Dear APS board: Go get Michelle Rhee
Whatever you think of the cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools, the system will probably need a new superintendent when Beverly Hall’s contract expires next summer. All indications are that Hall will leave then on her own, if she isn’t pushed out before.
For once, there’s a good solution waiting in Washington.
Her name is Michelle Rhee, and she’s been chancellor of the District of Columbia’s public schools for three years. Now, her tenure may be coming to an abrupt end after her sponsor, Mayor Adrian Fenty, lost his re-election bid earlier this month.
Let APS board members waste no time before trying to recruit her here.
Rhee is just 40 years old, but already she has built an impressive record of tackling the stasis that cripples too many public schools.
Most famously, last spring she fired 241 ineffective teachers, or about 5 percent of the district’s total, and put hundreds more on notice. She evaluated these teachers not just on whether students passed standardized tests but whether they made satisfactory progress.
That’s a fair way to refine the use of tests to judge teachers’ effectiveness, while still making clear that students’ results are ultimately what counts.
“This idea of no excuses, we’re going to raise expectations and standards and change the culture, I think that’s happening in D.C. and I think she deserves credit for that,” says Kevin Chavous, chairman of the reform-minded Black Alliance for Educational Options.
Some of those same notions of raising expectations and standards are already at work in APS, although the cheating scandal threatens to derail them. Right or wrong, Hall will always bear the stain of that scandal, but she has a worthy broader vision for improving urban education. That vision seems to fit well with Rhee’s.
So, Rhee wouldn’t be starting from scratch here. And because she had only three years in D.C. to pursue her reforms, the work-in-progress APS offers her a unique opportunity to continue proving that they work.
Dovetailing the good things that Hall did with the promise of Rhee’s ideas also offers an elegant way to bring together the two main factions regarding APS.
The camp that believed Hall’s work was too valuable to throw out because of the cheating scandal could be satisfied that a like-minded reformer would follow her.
The camp that thinks Hall must go because of the cheating scandal would be assured that the succession was under way.
Some of you may have read that Rhee’s leadership and inflexibility toward the teachers union in D.C. contributed to the mayor’s election loss. If so, why bring her to Atlanta?
Chavous, who lives in Washington, acknowledges Rhee let her office “become overly politicized during this campaign.”
But he also says, “I absolutely don’t think the election was as much about her as it was about the mayor. The mayor had lost touch with the voters.”
In Atlanta, Rhee would be accountable to the school board and surely could apply the lessons she learned in D.C.
Should Rhee leave Washington, Chavous predicts she will “have her pick of the litter, so to speak. I’m sure there are 10 to 15 school districts in America that would welcome her with open arms. It really comes down to where she wants to make her mark.” (Sure enough, Oprah Winfrey on Friday touted Rhee for the top job in the Newark, N.J., school system.)
Race to the Top? Let’s race to the Rhee.
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112 comments Add your comment
Politicians R Scum
September 25th, 2010
10:19 am
WHAT, HIRE RHEE AND DISRUPT THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM OF THE CITY OF ATLANTA? OH, THE NERVE OF SOME PEOPLE! MAKE IT SO.
J.B. STONER
September 25th, 2010
10:40 am
Rhee is not the answer ,nor should be an option…
I have told you how corrupt APS system is and will always be as long as control is a factor.
Continue to walk around with your blinders on (just like PBM does).
I’m laughing and can’t stop !!!!!!!
Politicians R Scum
September 25th, 2010
11:20 am
APS could do and does do much worse than my proposal: Replace all the math and science teachers with Asian students from Ga Tech. Pay them each to teach just one class per day, then return to Tech for their own advanced education. Within four years, math and science scores will increase by at least 20%, or I will admit I am wrong.
Eubieful O'sheet
September 25th, 2010
12:17 pm
Michelle Rhee lacks the one essential qualification for consideration for any government job in metro Atlanta – she is not an African-american.
Ability, desire, drive, initiative, potential – name any positive quality – all are secondary to epidural melanin content and heritage.
DC Mayor Fenty lost his re-election bid because he dared to hire a white female police chief and an Asian female school chief. Mayor Reed and other Atlanta politicians will not make the same mistake.
@@
September 25th, 2010
12:36 pm
I’ve been following Rhee’s career for some time. She’s very impressive. Her first and foremost concern are the children. A concern that, no doubt, stems from earliest years in teaching…Teach for America? It oughta be a requirement for anyone going into teaching. It’s the students who are most in need that should be every teacher’s focus.
There’s no way APS could lose with Rhee at the helm.
DawgDad
September 25th, 2010
1:39 pm
I live in an outlying county, but the problems with APS will affect all of us in the metro area for generations. The APS does not need an outsider (from DC no less, and someone touted by Oprah Winfrey!) to clean things up and run the system is effectively; the district, board, and administration need to be blown up, restructured, and rebuilt from the ground up, and run by responsible Georgians accountable to the district, city, and State taxpayers and citizens. To-date there has been virtually no accountability enforced for the massive teacher/administrator cheating scandal; the cheating has been institutionalized.
The State needs to step in and take over, restructure, establish board/administrator/teacher accountability, and turn the district back over to a new fairly elected local board. The plan needs to be defined and publicly communicated in advance in order for the responsible citizens and educators to jump on board and help champion its success.
I would fire Hall in a heartbeat and take my chances in court when she sues. She has failed to establish and maintain institutional control at the very core of the APS mission; if that isn’t grounds for immediate dismissal then go after the people that signed her contract for breach of fiduciary responsibility.
The zero tolerance policy that really matters is zero tolerance for any educator or board member not looking out for the kids above all else. A few years back we had a bad board memeber out here in Cherokee County; the County and citizens cleaned up the mess and got the system back on track very quickly.
josef nix
September 25th, 2010
2:41 pm
My jury is out on Rhee. I doubt seriously she’s all that she’s being cracked up to be. The big wigs seldom are.
My question is the same one being constantly asked in the teachers’ lounge. Why do we keep going somewhere else to recruit a superintendant? Are we incapable of producing our own? If that’s the case, then that tells you what the board thinks of its efforts. There are plenty of people quite capable of doing the job already here, already familiar with the local culture, the local problems and the local strengths. For the love of G-d, the reason the founding fathers refused to create a national public education system was because they felt it mete to leave the matter in local hands.
Just one, really rather trivial, instance of what it is I’m talking about. The first year Ole Missus was here, she didn’t close the schools on her first snow day, her Northeastern worldview showing. Instead, she put the children at risk. Talk to a bus driver about that day from hell. But it did show how out of touch with the local conditions she was and still is. She was informed by the locals why it was the schools should be closed. She just chose not to listen to the provencials, she knowing better. This is not a place for on the job training.
For the race baiters hereabouts—I should hope that in an 80% (whatever) system, 80% of the deadwood would be of that category.
Of course the best qualified person should be brought on and I would posit that those being bossed ought to have a considered vote in who that person is. They know the local pool better than anyone else. As an APS employee, I could come up with a list of contenders from my peers and coworkers who would do just as good, if not better, job than someone brought in here from outside.
Bottom line, the people making the decision haven’t the vaguest notion of what they’re talking about. We even have reps on the board who sent their own kids to private schools. The one who used to be my own (and my own school’s) “representative” used her position to have her own little white children enrolled in the best public school in the district when you could actually see the school full of little brown faces from her living room window. Never mind that the little white faces standardized test scores at her neighborhood school were higher than those she was sending her kids to. And BTW she was a Democrat elitist, not a GOP one.
Awful, Awful, Awful
September 25th, 2010
3:00 pm
Folks, lets get real……she’s not black. The APS can’t see anything but black. The only thing that’s gonna save the System is to replace everyone…..and that’s not gonna happen…..too much stupidity.
josef nix
September 25th, 2010
3:29 pm
Awful…
Replace everyone? I take that personally!
Seriously, though, it is long since time for a housecleaning of major proportions and first on the chopping block is that over inflated upper level administration. We’ve got some pretty good people in many of the local schools…
Truth
September 25th, 2010
4:33 pm
Are you nuts?
Rhee is being run out of town in DC. She was Rhee-jected. Her hamfisted mismanagement of the DC schools is the main reason DC Mayor Fenty lost in the Democratic primary. And her arrogant attitude towards the black community, among whom she is a hated figure, has dangerously racialized the city.
But … if you want her, you can have her. As for Newark wanting her, if that were so, she would already there. Regarding Oprah’s endorsement of her, since her disastrous experiment with Africab schools, that doesn’t count for much. Chris Tucker or Wheezee vouching for Rhee would probably carry more weight.
Hey, pal, as the commercial used to say, “If you don’t know, you’d better “ax” somebody.”
Mr_B
September 25th, 2010
5:26 pm
joseph: It’s good to see an actual teacher commenting here, but I’m afraid your wrong on the founding father’s foresight on the lack of a national public education entity is that it would never have crossed their minds to do it. In the 1790s education was reserved for a very tiny, wealthy elite, except for a few places in New England. But I agree that somewhere in the metro area is an administrator with the ability and stamina to correct the local problems, if they’re left alone long enough to do it. Many of the dilemmas we face in teaching are not suseptible to an instant fix from the education miracle du jour.
Mr_B
September 25th, 2010
5:28 pm
Give myself an “F.” Should be “you’re wrong.”
Brad
September 25th, 2010
5:51 pm
Damn Kyle, did you expect such a sh*tstorm?
Independent
September 25th, 2010
6:32 pm
So she fired a bunch of teachers. Did she find qualified teachers that did a better job to replace them? Or does she just fire more teachers every year?
josef nix
September 25th, 2010
6:50 pm
Mr B
The subject did come up. There were proposals to copy the free and mandated system of Prussia in place since the 1720s…the goal was to produce a good “citizen soldier” to serve the state. Jefferson came out dead set against it, warning of what it could lead to…turns out he was right…
Also, there were numerous publicly supported schools throughout the country at the time and not just in New England but in just about every town of any size. Most people lived in the countryside at the time where schools were not so available.
It is interesting to note that the first mandated public schools were in Mississippi in 1868 to operate as centers for reeducation under the occupation.
josef nix
September 25th, 2010
7:11 pm
Mr B…
I have to give myself lots of Fs in the blogosphere! In relation to the question of public education, here are some of my opinions on the subject from another forum, but it does give an insight into “see oursels as ithers see us…”
Director Ang Lee, in his suspiciously ignored film, “Ride with the Devil,” an adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s equally suspiciously ignored novel, Woe to Live On, has one of his characters, a Southern gentleman, predict the failure of “The Cause” by explaining that Union victory would come from the fact that the first building the Unionists put up in Lawrence was “not a church, not a home, but a schoolhouse” to which all of their children would be sent where they would all learn the same thing. The Unionists wanted everyone to think and live the same way and would “not rest until they did.” “The South,” he says, “doesn’t give a d*mn about such conformity and was content to let people live their own lives.” The Yankees would win, he avowed, because of that schoolhouse.
This, according to Ang Lee, is what struck him in the novel and what motivated him to do the film. “I grew up in Taiwan, where older people always complained that kids are becoming Americanized: they don’t follow tradition, and so we are losing our culture. As I got the chance to go around a large part of the world with my films, I would hear much the same complaints. It seems so much of the world is becoming Americanized. When I read Daniel Woodrell’s book Woe to Live On, which we based Ride With the Devil on, I realized that the American Civil War was, in a way, where it all started. It was where the Yankees won not only territory but, in a sense, a victory for a whole way of life and thinking.”
It is precisely this Weltanschauung which triumphed at Appomattox and which the unified republic took with it in its imperialist drive with the takeover of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the territories seized from Spain in the first of its wars on non-Monroe Doctrine foreign soil, setting out to remake the locals in its own image and giving the country its current reputation which is the fruit of the last 150 years of “victories.”
josef nix
September 25th, 2010
7:16 pm
Mr B and Kyle..
I tried to post a further comment from Ang Lee and it must have been held up…it was held up previously as well over at Jay’s…there’s something that the moderator doesn’t like and, try as I might, I cannot determine what it is…I’ve looked for all the usual letter combination catches and the such, but can’t determine what…
KYLE? Any ideas?
josef nix
September 25th, 2010
7:44 pm
Enter your comments here
oldtimer
September 25th, 2010
8:39 pm
As a retired teacher…She is brilliant! I was one of the ones who got “hard to handle kids”…..with no extra money…..
Mark in mid-town
September 25th, 2010
9:36 pm
The reason so many in DC ended up despising Michelle Rhee is that she actually cared about those attending the DC public school system. Such caring resulted in her going after sacred cows and in demanding results from too many who had been accustomed to not having to produce anything other than continued failure. Progress in the DC school system under the best of circumstances can probably be no better than slow, as the cultural problems there are so entrenched. Nonetheless, progress was being made under Rhee and under the mayor who hired her. Too bad he was defeated and too bad that means in all probability that Rhee will be out. It’s the kids of DC who will continue to suffer in the long term.
J.B. Bun
September 25th, 2010
11:06 pm
Kyle, You forgot the mention this but since you recommend her I assume that she does not have the #1 dis-qualification for the job. No matter what she has accomplished, with this attribute there is not a snowball’s chance of her being hired by APS but without it she’s a shoe-in. Is she white?
well-informed
September 26th, 2010
2:25 am
tellthetruth10 wrote:
“Michelle Rhee, Kevin Johnson
and St. Hope Academy
(note: It’s time to RESEARCH
the actual facts about
unaccountable, unqualified
Michelle Rhee) …….
== />
http://sacchartergate.blogspot.com/
(’hush money’
alert !)
Washington DC blogger ‘lodesterre’ has been reading the Inspector General’s referral to the U.S. Attorney; he/she’s been asking many good questions —
some of the same ones on our mind too
— such as the issue of Michelle Rhee holding “conflicting positions” at Kevin Johnson’s
“St. Hope Academy” privatized charter H.S.
in Sacramento.
According to the IG interview with former St. Hope employee Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez, the same time Rhee was listed as a St. Hope board member, she was identified as the consultant for the New Teacher Project (which recruited teachers for St. Hope schools), the consultant for the reconstruction bridge span and the consultant for the reconstruction of the HR department. On a memo she was listed she as the Chief Operating Officer for St. Hope Academy. On an organization chart she was identified as president. As lodesterre writes:
…Ms. Rhee’s titles at the St. Hope Charter Academy boggle the mind. Were all the positions paid positions? How did she perform the duties of board member and Chief Operating Officer at the same time? As president, Chief Operating Officer and Board Member at the same time? as President, COO, board member and a consultant for St. Hope on three projects, at the same time? How did she act as a consultant for St. Hope on the New Teacher Project, an organization that supplies teachers to schools, and as a consultant for St. Hope’s Human Resource Department’s reconstruction? Did she suggest to the Human Resource consultant which applicants to hire? It must have sounded interesting.
Why, when Rhee was apprised by St. Hope employee Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez about sexual misconduct allegations against Kevin Johnson by 3 Americorps teenage volunteers, did she not contact California State authorities she was obligated to do under California law? Was this another one of those irksome laws she sees no problem in ignoring because she “knows” better?
As COO and President, not to mention those consulting positions, was Ms. Rhee aware of the misuse of Americorps funds and volunteers as outlined in the Investigative General’s report of August 2008? As one of the top three office holders of St. Hope it seems that either Ms. Rhee was aware and therefore participated or that she was not aware and she was negligent in her duties or these positions were merely window dressing for her resume and padding for her bank account.
Why did Ms. Rhee not only try to bring in the St. Hope
umbrella organization to take over the operations of two DC schools, but she also insisted that she need not recuse herself from the process (??)
This occurred in spite of her
deep involvement with St. Hope
and her knowledge of financial irregularities
(involving the misappropriation of $400,000
in federal grants)
and federal legal violations
Another serious matter is her
attempted cover-up of evidence
pertaining to criminal incidents
within Sacramento city & county.
There were violations of California
state laws & regulations, which should
have been reported & investigated.
=====================
Churchill's MOM
September 26th, 2010
7:15 am
Wingboy good idea but as most of the local posters say if she isn’t black she won’t be hired. The corrupy APS does not want educational progress, they want the money.
CommonSenseForChange
September 26th, 2010
8:08 am
Michelle Rhee is not interested in children or education. She is in it for the fame and fortune. The latest model for achieving fame and fortune is to bring in imported labor to do the jobs Americans can’t do. Don’t believe it? Ask Bill Gates, the Walmart Waltons and the rest of Rhee’s backers?
Test scores went down on her watch — this immediately after the small rise under her predecessor’s watch.
j
September 26th, 2010
8:52 am
come on kyle is this the best you can do? Hire someone else.
only two subjects should be taught from k-8th grade: english and math.
only four subjects should be taught from grades 9 – 12:
english/english literature, math, computer science and american government/law/constitution.
Problem solved.
CommonSenseForChange
September 26th, 2010
9:24 am
Why Rhee?!
Greedy businesses claimed their new hires were not prepared by the school system to do jobs at their companies, so it cost them money to train them. Businesses didn’t want to pay for the training, so they pushed their agendas on the schools to get taxpayers to fund their training. Isn’t that where the whole propaganda campaign for imports started?
The greedy only get greedier, so ironically, business now wants a larger slice of taxpayer money. They will get it, too, by dismantling education and funnelling the money into charter schools and certification fees. Basically, the taxpayer went from subsidizing businesses’ education and training to outright paying businesses for THEIR own damned needs. Try going to your neighbors house and telling him you need food and then demanding that he pay you to feed you.
This is all possible because journalism standards have become low. Maybe instead of concentrating on teachers, we should teach logic in classes. At a minimum, make it a requirement for the journalism majors.
Something is wrong when the nations that can’t achieve/produce much can infiltrate the nation that has achieved by getting the media to do their bidding. How can underachievers show us how to achieve? Ms. Rhee and Mr. Gates want to import more low-wage teachers, period. Nothing more to their plan than that.
This is Mrs. Norman Maine
September 26th, 2010
10:17 am
Oh my gosh, I literally laughed out loud when I read this. For years, I’ve heard about how Georgia fired “King Roy” because he ruled like an autocrat. Well how in the heck do you think Michelle Rhee runs D.C.schools? There is a reason, her job is in jeopardy. She’s dictatorial. She’s nonresponsive. She’s polarizing. No wonder you like her.
I don’t care how good your ideas are, if you can’t work with the parents and teachers they are not going to hear them. Nice try, Kyle.
gateach
September 26th, 2010
10:54 am
If they don’t want her in DC why the %$&# do we need her here? Apparently she thinks running a school system is similar to running a Fortune 500 company. No thanks,APS is already screwed up enough already.
VIETNAM VET
September 26th, 2010
11:17 am
Enter your comments here
VIETNAM VET
September 26th, 2010
11:19 am
Let me see if I understand your position. Ms. Rhee’s program has just been refudated in DC and given that we should hire her in Atlanta.
Concerned1
September 26th, 2010
11:31 am
It doesn’t really matter who they hire for super in APS. Teachers have been painted as villians throughout the country. Unless we are willing to go back to being paid less than garbage collectors, work at school and then work 3 or 4 hours at home each night and then go out and patrol poor neighborhoods to make sure that parents are actually at home supervising and nurturing their children…oh please, enough already. Too many African Americans are making a decent living teaching and they vote. That is what this crap is all about.
teacher&mom
September 26th, 2010
11:45 am
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/08/13/VI2010081305444.html
Kyle-do you really want APS to be run by someone with only 3 years teaching experience? Listen to Rhee’s own words as she describes her teaching experience. Is this what we want to unleash on APS? How can any teacher, parent, or administrator respect a leader who admits to using masking tape on her students?
CommonSenseForChange
September 26th, 2010
12:24 pm
I have no affiliation with this blogger. Interesting read on the history, politics, privatization of education, etc. –
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2009/07/history-lesson-about-sandia-report.html
Again, if the goal is to achieve in the area of STEM, why import labor from countries that have not achieved as much success from or for their own masses?
Politicians R Scum
September 26th, 2010
2:11 pm
Looks like half the APS teachers will soon be in prison, they couldn’t cheat any better than they could teach! Federal fraud charges are pending, he he ha ha. Now replace the criminals with people who have masters degrees in the subject matter they are to teach, and not a masters degree in education. A masters in education degree concentrates on methods of teaching, not the subject matter. The best performing schools systems in the world refuse to hire education majors, they hire only people to teach who have a masters degree in the subject matter.
josef nix
September 26th, 2010
2:36 pm
jb
Supporter of Obama…? Me? Of ‘Fierce Advocate?’ Oy, Mate, you obviously don’t know my reputation with his disciples over to Jay’s place!
Politicians R
I won’t go so far as requiring a Master’s Degree.in the area of expertise..but I am in your corner on the Education Degree. The Master’s Degree is just one more piece of paper bought from Mail-In U and really holds no indication of the experience in that field. And for the record, by and large it wasn’t the teachers who were the “criminals” but the administrators.
I am reminded of what my mother told one of my teachers who went to citing her degrees in education in a parent-teacher conference, “well, you know all about teaching. Now why don’t you go learn something TO teach?”
jm
September 26th, 2010
5:12 pm
Great idea. A reform minded person like Rhee, that always puts the children’s needs and interests at the top of their priorities is the kind of successor we need. Rhee, or someone like Rhee, would be a great choice for APS.
Ks
September 26th, 2010
6:40 pm
Rhee is a fraud. She dismantled the School Board so she did not have to answer to anyone. In a system where there is oversight she would not take the job. And if you want a bunch of unskilled TFA teacher then she’s your girl. Also I don’t know what the racial dynamics are in Atlanta but if you got African American kids in your schools then you might want as well just say you’ve failed them now without have to pay her an arm and a leg to destroy their lives.
Politicians R Scum
September 26th, 2010
6:46 pm
That’s rich Ks, calling Ms Rhee a fraud, that from a crooked aps teacher who changed answers on student progress reports so Ks would look good. I hope the FBI knocks on your door real soon. See the headlines in today’s Urinal.
Mike
September 26th, 2010
7:26 pm
Michelle Rhee is impolite to others. She often changes her voice as she mocks others openly. She is immature and has terrible leadership skills.
Uncle Billy
September 27th, 2010
6:37 am
Notice that Mr. Wingfield quotes Kevin Chavous and then assumes that everything his says is true. As an argument it is called “begging the question.”
Politicians R Scum
September 27th, 2010
7:58 am
Gee, these comments are mostly supporting the status quo of aps: lying, cheating, stealing, and failing students. I bet most of these posters work for aps.
paleo-neo-Carlinst
September 27th, 2010
8:44 am
I am familiar with Ms. Rhee, as I have roots in the DC area. that said, I think we can file this under “hope and change”. I think we’d all like to “hope” she’d turn APS on its ear (”change” the culture from cronyism to academia); and her performance in DC is impressive. I just don’t see Atlanta “embracing” her. I just don’t think public education is a priority in Atlanta/GA. the uneducated (and I am referring to adults) don’t want some of Ms. Rhee’s ilk because they fear “change”. the educated (’ol boy network) don’t want her “educating” Atlanta because and educated, motivated class threatens the gool ‘ol boy network (and how can the good ‘ol boys rant and rave about public education, if it is producing competent, intelligent leaders in the public and private sectors?). good post KW, because you monst definitely put the ball in Atlanta’s court. as I said, I just don’t see it happening.
bob
September 27th, 2010
8:56 am
J 8:52, I hope that was sarcasm.
bob
September 27th, 2010
8:59 am
I think APS is doing quite well, now they are even being investigated by the FBI. This investigation might be a little harder than asking your vendors to come in and say “all is well”.
jconservative
September 27th, 2010
9:19 am
“Rhee is a crap choice! Some folks need to do some research on Michelle Rhee. There is a reason why she is on her way out.”
The reason she is on her way out is that she more than significantly improved the “per student” education of the students in the DC system.
To do this she fired incompetents, put marginally ineffective teachers on notice and hired “professional” teachers.
The “teachers unions” are the problem along with “partisan politics” and “cultural politics”. Solve these problem and you solve the education problem.
Teachers unions want to protect their members. Yet no member of the teachers’ union wants to go to an incompetent doctor when ill. But they say it is OK to have incompetent teachers teach our children.
The big question on the table is will Congress and the President force the hand on the teachers unions?
And Kyle is correct, Rhee will have her pick among dozens of offers. She is trying to make teaching a “profession” in fact, and not just in name.
Buckhead Writer
September 27th, 2010
9:25 am
The only reason Rhee is being run out of town is because she stood up to teachers unions and told them that they are detrimental to the school system. Her ideals were always The school system does not serve as an employment stream for adults and too long children have suffered and carried the weight of a system that is designed to keep harmony between adults on their backs while they are dragged under.
The result: the teacher unions gave the largest monetary donations to Fenty’s competition.
Finally someone who is not afraid to piss off some people and lose her job in the name of doing the right thing (putting the children NOT TEAHCERS/ADULTS) first.
Please, Michelle, Atlanta needs you!!!
CAIR Bears
September 27th, 2010
9:49 am
Looks like Democrats have more in common with terrorists than they do with America.
A’jad monster’s ball
Wacky week in NY for wolf in cheap clothing
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s six nights in New York featured a secret sit-down with militant minister Louis Farrakhan, heckling in a hotel bar, and a fear of being rubbed out that bordered on paranoia.
The president shared a hush-hush meal with Farrakhan and members of the New Black Panther Party Tuesday at the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street.
The meeting of the podium smackers took place in a banquet room, where the fiery leaders presumably exchanged theories on what’s wrong with the world.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/jad_monster_ball_Z7Km37ydJJJHSxgrxPtfbJ#ixzz10jobUAel
CAIR Bears
September 27th, 2010
10:04 am
Noticed some “hate Fox News” column from Bookman.
He should take notice at this retard at PMSNBC>
Ed Schultz: Chris Christie A ‘Cold-Hearted Fat Slob’ (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/27/ed-schultz-chris-christie_n_739929.html
well-informed
September 27th, 2010
10:05 am
dcpsparent :
re: Michelle Rhee’s “mom friendly” comment, prepared specifically for the Oprah show, about moms not tolerating mediocre teachers being given time to grow and develop professionally. “Well. The unqualified, needing-to-grow-professionally, TFA principal that Rhee PUSHED on our school, despite protests from a panel of engaged, informed, truly progressive, professional educators and parents with advanced degrees in education . . . . . (this TFA principal) hired and protected even more inexperienced, unqualified teachers who will take YEARS to develop into true professionals. But the principal and those teachers all know how to say “yes” to their boss. Too bad they don’t know the basics of how children learn, or the nuances of curriculum and instruction. It is hard, hard work indeed to have to reprogram my kids every day after school, to get them to embrace and understand learning again. Rhee’s influential, BAD decisions and practices, more than ANY OTHER failure of the DC Public School system, has me on the verge of pulling my kids out of school. Rhee embarrassed herself mightily at the DC screening of this film (”Waiting for Wall Street Super-scammers”) with her comment insulting DC voters. My kids, and the 350 others in their school, will not be devastated at all when she leaves. We assume she will head to the business world for which she may have more appropriate skills.”
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Intown
September 27th, 2010
11:18 am
APS may do well to hire her but, would probably do better to hire someone with a lower profile and less controversy to reform the school district. While Rhee is to be commended on fixing issues on the teacher side, no one has a good approach to addressing what is probably 80-90% of the problem to begin with — the parents and the students. There is a reason that schools are better in more affluent neighborhoods. The kids are better prepared and more interested in school and that’s because the parents value education, hard work, and excellence.