Paul Moore on Michelle Rhee

This Washington Post article...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/24/AR2009022403740_Comments.html

.....inspired this comment.

As her corporate masters have been forced to stand down by the
collapse of their global economy, of course Michelle Rhee's tune has
begun to change. It's out with the arrogant bluster of the bully and
in with the false humility of the abandoned and panic-stricken bureaucrat.

Rhee looked around the other day and her financial backers were gone.
Gates, and Broad, and Dell, and Robertson went to see about their own
survival. Rhee still longs to be a superstar in the dismantling of
public education. She will miss the Time magazine covers and the
mention of her name in presidential debates. And she still dreams of
smashing teachers seniority rights and thus their unions but that
whole project is being shutdown before you can say the Icelandic
banking system or credit default swaps.

When the history of Michelle Rhee's brief tenure in Washington, D.C.
is written it will go something like this. Lacking any discernible
qualifications, her shocking appointment as Chancellor of D.C. public
schools, can be understood only when you realize that Rhee was brought
in to inflict maximum damage on the district's public schools and its
children. And as a cultist (Teach For America, New Teacher Project)
and true believer she came at a bargain basement salary. Really
qualified superintendents were courted (Fenty visited Miami with
several members of the D.C. commission to interview Dr. Rudolph Crew)
but those candidates would have asked questions. They could not be
counted on to mindlessly take a club to D.C.'s public schools. The
havoc and chaos that Rhee caused was no accident. It was the plan!

But Michelle Rhee appeared on the scene because and when the "global
economy" was riding herd on this planet. Globalization is at the very
foundation of business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data
driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most
perversely of all, paying students to consume their version of
education. It was the reason the Business Roundtable and Bill Gates
were interested in public education at all. The CEO's wanted a profit
making private school system and Gates wanted visas for Indians and
Taiwanese who work for less.

Michelle Rhee got humble and then disappeared as the global economy
crashed and burned.

Paul A. Moore

Farewell to the Education President by Paul Moore

Our sad departing president, among the most incurious and anti-
intellectual national leaders in US history, last night said farewell
and hammered home yet again his central message to the American
people. "Be afaid! Yes, be very afraid!" How far this country has
come from, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," but
Bush's anti-FDR message served him well for eight excruciatingly long
years and brought us full circle. We're going to have Hoovervilles
again and the Great Depression II.

In his final days in office Bush hung on desperately to one delusion
of grandeur. And what a grand delusion it was! Heaven help us, in his
mind, and maybe in his mother's "beautiful mind", he was the
education president.

No question, the Bush Administration has directed the public schools
along a new path. They're going to this place right behind all those
Americans enjoying their new homes in Bush's "ownership society" and
right behind the flagships of the global economy like Lehman
Brothers, AIG, and General Motors.

The NCLB-era of educational policy in the US is the evil spawn of the
globalization of our economy. That process is at the very foundation
of the business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data driven
instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most perversely of
all, paying students to consume the corporate version of knowledge.
It was the reason the Business Roundtable, Bill Gates, and the Walton
and Bush families were the driving forces behind these absurd and
perverse educational policies. The CEO's wanted a profit making
private school system in their race with China and India to lowest
possible wage for workers. In their new economy there would be Wal-
Mart and plenty of security guard jobs or the military for the kids
that used to go to public schools.

These Milton Friedman-inspired Reagan revolutionaries will mark the
Bush years as the zenith of their power. This era spit up characters
like Rod Paige, Margaret Spellings, Armstrong Williams, Michael
Bloomberg, Jack Welch, Jeb Bush, Ruby K. Payne, and more ominously
for the future, Arne Duncan. It was certainly the time the attack on
public education appeared ready to bear fruit. They had public school
system wreckers like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein in place, kids were
dropping out in droves, and teachers were in full flight.

But just as they were breaking out that "Mission Accomplished" banner
from the White House basement, just then their rationale for being,
their precious global economy, crashed! In recent days they have had
to do $326 billion CPR on Citigroup (still the bank will be broken up
and the pieces sold off in three months), scrambled to rescue the Big
Three, and printed billions in new money. Madoff has made off with
about $50 billion and he's just one of many ponzi schemers. Their
pride and joy is on fire. It was supposed to be immutable. It was
eternal! Now that attitude's all gone. There's only panic on Wall
Street and investor flights to safety. Treasuries and negative
returns are hot now. The financiers who are not killing themselves
have both fingers crossed for President Obama.

Any talk of NCLB are prayers said over a corpse. Soon it will be
every private school and charter school investor for himself. Private
school students are being moved to the public schools by their debt
ridden parents in significant numbers already. And from his Dallas
retirement home (or his land in Paraguay if he should have to leave
the country suddenly) George Bush will watch the last vestige of his
legacy, including Arne Duncan if he holds to the old world, go up in
smoke.

Paul A. Moore
Miami Carol City High
United Teachers of Dade

The likes of Klein will perish in the blaze

From Paul Moore

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd9-2008dec09,0,3900995.story

Edit Admiral David Brewer out of the essay below and out of the Los
Angeles Unified Public Schools. It didn't take them long to realize
Brewer didn't know a classroom from a hole in the wall and that
military men like him and Colin Powell have no special insight into
public education. Now we await the triumph of rationality and reason
signaled by the departure of other fish out of water--former CEOs who
view schools as businesses to be run like, oh, AIG or General Motors
or Lehman Brothers and former inner-city school missionaries who
become Teacher For America cult leaders.

"Joel Klein is a simple servant of the global economy. Globalization
is at the very foundation of business model for schools, charters,
vouchers, data driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing,
and most perversely of all, paying students to consume the corporate
version of education. Klein's job is to pump toxic wastes, like
incessant testing and mindless data collection and merit pay plans,
into the public school environment to sicken both teachers and
students. And bye-and-bye the corporations would have a brave new
education system to serve their profit seeking.

And they were so close when the roof fell in recently. They had their
blueprint for legally closing public schools, the No Child Left
Behind Act, in place. Billionaire Bloomberg and his CEO sidekick Joel
Klein were steadily weakening the public schools in New York City.
Mayor Daley and Arne Duncan had nearly strangled the Chicago Public
Schools. Mayor Villariagosa and Admiral Brewer were trying to get
their hands around the throats of the Los Angeles Unified Public
Schools. Jeb Bush, in and out of office, was calling the shots in
Florida. Bill Gates had succeeded in winning Washington D.C. for
Mayor Fenty and he in turn introduced the nation to a new level of
ruthlessness and brutality in the person and policies of Michelle
Rhee. Eli Broad's superintendents dotted the landscape from Vallas in
New Orleans to Crew in Miami, chirping over the achievement gap and
with grave voices declaring "the children of Singapore are eating our
kids lunch." Many of those pesky democratically elected school boards
had been eliminated.

Then just as the campaign appeared ready to bear fruit, their
rationale for being, their precious global economy, crashed! Their
pride and joy is on fire now. The likes of Klein will perish in the
blaze."