Comments on: Candor We Can Believe In

By: Efavorite

Efavorite — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:08:55 +0000

Hello, again – there’s another example of Michelle Rhee’s candor that you should know about. She’s written a letter to DC city Council Chair Vincent Gray in which she acknowledges that the teacher who had “sex with children” is not listed on the police report Gray requested. There’s much more to it, which you should read yourself – closely – for consistency and understanding – and then decide if she’s living up to your definition of “candor we can believe in.”

Here’s Rhee’s 2/12/10 letter to city council

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/documents/rheegrayletter.pdf?sid=ST2010021905212

Here’s a 2/20/10 Washington Post article on the subject
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021905150.html

And here’s the comments section to the article where you’ll see me and many others trying to figure out what the Chancellor is trying to say.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021905150_Comments.html

By: Geraldine Vazguez

Geraldine Vazguez — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:21:57 +0000

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By: Efavorite

Efavorite — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:13:42 +0000

Slander We Can Believe In?

Rhee is now saying DC teachers RIFd in October hit and had sex with children. She said this in an interview with Jeff Chu of Fast Company magazine, who originally wrote very favorably about Rhee in a July’08 profile in the same magazine. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/128/the-iron-chancellor.html

Her latest justification for the RIF is in the Feb 1 2010 print edition and is online now:

“I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school, Rhee says.”Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?”
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/142/update-dc-report-card.html

There’s also a Washington Post article about it that came out Friday. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204543.html
Please check out some of the nearly 300 readers’ comments to get a feel for local opinions about Rhee and to get access to referenced, factual information.

So far, Rhee isn’t talking. Nor is the police department as they look for reports on child abuse and molestation that school officials are required by law to submit. The US attorney’s office is involved.

Please stay tuned and if the facts that come out affect your stated opinion about Rhee, please report that here. The stakes are too high not to get this right.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcschools/2010/01/sex_with_students.html#comments

By: Efavorite

Efavorite — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:14:25 +0000

Rhee is NOT candid about data.

In all Michelle Rhee’s crowing about DC’s improved NAEP math scores, she left out the fact that if you don’t count 4th grade white kids (who have the highest scores in the nation) then the gains are only 3 points instead of 8 points. She didn’t mention that 8th scores are flat (not enough white kids in the system in 8th grade to count) She also left out that the achievement gap has widened on her watch.

This information is available to anyone who reads the official report. It’s also laid out in a recent Washington Post article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/12/AR2009121201276.html and additional details are available on this blog, written by a retired DCPS math teacher http://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/

Now I don’t blame Rhee for these disappointing scores, but I do definitely blame her for actively misleading the public about her success. And I blame journalists for telegraphing the story because they’ve simply decided, without ever personally checking the data, that Rhee is data-driven and candid.

Please don’t ever do it again – there’s too much at stake.

By: Efavorite

Efavorite — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:46:25 +0000

If Rhee were so candid, you would think she’d mention the low grades her schools system got from the Center for American Progress.

http://images2.americanprogress.org/CAP/2009/11/leaders_laggards/state_report_cards/district-of-columbia-report-card.pdf
School Management D
Finance C
Staffing: Hiring & Evaluation B
Staffing: Removing Ineffective Teachers F
Data F
Pipeline to Postsecondary No grade
Technology D
State Reform Environment ?

Read it – she’s especially bad in providing data – without which, it’s hard to be candid.

By: P-Fix Highlights: Growth, Equity, & Fiscal Responsibility | Progressive Fix

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:11:10 +0000

[...] Rhee is adamant about putting the needs of Washington’s public school children, who are overwhelmingly poor and minority, above the interests of adults in the District’s political-educational complex who resist fundamental changes in a system that’s manifestly failing. Read more… [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:31:27 +0000

Michelle Rhee, DCPS, and Mayor Fenty are found by the courts to be correct and the WTU (Teachers’ Union) “failed to provide any evidence” to support their allegations of illegal firings that were in fact do to the Council’s cut to the DCPS budget. And, I quote Judge Bartnoff’s opinon: “At most, the plaintiff showed that a large number of teachers were hired in the spring and summer of 2009, which DCPS does not dispute. But the plaintiff presented no evidence to refute the evidence presented by DCPS that its budget included those new teachers at the time they were hired, as well as the returning teachers, that DCPS was planning for the new school year based on the budget that was passed in early June and its budget agreement with the Council Chairman, and that the RIF was instituted in response to the $21 million budget reduction enacted by the City Council on July 31.”

By: a.b.e.

a.b.e. — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:12:58 +0000

Yesterday, Rhee told a gathering of CEOs that the District suffers from a “complete and utter lack of accountability in this system.”

You should read the Washington Post’s stories about her since early September. It’s Rhee who is not being held accountable.

By: PhillipMarlowe

PhillipMarlowe — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:21:36 +0000

I believe it was a member of the Nixon administration who uttered the statement: Watch what we do, not what we say.
And when one does that with Mrs. Rhee, she does not look good.
She started her career on a myth, while at Harlem PArk ES, a privately run public school in Baltimore City, that during her 2nd and 3rd years of teaching, she took the same group of students from the 13th percentile in gr.2 to 90% of them scoring at the 90th percentile at the end of 3rd grade.
A miracle, no doubt.
But not one that is retold to the Teachers For America trainees. No, if Michelle could do it, so can you.
On the same resume, Mrs., Rhee claimed that she was written up in the Hartford Courant, the Wall Street Journal and featured on the Home Show.
No one has found these treasured clippings.
http://www.dcpswatch.com/mayor/070312b.htm

As the principal said:

The school leader said her instructors, “especially the experienced ones, see this new regime as a type of cult of the true believers. Don’t question what they do since they have all the answers.”

It matters if Rhee’s hero tale is correct. Tales like that have created bogus ideas about low-income schools for the past forty years now. Unfortunately, Time sent an unschooled scribe to profile Rhee, and through some process or another, she vastly downsized Rhee’s long-standing claim—perhaps without even realizing. Last week, we asked her how this change had occurred. But in the world the Dionnes and Roses have built, you don’t really question “reformers.”

Meanwhile, low-income kids can go hang in the yard; our journalistic world is built around pleasing tales, not the real search for “reform.” Press elites have always found it pretty to believe pleasing tales like Rhee’s. For ourselves, we don’t believe her inspiring tale—and we think the search for real success will surely be hard, and quite long.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh121908.shtml

By: a.b.e.

a.b.e. — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:34:44 +0000

Will,

Before you defend Rhee anymore I think you ought to check out this:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-americorps20-2009nov20,0,41659,print.story