Michelle Rhee was on the Daily Show, flogging her line[1], and I'm paraphrasing here: "We can have great schools if we only can get those lazy dead-ass teachers to do their jobs".
You can see this here at part 1, part 2 and part 3. Oh, she gives lip service to the need for other social services, but let's face the truth of the matter: A child who is ill-housed, ill-clothed and ill-fed[2] is not going to be very receptive to even the greatest teachers. Jon Stewart kept trying to get her to address the point that the charter school movement is skimming off the cream and leaving the regular public schools as a dumping ground for the kids that are hard to teach, but she just danced and danced around the question.
It was insane. Rhee says she wants to free teachers to do their jobs, but she thinks that there has to be "metrics", which is code for "teach to the test." Which, as Stewart kept trying to point out, means that the kids are being taught to pass a test. For someone who says that she respects teachers, Rhee seems to spend a shitload of time bashing them.
Rhee is suffering from an advanced case of Hammer Syndrome.[3] If she is going to help fix the educational problem, she has to do more than give lip service to the problems that affect children's inabilities to do well in school. As Stewart tried to point out to her, you can have great seeds, but if you cast them onto barren soil, good luck trying to get the plants to grow.
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[1] And her book.
[2] A child whose only decent meals are provided by the school system is going to be hard to educate.
[3] "When the only tool you have is a hammer, all of your problems tend to look like nails."
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5 comments:
I am scared by this 'idea' of turning schools into businesses. I never saw a problem with public education except for lack of money provided to the institution.
I got a decent education from the grade school system, junior high on was kind of 'theater' in Berkeley in the 60's, not the fault of the school system certainly. I graduated high school and some ten years later I went to the local junior college to become a certified auto mechanic.
What could the system have done privately except to charge me a lot of money?
My daughter went to a private college 11 years ago. We are still paying on her student loan and she has NO job skills to use.
Yea, lets privatize the whole school system so we can All be in debt!
Brilliant!
w3ski
Texas is trundling steadily down this path, with court ordered detours. Once again, the courts have held that the state isn't properly funding education, but we'll see what fan dance the anointed, sorry, elected, few do.
Now we have proposals for tax credits for businesses that offer scholarships to private or charter schools. It's a way to fund a religious school without running afoul of separation rules, and the credits reduce revenues to public schools.
Yea, about that 'reduced payment' thing. How can money be taken from public education for private? That makes No sense to me. Isn't private education supposed to be self funded?
Kinda like subsidies for the Oil Companies as well as miniscule to No taxes paid by such.
w3ski
I think you made a mistake in quoting the lady. I think she really said "free teachers".
Easy...they want "school choice". And the money from private education comes from the private sector, not government*. Therefore...
They are simply trying to kill public education like they stopped funding city pools when those "others" got allowed to swim more than once a year/month/week.
*The same type thing happens every 2 years when the State of Texas "balances" it's budget by moving some payments back into the next 2 year budget cycle.
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