Our cheated hearts

A colleague points at this NYT story about the “cheating Hart” of educational reform in Atlanta. Quote: “‘Principals and teachers were frequently told by Beverly Hall and her subordinates that excuses for not meeting targets would not be tolerated,’ the indictment said.” It’s just one scene in a long story now well plotted for every school in the country. The real bomb blast would be getting the goods on Michelle Rhee during her time in D.C., but my guess is that is not going to happen. If such a blast does go off, it will be in part thanks to the efforts of retired teacher b.F. Brandenberg. Even if it does, Atlanta-like pressures and behaviors have arrived much closer to home. Rhee’s got California in her sights and she just hired a very smart teacher union turncoat as an advisor.

A different colleague pointed out that all SFUSD asst. superintendents will be held accountable for “expected test score gains” for the next year. And those asst. sup’s will, in turn, expect the specific score gains from the site principals. The principals in turn will … well, you get the picture. The neat twist is that the principals, co-opted to infantilize themselves, will get to set their site’s specific targets for 2014-15 . They’ll collaborate with this top down nonsense by leading rushed and uninformed School Site Councils to complete revised Balanced Score Card plans. Read pages 7, 8 and 9 of this PDF and look for the word “target.” This is coming right out of Michelle Rhee’s playbook in D.C. And our toadying site leaders will use the targets as arrows to hit autonomous teachers wherever they can.

And of course, it’s not just San Francisco. CORE’s 10 urban districts got approval for their Race to the Top waiver and that means some kind of value added measures for teacher evaluation is on the horizon for all 10 districts.

To steal a line from tomorrow night’s HBO series, “Winter is coming.” And me? I’m heading south!

Stake-proof vampires

Nice that Merrow published this right after the Frontline doc on Rhee and the publication of the D.O.E. whitewash, but you have to wonder why it wasn’t part of the documentary. Should be enough to put RheeFirst in the graveyard of vampiric education reform, but it won’t be.