cheating chancellor Michelle Rhee talks how to fix education, the economy and anything else they care to ask on Meet the GE Press

Why is cheating Chancellor Michelle Rhee talking about gun control on a national network

Cheating Michelle Rhee: What happens when Oprah stops calling, there is no more propaganda to promote. and people have caught you cheating

Change.org, the progressive online powerhouse that channels grassroots energy into petition-based activism, has dropped two anti-union clients, including Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst, according to multiple sources familiar with the decision.

The move comes after intense pressure from the labor movement and other progressive allies, who accused the for-profit company of betraying its liberal roots by partnering with Rhee, the former head of Washington, D.C., public schools, and the similarly aligned group Stand for Children headed by education advocate Jonah Edelman. The ouster of StudentsFirst and Stand for Children was confirmed by a Change.org spokesman.

Leaders of Rhee's group were outraged. "We're surprised at their decision," Nancy Zuckerbrod, spokeswoman for StudentsFirst, told HuffPost. "When we spoke to them this afternoon, they couldn't point to a single one of our petitions on their site that violated either the terms of use or spirit of their organization. Not a single one. In fact, they said they agreed that much of the work of our members were in line with the progressive values of the organization. And it's clear that the Change.org community does as well, as tens of thousands of them signed our petitions fighting for the civil rights of all children to receive a high-quality education. For instance, more than 47,000 people signed our petition in support of the Dream Act, compared to fewer than 4,000 who signed the heavily organized protest petition on a different site against Stand for Children."

Change.org's meteoric rise has included a host of glowing profiles and the Timemagazine stamp of approval when it named CEO and founder Ben Rattray one of the100 most influential people in the world. It is staffed by some of the most talented progressive organizers in the country -- many of whom are well known and liked in the tight-knit liberal community, making the feud that much more bitter. And Edelman is the son of liberal champions Marian Wright Edelman and Peter Edelman.

StudentsFirst and Stand for Children oppose teachers unions as obstacles to education reform, and advocate on behalf of tying teacher pay to test scores and other student metrics. Change.org started working with Rhee's Students First in March 2011, five months after her resignation as Washington's public schools chancellor, and with Jonah Edelman's Stand for Children in October 2011.

Full Story:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/19/changeorg-michelle-rhee_n_1610760.html

At long last, Michelle Rhee's funders revealed | MinnPost

At long last, Michelle Rhee's funders revealed | MinnPost

According to Resmovitz, in response StudentsFirst named the Texas-based Laura and John Arnold Foundation and New Jersey hedge fund mogul David Tepper, who also founded and funds the group’s New Jersey offshoot.

The group also received $500,000 in startup funding from philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad’s Broad Foundation, which has championed a host of education reforms, most of them fairly characterized as conservative efforts.

Resmovitz then looked up the donors’ track records, using Federal Election Commission records:

Tepper has given upwards of $23,000 to the Democratic National Committee; $5,000 to Glacier PAC, a backer of Democratic Rep. Max Baucus -- and $5,000 to Mitt Romney for President this December. This January, he gave $375,000 to Restore Our Future, a Romney PAC….

Billionaire John Arnold, a former Enron trader, and his wife Laura, were slated to host in their Houston home a $10,000-ticket Obama fundraiser to feature Michelle Obama last October (the event was postponed). Arnold describes himself as a libertarian, and his wife Laura identifies as a Democrat. Still, Arnold was one of Obama's top 2008 donors, a bundler who gave the campaign between $50,000 and $100,000. According to Huffington Post's FundRace, he has given $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund 2012….

Arnold is currently funding efforts to have legislatures convert the pensions of public employees, such as teachers, into 401k plans. According to the Arnold Foundation's most recent tax returns, it had $650 to $750 million in assets in 2010.

Back to Put Kids First Minneapolis: The local group was born before Rhee’s became a household name, when a handful of Minneapolis residents unhappy with the way MPS staffs schools began comparing notes. Many of the changes they seek are similar to the reforms that landed Rhee in the hot seat in the first place, although even a brief tour of their website will reveal a much more measured tone.

LP - It is stunning to find these groups not satisfied with bribing one side when they can bribe both. It's just a simple action of buying America's politicians so they can destroy America's social structure.

More from two days earlier. Michelle Rhee former superintendent of Washington School. I spell relieve in two words: fraud and jail

According to the New Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/education/22winerip.html?_r=1 Rhee insisted that the cameras come in while she fired some principles on camera. Here is a brief clip as it appeared on PBS. Of course Michelle Rhee was the darling of plenty of the money men, the educational experts who have never educated a child in their lifetime and appear to want to start educating them with teachers who have all the skills and expertise of a quicky mart employee. Rhee was also was one of the big stars in the educational propaganda film Waiting For Superman and she also got a big plug from the queen of education Oprah. Here she is on Oprah:

Oprah here: has spun her ability to get people to open up about their problems into a mega billion dollar empire and who's own foray into education comes down to being a distant executive at one elite boarding school, in South Africa, that has had a couple of major sex scandals since it opened in 2007. Oprah was apparently too busy supplementing her income when those incidents befell the children but like any good distant executive as Michell Rhee can respect she did clean house afterward. Full story here http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/03/30/2009-03-30_o_no_not_again_oprahs_school_rocked_by_s.html

What is interesting about Oprah's approach is that the panel is filled up with everyone that wants to buy country's curriculum and then fire all its teachers but she isn't talking about "all the good teachers", and you know who you are, only all the deadbeats I see around you as they blockbust one educational system after another. Apparently what Rhee the "warrior woman" didn't tell Oprah that the best way to achieve these results was with a batch of tests and a big eraser. Eventually Rhee's protector Mayor Fenty was fired, by the very people they were suppose to be standing up for, and Rhee had to go freelance finding different school systems to destroy. And was Fenty himself contrite after the voters so soundly rejected him. No he joined the National Cities Educational Campaign or Everfi, a group that is looking to profit on the gold rush of educational material as there is plenty of money in education for someone who doesn't go anywhere near a classroom. There product is to promote financial literacy through video games. and a former mayor might be able to help sell to the people they need to impress.

http://www.dcblack.com/the-news/339-everfi-announces-former-washington-dc-mayor-adrian-fenty-to-lead-national-cities-education-campaign.html

 http://cfed.org/newsroom/in_the_news/SEED/financial_literacy_through_video_games/

From New York Times Why won't Michelle Rhee talk to the USA today?

Michelle Rhee during happier times sweeping away her district's teachers

Hats off to the New York Times for this. For awhile it appeared that if Ms. Rhee was convicted of fraud and sent to jail the main stream media would completely ignore the conviction and keep returning to the prison for jail house interviews, with Ms. Rhee, on how the public could turn around failing schools. I guess in the movie they were "Waiting for Superman" but it really turned out it was superwoman and her superpowers came in the form of one big eraser and a pile of recently changed tests.

From the NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — Why won’t Michelle Rhee talk to USA Today?


Ms. Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington public schools from 2007 to 2010, is the national symbol of the data-driven, take-no-prisoners education reform movement.

It’s hard to find a media outlet, big or small, that she hasn’t talked to. She’s been interviewed by Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Oprah Winfrey. She’s been featured on a Time magazine cover holding a broom (to sweep away bad teachers). She was one of the stars of the documentary “Waiting for Superman.”

These days, as director of an advocacy group she founded, StudentsFirst, she crisscrosses the country pushing her education politics: she’s for vouchers and charter schools, against tenure, for teachers, but against their unions.
Always, she preens for the cameras. Early in her chancellorship, she was trailed for a story by the education correspondent of “PBS NewsHour,” John Merrow.

At one point, Ms. Rhee asked if his crew wanted to watch her fire a principal. “We were totally stunned,” Mr. Merrow said.

She let them set up the camera behind the principal and videotape the entire firing. “The principal seemed dazed,” said Mr. Merrow. “I’ve been reporting 35 years and never seen anything like it.”

And yet, as voracious as she is for the media spotlight, Ms. Rhee will not talk to USA Today.

Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/education/22winerip.html

At the end of March, three of the paper’s reporters — Marisol Bello, Jack Gillum and Greg Toppo — broke a story about the high rate of erasures and suspiciously high test-score gains at 41 Washington schools while Ms. Rhee was chancellor.

The circle of crooks close ranks. Cheating ex-superintendent of Washington D.C. school took money from phone hacking company. Don't forget then when Murdoch got in trouble he sent for the ex-head of the New York school system to help him out. This is from The Daily Kos

Fri Aug 19, 2011 at 06:00 AM PDT

Rhee's StudentsFirst received Murdoch money

by Laura Clawson

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura ClawsonLast month, as the News Corp. phone hacking scandal spread, reporters started looking into Rupert Murdoch's connections to education "reform." After all, former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein was one of Murdoch's top advisers and News Corp. had been out looking for a profit in selling technology to public schools.
While Klein had gone from the New York City schools to cashing in at News Corp, his Washington, D.C. counterpart, former chancellor Michelle Rhee, was starting up StudentsFirst, an advocacy organization raising piles of money to spread her anti-union, pro-unproven evaluation standards agenda around the country. Rhee, too, was known to have ties to Murdoch, but when asked last month if he had been a StudentsFirst donor, it took two days for a spokesperson to refuse to confirm or deny.
Consider it confirmed:

That's an excerpt from Class Warfare, a book by Steven Brill. Dana Goldstein writes that, in a pair of influential articles written in 2009 and 2010, Brill's:

framing of the education debate, borrowed from reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee—teachers unions vs. poor kids—infiltrated the popular consciousness more deeply than it had before, presaging the September 2010 release of the pro–charter school, anti–teachers union documentary Waiting for Superman.

According to Goldstein, Brill's Class Warfare reflects a somewhat more nuanced take on education than those earlier articles; however, as a Rhee ally, he was certainly in a position to reliably report that Murdoch had been a StudentsFirst donor. So, add Murdoch to the list of Rhee's supporters these days, along with John Kasich, Rick Scott, Chris Christie and a host of other Republican governors.

"Cheating" Chancellor Michelle Rhee supports anti-union Tennessee teacher bill

The only thing that is unclear is did the Superintendent of Atlanta who cheated supports this bill as well. Rumor has it that four out of five cheating chancellors support this bill.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/20/996599/-Michelle-Rhee-praises-Tennessee-legislatures-anti-teacher-bill?via=blog_1