Right-Wing Jibber-Jabber on Education

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."