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Putting Students First

By: Ben Howe (Diary)  |  July 24th, 2012 at 05:27 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

One of the things that we should take from the epic battle in Wisconsin as well as the fundamental changes that are taking place in New Jersey, is that real education reform is no longer a “third rail” political issue. Organizations, governors and activists are taking the issue of education head-on and even the National Education Association (NEA) is learning that their time as the dictators of education are over.

Former D.C. Schools Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, has started an organization called Students First which is pushing for education reform that does more than simply concede all ground to powerful unions. In fact, this isn’t her first foray into the battle against the special interests that control so much of our children’s future.

In 2010 she gained the ire of unions for doing the unthinkable: firing people.

“I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?” she said.

As a father of four children I applaud this effort and encourage everyone to read more about them. Here’s a video they’ve just released about the organization.


It’s a funny ad to be sure, but education reform is a deadly serious and critically important topic. I am so incredibly tired of the first consideration in government and in voting to be the size of the teacher’s benefits package. And this is coming from the son of two teachers.

It’s very important for us to support groups like this, please visit their website.

COMMENTS

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  • lineholder

    Education reform is a broad issue spanning across the political political spectrum. I’ve been amazed at how much attention this is beginning to draw and how many people I’ve heard expressing that we very seriously need to find ways to reform our educational system.

    The Dems won’t touch this because of this Unions, so it’s a wide open area where Repubs could gain more support than they might realize at the present time.

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      • Ben Howe

        And I totally agree. I’m so glad people are finally addressing this honestly. All the orgs out there have been lefty for so many years. We have to support all these newer non-lefty orgs.

  • rcatheart

    at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit last summer, and was extremely impressed. She also apparently has street cred with teachers/administration – my sister is a public school teacher who is taking master’s classes so she’ll be able to be in administration, and she says her class thinks the world of Rhee. I’m so glad she’s continuing to take the reins on this issue!

  • agiraffedies

    Ben,

    My wife is a former educator and is currently in the process of earning her EDD (education PhD) and is thus very attuned to developments in education. Knowing this, I showed her this article. She said she heard about Students First when Ms. Rhee first started the organization. My wife was very excited (being a big fan of Ms. Rhee for her stand against the education unions) and joined immediately. She was, however, later distressed to find out from the organization’s mailings that they supported giving free tuition to illegal aliens. Upon reading about this, my wife cancelled her membership. It might be of interest to everyone if you spoke of this. To me, this is similar to finding out that the Komen group supports planned parenthood.

    Thanks

    • MF

      You’re right, it’s not good that they support giving free tuition to illegals. But with all of the good they are doing, that wart isn’t nearly big enough for me to reject them.

      Besides, the practical solution for the illegals problem is enforcement – close the borders and then make it so that illegals can’t get jobs, and they will leave. (Not trying to threadjack here…)

  • earlgrey

    SHe can’t link directly to this website as the forum is a liberal one, but we’ll see if she gives this lady some air-time. Education affects all parents.

  • Brookhaven

    The Democratic party and the left have been running education in this country for what…40 plus years? I’d wager there hasn’t been a non-Democrat elected to a school board position in most major cities since 1970.

    The current education system in this country IS the Democrat’s school system. Why the heck hasn’t anyone tied it (and all its problems) around the Democrats like a giant albatross?

    Why do we let the Democrats get away with even talking about improving education? Does anyone think the Democrats are going to change the current system (much less improve it)? They built THIS system. What you see right now is what you are going to get–forever–from the Democrats.

    Yet, we engage in debates about education reform with Democrats as if they are seriously participating in the discussion (they aren’t), which allows them to create a facade that they actually care about solving our education problems (they don’t). No matter what platitudes and promises they make, at the end of the day they aren’t going to change a single thing about THEIR education system. They built it, and benefit from it being just like it is right now.

    We should be asking voters one question: why would anyone believe the Democrats are serious about changing anything, when they’ve been running the show for the last 40 years?

    The GOP may not have all the answers, but at least with the GOP there is a chance education will get better. With the Democrats there isn’t a chance–not a snowball’s chance–of it ever improving.

    We should keep banging those points home–over and over and over again–until we’ve wrapped the current education system around the Democrats and the left like an albatross.

    • runner12

      I think the tide is shifting in favor of serious education reform in this country. The films “Waiting for Superman” and “The Lottery” woke many people up and the cries for reform from people like Ms. Rhee are being heard.

      The problem is the unions and their ties to the Democratic party. They own most of the education system and have wrecked it completely. They will not give up control of this area without a fight because they want the power this control gives them.

      By hanging the Democrats failures in education around their necks, maybe more people will wake up and help us drive the NEA and their ilk from the US education system.

  • hunter

    She is great at getting a LOT of money for administrators (who do not teach), for using conservative words, and for failing.
    Beware of the faux reformer nomadic administrators who care for their latest school district the way a carpet bagger cared for the town he was fleecing.
    Rhee and others who talk big talk do not deliver and leave chaos and poorly educated students, after they receive big contract buy outs.
    Getting rid of out of control unions is great. Getting rid of bad teachers is vital.
    Rhee and her ilk are not the solution.

    • http://boldcolor.blogspot.com/ Paula

      Rhee has always been a controversial figure, but she has done an excellent job of bringing attention to the school choice issue. She is an avowed Democrat and is a promoter of universal school choice – within the public school framework.

      Because of that, I think she’s been able to help build bridges between Republicans and Democrats. They both disagree with her often, but also find common ground. She spoke at a screening of “Waiting for Superman” in Cleveland with Republican Governor Kasich and, with teachers picketing outside, had the guts to stand up there and answer questions from union members inside.

      I was actually pleasantly surprised when someone asked Gov. Kasich whether he thought there should be tax credits or vouchers for homeschoolers in exchange for state-mandated tests. Kasich said he hadn’t really thought about it. Rhee jumped in and said that homeschoolers valued their independence and most wouldn’t want to trade that independence for state interference in their curriculum decisions. Amen to that!

      Anyway, if you read through the ideas in the Students First website, most of them are excellent: teacher’s evaluations, eliminating tenure, more charter schools, etc. We can learn from Rhee and her organization without joining and sending money.

      Last year I attended an event for National School Choice Week and heard Juan Williams, Hugh Hewitt, and OH Treasurer (now senate candidate) Josh Mandel all speaking about school choice. The Republicans have got to build more coalitions with Democrats on this issue. Parents desperately want it, but we can’t seem to get the message past the unions’ firewall.

      • hunter

        Her organization should be called “Rhee first”.
        The problem with democrats building bridges is that they don’t.
        The verbiage and rhetoric at her website may be wonderful, but the reality of all of these faux reformers is that at the end of the day they don’t teach, they do not value those who do, and the students in the Districts they teach in are no better off after they are finally run off.

  • http://www.redstate.com/wp-admin/user/profile.php docfreeman

    We had GOD in our schools and they were doing great, but an atheist went to court and the liberal court took GOD out of schools. Now look what kind of education we have, gangs in school, drugs, rapes, drive by shootings, teen pregnancies. In 1962 the Supreme Court Declared that schools could no longer have prayer or bible reading in American schools. Taxpayers will spend $120,000 on the average student entering kindergarten today before that student finishes high school. Washington’s role in education is ineffective and duplicative programs. Nearly three decades after ?A Nation at Risk?, the groundbreaking report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, warned of ?a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people,? the gains we have made in improving our schools are negligible?even though we have doubled our spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) on K?12 public education. On America?s latest exams (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), one-third or fewer of eighth-grade students were proficient in math, science, or reading. Our high-school graduation rate continues to hover just shy of 70 percent, according to a 2010 report by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, and many of those students who do graduate aren?t prepared for college. ACT, the respected national organization that administers college-admissions tests, recently found that 76 percent of our high-school graduates ?were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses.?
    The World Economic Forum ranks us 48th in math and science education. On international math tests, the United States is near the bottom of industrialized countries (the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and we?re in the middle in science and reading. Similarly, although we used to have one of the top percentages of high-school and college graduates among the OECD countries, we?re now in the basement for high-school and the middle for college graduates. And these figures don?t take into account the leaps in educational attainment in China, Singapore, and many developing countries.
    During the first three-quarters of the 20th century, America developed an enormously successful middle class, first by making high school universal, and then, after the Second World War, by making college much more available, through the GI Bill and other scholarship programs. As a result, our educational attainment kept pace with our strong technological advancement. But that?s changed markedly since 1980, and now our technological progress is advancing more rapidly than our educational attainment. From 1960 to 1980, our supply of college graduates increased at almost 4 percent a year; since then, the increase has been about half as fast.
    We need the States to take back the role of overseeing schools, which would allow counties, towns, local school boards, and parents to have the last of their own children?s education. Also the teachers union should be disband so that teachers who cannot teach can be fired not put in rubber room doing nothing, but drawing their salary and pension.

  • nhbuckeye

    that in two of four articles (one of Master’s bump, other on students saying school is unchallenging) on their home page reference studies from the Center of American Progress? The Ctr for Am. Progress may have done some interesting research, but I doubt their ability to conduct any kind of study without inserting progressive bias. Even though what the articles are saying are easy to agree with (Master degrees don’t make better teachers and, yup, I was unchallenged in school too), I am far too cynical of the progressive agenda to trust anything that comes out of the Ctr for Am. Progress.

  • Paul Fallavollita

    I agree with some of the other comments that advise caution given the background and connections of Rhee and her organization. That being said, I’ve read the fairly large PDF on her site regarding the kinds of reforms her organization recommends and I believe that many of them are viable for inclusion in a conservative program for educational reform. It’s probably best to approach her proposals cafeteria-style.

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