Rhee On Stewart: A Final Thought

What does Michelle Rhee want to do to fix our "failing" schools?

It's not a secret: you can find the policy prescriptions for her Republican money funnel education reform organization, StudentsFirst, right at their website. The basic plan is as follows:

• Use standardized tests and Value-Added Models as at least half of the evaluation for teachers and principals; this should not be subject to collective bargaining.
• Dilute the credentialing and training of teachers.
• Install merit pay and eliminate tenure and seniority.
• Use much more computer-based instruction (not computer-assisted, but computer-based).
• Track student data.
• Expand charter schools and vouchers.
• Implement the parent trigger.
• Allow parents to choose their child's teacher.
• Support the usurpation of local school board control in favor of mayors or states.
• Stop capping class sizes.
• Increase outsourcing of support services and facilities.
• Move away from pension plans.

As I said: none of this is a secret. It's all right there, and here's the thing: this is pretty much it. StudentsFirst isn't real big on curriculum development, or expanding wrap-around services, or implementing high-quality pre-school, or expanding access to the arts, or any number of other school improvement policies. My list above is pretty much all that they say they want.

I'm not going to bother debating each of these policies here, because that's what this entire blog is about, and I've tackled each one at length many, many times. And if you can't stand to read my take on VAM or the parent trigger or tenure one more time, just click on any of the links at your left.

It's clear to me that none of the policies above will help American public school students; in fact, most of them will make schools worse. But let's save that debate for another time, and get back to Michelle Rhee's appearance on The Daily Show.

If you have a spare twenty minutes - and the stomach for it - watch all three segments from Jon Stewart's extended interview with Rhee (and read my previous takes on it here). As you watch, continue to refer to the list I provided above and ask yourself: how many times does Rhee advocate for any of these policies specifically?

Part 1:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

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Part 2:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

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Part 3:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

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Here's my count: zero. Rhee says absolutely nothing in support of the specific policies StudentsFirst wants to implement. Oh sure, she talks in generalities and trots out plenty of platitudes:

• Let's put kids first!
• Let's have fair and transparent teacher evaluation!
• Let's hold teachers accountable!
• Let's put kids first!
• Let's make sure all kids have a great teacher!
• Let's get rid of ineffective teachers!
• Let's put kids first!
• Let's honor teachers! Like Rhee does! Because teaching is so hard!
• Let's get rid of stifling, antiquated bureaucracies!
• Let's judge teachers by how well their students learn!
• Let's not trap kids in "failing" schools!
• Did I mention we should put kids first?!

These, however, are meaningless generalities, because everyone in their right mind agrees with them. Everyone thinks that the best interests of students should be paramount in the development of education policy. Everyone agrees that kids need great teachers, and bad teachers need to either improve or be fired. Everyone thinks teacher evaluations are necessary to enforce accountability.

Duh.

What Rhee never gets around to, however, is telling us why her policies are the best way to make schools better. She never explains why charter schools and vouchers are so necessary. She never explains why VAM-based scores, even with their massive errors, should comprise at least half of a teacher's evaluation. She never tells us why moving away from pension plans would be good for students ("The only reason I got an 'F' is because Mr. Chips's pension isn't portable!").

Now, some of you might say, "Well, Comedy Central isn't really the right forum for this sort of stuff." OK, fine. How about This Week with George Stephanopoulos? Sorry - no mention of tenure or merit pay or de-capping class sizes there. 

OK, but that was a short interview; how about HuffPost Live, where Rhee did a 34-minute interview on education policy? Granted, she does at least mention a few of her specific policies, like gutting seniority and tenure. But any discussion of why this would work? Any evidence that these policies improve student learning?

Nope. Instead, we hear Rhee declaim the incredibly powerful insight that countries that perform better than the US on standardized tests (oy...) "focus on education as a top priority." I know - it's hard not to stand in awe of such perspicacity...

How about The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC? Surely public radio would finally put Rhee under the microscope? Well, give Lopate credit: at least he knew Rhee was embroiled in a cheating scandal following her tenure in Washington, D.C. Like Stewart, at least he was willing to challenge Rhee on standardized testing and the role of poverty.

But unfortunately - like Stewart - Lopate never gets to the "whys" of Rhee's arguments. We get a nice glossing over about poverty and standardized testing and teachers unions... but we never get to the heart of the matter. Why would VAM-based teacher evaluations help students overcome poverty? Why would vouchers improve student achievement in public schools? Why would removing caps on class size help students? Why?

Apparently, we don't have time to get into that. Michelle Rhee has a book to sell, and now we need to take a time out to hear from our sponsors...

Look, I like Lopate a lot. And I love - I mean, I love - Stewart; he's our era's Mark Twain. But we live in an unserious time when it comes to the lives of our nation's kids. We'll spend hours of airtime listening to Michelle Rhee's mea culpas about firing a principal on camera, but we won't take the time to examine whether firing principals based on their VAM scores will actually improve student achievement. We just don't seem to care very much about whether "reform" works or not; if we did, we wouldn't waste our time with the trivial nonsense Rhee spouts regularly.

I wish I could say this is a new phenomenon; sadly, it isn't. Way back in 2008, one of my favorite bloggers, Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler, wrote a series of pieces about an interview TFA's Wendy Kopp gave to Charlie Rose. Over and over, Rose tried to get Kopp to tell us why a great teacher is a great teacher; over and over, she refused to say. Over and over, Rose tried to get Kopp to tell us why she thought children in poverty could achieve at the same levels as children from privileged homes; over and over again, Kopp evaded answering the question.

Kopp even, unbelievably, evoked the teaching career of Michelle Rhee as "proof" that "great" teachers can save the world. Looking back over four years later, it's obvious that Kopp was selling Rose a big bag of magic beans; Rhee never did what she said she did while teaching in Baltimore, and Kopp, as we gaze in our rearview mirrors, looks like a fool.

I wish I could say that things have changed much since 2008. But as Rhee runs from one media outlet to the next, what Somerby wrote back then rings especially true today:

Has anyone ever pimped “easy answers” in the ridiculous way Kopp does? She seems to know nothing about low-income classrooms—unsurprising, since she’s never taught. She keeps making grandiose claims for her program—claims the studies don’t seem to support. But so what? Ever since the 1960s, our elites have favored pleasing, non-answer answers to the problem of low-income schools. They’ve always loved the music men who come along with their magic solutions. This new music man is especially helpful, since her program can be used to take silly shots at teachers unions, which simply aren’t the cause of this problem. But whatever! Manhattan elites have settled on Kopp. She provides the latest version of the pleasing, high-minded tale. 

Our elites have tended toward this sort of thing since (soon after) Day One. They’ve always loved the pleasing tale in which our finest children, from our finest schools, solve this nagging problem with ease. That helps explain a tragicomical fact: Our finest children have been solving this problem for the bulk of the last forty years! Kopp’s just the latest pseudo-influential—the latest music man. 

The problem lies in Kopp’s “most influential” status. As long as we pretend she knows what to do, others won’t bother to search. [emphasis mine]

Sadly, this is exactly our current situation today. Yes, there is some gentle push-back from the Jon Stewarts, for which I am grateful. But it's far too little, and far to late.

Our nation's dialogue about education has been commandeered by a bunch of ill-informed, intellectually lazy, bought-and-paid-for edu-celebrities. Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Wendy Kopp, Ben Chavis, Steve Perry, Jeb Bush, Arne Duncan, and a few others are pushing an agenda that has little evidence to support it; worse, they are rarely questioned by well-informed journalists as to the specifics of their plans.

When I see this, I fear for America's future. We cannot continue to be a country that makes policy through bouts of trite media exposure. Our fatuous ways got us into Iraq, crashed the economy, and are burning up the planet. Now that same brainlessness threatens to destroy our public school system.

We don't need more Oprah-style interviews with edu-celebrities where we let them babble on about how much they love teachers; we need, instead, a frank and informed discussion about the implications of the "reform" policy agenda. Until we get that, it is the duty of everyone who cares about public schools to point out - over and over, if necessary - how truly stupid our national conversation about education has become.

I appreciate that Stewart was willing to engage Rhee and challenge one of the central tenets of her philosophy. But when he asked her to name districts that she thought were models for success, he never pressed her as to why she thought they were working. It was enough, for both of them, to let the conversation devolve into yet another silly paean to teachers.

Well, if they really do respect teachers, they should show that by giving us what we really deserve: a serious conversation about education where the plans of the "reformers" are challenged by serious people.

Is that really so much to ask?

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