~Jonathan Swift.
I'm very disappointed when I read something like this from Leonie Haimson. Apparently Gotham Schools has seen fit to write a story about where her kids attend school, days after a similar story surfaced about Michelle Rhee. It turns out she, like Rhee, has chosen to place her children in private school. In this space, you have not seen criticism of people for choosing private school for their children. You have seen criticism of people who choose private school for their children and force something inferior on our children.
How dare they insist on a system for our kids they deem unfit for theirs?
For
example, people like Michelle Rhee, Barack Obama, Michael Bloomberg and
Joel Klein send their kids to elite schools with small class sizes. For
their kids, that sort of education is important. Yet our kids should
sit in large classes while their teachers are vilified for their failure to reach 100% of the students in their classes. No excuses.
Learning disability? No English? Too bad for you. Fire the teachers,
close the schools, and salt the earth so nothing will ever grow there.
Neighborhood schools? What's a neighborhood?
The schools Rhee, Obama, Klein and Rahm choose for their kids do not test them to death. Yet, these hypocrites think our kids should do nothing but test prep, our
kids should be measured only by test scores. They push idiotic data
systems on us. They insist teachers be rated by what is, in fact, junk
science. The fact that it is garbage dissuades them not at all. I have
actually heard arguments that it's only 20-40% garbage, so don't worry.
However,
as an educator, I am firmly anti-garbage. I don't teach garbage, I
don't write garbage, and I don't want garbage for your child or mine, or
anyone's. I had a long conversation with a reformy friend of mine.
My reformy friend argued people like Leonie are hypocrites because they send their kids to private schools. I don't think so.
Here
are just a few differences between Leonie Haimson and Michelle Rhee.
The first, of course, is that Leonie Haimson advocates for small classes
for my kids and your kids. She fights so that they are
not, in fact, subject to ridiculous tests that establish nothing yet
enrich Michael Bloomberg's BFFs. She fights so all kids can learn under optimal conditions.
Michelle
Rhee, on the other hand, runs around advocating for schools that relentlessly test
our kids, because in her reformy world, nothing else matters. She does not fight for the one thing we know helps
our neediest kids, reasonable class size. She walks around peddling the
gun-to-your-head no excuses BS that led to the scandal recently
uncovered in Atlanta, and the one not yet fully uncovered in her
former fiefdom of Washington DC. Her idiotic notion that all kids need
the same corporate-style crap directly contradicts the message we
teachers always get--you have to differentiate. How on earth can you
effectively differentiate instruction when the test is the same no
matter what?
Furthermore,
who knows how much Rhee gets to head her astroturf group Students
First? Not me. I'm certain she doesn't do it out of the goodness of her
heart. I do know it costs 35K plus expenses if you want her to spread her wisdom around your place.
Leonie
does this work because she has a passion to improve education. I know
she's working for my child, and for the children I'm privileged to
teach. Rhee spouts corporate nonsense that doesn't work and helps no
one but the companies that want to peddle useless crap to our hapless kids. There is a huge difference between these two individuals. I asked
Leonie to come to our school and speak, and she did, gratis. We gave her
a hoodie with the school name on it, but I'm pretty sure she'd have
been just as happy if we didn't.
Leonie writes Gotham Schools intended to make the comparison between she and Rhee, though I did not see it directly referenced in their final story. Directly, obliquely, or coincidentally, it's preposterous beyond belief.
Full disclosure: My kid attends public school. She'd like to go to military school (really!) but I'm not going for it.
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