee tells the mouth tape story for laughs.

She ought to be investigated for assault and endangerment of children's welfare as well.

Kevin Johnson Blames Teachers Union For Sexual Abuse And Harassment Allegations

It's not KJ's fault that he has multiple allegations of sexual abuse and sexual harassment lodged against him - it's his "enemies" in the teachers union:

Mr. Johnson suggested that the attacks were being orchestrated by political opponents, starting with the teachers’ unions. Before he took office, a nonprofit organization he created wrestled control of the Sacramento High School and turned it into a charter school, ousting the unionized teaching staff.

“I ended up turning the high school I went to into a charter high school,” he said in the interview before his announcement. “And as a result, I probably made a lot of enemies in the teachers’ union. California and Sacramento are ground zero when it comes to one of the strongest special interest groups in the country. I did what I thought was right for kids. I created problems and enemies back then, and they have been enemies for life.”

The mayor said he realized this issue would come up when he considered running for office in 2008, eight years after he retired from professional basketball. “It was very clear to me that when I had to make a decision on whether I was going to run for mayor or not, that the allegations would resurface,” he said. “I didn’t have any inkling that they would dog me throughout my political career, but that’s the reality of it.”

Perhaps he thought he could survive the allegations the way Bill Clinton survived his.

Maybe he would have, but for the video tape and the age of the girl at the time of the alleged abuse.

But bet that the allegations made against him at St. Hope, his charter school, along with the sexual harassment complaint filed against him by a Sacramento city employee and some unseemly behavior with another woman who worked for the National Conference of Black Mayors, didn't help matters.

I read somewhere last night that the national media were starting to dig into the story that Dave McKenna of Deadspin had done so much to move forward.

If that's the case, we may yet get more to this story that not only puts an end to Johnson's political career, but finishes him off Cosby-style too.

Same could happen with his wife, Michelle Rhee, since she is alleged to have helped him cover up sexual misconduct allegations at his charter school.

Kevin Johnson, Dogged By Sex Abuse Claim, Will Not Seek Re-Election

And he's claiming it's teachers union who have dredged up the 20 year old sex abuse claim:

SACRAMENTO — It should have been a high point in a career of high points: the premiere of a documentary chronicling how Kevin Johnson, the former N.B.A. All Star who as mayor helped rejuvenate this once ailing capital city, kept the Sacramento Kings from leaving for Seattle with a gleaming new basketball arena.

But hours before the premiere last week, the ESPN network, which produced the documentary, “Down in the Valley,” announced it would delay indefinitely the national release of the film. The network cited the re-emergence of an issue that has shadowed Mr. Johnson since his first campaign in 2008: A claim by a 16-year-old girl that he sexually abused her 20 years ago while he played for the Phoenix Suns.

...

Mr. Johnson has repeatedly denied the accusation and made no mention of it in his statement. In an interview on Friday, he asserted that the case was being dredged up by his opponents — including the teachers’ union, with which he has battled over the years — to hurt him politically.

“There are no truth to the allegations,” he said. “If you go back 20 years ago, they were investigated. Law enforcement obviously didn’t feel there was merit there. For me I’ve just tried to move on and go forward.”

The Phoenix Police Department investigated the claim but closed the case without filing charges. Mr. Johnson entered a draft settlement which included a $230,000 payment to his accuser. The mayor declined to comment when asked why, if the charges were unfounded, he had agreed to make a payout.

What is different this time is a videotape of a police interview in which the girl, speaking in a calm voice, describes in disconcerting detail what she said Mr. Johnson did to her, including fondling and undressing her. The release of the video, posted on Deadspin, a website devoted to sports news, put a young and vulnerable voice to claims that until now had been only a detached account found in court filings.

“People have so desperately wanted to believe in him that they’ve given him a pass on a lot of things, and I think that has worked out generally to the city’s advantage,” Steve Hansen, a Democratic City Council member and critic of Mr. Johnson’s, said before the announcement. “The wall of not knowing how to deal with his problems, but choosing to ignore the failures in hopes of the promise, has begun to collapse. Once you saw the video and read the story, it was hard to pretend it never happened.”

Johnson claims the Phoenix allegation was investigated and dispensed with 20 years ago.

But what about the abuse allegations from his St Hope charter school?

Or the sexual harassment suit filed against him by a city employee?

And how about that blaming the teachers union for dragging his name through the mud with these allegations?

Here's a guy so reflexive in his teacher-bashing that he just doesn't understand that, post-Cosby, he just can't dismiss these allegations with that shit-eating grin of his and a little help from his wife, Michelle Rhee (who allegedly helped with the St. Hope cover-up.)

Not with that video of the alleged victim:

Although Mr. Johnson argued last week that the accusation had not hurt him with voters, officials in both parties said the video would have made it hard to win a third term. After ESPN announced it was shelving the documentary, the city's Democratic leader, Ms. Asbury urged Mr. Johnson not to seek re-election

The video came at a time of heightened scrutiny of the kind of behavior that once might have been disregarded, as other figures in American public life have been discredited by accusations of sexual misconduct.

 

Here's hoping the St. Hope allegations get some more scrutiny because it's pretty clear that the Obama administration, along with his wife Rhee, helped Johnson cover them up and make them go away.

And Rhee should get some scrutiny for helping KJ cover his crimes up.

When Rhee fired teachers in D.C., she defended the firings by claiming some were sexual predators.

That turned out to be a lie from Ms. Rhee - or projection, since she appears to be married to a predator herself.

Rhee and Johnson have both fallen from grace, but given their respective crimes, they haven't fallen far enough in my estimation.

Calling The "Visionaries" In And Out Of The Education World What Many Of Them Truly Are - Sociopaths

Tony Schwartz in the NY Times on Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk:

The three leaders are arguably the most extraordinary business visionaries of our times. Each of them has introduced unique products that changed – or in Mr. Musk’s case, have huge potential to change – the way we live.

...

What disheartens me is how little care and appreciation any of them give (or in Mr. Jobs’s case, gave) to hard-working and loyal employees, and how unnecessarily cruel and demeaning they could be to the people who helped make their dreams come true.

...

Given the extraordinary success of these men, the obvious question is whether being relentlessly hard on people, and even cruel, may get them to perform better.

Like their biographers, I think the answer is no. Our research at the Energy Project has shown that the more employees feel their needs are being met at work – above all, for respect and appreciation – the better they perform.

Here's how these three "visionary" leaders treated their employees and/or others:

As Mr. Isaacson writes of Mr. Jobs: “Nasty was not necessary. It hindered him more than it helped him.”

...

Mr. Jobs drove around without a license on his car, and he regularly parked in spaces reserved for the handicapped. As Mr. Ive said of his attitude, “I think he feels he has a liberty and a license to do that. The normal rules of social engagement, he feels, don’t apply to him.”

Amazon employees collected examples of Mr. Bezos’s most eviscerating put-downs, including, “Are you lazy or just incompetent?” “Why are you wasting my life?” and “I’m sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?”

When Mr. Musk’s loyal executive assistant of 12 years asked for a significant raise, he told her to take a two-week vacation while he thought about it. When she returned, he told her the relationship wasn’t going to work anymore. According to Mr. Vance, they haven’t spoken since.

And of course all of this nastiness, this "I am the most special person on the planet and you will treat me as such!" stems from the egocentric belief these men had or have of their own so-called genius.

But Schwartz thinks there's another reason Jobs, Bezos and Musk act or acted so badly - out of fear:

People like these three visionaries deeply crave control. Each of them was far more likely to act out suddenly and behave poorly when he wasn’t getting exactly what he wanted — when he felt that others were failing to live up to his standards.

All three invested endless hours and energy in building and running their businesses — and far less in anything else, including taking care of the people who worked for them or even understanding what doing so might look like. To a large extent, people were simply a means to an end.

I understand what it is like to have one’s self entirely tied up with external success. No amount is ever quite enough. To a large extent, for these men, employees are simply a means to an end.

If you're a teacher these days, you know some of the drill that the people who work or worked for Jobs, Bezos and Musk know because some of the same personality types have been given the power to run school systems and schools themselves.

In the "visions" of the corporate education reformers, students are seen as "products," teachers are seen as a means to an end, control is the most sought-after goal and the only thing that truly matters is imposing an agenda and rigging the data to make it look successful.

Many education leaders these days are little versions of Bezos, Jobs and Musk - always without the "genius" or "vision," of course, though some education leaders think they have it - see Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Cami Anderson, et al. for the same delusional arrogance and egocentric patterns that Bezos, Jobs and Musk displayed.

But it doesn't really matter whether the Kleins and Rhees of the world have the "genius" or "vision" of Bezos or Jobs or not because a truly successful leader shouldn't be treating people like "products" or a "means to an end," a truly successful leader shouldn't be so obsessed with control and fear that they run roughshod over everybody and everything.

Schwartz concludes:

The question their management style raises is not whether being tough, harsh and relentlessly demanding gets people to work better. Of course it doesn’t, and certainly not sustainably. Can anyone truly doubt that people are more productive in workplaces that help them to be healthier and happier?

The more apt question is how much more these men could have enhanced thousands of people’s lives – and perhaps made them even more successful — if they had invested as much in taking care of them as they did in conceiving great products.

“Try not to become a man of success,” Albert Einstein once said, “but rather a man of value.”

It is time we stop fetishizing so-called corporate geniuses like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and other so-called "visionaries" (you can add many others to the list - Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates come immediately to mind) and call them exactly what they are - sociopaths who in the end do a lot more harm than good.

The same goes for the little versions in education - the Kleins, the Rhees, et al. - who for years have lived on the press of their "visions" and "genius" (think the TIME cover with Rhee on it holding the broom.)

But remember, you can't decry the sociopathology of the Kleins and Rhees of the education world while praising the "genius" and "vision" of sociopaths like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates.

Gates is an easy one for people in the ed world to despise - his foundation's work to destroy public schools makes that an easy thing.

But Steve Jobs still gets fetishized by some for his "genius" and "vision".

Truly his "vision" was "@#$% you, I get my way or I destroy you!"

And that's the kind of vision we can do without these days - in or out of education.

For another example, see one Andrew Cuomo in Albany.

Michelle Rhee's Husband, Kevin Johnson, Target Of New Sexual Harassment Complaint

The Sacramento Bee:

A former aide in the Sacramento city manager’s office filed a claim last month against Mayor Kevin Johnson alleging the mayor sexually harassed her multiple times over a seven-month period at City Hall, according to a copy of the claim obtained by The Sacramento Bee.

The employee – identified in the claim as Estrellita Ilee Muller, 32 – alleged that she was summoned to the mayor’s private library at City Hall by Johnson’s security officer and that the mayor pressed his body against her, felt her torso and tried to kiss her. Muller filed the claim with the City Clerk’s office in April and is seeking $200,000 in damages, according to the document. She also filed a formal discrimination complaint with the city’s human resources director in October 2014 – a complaint that was found insufficient by that office.

Read the whole Bee article - the city's investigation into the complaint sounds rigged for the "insufficient evidence" outcome.

This would not be the first time Kevin Johnson has been accused of sexual harassment and or other sexual-related crimes - he has a pattern of this kind of behavior:

In 1997, Johnson signed a draft confidential settlement with a Phoenix teenager who had claimed the former NBA player molested her, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Bee in 2008. The agreement amount was $230,000, according to the document.

The settlement stemmed from a 1996 investigation by Phoenix police into an allegation that Johnson, who was 29 at the time, disrobed in the presence of a 16-year-old girl and touched her inappropriately. The allegations were made to police by the girl’s therapist.

Johnson denied the allegations and no criminal charges were filed in the case.

In 2008, soon after Johnson launched his first mayoral campaign, a police report filed by a former teacher from Sacramento High School surfaced alleging that a 17-year-old student at the school told the teacher Johnson had approached her from behind, massaged her shoulders and touched her breasts.

Sacramento police later said the girl recanted her story and found the allegation to be unfounded.

Johnson founded the nonprofit St. HOPE organization that operates Sacramento High School as a charter school.

A separate allegation made in teacher Erik Jones’ report charged that Johnson tried to get into bed with a volunteer from the Hood Corps program, an urban volunteer program that was part of St. Hope. Police did not investigate that allegation because the young woman was not a minor.

There are not at least four allegations against Johnson - the 16-year old in Phoenix, the 17 year at KJ's charter school, a teacher at the same charter school and now a city employee.

The Muller complaint alleges there are other incidents with city employees that have been covered up:

The claim states that Muller’s supervisors at City Hall “failed to take appropriate action to protect” her from the alleged incident or “subsequent incidents of harassment.” The claim states Muller told “several representatives of the city regarding the conduct of Mr. Johnson on several separate occasions” and that those representatives “offered no helpful advice and took no action in response to receiving the information.”

“Plaintiff alleges on information and belief that Mr. Johnson had acted inappropriately with respect to other city employees and representatives in the past and that representatives of the city knew, or had reason to know, of facts establishing this,” the claim states. “Notwithstanding this, city representatives did nothing to effectively deal with the situation or to protect plaintiff and similarly situated employees.”

Imagine Kevin Johnson was a teacher instead of Michelle Rhee's husband.

What would Campbell Brown, Michelle Rhee, and the rest of the education reform contingent be saying about this?

Right now all we get from them is silence.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/city-beat/article21025047.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/city-beat/article21025047.html#storylink=c

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/city-beat/article21025047.html#storylink=cpy

Andrew Cuomo Deals From Michelle Rhee's "Perv Teacher" Fear Card Deck

Governor Cuomo yesterday:

"The teachers’ union represents the teachers. I understand that. … I represent the students and I want to do the best we can for the students and for their education," he said. "One of the issues we have to work through where the teachers’ union doesn’t agree with me is, I want to evaluate teachers, and I want to be able to get bad teachers out of the classroom.

“I understand the union’s issue; they don’t want anyone fired,” Cuomo said. “But we have teachers that have been found guilty of sexually abusing students who we can’t get out of the classroom. We have a process where literally it takes years and years to get a bad teacher out of the classroom. And I understand the teachers’ rights, but I also understand the students’ rights. And the Albany government, the Albany media, is very responsive to the teachers’ union and their groups. I get it. But the students have rights, too. And this whole education system is about the students.”

See what's he's doing there?

Mary Ahern did:

@TeacherArthurG @nbianculli @perdidostschool He's blurring issue of faulty VAM w/the sexual offenders scenario to play on ppls' worst fears.
— Mary Ahern (@mma718) January 1, 2015

So did Arthur Goldstein:

He's talking about people who were convicted of nothing anywhere. Like Andrew Cuomo, so far. @nbianculli @perdidostschool
— Arthur Goldstein (@TeacherArthurG) January 1, 2015

So did Nick Bianculli:

@mma718 @TeacherArthurG @perdidostschool His claim of teachers found guilty of sexual misconduct w/out losing jobs must be substantiated
— Nick Bianculli (@nbianculli) January 1, 2015

@mma718 @TeacherArthurG @perdidostschool And yes, eval of teachers and sexual misconduct by teachers are two completely different issues
— Nick Bianculli (@nbianculli) January 1, 2015

Cuomo's fear mongerig is straight out of the Michelle Rhee/Campbell Brown education reformer playbook.

Whenever they want to try and turn the public against teachers, they trot out the "Perv Teacher" fear card and play it liberally - even when the whole thing is made up.

Michelle Rhee, for example, fired 266 teachers in Washington D.C. when she was schools chancellor, claiming that they were sexual and physical abusers of children.

She was lying, er, "misspeaking":

Michelle A. Rhee, the chancellor of District of Columbia schools, finds herself at the center of a controversy again, this time over comments attributed to her in a business magazine saying that some teachers who were laid off last fall had sexually and physically abused students.

Rhee laid off 266 teachers and a few dozen administrators in October in an effort to close a budget gap, a move that led to student protests, a lawsuit by the local teachers' union, and a contentious face-off with the local city council. Rhee was accused by her detractors of using the budget as an excuse to lay off veteran teachers without having to work with seniority rules.
 
But her response defending her actions to Fast Company startled many.

"I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school," Rhee told Fast Company. "Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?"

Rhee's comments, first circulated over the weekend in D.C-area media, sent shockwaves around the region and beyond, invoking the ire of many teachers and some of Rhee's sharpest critics, including the local teachers' union president and the city council chairman.

"With a callous, nonspecific statement that names no one and thus blames all, Michelle Rhee has called into question the ethics of 266 men and women, and she's done it in a way that gives these individuals almost no recourse to defend themselves," George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers Union, wrote in a letter to D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who is Rhee's boss. Parker asked Rhee to apologize to teachers in his letter.

Questions immediately arose. If these teachers had been physically and sexually abusing children, why were they allowed to remain until a budget crunch required dismissing teachers? How many of the 266 teachers had been abusing students?

As the Washington City Paper explains, Rhee and other school officials are required by law to immediately report any suspected abuse of children they are aware of.

I asked Rhee on Monday to shed light on the context in which she made her comments and if she had moved to take any legal or disciplinary action against those teachers who had allegedly abused students before the October layoffs. Answers to me—and the legions of other people wanting an answer—were slow in coming.

After nearly five days of silence on the matter, Rhee responded to us all a short time ago via a two-page letter she wrote to the council chairman and two other members about their numerous concerns.

The chancellor said her comment to Fast Company was made "some time ago" while explaining that teacher performance and not just seniority was an important factor considered in deciding who to terminate during the layoffs caused by a budget cut.

"I was describing the kind of conduct that was appropriate to take into account in implementing the reduction in force," she wrote. "The examples I gave involved a very small minority of the teachers who were terminated in the budget reduction."

How small a minority? Rhee says one teacher had "serious allegations of sexual misconduct," and that teacher had been removed from the school immediately. The case was referred to police, and the teacher was not in the classroom during the time of the layoffs, she said.

Six employees who were laid-off had been previously suspended for using corporal punishment on students. Two employees had served suspensions for "being AWOL on multiple occasions and several other employees had egregious time and attendance records." In the case of these actions, the discipline procedures embedded in union contracts prescribed suspension, rather than firing for those offenses.

Have you got those numbers now?

One teacher accused of sexual misconduct, already taken out of the classroom.

Six teachers with previous suspensions for "corporal punishment."

Two with previous suspensions for being AWOL.

But she said this:

"I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school," Rhee told Fast Company. "Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?"

Nonetheless Rhee felt no compunction to apologize to the vast majority of teachers who weren't accused of having "sex with children" or hitting children.

Ironically Rhee is married to a man who has been accused of multiple events of sexual misconduct and was alleged by a US Inspector General to have helped him cover up some of those allegations, but that's a story for another time.

The point here is, whenever reformers want to drive up public outrage against teachers, they play the "Perv Teacher" fear card and conflate the issue with whatever other issues they want.

As Mary Ahern noted in her tweet, Cuomo's conflating sexual misconduct (which no one I know defends - certainly not the UFT, as Mike Mulgrew's response to Campbell Brown shows) with evaluation of so-called teacher effectiveness.

That Cuomo feels the need to conflate the two and play the "Perv Teacher" fear card shows you how little confidence he has in his argument that the public education system needs to be broken.

It also shows you how scummy Cuomo is.

Like Rhee, he has no problem smearing teachers as criminals in order to get them off the payroll.

Is Bill Cosby Still On The StudentsFirst Board? (UPDATED - 10:40 AM)

StudentsFirst seems to have scrubbed their website a bit.

When I put in a Google search for Bill Cosby + Board of Directors + StudentsFirst, here's what comes up:

StudentsFirst Board of Directors | StudentsFirst.org

https://www.studentsfirst.org/board-directors

StudentsFirst

One of America's most beloved comedians of all time, Bill Cosby has captivated generations of fans with his comedy routines, iconic albums and best-selling ...

And yet, when you click on that link, you don't find the page with the Board of Directors listed or the page with Cosby listed as sitting on the board.

Instead, you just get the StudentsFirst.Org page.

I looked around the StudentsFirst website, including under the "Who We Are" tab.

The Board of Directors page seems to have disappeared from the site.

Now I see plenty of stories about Cosby joining StudentsFirst back in September 2012.

I even see a video of him talking about StudentsFirst and education reform.

But I don't see any stories about him stepping down.

Strange that StudentsFirst.org has lots of information about "Meeting Their Team" - including Michelle Rhee - and learning about their "Mission," but alas, no information about their board.

You'd think they want to publicize information about their board, especially since there are some real luminaries sitting on it, including Roland Martin, Joel Klein, Connie Chung and Bill Cosby.

It's as if something happened recently that made them decide to scrub their Board of Directors page, but rather than own up to it, they did it in the dark and hoped nobody noticed.

Now it's possible I've gotten this all wrong here and I'm just missing the information about the Board of Directors at StudentsFirst and all the wonderful members on it.

It's possible that I'm just missing the information about Cosby and his commitment to education reform and children on the Studentsfirst website.

Or it's possible that Cosby stepped down and I'm missing the notice for that on the World Wide Web.

Though I don't think this is the case - Valerie Strauss has a Washington Post piece dated August 13, 2014 about Michelle Rhee stepping down from StudentsFirst and joining Miracle Gro and Cosby is said to still be a member of the StudentsFirst board as of that date.

So it seems likely Cosby was still a member of the StudentsFirst Board of Directors when the sexual assault allegations against Cosby that have long been in the public domain went viral the past few weeks.

It seems that StudentsFirst wanted to distance themselves from the sexual assault (including statutory rape) allegations against Cosby as quickly and as quietly as they could.

If they did want to distance themselves from Cosby and the growing scandal around him, it's a shame they didn't go public and explain EXACTLY why they wanted to do that.

Berklee College of Music did just that with a scholarship Cosby sponsored at the school.

Alas, it seems the "students first" people at StudentsFirst haven't take that same route.

That's a shame - this could have been a teachable moment for us all, as the "Blame Teachers First" crowd turned on one of their own who looks to be a serial sexual assaulter.

You can bet if this was a teacher alleged to have committed these egregious acts, the StudentsFirst crowd wouldn't have gone quietly.

But they seem to have taken the coward's route out instead and scrubbed him away in the middle of the night.

If I've gotten any of this wrong, I will publicly apologize to StudentsFirst and Michelle Rhee herself  for vilifying them for secretly scrubbing their ties away to a man alleged to have committed at least 18 acts of sexual assault and more coming out every day.

Just let me know, StudentsFirst folks.

Is Bill Cosby still a member of your board or not?

UPDATED - 10:40 AM: Patrick Sullivan left the following comment on the post:

 Looks like they took their board page down. Google has a cached copy as of 10/31 that includes Cosby. This link should bring it up:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mWnrmFEAN-QJ:https://www.studentsfirst.org/board-directors

It seems Michelle Rhee and StudentsFirst did not have the guts to go public with their cutting Cosby loose.

Too bad, but not unexpected.

After all, Rhee helped sexual misconduct allegations against her husband, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, go away.

It seems Ms. Rhee and her fellow ed deformers are only looking for accountability against people who are accused of sexual misconduct when they're teachers.

Awaiting The Campbell Brown Denouncement Of Bill Cosby

Here's where education reformer Campbell Brown denounced the teachers unions for defending 97 teachers or school employees accused of sexual misconduct over a five year period in NYC.

97 teachers and staff accused (not convicted, btw - just accused) is slightly more than 0.001% of the teaching and school staff overall.

Still, Brown says this is a major problem and the system needs major reforms.

She has gone on TV and written about this repeatedly to educate the public about the need for reform.

Meanwhile fellow education reformer Bill Cosby has been accused of raping 16 women over the course of his career.

Every day now a new allegation against Cosby surfaces - there were two just yesterday (including a TMZ story in which an actress alleges Cosby assaulted her in the dressing room of the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.)

One commenter at Perdido Street School writes:

Where is Campbell Brown when you need her? Oh, she is only interested in alleged teacher predators.

Indeed, here's the silence we have from Brown on Cosby.

Another teacher-basher, Whoopi Goldberg, actually defended Cosby earlier this week, saying that she has many questions for one of Cosby's accusers.

I wonder what teacher bashers like Brown or Goldberg would be saying were there a teacher out there who had 16 allegations of sexual assault lodged against him, with a new one surfacing every day?

I bet silence (in Brown's case) and defense (in Goldberg's case) would not be the response.

Funny how that goes.

Brown's been silent on her another education reformer's alleged sexual misconduct.

Her husband, neo-con Dan Senor, sits on the board of Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst even though Rhee is alleged to have helped cover up her husband, Kevin Johnson's, sexual misconduct with employees of his charter school.

The hypocrisy of education reformers like Campbell Brown and teacher bashers like Whoopi Goldberg knows no bounds.

It seems any teacher accused of anything is guilty automatically and ought to be fired.

But fellow education reformers and celebrities like Cosby and KJ - they're entitled to a stonewall defense.

Bill Cosby And Kevin Johnson - Brothers In Education Reform AND Sexual Predation

When Diane Ravitch blogged in 2012 that Bill Cosby was joining Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst board, I left the following comment on her post, comparing Cosby to Rhee's husband, Kevin Johnson:

reality-based educator

September 17, 2012 at 6:13 pm

Actually Bill Cosby was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a 32 year old woman in 2004. She tried to bring a criminal case against him in 2005, but police declined to file charges. She brought civil charges against him. Her attorneys found 10 other women who also claimed to have been drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby in the past. Nine were listed anonymously in the court documents, one made the accusations publicly. The court documents are here:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/bill-cosbys-prior-bad-acts

The LA Times covered the story, including the settlement Cosby reached with the woman, here:

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/nov/09/news/wk-cosby9

Cosby settled the 2005 case for an undisclosed amount, the alleged victim of the assault signed a non-disclosure agreement, so no other details of the case emerged. But People magazine covered the aftermath and interviewed three other women who claimed they had been drugged by Cosby and assaulted. People also reported that Cosby had paid off several women who had made these accusations in the past against Cosby.

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20059561,00.html

I have two things to say about this:

First, Cosby fits right in with Kevin Johnson, Rhee’s husband, who himself has at least two accusations of sexual misconduct lodged against him (one by a minor.)

Second, how dare anybody with so many accusations leveled against him in the past lecture people about bad behavior, as Cosby has been known to do?

I stand by that comment tonight- both the Cosby part and the KJ part.

Cosby still fits in at StudentsFirst, which was founded by a woman who made sexual misconduct allegations against her boyfriend (now husband) go away.

Cosby lost his Netflix special, NBC canceled a sitcom they were developing with him and TVLand has stopped running The Cosby Show reruns.

While Cosby is free from the criminal justice system since all of the reported acts happened long ago, his career and reputation are in tatters.

His fellow ed deformer Kevin Johnson, however, remains free and clear tonight, still in power as mayor of Sacramento, even though he's got at least two accusations against him for sexual misconduct.

Isn't it time somebody revisits the Michelle Rhee/Kevin Johnson sexual misconduct case and cover-up again?

StudentsFirst Runs Pro-Republican Ads In NY State Senate Campaigns

Can we dispense with the idea that education reform groups are "liberal"?

Take StudentsFirst, for example:

ALBANY—A pro-charter school group spent a combined $78,000 on Thursday on radio and TV ads in three competitive State Senate races, according to financial disclosure filed with the state's Board of Elections.

New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, formed by StudentsFirst and run by the New York chapter of the organization, spent $47,000 on a radio ad on behalf of Republican State Senate candidate Tom Croci, who is vying to replace State Senator Lee Zeldin, a Republican who is vacating the seat to run for Congress.

...

Republicans have repeatedly tried to tie Democratic candidates to de Blasio as a way of alienating voters outside New York City. De Blasio campaigned on a pledge to limit the influence of charters in New York City.

New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, an independent expenditure political action committee created last month and funded largely by pro-charter hedge fund executives, is dedicated to preserving the current majority in the Senate. The upper chamber is controlled by the Republicans and the Independent Democratic Conference, who have been largely supportive of charter schools.

Capital reported yesterday that the PAC had spent $107,000 surveying battleground State Senate districts around New York.

New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany spent an additional $31,000 on cable and radio "media productions," in two competitive districts in the Hudson Valley.

Time and time again, we see these education reforms groups - from the Orwellian-named "Democrats for Education Reform" to supposed Democrat Michelle Rhee's group, StudentsFirst - raising money from the wealthiest (and toniest) of Republican donors (i.e., hedge fundies and other Wall Street types), then using that money to promote right-wing policies and right wing candidates, mostly with (R) after their names.

Carl Korn, spokesman for NYSUT (which is putting up some ads for Senate Dems), puts all this in perspective:

"What we see here is a small group of hedge fund billionaires working to privatize public education by siphoning money away from those schools that serve the vast majority of New Yorkers," NYSUT spokesman Carl Korn told Capital. "In terms of our work, we are proud to support those candidates who support public education and oppose the overreliance of standardized testing…We're working aggressively in a number of Senate races, and Assembly races , to elect candidates whose values align with out members".

StudentsFirst is using dark money from unknown sources to push for their right-wing policies and elect right-wing candidates to keep the State Senate Republican.

There's nothing "liberal" about them - they're no different than any other Republican donor group.

Which is fine - I have no problem with Republican donors groups raising cash and putting it into campaigns to elect their own people and push their own causes and issues.

I simply want those Republican donors to openly say "We're a Republican interest group pushing Republican causes and Republican candidates."

Not to much to ask, right?

Apparently with StudentsFirst it is.

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.

Education Reformers Turned On Michelle Rhee

Mostly because she sucked:

StudentsFirst was hobbled by a high staff turnover rate, embarrassing PR blunders and a lack of focus. But several leading education reformers say Rhee’s biggest weakness was her failure to build coalitions; instead, she alienated activists who should have been her natural allies with tactics they perceived as imperious, inflexible and often illogical. Several said her biggest contribution to the cause was drawing fire away from them as she positioned herself as the face of the national education reform movement.

“There was a growing consensus in the education reform community that she didn’t play well in the sandbox,” one reform leader said.

Gee, I am shocked, shocked to find out Michelle Rhee was imperious, illogical, inflexible and didn't play well with others.

Now we're starting to get stories of Rhee's hubris not from her "enemies" but her former allies:

And her fellow education reformers tell remarkably consistent stories about their frustration with Rhee and the organization she founded.

 In Connecticut, Minnesota, Florida and elsewhere, activists said StudentsFirst often swooped in with pre-fab policy agendas set by national strategists operating out of its Sacramento headquarters.

Rhee’s state directors then promoted those policies and only those policies, without regard to local needs or political realities, according to activists who tried to work with them. In at least one case, the StudentsFirst team insisted on pushing legislation that clashed with other state laws and would have been impossible to implement, sources said.

“They’d walk around with a 15-point legislative agenda and a legislator would say, ‘What are your top two on the list?’ and they would say, ‘Nope, we need all 15,’ — so then they got zero,” one activist said. “They were policy purists in a way that made them seem oblivious to political reality.”

...

An education reform leader familiar with her tactics said Rhee made audacious demands of potential backers — once asking for $50 million from a single donor. (She got $1 million, this source said.)

That's Oprah's "warrior woman" in crystallized form - her way or the highway.

So, she's been told "Hit the highway!"

What more will we learn about Michelle Rhee now that the education reformer knives are out for her?

Why Wasn't Michelle Rhee Investigated For Taping Children's Mouths?

From the Daily News:

A New Jersey substitute teacher is in a sticky situation after she allegedly slapped tape across loud-mouthed third-graders as part of something she called the “quiet game,” school officials said.

The teacher has been removed from a list of possible substitutes used at Winfield Scott School No. 2 in Elizabeth after the May 29 incident, when five children told their parents, who told school administrators, of the cruel “game.”

"We consider this serious," Donald Goncalves, spokesman for the school board, told The Newark Star-Ledger. "We took the teacher out of the classroom and she will no longer be working for us."
The unnamed teacher allegedly used “a pink, fabric-based tape” to cover the kids’ mouths, according to the newspaper.

"I don't understand what she was thinking," the girl’s father, Munford Henderson, told WNBC-TV. "We're talking about kids. You're sworn to protect and teach, not to hurt them and put them in fear."

Elizabeth police and the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency are both looking into the allegations.

 It's interesting how a substitute teacher in New Jersey is under fire for taping the mouths of students shut but education reformer Michelle Rhee was feted for the same thing:

Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's talk to the new DCPS teachers Wednesday included two anecdotes I had not heard before -- one remarkable for its content, the other for its delivery. They described her struggles 18 years ago as a fledgling second grade teacher at Baltimore's Harlem Park Elementary.
"The worst and in many ways definitely the toughest year of my entire life," she said.

Rhee had poor class management skills, she said, recalling that her class "was very well known in the school because you could hear them traveling anywhere because they were so out of control." On one particularly rowdy day, she said she decided to place little pieces of masking tape on their lips for the trip to the school cafeteria for lunch.

"OK kids, we're going to do something special today!" she said she told them.

Rhee said it worked well until they actually arrived at the cafeteria. "I was like, 'OK, take the tape off. I realized I had not told the kids to lick their lips beforehand...The skin is coming off their lips and they're bleeding. Thirty-five kids were crying."

Rhee walked that story back after Bill Turque published it in the Washington Post

Rhee said in an e-mail Friday that the students' mouths weren't covered. "I was trying to express how difficult the first year of teaching can be with some humor. My hope is that our new teachers will bring great creativity and passion to their craft while also learning from my own challenges." Still, it's difficult to imagine a DCPS instructor, first-year or tenth-year, surviving the masking tape stunt without suspension at a minimum.

The story, like many stories about Rhee, is clouded in mystery and myth.

Did Rhee really tape students' mouths shut?

Did she really eat a bee to garner her students' attention?

Does she really not remember being informed about widespread cheating at Noyes when she was DCPS chancellor?

Or how she tried to convince young women who were alleging her fiance at the time, now her husband, Kevin Johnson, had engaged in unwanted sexual contact with them to drop their stories?

Why is Rhee still celebrated in the culture when so many of these questions circulate about her?

Daily News Picks Up Deadspin Report On Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Kevin Johnson

From the NY Daily News:

In the days leading up to Donald Sterling’s lifetime ban from the NBA, one of the strongest advocates for disciplining the Clippers’ owner was former All-Star guard and current Sacramento, Calif., mayor Kevin Johnson.

“The players are waiting for the commissioner to act decisively,” Johnson said in late April, speaking on behalf of the players’ union. “They want the maximum of what the constitution and bylaws will allow and we’re trying to figure out what that is. They want a decision to be made quickly and decisively. If you don’t respect the players in this league, then the values that we all espouse are for naught. If what has been alleged and stated is authentic then there must be sanctions that make it clear that the NBA family will have zero tolerance for such conduct today, tomorrow or ever.”

Johnson got his wish when NBA commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life and fined him $2.5 million after Sterling admitted he made the racist comments in a taped conversation between himself and his former girlfriend.

But while Johnson may be viewed as a strong, moral voice in the Sterling saga, a Deadspin report published last week revisited dark chapters in the California politician’s past — including alleged sexual misconduct by Johnson when he was the president and CEO of St. HOPE Academy, a charter school organization he founded in Sacramento — and misuse of federal funds the school received.

The St. HOPE matter came less than a decade after Johnson, according to a joint U.S. Senate and House report, paid “$230,000 to resolve claims brought by a Phoenix teenager who alleged Johnson molested her.”

Arizona prosecutors never filed criminal charges against Johnson in that matter but an investigation into the ex-NBA guard’s tenure at St. HOPE ultimately led to an August 2008 referral to the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of California by the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) “for criminal and civil prosecution of Kevin Johnson” and another St. HOPE executive for misuse of federal funds.

“I will tell you that my staff, which had a totally nonpolitical agenda, looked into all the allegations,” says Gerald Walpin, the former Inspector General for the CNCS, whose office ultimately made the referral to the U.S. Attorney’s office to prosecute Johnson the same year the former hoops star ran for mayor of Sacramento. Walpin was fired by President Obama in the ensuing fallout. “I would not have referred it to the U.S. Attorney’s office unless there was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. And there was no doubt that there was established documentary evidence of misuse of federal funds.”

Read the whole Daily News piece, read the more detailed Deadspin piece by Dave McKenna they picked up on and ask yourself this question:

How did Kevin Johnson get away with what he got away with and why is he considered anything other than a sexual predator?

Michelle Rhee Says The UFT Contract Fails The Reform Test

Could be a head fake out of the Great Broomster, but Michelle Rhee says she's not too impressed with the new UFT contract agreement:

The camaraderie among the mayor, senior administration officials and UFT leadership was evident at Thursday's big announcement. Praise flew every which way; UFT boss Michael Mulgrew and Chancellor Fariña hugged.

What was not so clear was what, exactly, they had agreed to. Inexplicably, the city focused on the pomp and circumstance of the agreement but has not released its language. This much we know: Mayor de Blasio gave in to the union's demands for sizable raises but got very little in return - no premium sharing of health-care costs, no higher co-pays, no guaranteed dismissals for ineffective teachers who don't even teach full time, no changes to the rigid seniority-based salary schedule, nothing.

For all the talk of a fair deal for students, the union did not make a single meaningful concession.

Make no mistake: I support the generous raises in the new contract agreement. Teachers deserve to be paid like the professionals they are. But rather than use substantial salary increases to drive groundbreaking reform, the de Blasio administration tinkered around the edges, by and large preserving the status quo.

If the mayor had been willing to cause some friction with his union friends, he could have used the new contract to drive reforms that would have enhanced the quality of teaching and had real impact for kids. Yes, it's difficult to stand up to powerful and wealthy special interests, but across the country there are mayors and superintendents showing precisely this type of courage.

For example, in Harrison County, Colo., school officials worked with their teachers union to put in place an "effectiveness and results" pay plan that uses educators' classroom performance - rather than simply their seniority - to make school placement decisions and salary increase determinations.

In Cleveland, Oh., public school leaders did away with the outmoded salary scale that gives raises based on only on tenure and college coursework and replaced it with a more modern system that gives raises based on performance and specialized qualifications. The Cleveland contract also changes how layoffs and recalls are handled, with performance and qualifications taking precedence over seniority.

In Washington, D.C., where I was chancellor, IMPACT teacher evaluations are among the strongest in the country and have helped that school district go from the worst urban district in the country to the one making the biggest gains in student achievement.

In Newark and Hillsborough, N.J., teachers receiving an "unsatisfactory" or "needs improvement" rating will not be eligible for salary increases for the next school year or for any pay raise until they receive an overall satisfactory evaluation.

San Jose also chose to deny automatic raises to unsatisfactory performers.

The contract governing educators in a group of schools run by Green Dot, in Los Angeles, calls for teachers to devote the necessary time and effort to fulfill their professional obligations. Though high-performing teachers typically work long, unpredictable hours, traditional teacher contracts both set strict limits on hours and are extremely prescriptive about what responsibilities can be assigned within those limited work days.

This civil-service approach leads to significant negative outcomes, from parents having two-minute conferences with teachers, to new teachers being told not to work late because it will make veterans look bad. Green Dot's simple language has helped transform the culture of teaching at these schools.

Each of these gains in the contract happened with unions and districts working collaboratively.

These are just some of the ideas that could have been replicated in New York City to benefit students. And a nine-year agreement with generous salary increases would have been the exact right mechanism to do it.

Bob McManus of the Post also hammered the deal today, calling it "catastrophic" for the city, though he was focused more on the cost and the little in "health care savings" that he wanted out of it.

While I think there is much to dislike about the agreement, this much is true:

Salary steps are preserved and continued, unlike in some teachers contracts around the country in the last few years.

In fact, had Christine Quinn won the election, you can bet she would have pushed for a contract that eliminated automatic salary step increases and promoted so-called "performance pay" as the primary mechanism for raises.

Same goes for Anthony Weiner - who also said he would push for city employees to be part of a universal city health care system and force teachers to pay "at least 10% of their health care premiums."

The UFT even put out a trial balloon last year about what a contract without automatic step increases might look like through Unity caucus member and Ed in the Apple blogger, Peter Goodman, something I posted about in March 2013. 

While this de Blasio contract has a merit pay proposal in it, it doesn't replace steps as the primary mechanism for salary increases and while it does call for some fuzzy notion of health care savings, both the city and the UFT claim that teachers will not be paying part of their salary toward health care.

I've seen some criticism around the Internet that claims this is the worst deal ever, Bloomberg's wet dream, etc., but the truth is, it's not even the kind of deal that Quinn or Weiner would have sought, let alone Bloomberg or Rhee.

By all means, scrutinize and criticize the deal, point out the problems with the delayed compensation, the "retro pay" that isn't really retro pay at all, the merit pay stipulation, the ATR changes and the 200 schools that can dispense with parts of the contract if 65% of their staffs agree to it.

But don't overdo it because this UFT/de Blasio deal is nowhere near as bad as some deals we've seen around the country recently (like the one Rhee lists), nor is it anywhere near as bad as what you might have seen had Quinn or Weiner been elected.

That doesn't mean I think it's a good deal - I think there are major problems with it and I know why people are pissed about it.

But make no mistake, it could have been a lot worse than it is, as Rhee points out in her Daily News piece, and I think it's important to take that into account as you talk to your colleagues about it.

How The Chinese Rig Their PISA Scores - And Why It Doesn't Matter Anyway

The next time some education reformer type spews alarmist clap trap around the PISA scores, you can lay this on them:

Chinese experts are also less impressed than Truss by the Pisa scores. "Even though Shanghai students scored well on the test, this doesn't mean that Shanghai's education system doesn't have any problems," said Lao Kaisheng, a professor in the education department of Beijing Normal University. "In fact, it's the opposite."

As long as China's education system remains vast but resource-constrained, Lao added, its schools will default to testing as a reliable indicator of competence. "The education system here puts a heavy emphasis on rote memorisation, which is great for students' test-taking ability but not for their problem-solving and leadership abilities or their interpersonal skills," he said. "Chinese schools just ignore these things."

According to an analysis of the rankings, the children of Shanghai's cleaners and caterers are three years more advanced than UK lawyers' and doctors' children in maths. Yet the figures are an unreliable measure of equality. Although Shanghai's 23 million people make up less than 2% of China's population, its per capita GDP is more than double the national average; its college enrolment rate is four times as high.

Furthermore, nearly half of Shanghai's school-age children belong to migrant families and were effectively barred from taking the test: because of China's residence registration system, these students are forced to attend high school in their home provinces, where schools are often debilitatingly understaffed. Although students from 12 provinces took the test in 2009, the government only shared Shanghai's scores.

"The OECD has not disclosed if other Chinese provinces secretly took part in the 2012 assessment. Nor have Pisa officials disclosed who selected the provinces that participated," wrote Tom Loveless, an education expert at Harvard University, on a Brookings Institute blog. "There is a lack of transparency surrounding Pisa's relationship with China."

In short, the Chinese PISA scores are rigged and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) help them to hide the chicanery - here's more from Tom Loveless:

Shanghai is portrayed as a paragon of equity in PISA publications. A 2010 OECD publication, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education, highlights model systems that the world should emulate. Shanghai is singled out for praise. One section on Shanghai is entitled, “Ahead of the pack in universal education.” The city is described as an “education hub,” and the only discussion that even remotely touches upon migrants is the following:

 “Graduates from Shanghai’s institutions are allowed to stay and work in Shanghai, regardless of their places of origin. For that reason, many  ’education migrants now move to Shanghai mainly to educate their children.’ “[2]

That description is surreal. PISA’s blindness to what is really going on in Shanghai was also evident in the official release of PISA’s latest scores. The 2012 data appear in volumes organized by themes. Volume II is entitled, PISA 2012 Results: Excellence through Equity, Giving Every Student the Chance to Succeed. Shanghai is named as one jurisdiction where schools “achieve high mathematics performance without introducing greater inequities in education outcomes (p. 28)” and one with “above average socio-economic diversity (p. 30).” In the 336 pages of this publication on equity, the word “migrant” appears only once, in a discussion of Mexico. The word “hukou” does not appear at all.

The OECD responded to Loveless' criticism by saying he is relying on old stereotypes of Shanghai, that things have changed there and migrant families are able to send their children to high school in Shanghai rather than having to send them back to schools in their home provinces.

But Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post countered that rebuttal with this:

I asked Post reporters who have covered China about Shanghai, and they said that despite the 2008 change in Shanghai policy, things have improved slightly for migrant families but not very much. Children who do not have Shanghai registration can now in theory get into Shanghai public schools, but only through very complicated and often arduous means that require either a brilliant kid, valuable inside connections or bribe money. (See this Washington Post story that talks about how Chinese parents pay bribes to get their children into top schools.) And while  the government recently announced that the hukou registration system is going to be reformed in the next few years, this does not mean families can suddenly get registered in big cities such as Shanghai.

So bear all this in mind the next time you see a statement like this:

If we don’t emulate China by establishing common nationwide education standards and implementing even more standardized testing, we will fall behind internationally. So goes the argument of Common Core advocates like Michelle Rhee.

“You need to reframe the debate,” Rhee said, speaking to Florida lawmakers in May. “This is about China kicking our butts. Do you want China to kick out butts? No!”

Even if the Chinese PISA scores were accurate - which they do not seem to be  - writer Mitchell Blatt calls into question the lessons Rhee claims we can take from them:

China’s education system is uniquely positioned to produce students who will do well on tests. It’s based on national standards, the knowledge of which is evaluated in a series of nationwide tests. Before entering high school, students take the zhong kao — the high school entrance exam — and before entering college, students study non-stop for a year to take the gao kao — the college entrance exam. Schooling is based heavily on tests and rote memorization.

So it’s no surprise that China did well on PISA.

The important question to ask is, Is China creating a competitive, innovative economy?
China has 19 percent of the world’s population, but in 2011, China only accounted for 9 percent of the world’s share of patent applications. The United States, by contrast, has 4 percent of the world’s population but accounted for 26.7 percent of the world’s patent applications in 2011, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

In China, the use of standards has fostered a high-pressure system that kills creativity.
“When [my son] Star was young, he was very imaginative,” Frank Chen, director of Asian operations for OnSpeX, said. “Now, he appears to be losing his creativity.”

“If he writes whatever he wants in an essay, he will get a bad grade, because the teachers do not like it. But there’s nothing to do about it. I want him to go to a good college. The teachers get bonuses if he goes to a good college.”

Because a student’s performance on the college entrance exam determines which college he goes to, teachers teach to the test, and there is a greater emphasis on memorization than on learning.

This is stifling creative innovation. After Steve Jobs died, Jobs’ biography became a best-seller in China. Chinese people asked the question, “Why doesn’t China have its own Steve Jobs?”

Former Google China CEO Kai-Fu Lee said on Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblog, that China’s education system has prevented China from developing such innovators.

It is a folly to think that raising America’s international test scores will automatically improve America’s education quality or economic competitiveness. A paper by Christopher H. Tienken, an assistant professor at Seton Hall University, notes: “According to the World Economic Forum (Schwab 2009), the United States has ranked either 1st or 2nd consistently in economic competitiveness since 1998. … Keep in mind that that U.S. students never scored in the top two spots on any international test during this same period or any prior time.”

An analysis by Keith Baker, a retired researcher for the Department of Education, found that when comparing the United States to countries that outscored us on the FIMS test, the U.S., on average, outranked those countries in the categories of economic growth, quality of life, livability, democracy, and creativity.

Moreover, even if we do make scoring higher on international tests a goal of education reform, Common Core isn’t the right way to do it.

“There is no strong, or even mild, correlation — and certainly not a cause-and-effect relationship — between national standards and national performance on international tests,” Tienken’s report notes.

Right now, the Chinese are discussing how to make China’s education system less reliant on standardized tests and rote memorization. If Michelle Rhee really wants to learn from China, she should look to Chinese reformers. As they know, standardization doesn’t build a globally competitive workforce.

Whether China is cheating on the PISA or not, the United States should not be trying to emulate an education system that is plagued by inequity, stifles creativity, and creates such high pressure on students, parents and teachers that nobody feels safe enough to, as the cliche goes, "think outside the box" and try something different, innovative or new.

Adding A 5th Reason To Why Kaya Henderson Won't Be NYCDOE Chancellor

Valerie Strauss lists four reasons why she thinks DCPS chancellor Kaya Henderson won't be NYCDOE chancellor despite rumors that her name is on Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio's short list for the job.

The four reasons are 1) Henderson's staunch support of charter schools 2) Henderson's emphasis on standardized tests as the most important measure of educational achievement 3) her antagonism toward the union and 4) her dismissal of class size as an important component of reform.

I would add a fifth reason - Henderson's part in the Michelle Rhee testing scandal in DC.

When Rhee was allegedly informed about widespread allegations of cheating at DCPS schools, Henderson's was said to be present.

Both Rhee and Henderson deny ever having been told about widespread cheating allegations.

So far, the news media has seemed complacent to let that cheating story die without checking much into Rhee's or Henderson's stories.

If Henderson is offered the NYCDOE chancellor job, that cheating allegation story will resurface and get much more rigorous coverage from the media this time around.

I bet that's something that neither Henderson's old boss and pal in crime, Michelle Rhee, nor Henderson herself want.

I bet it's something the education reform establishment doesn't want either.

The Myth Of Michelle Rhee must not be exposed.

No Wonder De Blasio Didn't Want An Open Process For The Chancellor Pick

With the news that Bill de Blasio's team may have reached out to Michelle Rhee acolyte/DCPS chancellor Kaya Henderson to interview her for the NYCDOE chancellor position, we now can see why he got snarky yesterday over his flip flop on having an open process to pick the chancellor.

To recap, De Blasio said the following about picking a chancellor last year:

He said at a mayoral forum a year ago that schools chancellor candidates must undergo a “serious public screening...We need a chancellor who is presented to the public, not just forced down our throat.”

This week he said:

But Monday, as he mulls his own schools chancellor pick, he said there would be no “beauty contest” where finalists for the job are publicly identified and scrutinized. The change angered some education advocates.

“I want to be very blunt about this. That was clearly a reference to an unfortunate chapter in our city’s history related to Cathie Black,” de Blasio said of his earlier comments. “And I am going to ensure that we will never have a situation like that on my watch.”

...

“We are talking to a number of individuals who have extraordinary careers in education,” de Blasio said. “This is an open process in the sense that any name could be put forward, and names are being looked at that clearly have extraordinary educational credentials. So there’s not going to be a Cathie Black situation here.”

A reporter pressed de Blasio on how a public screening could be possible if the public is not informed of who the candidates are. An irritated-sounding de Blasio replied only: “I’m defining what I was saying then and what I’m saying now.”

With Henderson's name surfacing in a Times article about the chancellor search, it turns out de Blasio was quite right - "any name could be put forward."

Henderson's is the kind of name you wouldn't expect from a candidate for mayor who ran on turning back the clock on the standardized test-based school system that uses test scores as bludgeons against students, teachers and schools.

I must admit, I have a little skepticism that Henderson really was interviewed for the chancellor gig.

But with de Blasio already flip flopping on having an open process to choose the next chancellor, it is quite possible that he is set to flip flop on the kind of chancellor he wants to run the system and the kind of system he wants to run.

And if this is the kind of person he is interviewing for the chancellor job, then I can see why he would want no public scrutiny.

Did De Blasio Interview Kaya Henderson To Be The Next NYCDOE Chancellor?

On the heels of Bill de Blasio's flip flop over wanting an open process for the picking of the chancellor comes this doozy from the NY Times:

In recent weeks, Mr. de Blasio and his team have reached out to Dr. Starr, the superintendent of the Montgomery County school district, and Kaya Henderson, chancellor of the Washington school system, say people close to Dr. Starr and Ms. Henderson. It was unclear whether the calls were to gauge their interest or to merely solicit advice.

...

 Ms. Henderson is considered friendly to the kind of policies endorsed by Mr. Bloomberg — she was once a deputy to Michelle A. Rhee, the hard-charging former chancellor of Washington schools. But she is considered more of a peacemaker than her predecessor and an agile negotiator with the teachers’ union. A spokeswoman said Tuesday that Ms. Henderson was traveling and unavailable for comment.

It doesn't matter if de Blasio was interviewing Henderson for a possible hiring as the next chancellor or simply soliciting advice from her.

As the deputy to Michelle Rhee at DCPS, as one of the key ed deformers who has pushed test score-based schooling and teacher evaluations, either interviewing her for a job or soliciting advice from her is problematic in my eyes.

I wrote last night that de Blasio's flip flop on the chancellor pick process was a troubling sign for what may come in a de Blasio mayorality.

If de Blasio reached out to Kaya Henderson for either reason - to interview her for the DOE job or just to ask her advice about something or somebody else - it's another troubling sign.

That's a big if, of course.

This story could just be one of those "planted" things by some DFER or Eva Moskowitz ally looking to stir things up.

Nonetheless, I think it is important to warn de Blaiso publicly that holding Henderson in anything other than contempt for her education record and policies is unacceptable.

One good thing might result if he does tap Henderson to be chancellor, however.

She might finally get some scrutiny for the cheating scandal in DC she helped quash, along with her boss at the time, Michelle Rhee.

Why Isn't Michelle Rhee Getting Scrutiny In The Calderon Scandal?

Cosmo Garvin:

Everything connected to the Calderon political family is getting media scrutiny now, since state Sen. Ron Calderon was named in an FBI affidavit, made public by the Al Jazeera America news organization, alleging the Montebello Democrat took bribes from undercover agents. One Sacramento Bee follow-up story looked at allegations that Calderon and his brother Tom Calderon, a lobbyist and former state assemblyman, used a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization to receive money from the Latino Caucus, in exchange for Ron’s support in a leadership dispute.

Several other stories have looked at the Calderon’s willingness to carry water for an array of special interests, including Hollywood, Indian gaming and the payday-loan industry, among others.

But the Sacramento daily press has ignored the connection between Calderon and Sacramento’s own Michelle Rhee.

Rhee, of course, is the wife of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, and a controversial figure in education policy. Her Sacramento-based StudentsFirst organization has lobbied for a particular flavor of corporate-backed education reform.

As reported in Al Jazeera—which was first to publish the FBI affidavit—StudentsFirst last year plowed nearly $400,000 into the successful Assembly campaign of Ian Calderon, son of former legislator Charles Calderon, eldest brother of Tom and Ron. On February 21, according to the Al Jazeera report, StudentsFirst lobbyists met with lobbyist Tom. The next day, brother Ron introduced legislation to change the way teachers are evaluated, part of the StudentsFirst legislative agenda.

Given Rhee’s status in Sacramento and the city’s prominent place in the education-reform movement, the Al Jazeera story raises all sorts of interesting questions. Like, why are we reading about this in Al Jazeera instead of in the Bee?

Nothing Michelle Rhee or her husband, Kevin Johnson, do ever seems to get serious srcutiny in the "serious" media.

Cheating scandal in D.C.?

Nah, we don't feel like checking into that story.

Letter showing Rhee knew there was widespread cheating going on?

Nah, we don't feel like checking into that story.

Evidence that KJ is a sexual predator?

Nah, we don't feel like checking into that story.

Evidence that Rhee's lobbying group bribed a a state legislator through his brother.

Nah, we don't feel like checking into that story.

It's like she's got Kryptonite around her.

Gates Foundation-funded Kryptonite.