Jersey Jazzman: The Incoherent Reform of Michelle Rhee:
Let's be very clear about the reform agenda of Students First and Michelle Rhee.
- They want to "reform" tenure so much as to make it essentially meaningless: if you can take tenure away without an objective hearing, it's like not having tenure at all.
- They believe in the Merit Pay Fairy, but they refuse to call for substantial additional funds to buy her new wands; this means they want to take away money from some teachers and give it to others.
- They want "accountability," which will be driven primarily by standardized tests, which leads to teacher evaluations with huge margins of error. And they want these error prone evaluations released to the public, no matter how disastrous the results.
- They want "choice" in the form of charter schools and vouchers for private schools, which show no evidence of doing any better than public schools when accounting for student differences, but have far more teacher turnover and de-unionized faculties.
And while Rhee pushes for all this, she's happy to stand in photo ops with politicians who are working hard to cut teacher pay, benefits, and workplace protections. If she really wants to recruit more talent into schools, she sure has a funny way of showing it.
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