Let the Reprogramming Commence!
Well, seems like everyone has something to say about Michelle Rhee these days, here’s Dean Shareski, there goes Doug Noon, and Chris Lehmann has some nice things to add. We even have some pushback from Dan Meyer.
I’d love to share my own thoughts about the ridiculousness of Rhee’s tone, ideas, and her preference to respond to emails rather than people who are right in front of her, but it would just be icing on the cake. I’ve already shared my doubts about the effectiveness of putting all of your eggs in the bubble test basket, but other issues are rising to the fore.
Unfortunately, I found out that my school did not make its AYP goals, so we are now advancing up to Year 3 of Program Improvement. It’s a long story involving the new Modified Assessment (CMA) scores for special education kids which the state didn’t have factored in until November.
Program Improvement Year 3 requires “intervention” so our site has to submit a plan for our own “improvement”. I think we’re on the right path, the big problem last year was that we were not as “tight” in our interventions and execution with some of our kids, and we were still too “program” focused (on a marginal Language Arts and Mathematics program), rather than being centered on the standards. We’re all pretty keen on planning, analyzing, so this wouldn’t be a big deal, BUT, that is just purgatory, hell is a couple floors lower. Remember this recent post where we were going spend a bunch of carry-over (unspent) money on technology to improve our instructional practices? Well, with the recent budget woes in California, my district is freezing all spending, so the order is kaput. We’d LOVE to put the integration of technology in our “improvement plan” but we’ve been instructed to think of improvements that don’t cost anything. Of course, part of why my particular district is in such pain is because a local charter school owes the district a million in unpaid rent, and hey, that’s the same darn charter operator that Michelle Rhee is on the Board of Directors of! Did I mention she came out to Sacramento to advise new elected mayor Kevin Johnson as part of his transition team? There may be a reason why she has to manage by Blackberry.
Back when I wrote this post, Dan Meyer thought I was snide about Michelle Rhee. Frankly, I was sharing how she described her first year of teaching, but I’m guessing he didn’t appreciate how fond Michelle Rhee is of sarcasm herself, and that was part of the why I took that tact. I don’t fault Dan for this, because it shows what a nice, well-mannered guy he can be, and he obviously didn’t know how nasty Michelle Rhee is. I think this only reinforces Chris Lehmann‘s point that older/more senior educators are wary of deals and people like Rhee for a reason, they’ve seen stuff like that before.
Well, looks like I wrote that Michelle Rhee rant anyway!
Interesting that there appears to be an age distinction here on this issue. I’m not sure what to make of that or if it matters. Just an observation.
Hmm, well Dan didn’t like her attitude, he just didn’t like mine a couple months ago, or your points now (look at his first comment where he talks about her false dichotomies, and yours). I’m not sure I’m crazy about your points, which I’ll post about in a bit, so that’s not an age split but may speak to some of the race/class differences in the school populations all three of us teach. He is less questioning of tests as a metric, which may or may not be about his age and social class, or may be more about his discipline.
In the end, we all seem to agree that Rhee has the wrong tone and temperament for her position, we just disagree about the answers.
Dan and I still disagree about snarkiness; although I will note he is plenty sarcastic about edubloggers when it suits him. I will agree I was much snottier about Michelle Rhee than he has ever achieved, but she is a politician, and is engaged in negative campaigning. My characterization of her would be MILD on a political blog, but doesn’t that say nice things about edublogging?
If Michelle Rhee was advising anyone with any pull over schools in my area, I’d be plenty wary, and not too nice about refuting anything she has to say – regardless of tone or temperament. Someone needs to talk back to this nonsense, and that falls on teacher bloggers because the media has been taken for ride, convincing everyone that multiple choice tests are going to help us bubble our way toward academic achievement.
Alaska has had a merit pay system for a few years. The whole staff of any “successful” school gets to share a bonus of up to $5,000 bucks per person. Does this sound motivating? Nobody cares about it. We didn’t ask for it, and we don’t want it. But the state commissioner pushed it through, anyway. What good is an incentive that nobody wants? When the carrots don’t work, we have people like Rhee to bring in the big stick.
Not only will it not work, control through intimidation is wrong.
There has been a LONG, strange history in Sacramento, and Sacramento City Unified School District with St. Hope Foundation/Kevin Johnson and his charter schools. They run two small schools that serve a rather marginal number of students (some of whom aren’t even in the district), but they love writing pieces on the editorial page saying that they have the answer to urban school reform. They “lost” control of the school board when we switched over to district rather than at-large election of trustees this November. The only bully pulpit they have is the fact that Kevin Johnson is mayor. He has no direct control over the schools, and no authority there, BUT he is being swept in as the “agent of change”. He is no Barack Obama and not just because he has no previous elected experience, but more importantly he is a celebrity, not an organizer. If he was, he would have done as former Mayor Joe Serna did when he wanted to reform the schools, and run a slate of candidates. He has a very magnetic personality, and is the local hero who came back to do good, and that is his only playing card. I think he’s going to have a lot on his plate with running the city, but he’s ambitious and may seek out more glory in reforming schools. I’ll have to wait and see. I started in Oakland, which has been taken over the by the state, and is still dysfunctional. The first school I taught in has already been reconstituted, and may be shut-down.