Of Michelle Rhee and the upcoming school board elections

Michelle Rhee and her organization, StudentsFirst, are doling out a lot of dough to elect candidates that will carry out her anti-union views at school boards. Here's a really good article about her recent contribution to candidates for the L.A. Unified School District.

I wonder what her daughters think about her mom's "frank talk." 

School board elections are more than seven months away, but there's already chatter on both sides of Monterey's Lettuce Curtain about who's going to run and who's going to throw in his/her weigh behind candidates.

I expect it's going to get really nasty at the Alisal. There's rumors that anti-status quo forces (and yes, Castañeda is the status quo) are gearing up to recruit three candidates to take over the board. One of the candidates would have to run against -- yes, you guessed it -- José Castañeda.

Not only is Castañeda nowhere near giving up his seat at the Alisal board, but I hear he wants to run AGAIN for the seat come November. I'm not making this up.

Speaking of the Alisal, there's a lot of discontent brewing because administrators fired Oscar Loya Principal Dannette Bryson, who has not even been at the district for a year. Then about 15 classified employees were given a pink slip last week. Long time principal of Alisal Community School Elizabeth Armenta was also forced out. No surprise there. Castañeda and his allies have always had it against Armenta's brother-in-law, Monterey County Supervisor Fernando Armenta, and it's surprising Elizabeth lasted this long after Castañeda took over the board.

At MPUSD, several trustees have said they don't want to run again. It'll be interesting to see who throws their hats in the ring.

A must-see documentary on Michelle Rhee

Anybody who's interested in the state of public education should know about Michelle Rhee, the controversial former chancellor DC of public school.

Rhee was determined to reform the failing schools --and she did.

A few years later, investigations put into question whether those astronomical gains were even real.

Rhee has since founded an organization call "Students First" which is advocating on school reform based primarily on reforming unionized teaching. She wants states to abolish tenure and add similar measures often rejected by organized labor.

Today, student's first issued a "report card" that grades California with a "F" based on whether or not the state follows the reforms the group is advocating for. Find the report card here. And find a related article by the New York Times here.

A very timely Frontline documentary on Rhee will air starting tomorrow at 10 a.m. at local PBS stations. Check it out!

Watch The Education of Michelle Rhee Preview on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Documentary on Michelle Rhee soon to hit the airwaves

Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the Washington D.C. schools and now the CEO of Students First, will be featured in a Frontline documentary in January. Find more details here.

Rhee's now Sacramento's First Lady, and remains a controversial figure in education. She received much praise for what were perceived great gains in the D.C. schools during her tenure, but those gains came into question later when it was discovered that the erasure rate in exams throughout the district was higher than normal.

Rhee was featured in "Waiting for Superman" and promoted "Won't Back Down," a dramatization of parents taking over a school. She's a personality worth knowing, so mark your calendars.

Corporations and education

Two events this week that will likely resonate in the education community for a long time to come: one, Democratic voters fired Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, and effectively along with him one of the movement's biggest superstars, District schools chief Michelle Rhee. Nathalie Hopkinson describes it best in her piece for The Atlantic: "This Spring, Rhee negotiated among the most revolutionary teacher's contracts in the country, which essentially broke the union, loosening tenure protections in exchange for the potential for teachers to make more money and earn performance bonuses. D.C. is being hailed as a model in urban education reform, and there are plans to replicate this model..."

Where the road meets the rubber is in the insistence of the charitable arm of Wal-Mart to retain Rhee to make sure she'd continue on the union-breaking war path or it would yank millions of dollars in funding, according to Hopkinson...

which leads me to the second event this week, also in Washington D.C.

President Obama announced Thursday the launch of a new organization called "Change the Equation," which will help the administration's goal to improve math and science education. In the prez words, Change the Equation "brings together a coalition of more than a hundred CEOs from the nation’s largest companies who are committed to bring innovative math and science programs to at least a hundred high-need communities over the next year."
Among the top execs invited to witness Obama's announcements were Ursula Burns from Xerox, Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobil, Craig Barrett, former Intel CEO; Antonio Perez of Kodak; Glenn Britt from Time Warner.

So I'm curious. Will the funding of these corporations be contingent on whether school reform includes union-breaking measures? Can we really expect schools to work as businesses? If so, how do we measure "productivity" and for whom? And what happens to the kids who don't "produce"?