Rhee-ality check

You know a report titled "Rhee-ality check: the Failure of Students First" is going to be interesting, and indeed it is, opening with

Since its launch two years ago, StudentsFirst has made bold predictions about the organization’s impact on education policy, and what it will accomplish across the country.

This is the first report of its kind to examine whether this education advocacy group founded by Michelle Rhee has made progress toward its key goals. Gathered here for the first time is a body of evidence, data, and analysis showing that Students First has given its donors and supporters a poor return on their investment.

StudentsFirst has failed to live up to expectations in four main areas: fundraising, leadership, electoral politics, and grassroots organizing. These failures are described in detail below. A national education advocacy group with such a track record of ineffectiveness is not what Rhee’s investors signed up for.

Here's the full report

Rhee-ality check: the Failure of Students First

This report seems to fit in with a previous post, "THE END OF MICHELLE RHEE?", given how ineffective the organization she has created truly is.

Education News for 10-12-2012

State Education News

• Superintendent evaluation process varies (Hamilton Journal-News)

While Race to the Top and other education reform movements are putting an emphasis on teacher and principal evaluations, there is no uniform method for evaluating superintendents…Read more...

• CTC programs take students from classroom to workforce (Portsmouth Daily Times)

The Scioto County Career Technical Center has changed faces since its old days as “VoTech,” with a significant growth…Read more...

Local Education News

• Former Cleveland schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett to take over top post in Chicago (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard stepped down Thursday after a little more than a year in the post, a spokeswoman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel said…Read more...

• Levy failure would result in loss of up to 20 teachers (Lorain Morning Journal)

Failure of Amherst schools 4.9-mill levy, Issue 28, would mean up to 20 more teaching positions would be eliminated, Superintendent Steve Sayers said…Read more...

• Nonstudents enter LaBrae High, triggering a lockdown of school (Youngstown Vindicator)

LaBrae High School was on lockdown for 90 minutes Thursday morning after three young men walked into the school who were not students there and were noticed by a teacher…Read more...

Editorial

• Access denied (Akron Beacon Journal)

State agencies catch grief for layers of bureaucracy that waste time and money. Many times, the problem originates with the General Assembly. Ohio’s Statewide Student Identifier system…Read more...

Double down on failure

No Child Left Behind introduced the idea of high stakes education. Few today doubt it's failure.

More Americans think the No Child Left Behind Act, which has governed federal education grants to public schools for a decade, has made education worse rather than better, by 29% to 16%. Thirty-eight percent say NCLB hasn't made much of a difference, while 17% are not familiar enough with the law to rate it.

That rejection is across all demographic groups.

People know failure when they see it. But, rather than re-evaluate the consequences of pushing for ever higher stakes, corporate education reformers have doubled down.

We haven't even begun most efforts, but we've already lost the State Superintendent to scandal, have delayed critical school report cards because of an invesitgation into erasures, have an evaluation system few are going to be able to figure out - let alone implement, a voucher privatization scheme few parents have been interest in, and all in an environment of massive and reackless budget cuts, and appointments of college quarterbacks with no education background to the State Board of Education.

School 'reforms' are doomed to failure

Another great piece from Thomas M. Stephens

The governor and legislators' micromanagement reveals (once more) their cluelessness about how to improve public schools; after mandating this bad joke, they assigned its operation to the State Board of Education.

This would be fine and dandy, if it were based on any reasonable chance of success. Instead, it's a Hail Mary, a desperate move by self- appointed "reformers" who have helped bring urban schools to their knees and who now call for more charter schools as replacements. Soon both teachers and their students' parents will be labeled failures.

There are no secrets as to why many urban schools need help, or how to improve them. For the most part, achievement tests are measures of the socioeconomic status of students and their families. The urban poor face inequalities, often at conception, and too many persist into adulthood. Sure, good public schools can help, but the metrics now being used give a false picture of their efforts.

[readon2 url="http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2011/05/14/school-reforms-are-doomed-to-failure.html?sid=101"]Continue reading...[/readon2]