# Let's question Michelle Rhee, standardized testing and school privatization **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 9, 2013, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685 "2013-01-09T23:51:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BigAppleBucky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigapplebucky/32/178_2.png) [@BigAppleBucky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigAppleBucky)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/1 "2013-01-09T23:51:52Z")
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/documentary-examines-michelle-rhees-legacy-in-dc/2013/01/04/ae86e8a6-55f7-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc\_story.html](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/documentary-examines-michelle-rhees-legacy-in-dc/2013/01/04/ae86e8a6-55f7-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_story.html) > **[The Empire Michelle Rhee Built](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17818/michelle-rhee-corporate-public-schools-010713/)** > > Handing over "our" schools to people like Michelle Rhee who volunteer as well-remunerated middle managers, privatizes public education without having the basic cojones to admit that it's happening. This is not the way it's supposed to work. > [@](#): > > Student standardized-test scores at an award-winning D.C. school dropped dramatically in 2011 after the principal tightened security out of concern about possible cheating, according to a new “Frontline” television documentary to be broadcast Tuesday. > > The hour-long program raises questions about whether District officials have adequately investigated persistent suspicions that public school employees may have tampered with tests during the tenure of former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. * * * * * * > [@](#): > > Rhee’s entire (and very lucrative) career as a proponent of educational “reform” is based on her time as chancellor of the public schools in Washington, D.C. Between 2007 and 2010, she did everything that sends a thrill up the leg of the “reform” community. She bashed teachers, scapegoated principals, and shined up her own armor for public consumption every chance she got. She also instituted a system of standardized testing by which Michelle Rhee would be able to judge the awesome awesomeness of Michelle Rhee. > > Standardized testing is a crack cocaine of education. It is rife with problems. It is also a multimillion industry without which might not exist, among other things, The Washington Post. A reliance on standardized testing as a metric for progress is generally a reliable “tell” that “reform” has ended and that the grift has begun. A reliance on standardized testing as a metric for progress — and, it should be said, as a Procrustean scoreboard to judge whether a teacher, an administrator, or a school system are doing their jobs properly — almost guarantees that some finagling with the numbers will take place. It is a sub rosa way to install a corporate model on public education and, since the corporate model for everything in this country right now is a moral and ethical quagmire, it encourages cheating on a massive scale. The sooner one recognizes that Michelle Rhee’s brand of “school reform” is simply a smokescreen to promote the privatization of public schools the sooner one recognizes that in general the charter school movement as pushed by the Student’s First crowd is a fraud. Rhee’s most recent ranking of states by “best education policy” put Louisiana (home of Creationist teaching) and Florida - both very low performers in student achievement - at the top–no coincidence that both states are led by Republican charlatan governors who are pushing privatization. Most of the top states for student performance were rated at the bottom–and of course most of those states are not interested in the privatization of public schools. Iowa, whose students have led the nation for years in SAT and ACT scores, gets an “F” under Rhee’s system of rankings. I suppose they need to dumb things down in order to improve. The woman is a fraud. Support for her is based on the idea that privatization will further weaken public school teachers’ unions. [http://www.kwwl.com/story/20522535/2013/01/07/iowa-gets-f-on-education-report-card](http://www.kwwl.com/story/20522535/2013/01/07/iowa-gets-f-on-education-report-card) Here is Rhee’s website, but it does not have an obvious link to their rankings: [http://www.studentsfirst.org/content/main](http://www.studentsfirst.org/content/main) ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/2 "2013-01-11T03:45:17Z")
Regarding cheating in standardized testing at least, _Freakonomics_ already pointed it out a while back. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/3 "2013-01-11T04:08:30Z")
For those wondering what StudentsFirst’s real priorities are (spoiler alert: it’s not students) their criteria in awarding these grades are [useful to look at](http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/01/more-on-the-rhee-fraud): > [@](#): > > Amazingly, the [methodology](http://edref.3cdn.net/44c8d75f5567b24912_zlm6b85ed.pdf) being used by Rhee’s grifters gives states a “4″ (the highest score) if they have defined contribution pensions and a “0″ if they have defined benefit pensions. In other words, states get higher rankings for their education systems if they make their pension benefits less attractive! Even more amazingly, pension “reform” is an “anchor” category, meaning it gets three times the weight of some of the other categories that might actually have a clear positive relationship with improving a state’s educational system. Notably, the correlation between Rhee’s report card and NAEP test results is [quite weak and in the wrong direction](http://lbo-news.com/2013/01/07/more-bogosity-from-michelle-rhee/). Basically, a bunch of Wall Streeters funding an organization to sell people on the idea of crushing teachers unions and raiding their pension plans as somehow being good for students. If you don’t understand, just repeat “choice” over and over until it makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/4 "2013-01-11T04:28:19Z")
Yes, teachers unions represent everything that is great about DC’s school system. How dare anyone mess with success! ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/5 "2013-01-11T04:39:03Z")
> [@BigAppleBucky](#): > > The sooner one recognizes that Michelle Rhee’s brand of “school reform” is simply a smokescreen to promote the privatization of public schools the sooner one recognizes that in general the charter school movement as pushed by the Student’s First crowd is a fraud. Charter schools are public schools, aren’t they? ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/6 "2013-01-11T04:45:18Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Yes, teachers unions represent everything that is great about DC’s school system. How dare anyone mess with success! The second link in my post mentions that Massachusetts has the highest rate of teacher unionization and the highest NAEP scores. The five states that have teachers’ unions aren’t known for their spectacular outcomes (I can’t recall which states they are offhand, other than Virginia, which does fairly well on the NAEP, but recall seeing them all clustered in the bottom ten on SAT scores). I’m not trying to claim that teachers’ unions necessarily help students. The prime beneficiaries of teachers’ unions are obviously teachers. I am claiming that Michelle Rhee’s organization is primarily concerned with weakening unions, cutting pension plans, and privatization, and that the whole “students first” rhetoric is misleading. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/7 "2013-01-11T04:51:06Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Charter schools are public schools, aren’t they? Sort of. They are paid for out of tax dollars but they sometimes get to pick and choose their students. In those cases they don’t have to deal with special needs students and can expel discipline problems back into the other schools. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/8 "2013-01-11T05:04:51Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Yes, teachers unions represent everything that is great about DC’s school system. How dare anyone mess with success! That is supposed to be sarcastic is it? Because everybody knows that teachers’ unions are just awful, because people like Rhee and her very wealthy backers, and all the press they can buy, keep telling us so. Education would be so much better if we could just get rid of all the teachers. I know, let’s break their unions so we can treat them even more like shit than we do already, and drive all the teachers out of teaching. Then truly talented people are bound to flood in to the job and make everything wonderful. And they will be cheaper! ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/9 "2013-01-11T10:14:48Z")
According to one conservative doper, having other teachers who aren’t as good as you is enough to keep those people out, though. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/10 "2013-01-11T13:47:42Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > That is supposed to be sarcastic is it? > > Because everybody knows that teachers’ unions are just awful, because people like Rhee and her very wealthy backers, and all the press they can buy, keep telling us so. > > Education would be so much better if we could just get rid of all the teachers. I know, let’s break their unions so we can treat them even more like shit than we do already, and drive all the teachers out of teaching. Then truly talented people are bound to flood in to the job and make everything wonderful. And they will be cheaper! Heavens! all those voucher schools and private schools which don’t have unions therefore have no teachers. Amazing. Just how do they do it?!!! ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/11 "2013-01-11T17:28:10Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Yes, teachers unions represent everything that is great about DC’s school system. How dare anyone mess with success! I think it’s fair to say that if teachers’ unions are a factor in failure of education systems, people wouldn’t need to fake test scores to prove it (assuming there isn’t some other reason for the drop in scores referenced in the OP). ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/12 "2013-01-11T17:50:36Z")
Let’s get this straight: I’m not a union basher. Unions are not inherently different than businesses or agencies: some do a wonderful job, most do a good job, and a few are disasters. I do not believe that unions and their membership are above scrutiny; no more than I believe that corporations and their executives are beyond reproach. But let’s also get this straight: DC teachers agreed to a 20% pay increase if they agreed to have evaluations of their work carried out, with full knowledge that those who did not perform would be out of a job. The vote was 1,412 to 425. So, the idea implied, if not outright expressed, by **BigAppleBucky** that Rhee sought the privatization of public schools and **njtt** ’s comment about union busting, are simply bullshit. DC teachers agreed to be evaluated in exchange for a huge raise, and many came up short. I’m not going to cry for bad teachers. One must think for a moment, if teachers’ performance was in part based on student test scores, and the scores are being inflated; then it must follow that teachers signed up to an evaluation system that even more of them are failing. In fact, the articles kind of imply that teachers were _part_ of the bogus test results: shouldn’t we be holding them accountable? We blame Rhee because some teachers may have been helping their students cheat? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-question-michelle-rhee-standardized-testing-and-school-privatization/646685/13 "2013-01-11T17:52:48Z")
I didn’t know any of that. Thanks.