From Bill Turque of the Washington Post:
Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, whose image has been frayed by a series of high-profile news controversies, is turning to former White House communications director and veteran Democratic media consultant Anita Dunn for help.
A D.C. schools spokeswoman confirmed Friday that the agency is negotiating a contract with Dunn's firm, Squier Knapp Dunn. The objective is to more effectively handle the heavy load of local and national news media attention that Rhee attracts and to help roll out major stories to greater strategic advantage. The spokeswoman said Dunn has devoted time to District school issues but would not elaborate.
Yeah! Roll out news stories to greater strategic advantage.
Read the rest at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn-/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031904714.html A big thank you to Bill Turque for reporting this. It seems most reporters in an uncritical mainstream media regard Rhee as some sort of hero by virtue of her contempt for America' public school teachers.
Some reports I read claim that schools in D.C. have improved since Rhee came on board as Chancellor. Others, mainly teachers, say the improvements were already underway before Rhee took command. Being far from D.C. I wouldn't know which version is correct or if there is some truth in both. But as a former teacher I confess I'm biased and inclined to lean toward the teachers' version. But if test scores are rising, what does it really mean? It might mean that children are getting a better education and it might not.
In this age of fear and abuse packaged as accountability, with the iron-fisted imposition of the business model in our nation's classrooms, and worship at the altar of data, at what cost higher test scores? All over the country, it is very hard to even know anymore whether test score gains are really a reflection of improved learning. Certainly the joy of learning for its own sake is being snuffed out.
One of the most important things I ever learned from independent researcher and national treasure Gerald Bracey (and as a teacher during this age of maniacal testing and cutthroat accountability) is that high test scores are a good thing in and of themselves, but they are only meaningful when you don't attach too much meaning to them. Repeat that. Test scores are only meaningful when you don't attach too much meaning to them. Attach high stakes to them and as Campbell's Law warns, gaming and corruption ensue. And much else of immeasurable value is lost. The issue isn't the tests themselves, it's their misuse.
There is a very well funded PR machine churning in the dark underbelly of the ed deform movement's failing schools/failing teachers narrative, most often cloaked in civil rights rhetoric. Even well-meaning reporters for whom I normally have much respect on issues other than education are miles and miles behind ordinary folks in recognizing how bloated with distortion and deception that underbelly is.
The current silver bullet being fired to the media is getting rid of bad teachers. Indeed there are some bad teachers who should find another line of work and it shouldn't take years and an act of Congress to get them out of the classroom. However, I believe from my experience in 12 years of teaching that incompetent teachers are a small minority of the teaching population, (I'd say roughly 5%-7% in my area) and many, many teachers who find they cannot handle teaching simply "fire" themselves by resigning voluntarily.
You can fire every "bad" teacher in the country and it will barely make a dent in the challenges that present themselves to America's public schools, for those challenges are simply a mirror reflection of the poverty and societal ills that our leaders manage to turn a blind eye to. We are number one in childhood poverty among wealthy nations. What irony that the very people who have chosen to devote their lives to teaching and working with poor children are singled out and deprecated in the media.
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