Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was teacher in a low performing DCPS school for several years prior to Rhee. Had she come into position while I was there I might have been able to stay. The culture of dysfunction is deeply ingrained. Trying to buck it at any level is suicidal. Teachers who sleep on the job, leave early every day, don't teach ONE. SINGLE. BIT. of the curriculum, teachers who sleep with students... my stories could go on and on. One biology teacher refused to teach the class and instead preached Christianity the entire year. No biology.
I never once had enough text books.
I bought ALL of my own chemistry supplies.
I was out sick with the flu for a couple of days and no sub ever covered my classes- they just roamed the halls.
The librarian locked the library and would only allow teachers she liked to come in and socialize and eat lunch. Students were not allowed in there.
The counselors routinely lost students' transcripts. I was contacted for 2 years after I left to recreate grades for kids.
The athletic director changed a failing student's grade so she could play basketball.
We had a homeless kid live in the stockroom for a month of two because he broke in every night.
We had a couple of building service personnel who pimped out a couple of girls in the chorus room in the evenings and weekends.
The principal embezzled nearly a hundred thousand dollars from a technology grant from AOL, held a gospel concert that lost nearly all the money and NOTHING happened to him- even after being investigated and the involvement of the mayor.

I have hundreds of other stories of the culture of dysfunction. I was told early on when I went to that school that I landed the perfect job where everyone wants to end up because it is the easiest place to ride out your last years teaching. And so it was for 2/3 of the building. The rest of us got so burnt out from picking up the pieces that we couldn't last for more than 5 or 6 years. It would have been nice to have someone, ANYONE look at the school and notice just how bad and useless most of the adults were in that building.

Interesting to me that you were a teacher and only found problems with other teachers. So the admin was fine? Parents fine? Thats amazing... and BS

What in the world are you talking about? A principal embezzling money is not an administrative problem? Not having sub teachers is not an administrative problem? A homeless kid is not a problem with his parents? Not sure why you're jumping on the PP here, but your criticisms are silly.

The Washington Post did an expose on the grant in 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110802506.html?sid=ST2007110802581

Wow, thanks for this. I just read that article and the related articles regarding the embezzlement/theft of student activity funds. This is an outrage. Rhee could have had enough on her hands to deal with this kind of corruption? The buck-passing, who-me? attitude was sickening.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was all about the test scores, Rhee used secret mind control and brain washing techniques to turn hundreds and hundreds of honest and upstanding teachers and administrators into her legion of evil minions to do her bidding to fake the results and even now, years after she's gone, she still controls them through threat of Omerta and her roving bands of secret death squads that patrol all the schools. And, she did all that in just three short years.

Uh huh.

What is your explanation for the abnormally high number of wrong-to-right erasures in schools which showed significant test score gains, but then showed significant test score losses when test security was increased?

Do you find that something to ridicule? Is it your position that we should stick our fingers in our ears and chant, "la, la, la"?

How can you support test scores as the basis for judging success while simultaneously joking about concern that the test scores might not be legitimate? Don't you realize that good teachers who are expected to improve upon artificially-inflated scores of their incoming students suffer from this while their cheating colleages prosper? Do you have a joke about that as well? Because that doesn't seem very funny to me.

RHEE is the one who raised security, so obviously she was concerned about eliminating cheating and concerned about the process being more controlled and HONEST. I'm not sure who you are talking about, where it comes to "joking about test scores not being legitimate" - I don't see that in PP's post. You seen to be getting posters mixed up - and your own confusion is no viable basis for attempting to debunk other posters.

1) Rhee only raised security after the USA Today report exposed the high number of wrong-to-right erasures. She dragged her feet on investigating possible cheating and as recently as two days ago denied that there was significant cheating. She continues to assert that the test score gains were legitimate and not influenced by wrong-to-right erasures.

2) You say you are not sure about "joking about test scores not being legitimate" -- a quote that you will not find in my post. Since I didn't write what you are quoting, I am not surprised that you are confused. Please refer to my actual post, not your revision of it. I mentioned "joking about concern that the test scores might not be legitimate", something the post that I quoted does throughout its entirety.

3) I was responding to one specific poster whose post I quoted. I assure you that any confusion is entirely on your part.

There is NOTHING about such joking in the specific post that you quoted. That post was obviously pure sarcasm ridiculing "Rhee Conspiracy Theory" that keeps getting posited, that all of the problems were solely Rhee's fault and Rhee's doing - it wasn't about the legitimacy of the tests.

[Anonymous]

Truth is, teachers and staff members who weren't doing their jobs could have been fired without Michelle Rhee. Even teachers with tenure could have been fired for time and attendance violations. The situation we have now with IMPACT is that everyone feels threatened, including great teachers who work under very difficult conditions. Also, we have teachers who don't do that much who are earning bonuses. Does this sound like an improvement?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
There is NOTHING about such joking in the specific post that you quoted. That post was obviously pure sarcasm ridiculing "Rhee Conspiracy Theory" that keeps getting posited, that all of the problems were solely Rhee's fault and Rhee's doing - it wasn't about the legitimacy of the tests.

It is difficult for me to understand how a post that you acknowledge is "pure sarcasm" and which begins "It was all about the test scores" does not contain joking about the concern some might have about the legitimacy of test scores. But, maybe it's just a question of semantics.

Obviously, nobody believes Rhee led a conspiracy to fake test scores. Rather, she created a system that incentivized cheating on test scores through the carrot of financial reward and stick of job loss. When the rather predictable cheating was revealed, she was slow to investigate it. She went so far as to promote the principal at whose school the greatest number of wrong-to-right erasures took place. Much as she based her original reputation on test score improvements in Baltimore that are largely a product of her imagination, she now bases her current reputation on test score gains in DC that are tarnished by cheating. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's just fact.

[Anonymous]

She gave bonuses and promotions to people like Wayne Ryan, former princpal of Noyes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The almighty dollar bill was the only power needed.

the almighty dollar is what's keeping Henderson and Rhee afloat right now -- and keeping some honest people from speaking up.

Cothorne got out of the whole education field before she spoke up.

You don't have to be corrupt to react to money -- you just have to want to eat -- and maybe let your kids eat too, and have a roof over their heads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was teacher in a low performing DCPS school for several years prior to Rhee. Had she come into position while I was there I might have been able to stay. The culture of dysfunction is deeply ingrained. Trying to buck it at any level is suicidal. Teachers who sleep on the job, leave early every day, don't teach ONE. SINGLE. BIT. of the curriculum, teachers who sleep with students... my stories could go on and on. One biology teacher refused to teach the class and instead preached Christianity the entire year. No biology.
I never once had enough text books.
I bought ALL of my own chemistry supplies.
I was out sick with the flu for a couple of days and no sub ever covered my classes- they just roamed the halls.
The librarian locked the library and would only allow teachers she liked to come in and socialize and eat lunch. Students were not allowed in there.
The counselors routinely lost students' transcripts. I was contacted for 2 years after I left to recreate grades for kids.
The athletic director changed a failing student's grade so she could play basketball.
We had a homeless kid live in the stockroom for a month of two because he broke in every night.
We had a couple of building service personnel who pimped out a couple of girls in the chorus room in the evenings and weekends.
The principal embezzled nearly a hundred thousand dollars from a technology grant from AOL, held a gospel concert that lost nearly all the money and NOTHING happened to him- even after being investigated and the involvement of the mayor.

I have hundreds of other stories of the culture of dysfunction. I was told early on when I went to that school that I landed the perfect job where everyone wants to end up because it is the easiest place to ride out your last years teaching. And so it was for 2/3 of the building. The rest of us got so burnt out from picking up the pieces that we couldn't last for more than 5 or 6 years. It would have been nice to have someone, ANYONE look at the school and notice just how bad and useless most of the adults were in that building.

Interesting to me that you were a teacher and only found problems with other teachers. So the admin was fine? Parents fine? Thats amazing... and BS

What in the world are you talking about? A principal embezzling money is not an administrative problem? Not having sub teachers is not an administrative problem? A homeless kid is not a problem with his parents? Not sure why you're jumping on the PP here, but your criticisms are silly.

The Washington Post did an expose on the grant in 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110802506.html?sid=ST2007110802581

Wow, thanks for this. I just read that article and the related articles regarding the embezzlement/theft of student activity funds. This is an outrage. Rhee could have had enough on her hands to deal with this kind of corruption? The buck-passing, who-me? attitude was sickening.

The article didn't even account for all of the funds that went missing. There were only 2 people at the school who had authority to write checks: the principal and the bank manager. Nothing happened to either one of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was all about the test scores, Rhee used secret mind control and brain washing techniques to turn hundreds and hundreds of honest and upstanding teachers and administrators into her legion of evil minions to do her bidding to fake the results and even now, years after she's gone, she still controls them through threat of Omerta and her roving bands of secret death squads that patrol all the schools. And, she did all that in just three short years.

Uh huh.

No, she used money as an incentive. Powerful enough for you?

Nothing wrong with financial incentives in and of themselves. The problem was the widespread cultural problems, wherein hundreds of teachers and administrators took it upon themselves to immediately leap to cheating rather than actually trying to do it the right way. The previous posters testimonial makes it clear that the deep-seated culture of corruption throughout DCPS that makes this possible. And here you are, basically DEFENDING that status quo, which had nothing to do with Rhee.

But Rhee wasn't experienced enough or maybe even smart enough as a manager to understand that she needed to provide extra security to keep cheating from happening. And when incredible gains were made - that just seemed a bit too miraculous - she wasn't reflective enough to make sure that kids were really learning more. She chose not to look at what was really happening.

Okay so you might argue that at worst she was naive. I believe that she certainly meant well. But why did Fenty hire someone so inexperienced and naive to run the school system? Especially someone whose supporters argued that every criticism of her was just another vote for dysfunction in DCPS? We deserved better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Here is my issue with your original post. The entire first part talks about teachers this... and teachers that. So, as I teacher- do I know that it all comes down to admin- OF COURSE. But I feel like teachers often get the blame for working in a culture of dysfunction The first part of your post you say again and again- teachers did this... teachers did that. Teachers, likely were also doing some heroic work. Also, and this is the tough part- you left. I am not blaming you- as I am now ready to head out the door to, but its hard to take negative feedback about the terrible things that are going on in the schools, from people who left. Those of us who stuck it out- and are trying to make good for the kids of DCPS (ALL the kids, not just the ones in NW) do not need one more thread of parents generalizing us as lazy, or asleep on the job. I would just ask- did you not see good things too? Was everything at your school terrible? I have taught Title I DCPS for my entire teaching career and sure- there is some bogus stuff going on- but there are also things that make me proud to be engaged in this amazing work. So am I 'defensive' teacher. You bet! When teachers are used as a scapegoat to ignore larger issues. (Not saying that is what you were directly doing, but you were laying the groundwork)

Oh my goodness... reading comprehension. My entire second response was about admin, but maybe I wasn't explicit enough. I have included handy hints in my message below. Admin creates, facilitates and nurtures the culture of a building. I had 6 principals in 5 years. You have a right to be a "defensive teacher" but if you must please try to resond to what is actually written. I have a feeling that you never taught in high school. It is a completely different environment in which to work. There is a lot that can go on in a 200,000 sq ft building that only serves 700 students, but all of it is under the direction of the leadership.
And FWIW, I loved the kids and many of the families. I still keep in contact with lots of them on a very regular basis. I still live in DC and send my kids to a charter school, and I still teach in public schools. I did leave that school after only 5 years because my ceiling collapsed (ADMIN) and I had been very ill for months because of the mold growing in the plaster that rained down on me (ADMIN). I felt a lot of guilt about it, but I couldn't physically or mentally do any more. I litereally fed, clothed and mothered hundreds of kids (FAMILIES) and it was a 24 hour a day job. There were plenty of physcial realities that required constant defense. I had 4 open drains in the middle of my classroom (ADMIN). There were rats and filth everywhere that wasn't attended to (ADMIN). I won't mention the one year I had to to teach science on a cart because of a many month battle to remove asbestos from my classroom (falsified reports made it so that "no one" knew about it- falsified by ADMIN who refused entrance to the room by the Army Corps of Engineers). I'm just grateful that Dr. Vance The only place I had to store my cart was in a bathroom (ADMIN). I wasn't assigned a temporary classroom (ADMIN)- I just had to find space for all of my kids every day, every period (ADMIN) My prep area was A DAMN BATHROOM. But it was okay because the ADMIN would only allow 2 bathrooms in the building to be unlocked and used by students so I had a 12 stall girls restroom all to myself.

And to the PP regarding a book: I have long thought about it, but books have plots with a beginning and an ending. People want to read stories that have closure. I have a long, long list of stories that don't have endings. I do have an equal number of great and wonderful, uplifting stories, too. Maybe that is the closure part?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Truth is, teachers and staff members who weren't doing their jobs could have been fired without Michelle Rhee. Even teachers with tenure could have been fired for time and attendance violations. The situation we have now with IMPACT is that everyone feels threatened, including great teachers who work under very difficult conditions. Also, we have teachers who don't do that much who are earning bonuses. Does this sound like an improvement?

People who aren't teachers are constantly evaluated in their jobs. Why should teachers be excluded from review? It sounds like teachers are moving more towards working in THE REAL WORLD, not DCPS where every action was ignored and a paycheck rolled in regardless. Most people, especially in a bad economy, feel threatened about losing their jobs. Welcome to real life.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
There is NOTHING about such joking in the specific post that you quoted. That post was obviously pure sarcasm ridiculing "Rhee Conspiracy Theory" that keeps getting posited, that all of the problems were solely Rhee's fault and Rhee's doing - it wasn't about the legitimacy of the tests.

It is difficult for me to understand how a post that you acknowledge is "pure sarcasm" and which begins "It was all about the test scores" does not contain joking about the concern some might have about the legitimacy of test scores. But, maybe it's just a question of semantics.

Obviously, nobody believes Rhee led a conspiracy to fake test scores. Rather, she created a system that incentivized cheating on test scores through the carrot of financial reward and stick of job loss. When the rather predictable cheating was revealed, she was slow to investigate it. She went so far as to promote the principal at whose school the greatest number of wrong-to-right erasures took place. Much as she based her original reputation on test score improvements in Baltimore that are largely a product of her imagination, she now bases her current reputation on test score gains in DC that are tarnished by cheating. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's just fact.

NP here: Well at least the teachers were doing something instead of napping. I don't think smart people, with any sense of ethics, cheat on tests. Cheating is not a natural reaction to having goals put on you in the workplace. Rhee's problem was trying to incentive people who have NO place in education they lack any sense of ethic/morals but have a huge sense of entitlement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Truth is, teachers and staff members who weren't doing their jobs could have been fired without Michelle Rhee. Even teachers with tenure could have been fired for time and attendance violations. The situation we have now with IMPACT is that everyone feels threatened, including great teachers who work under very difficult conditions. Also, we have teachers who don't do that much who are earning bonuses. Does this sound like an improvement?

People who aren't teachers are constantly evaluated in their jobs. Why should teachers be excluded from review? It sounds like teachers are moving more towards working in THE REAL WORLD, not DCPS where every action was ignored and a paycheck rolled in regardless. Most people, especially in a bad economy, feel threatened about losing their jobs. Welcome to real life.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Truth is, teachers and staff members who weren't doing their jobs could have been fired without Michelle Rhee. Even teachers with tenure could have been fired for time and attendance violations. The situation we have now with IMPACT is that everyone feels threatened, including great teachers who work under very difficult conditions. Also, we have teachers who don't do that much who are earning bonuses. Does this sound like an improvement?

People who aren't teachers are constantly evaluated in their jobs. Why should teachers be excluded from review? It sounds like teachers are moving more towards working in THE REAL WORLD, not DCPS where every action was ignored and a paycheck rolled in regardless. Most people, especially in a bad economy, feel threatened about losing their jobs. Welcome to real life.

Teachers have always been evaluated - not "excluded from review." The difference now is that they are reviewed in part on their students' standardized test scores and in part on specific classroom behaviors, as per IMPACT.

Imagine a farmer being downgraded because there was a drought.

Imagine a oncologist getting fired because most of his mortally ill patients died of cancer.

Of course accountability is needed but the current system assumes that teachers alone are reponsible for their students' ability to learn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Truth is, teachers and staff members who weren't doing their jobs could have been fired without Michelle Rhee. Even teachers with tenure could have been fired for time and attendance violations. The situation we have now with IMPACT is that everyone feels threatened, including great teachers who work under very difficult conditions. Also, we have teachers who don't do that much who are earning bonuses. Does this sound like an improvement?

People who aren't teachers are constantly evaluated in their jobs. Why should teachers be excluded from review? It sounds like teachers are moving more towards working in THE REAL WORLD, not DCPS where every action was ignored and a paycheck rolled in regardless. Most people, especially in a bad economy, feel threatened about losing their jobs. Welcome to real life.

+100

This statement and it's "+100" is so unfortunate. No one has criticized Michelle Rhee for wanting to evaluate teachers. Rhee has been criticized for the way she went about reforming education and evaluations. Even today, her organization calls for 50% or more of a teacher's evaluation to be based on test scores, even though she 1. offers no evidence that this is really good for students and 2. hasn't started any dialogue about how to even improve standardized tests so that they are accurate predictors of student growth.

Rhee either believed or wanted it to be true that if people just had higher expectations, students would miraculously do better. This is not true, and it is a mindset that ultimately hurts students because they are deprived of the real resources they need in order to improve. Teachers do not just need to come to school filled with hope and high expectations - they also need sound curricula and support in building environments that are conducive to learning. Rhee may have found boxes of glue and pencils in the warehouse and been great at responding to emails, but she didn't put any effort into revamping curricula. So, it's not that teachers didn't WANT to meet Rhee's high expectations or be held responsible for improving student learning; it's that they were given very little time to figure out real, effective strategies to improve learning. Most teachers did not cheat, but MANY teachers narrowed the curricula and stopped trying to incorporate best practices for teaching kids and replaced them with best practices for getting scores up. This is not because teachers were greedy, lazy or trying to shirk responsibility; it's because they were being told to get something done was very nearly impossible to do without cutting corners (i.e. either cheating or narrowing the curricula).

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
There is NOTHING about such joking in the specific post that you quoted. That post was obviously pure sarcasm ridiculing "Rhee Conspiracy Theory" that keeps getting posited, that all of the problems were solely Rhee's fault and Rhee's doing - it wasn't about the legitimacy of the tests.

It is difficult for me to understand how a post that you acknowledge is "pure sarcasm" and which begins "It was all about the test scores" does not contain joking about the concern some might have about the legitimacy of test scores. But, maybe it's just a question of semantics.

Obviously, nobody believes Rhee led a conspiracy to fake test scores. Rather, she created a system that incentivized cheating on test scores through the carrot of financial reward and stick of job loss. When the rather predictable cheating was revealed, she was slow to investigate it. She went so far as to promote the principal at whose school the greatest number of wrong-to-right erasures took place. Much as she based her original reputation on test score improvements in Baltimore that are largely a product of her imagination, she now bases her current reputation on test score gains in DC that are tarnished by cheating. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's just fact.

NP here: Well at least the teachers were doing something instead of napping. I don't think smart people, with any sense of ethics, cheat on tests. Cheating is not a natural reaction to having goals put on you in the workplace. Rhee's problem was trying to incentive people who have NO place in education they lack any sense of ethic/morals but have a huge sense of entitlement.

True to an extent. However, Rhee hasn't treated this as a "problem". Rather, she has treated it as the best indicator of her success. Ironic that Rhee apparently owe a debt to exactly the type of teacher she should have fired.

Edit: Just to be clear, Rhee touts test scores that are artificially inflated as a result of tampering as the best indicator of her success in DC. She, however, denies the artificial inflation.