Michelle Rhee is a Proven Liar. Why is this liar dominating the national conversation on education?

[Hannah Bell]

As Michelle Rhee's resume indicates, she has been claiming miracles from her TFA stint in Baltimore for a long time. She actually used her tales of miracle test score gains at the Edison/EAI school where she worked to leverage a position in New York prior to coming to DC.

What's amazing is that no one ever bothered to check her story that we know of, which was easy enough to do (even for Jay Mathews), since a conclusive research study was readily available through the federal clearinghouse, ERIC, that shows Rhee's claims that 90% of students at her school in Baltimore moved from the 13th to the 90th percentile was pure and unadulterated fabrication, i.e, a black lie...

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED390170&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED390170

There is not a single Baltimore Edison/EAI/Tesseract school at which students in math jumped from the 13th percentile to above the 90th percentile, in either CTBS reading or math, at any grade level, during the period 1992 through 1995.

http://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/answers-to-the-latest-quiz-on-the-baltimore-rhee-miracle/

This study is pretty conclusive evidence that Michelle Rhee was flat-out lying in her resume, in her testimony about her resume, and in her interview last month in the Washingtonian magazine.

Why does this resume flap still matter?

Simply because this person, who is proven to be a repeated liar, continues to nearly dominate the national discussion about “reforming” public education. (read: destroying public education) She has absolutely no shame about lying to the public with an absolutely convincing demeanor.

Perhaps she believes her own lies. If that was the only problem, nobody would care. But there is a problem: she is succeeding in demonizing teachers in general and in steering the public away from the real changes that need to happen in the American public educational system, and towards changes sought by the same billionaires who are plundering the entire planet, widening the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us, and who recently threw millions of Americans out of work.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/02/michelle-rhees-miracle-teaching-turns.html


And in fact, the evidence showing Michelle Rhee is a liar was out three years ago:

http://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/i-got-scooped-by-more-than-three-years/

http://web.archive.org/web/20071012123206/stateofcolumbia.com/weblog/archive/2007/06/28/rhee-scores

Council to Challenge Rhee's Résumé
By Nikita Stewart and V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 30, 2007

The D.C. Council will question acting D.C. schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee next week about claims in her résumé that she improved students' test scores when she taught in Baltimore a decade ago, council members said yesterday.

Rhee's résumé asserts that the students made a dramatic gain: "Over a two-year period, moved students scoring on average at the 13th percentile on national standardized tests to 90 percent of students scoring at the 90th percentile or higher."

[immoderate]

1. Kick

--imm

[hlthe2b]

2. I believe this... I believe she is a fraud and a harmful one at that...

What I don't understand is why the Union and other teacher groups are not going after her with this information--forcing the media to expose her?

[Starry Messenger]

3. This country loves snake oil.

She's like an update of the Traveling Medicine Show, but for anti-union liberals. Like a little snail trail of evil, she'll erode confidence in public education while the money boys move in from behind and mop up.

[markpkessinger]

4. Apparently, so does our President n/t

[Poboy]

15. Excellent summary of how they operate.

[roody]

5. Is she demonizing them because she could not handle

teaching herself?

[Reader Rabbit]

12. That's my theory as well.

She resents the people who are capable of doing the job that she could not, so she's made it her life's mission to stick it to them.

[Enthusiast]

6. K&R nt

[xchrom]

7. recommend

[quaker bill]

8. because she is telling

the "more with less" lie that many seem to want to believe?

[Kolesar]

9. Does "Teach for America" sponsor NPR radio?

Are they buying silence, like the coal industry tried to do??

[Hannah Bell]

10. i wouldn't be surprised if gates, walton et al were ponying up some bucks to the cpb.

[Kolesar]

11. The Billen Melinda Gates Foundation does fund NPR ...

and another group that funds "what works in education".

[Reader Rabbit]

13. She's the Sarah Palin of the ed deform movement.

She doesn't know anything but she talks a good game, so those with the money to do so keep putting her up on the podium.

[somone]

17. Perfect description

[hobbit709]

14. Because she tells the lies that TPTB want told.

[Nevernose]

16. A bigger lie is her turnaround of DC schools

She claims that she did all of those wonderful things there, but there are plenty of studies out there showing that what improvement DC schools had was, in fact, due to changing demographics. To me, that's a much bigger and more harmful lie.

She's now "advising" the governors of half a dozen states, including mine (Nevada), where the only thing they think matters is ending teacher tenure. Teacxhers keep screaming their fool heads off that tenure is the only thing protecting us from capricious and incompetent administrators and that it is quite easy to get rid of the bad teachers, but only if you have competent administrators who are willing to follow the rules and do the work.

And she's big into getting rid of Master's degree promotions, too. Because why ever would people in the education field feel that education is important? What about test scores, right? /sarcasm

[chimpymustgo]

18. Hannah Bell, the story made the WaPo today, and I was about to post it. Do you mind,

or I could fold it into your thread. But I think it's important that her LIES are being exposed.
**********

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/10/AR2011021007240.html?hpid=newswell

Rhee faces renewed scrutiny over depiction of students' progress when she taught

By Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 10, 2011; 8:52 PM

Former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, known for her crusade to use standardized test scores to help evaluate teachers, is facing renewed scrutiny over her depiction of progress that her students made years ago when she was a schoolteacher.

A former D.C. math teacher, Guy Brandenburg, posted on his blog a study that includes test scores from the Baltimore school where Rhee taught from 1992 to 1995. The post, dated Jan. 31, generated intense discussion in education circles this week. In it, Brandenburg contended that the data show Rhee "lied repeatedly" in an effort to make gains in her class look more impressive than they were.

Rhee, who resigned last year as chancellor, denied fabricating anything about her record and said Brandenburg's conclusion was unfounded. But she acknowledged this week that she could have described her accomplishments differently in 2007, when then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) selected her to be chancellor.

At issue is a line in Rhee's resume from that year that described her record at Harlem Park Elementary School: "Over a two-year period, moved students scoring on average at the 13th percentile on national standardized tests to 90 percent of students scoring at the 90th percentile or higher."

On Wednesday evening, Rhee said she would revise that wording if she could. "If I were to put my resume forward again, would I say 'significant' gains?" Rhee said. "Absolutely."

-edit-

[Reader Rabbit]

19. You might want to give this its own thread.

Now that a major newspaper is airing stories questioning this charlatan, it might gain traction!

[Hannah Bell]

23. the other piece of brandenberg's story was the decline in special ed students,

from something like 8% to 3%.

also, her students didn't start at 13% but at 27%, if i remember right.

[kwassa]

20. Dissent had a great article "Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools"

and Rhee is a hero, the point person, for their agenda.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781

Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children (only religious organizations receive more money). But three funders—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with road) Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation—working in sync, command the field. Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making. And they fund the same vehicles to achieve their goals: charter schools, high-stakes standardized testing for students, merit pay for teachers whose students improve their test scores, firing teachers and closing schools when scores don’t rise adequately, and longitudinal data collection on the performance of every student and teacher. Other foundations—Ford, Hewlett, Annenberg, Milken, to name just a few—often join in funding one project or another, but the education reform movement’s success so far has depended on the size and clout of the Gates-Broad-Walton triumvirate.

(jump)

Consider the case of school reform in Washington, D.C. Former schools chancellor Michelle Rhee battled the teachers’ union in acrimonious contract negotiations for more than two years; she wanted greater control over evaluating and firing teachers. Her breakthrough move was to get $64.5 million from the Broad, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold foundations to finance a five-year, 21.6 percent increase in teachers’ base salary. The union took the money in exchange for giving Rhee some of the changes she wanted. The money came with a political restriction: the foundations could withdraw their pledges if there was a “material change” in the school system’s leadership. When critics challenged the legality of the arrangement (Hadn’t Rhee negotiated a deal that served her personal financial interests?), the chancellor found a way to shuffle funds and spend on a schedule that made the leadership clause irrelevant. The foundations’ attempt to dictate who would be D.C. schools chancellor failed, but their investment paid off with highly publicized (and, the foundations hoped, precedent setting) concessions in a union contract.

[blindpig]

21. What do you expect from a sales person?

No doubt on commission.

[StarburstClock]

22. "No Child Left Behind" is a fraud from the start as well

The news of it being a fake is 7 years old but it has never stopped the people like Rhee who only care about getting ahead:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/06/60II/main591676.shtml

--- The 'Texas Miracle'

(CBS) It was called the “Texas Miracle,” a phrase you may remember because President Bush wanted everyone to know about it during his 2000 presidential campaign. It was an approach to education that was showing amazing results, particularly in Houston, where dropout rates plunged and test scores soared. Houston School Superintendent Rod Paige was given credit for the schools' success, by making principals and administrators accountable for how well their students did. Once he was elected president, Mr. Bush named Paige as secretary of education. And Houston became the model for the president’s “No Child Left Behind” education reform act. ---

[maryf]

24. K&R

thanks.