Michele Rhee's own contract betrays her rhetoric

Earlier this month, discredited advocate of corporate education reform, Michele Rhee, was invited to speak at Kent State University. Her contract for participating in this event has now been leaked, and its quite the eye opener. It seems, rather than putting "StudentsFirst", Ms Rhee likes to put herself first.

On top of the $35,000 speaking fee, she also requested up to another $5,000 for a first class plane ticket, VIP hotel suite, coverage for all “incidentals” and a “town car” driven by a “professional”.

As one education blog notes, that's more money that a lot of teachers get for a whole years worth of work. But the story doesn't really end there

I’m not an attorney, just a simple education professor. But I will say that the proceeds, excessive as they are, are apparently going to something called Rhee Enterprises, LLC and care of a creative artists agency. So, like a talent agent? I mean, I get it: you make huge bank on the road as some hard-ass former education czar whose ideas have been debunked on numerous occasions. I guess you’re going to need someone to manage your “talent.” But, this whole LLC thing: it’s operated by her brother. So then Rhee Enterprises, which is really funny by the way, needs to pay her brother for managing the whole show. What’s his cut? Hey, wait, what are the students getting out of this? I thought they were first? I don’t know, reeks of nepotism to me, but I don’t know the family situation there.

Rhee would have everyone believe that merit pay is the way forward, and such systems would never lead to any kind of favoritism, nepotism or corrupt bargaining, yet as can been seen quite plainly, that's not how she operates her very own business, a business she claims puts "StudentsFrist".

Here's the Kent State Contract

Rhee Contract

Why won’t Ms. Rhee talk to USA Today?

Michele Rhee has suddenly gone tight lipped

It’s hard to find a media outlet, big or small, that she hasn’t talked to. She’s been interviewed by Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Oprah Winfrey. She’s been featured on a Time magazine cover holding a broom (to sweep away bad teachers). She was one of the stars of the documentary “Waiting for Superman.” ... And yet, as voracious as she is for the media spotlight, Ms. Rhee will not talk to USA Today.
[...]
On May 2, another Rhee spokeswoman e-mailed to say the reporters were too interested in cheating and not enough in StudentsFirst. She said they could submit a list of questions.

There were 21 questions; Ms. Rhee did not answer 10 of the 11 about cheating.

Mr. Gillum, who recently took a job at The Associated Press, said he was surprised by how unresponsive Ms. Rhee has been. “She talks about how important data is, and our story is data driven,” he said.

The whole article sheds an enormous amount of light on the shady way Michele Rhee and her "StudentsFirst" organization operates.

Michele Rhee, stranger to the truth

Here's Michele Rhee. In her own words and voice

"In fact the children that are in school today will be the first generation of Americans who will be less educated than their parents were"

Ahem.

That's the longitudinal student performance trend in NAEP reading average scores for 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students.

That's the longitudinal student performance trend in NAEP mathematics average scores for 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students.

Those are not difficult graphs to read, and neither show any declines for current students vs their parents performance, in fact - it's the opposite. Why Rhee wants to lie about the data in order to fire teachers is a mystery only she can answer - but that is her agenda, and it is not supported by the facts.

Michele Rhee architected parts of SB5

Michele's Rhee's reputation was already a little shaky amongst educators, as she pushed a partisan and deceptive corporate education reform agenda, but now that reputation must be in tatters on the news that she and her nascent organization "StudentsFirst" employed lobbyists in Ohio to architect major parts of SB5 and the SB5 provisions in the budget bill.

Between January and April of 2011, StudentsFirst employed Robert Klaffky, the president of firm Van Meter, Ashbrook & Associates and a close adviser to Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) to help push various aspects of education policy.

If the name Robert Klaffky sounds familiar, it's because he was featured in an Disptach article only this weekend, frontpage headlined "Kasich friends in high demand - 3 who have long been advisers to governor become top lobbyists".

Almost every Thursday during the 2010 campaign, Kasich's closest advisers, including Klaffky and Preisse, met at Thibaut's house to strategize. After Kasich's victory, candidates for his cabinet trooped to Thibaut's house to be vetted.

The details of Klaffky's lobbying are laid out in a HuffingtonPost report

In particular, the group, established by Rhee after she left the D.C. school system following then-Mayor Adrian Fenty's defeat, had Klaffky work on SB5, the infamous anti-collective bargaining bill passed into law but already facing the likelihood of referendum.
[...]

How much work StudentsFirst actually did on SB5 is not entirely clear. While Klaffky said he was tasked with putting language into the controversial bill, Hobson insisted that the group's primary focus was on the budget, HB153. The reason SB5 was put on the lobbying disclosure, she said, was because Klaffky simply discussed the matter with StudentFirst officials.

That explanation, however, appeared to contradict local reports, which had Rhee personally asking Kasich to include performance pay for teachers in SB5. It also did little to win over critics of Rhee, who argued that the former chancellor's willingness to work with the likes of the Ohio governor gave him the type of cover needed to make sweeping changes to the collective bargaining law. Adding amendments to the bill, the logic goes, inherently supports the bill.

"It now turns out that Michelle Rhee hired a close friend of the governor to lobby in favor of SB5," said Piet van Lier, head of Policy Matters Ohio who has worked on education in Ohio and opposes SB5. "This bill would require merit pay and test-based evaluations for teachers, neither of which has solid research support as a way to improve schools."

There should be no educator in the country now in any doubt about Rhee's corporate, partisan "reform" agenda and her disdain for public school teachers.