I met reactionary Fernando Espuelas' challenge, now will he demand the same of Gates, Zuckerberg, and Dell?

"Another issue involves concerns that charter schools may be screening students by requiring parents to provide information related to special education eligibility and services on the lottery application. Over the past two years, a review of applications has found a considerable number of schools requiring such information despite efforts by the District to eradicate this through oversight of the application process." — LAUSD Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM) Modified Consent Decree

Roughly eighteen months ago I tweeted a passage from the above quoted OIM document. The lucrative Los Angeles charter industry systematically discriminates against special needs children in favor of bloated executive salaries, as evidenced most recently by Aspire Charter Corporation's dodging of its obligation to the most vulnerable students.

Not more than two minutes later I was attacked by one of Los Angeles' bullhorns for neoliberalism, reactionary Fernando Espuelas. I'll get to the exchange between Espuelas and myself momentarily, but think it's important to provide a little background on this privatization pusher. Espuelas is a venture-capitalist-turned-broadcaster who is currently a Henry Crown Fellow at the right-of-center Aspen Institute. Aspen's leadership includes genocide defender Madeleine Albright, billionaire Pete Peterson's "Fix the Debt" cheerleader Sam Nunn, NSA surveillance zealot Dianne Feinstein, neoliberal columnist Nicholas Kristof, and host of other unsavory folk who would feel comfortable at a Hoover Institution luncheon.

Aspen is certainly the correct venue for Espuelas' brand of politics, who has no qualms retweeting the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), supports the apartheid regime in the Near East, and consistently called for the overthrow of the democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez when the courageous anti-imperialist leader still lived. Espuelas served on the board of the reactionary Walton Family Foundation funded school privatization outfit "Parent Revolution" — which has close ties to both the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the fringe-right Heartland Institute.

Espuelas is best summed up by Bloomberg's Business Week which said of him: "he's all Wall Street."

Getting back to our narrative that started with my tweet condemning the greedy corporate charter sector. Espuelas, who apparently isn't much of a reader, launched into a fact-free diatribe against me. It was the usual slanderous tripe: I'm on some chimerical union payroll, I'm a "UTLA sock puppet", and so on. Ben Austin, Gloria Romero, Jed Wallace, Steve Barr, Marco Petruzzi, and all the other profiteers in the charter industry have made these same claims, I suppose someday proof will be forthcoming? I kept trying to get Espuelas to commit to a stance on special education, but anti-labor tirades were all he seemed capable of. At one point I called him a dullard after calling out his slander saying I was paid to advocate public education. That's when he started mocking me for being forced to drop out of my last quarter at UCLA in the early Nineteen-Nineties because of dire economic circumstances. [1]

There is no requirement for members of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board of Education to hold college degrees. While it is certainly desirable that board members be educated, Espuelas was using my situation as a red herring to avoid discussing substantive policy issues because even he, reactionary as they come, couldn't defend the indefensible special education policies of the infamous charter school industry. After a long exchange in which he continuously condescended to me, he said:

@rdsathene blah, blah, blah. maybe finish getting a diploma as an example to the students you aspire to lead-then you'd be a bit credible

— Fernando Espuelas (@EspuelasVox) October 29, 2012

Despite Espuelas' offensive pleas I ran for the LAUSD School Board in 2013 against the billionaire funded corporate reform candidate, and finished second in a field of five with over 5,200 votes. A promise to my wife to return to UCLA if I lost the race was accompanied by finally being in a position with both the time and the money to return to school. Not only did I finish my three remaining required classes, I did so with some distinction, raising my GPA by two full points.

Effectively, I was able to take on Espuelas' challenge. The Official Verification Transcript pictured above states I was awarded a Bachelor of Arts on March 21, 2014 in Classical Civilization by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Am I "a bit credible" now? Oddly enough, for all his bluster, Espuelas' BA is from from a school that's not nearly as prestigious as the one I just graduated from. More importantly, why does Espuelas selectively demand university degrees from public school advocates, while not holding school privatization advocates to the same standard? If this statement is genuinely true:

@rdsathene yes I'm a total "elitist" - I think that people that aspire to run school systems should have a university diploma - crazy!

— Fernando Espuelas (@EspuelasVox) October 29, 2012

then Espuelas should make the same demand of billionaire college drop outs Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Michael Dell. After all, all three aspire to run not only local school systems, but use their ill gotten gains to control national education policy. Gates' [2] noxious meddling with our remaining public education system is unprecedented, as Professor Mark D. Naison recently wrote. Perhaps if these capricious billionaires followed Espuelas's advice, just like I did, they would become educated enough to halt both their viciously destructive funding agendas, and their neoliberal policy advocacy.

My challenge to Fernando Espuelas

Mr. Espuelas I met your challenge to obtain a degree, now will you take up my challenge to you? First, you should demand Gates, Zuckerberg, Dell, and all their fellow privatizers obtain degrees before aspiring to run education. Anything else is a double standard that exposes you as a fraud, phony, and fake — someone unworthy to discuss education policy. Second, I repeatedly asked you this very important question on October 28, 2012, and I believe the world should know your answer to it:

@EspuelasVox Getting back to your original attack. Do you agree that schools taking public funds should be obligated to educate every child.

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) October 29, 2012

Naturally my own answer to that simple question is yes.

---

[1] That story deserves full treatment in the future, but would distract from our discussion here.
[2] Susan DuFresne and I had fun responding to Professor Ravitch's #ThingsInCommonWithBillGates tweet by addressing the degree issue.

Education "Reform" with David Sirota

YouTube Introduction What's really happening in education politics? Would you believe it's a battle between greedy school teachers and corporate CEOs who want what's best for the children? Well, not so much. Charter schools backed by these so-called "education reformers" aren't necessarily better than standard public education - it's actually been proven that they aren't. Charter schools do however make sense as a business strategy, allowing corporations to make big money off school children. How does this strategy work? David Sirota explains.

Christie Bows to the Billionaires: Public Schools to Go the Highest Bidder

Through filing of a FOIA request, the Education Law Center in Newark has obtained the Broad Plan for privatizing schools in New Jersey where least resistance will be offered--poor schools.  The plan is being passed around by Cerf's henchmen in the Ed Department, as they try to stay ahead of legislation that could put restrictions on this planned economic bonanza for Wall Street aspirants who are not smart enough to operate there, but not dumb enough to miss out on a feeding frenzy if the Christie/Broad alliance holds.  From NJPR: 

The New Jersey Department of Education is moving forward with a reform plan for the state’s lowest performing schools by using private money from a California-based foundation [Broad].

The proposed plan calls for school closures, state operation of failing schools and elimination of union representation in schools that do not improve after sustained efforts to raise student performance. . . .

The plan is very similar to the one being finalized in Tennessee and other states with legislators for sale, whereby the most vulnerable schools in the state will be gobbled up by the Achievement School District, an enterprise run at the state level for turning urban schools over to corporations.   Local pols can avoid the angry questions by parents, and the State can blame federal requirements under Race to the Top.  Duncan, in turn, can blame teachers, parents, and children for not accomplishing what poverty disallows.

 

Here is the beginning of a piece from Reuters today that examines the economic bonanza awaiting the billionaires and their yes men, the same ones now infiltrating school systems across New Jersey and paid for by tax dollars.  

Aug 1 (Reuters) - The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige.

Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.

"You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up," said Lytle, a partner at The Parthenon Group, a Boston consulting firm. "It could get really, really big."
Indeed, investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education.

The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors.

Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into -- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.

Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education. . . .

Once more Alex Russo afflicts the afflicted and comforts the comfortable

"I want to work with people who have relevant experience in our neighborhoods, whose kids go to the same schools mine do, and who believe in the self-determination of all communities. I do not appreciate the dominant-culture control of the 'reformers' who parachute in, a la Peace Corps style, to show us Brown and Black folks how to be like them." — Andrea Merida

Photo courtesy of LS4C1.

It seems Alexander Russo just can't stand when ordinary working class people stand up to the plutocrats he serves with such aplomb. Wasn't it just yesterday when we discussed him excoriating "activists, community members, and educators standing up to the corporate education reform juggernaut" in The trouble with Alexander Russo?

On the first of June, he wrote a paean to right-wing school privatization veteran Linda Serrato. In the piece Russo makes abundantly clear his heartfelt desire that he wants to see the administration be supportive of "Charter Trigger" laws. Since this administration is responsible for educational malpractices including Race to the Trough and Corporate Core Curriculum, it wouldn't be surprising if they did express support for Ben Austin's American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) template legislation.

Yet it's not Russo's love for all things profitable and corporate that is of note in the above article. What's astonishing is that he banned parent activist Caroline Grannan for the month of June from making comments on his blog. Grannan's crime? She had the audacity to point out that privatization pimp Serrato was a paid hack, just like the rest of the so-called Parent Revolution condottiere so beloved by the Heartland Institute.

Grannan wrote eloquently about heavy-handed Russo's selective censorship in Parent Trigger flap over paid flacks vs. real advocates. Her fellow Parents Across America (PAA) member Julie Woestehoff also wrote an excellent piece entitled Mercenaries in the corporate reform propaganda war.

While his corporate reform bias isn't in question, Russo likes to pretend he is seemingly above the fray and that he somehow devotes equal skepticism to all sides. He cites a handfull of his posts where he is mildly unflattering of some corporate reforms. Let's put his feigned neutrality to the "Who Stands to Gain?" test coined by the sage Russian philosopher, since ultimately that's the question people have been asking about paid corporate education reformers that has Russo in such a tizzy. First and formost we can't forget Russo's employer, Scholastic, made $1,906.1 Million in revenues last year. Secondly, we have to remember that he's not a volunteer activist, or even an unpaid blogger. Instead, he's paid by one of the largest education companies to write about various topics that are most typically centered around what eventually will bring in more profits to his employer. Who stands to gain? Corporate reforms like Corporate Core and other scripted curriculum mean more profits for Scholastic, which, in turn, will ensure Russo continued employment. This is probably why he's so sensitive when his idols Rhee, Romero, Petruzzi, and Austin are rightfully accused of being hired guns, since he's one himself.

Hence Russo couldn't leave Woestehoff and Grannan's valid criticisms of both himself and his corporate reform colleagues unchallenged. Indeed he launched a full scale smear campaign against PAA, leveling accusations that they are "white, middle-class, middle-aged types," who are "coming at education reform from a less immediate and compelling perspective" and further says "it isn't really clear whether PAA represents any great number of young low-income minority parents who have a direct and immediate interest in making low-performing, neglected schools better." I would ask Russo this directly, but he tends to ignore me or respond with obtuse misdirections: since corporate education reform is funded by Walton, DeVos, Broad, Bradley, Gates, Koch, Hastings, Dell, Powell-Jobs, Scaife, Tilson, et al. can he name one of the entities from that list that meet his criteria? Taking just the funders from the above mentioned Parent Revolution, can Russo tell me who out of that group of plutocrats are "low-income minority parents?" Or perhaps he's referring to Parent Revolution's leader (and it's not Maggie Gyllenhaal) who lives in a 1.2 million dollar home in an area of Beverly Hills that's 87.5% white. Despicable, duplicitous, and disgusting.

I left the following comment under Russo's recent piece. He typically deletes or edits my comments, so it's good to have a record of the original:

Wow! One of the biggest cheerleaders for corporate "reforms" savaging one of the few genuine parent movements in the country. Who would have expected that?

I'm not a member of PAA, because I'm not a parent. If I was, I'd join in a second because their policies precisely reflect those of all the families that I do countless hours of VOLUNTEER work with in my impoverished community [1]. I think PAA are actually not critical enough of the other side, whose motives are as clear as the six figure salaries they receive. Mr. Russo, show me a PAA leader paid Gloria Romero, Michelle Rhee, or Ben Austin type money, and I'll make a public apology right here.

[1] http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/neighborhoods/neighborhood/westlake/

Several of the PAA founding members, including those of color who take righteous exception to Russo casting them as white and middle-class, have commented there. But as I argued in my first polemic against Russo, there's a serious power imbalance on every level between those forces heralding corporate education reform and grassroots resistance to that selfsame neoliberal agenda. Our very own Professor P. L. Thomas discusses such an "unfair imbalance of power" in his very erudite Does Tone Matter in the Education Reform Debate? far better than I am able to articulate. Interestingly Thomas' essay mentions yet another Russo attack on Professor Diane Ravitch. We must continue to point out that these power imbalances exist, and that they are manifestations of system that hinges on our oppressors maintaining those imbalances at all costs. In that regard Russo is merely a mouthpiece for those really in power, and a shrill and servile one at that.

Joanne Barkan on How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

False Choices: The Economic Argument Against Market-Driven Education Reform

False Choices: The Economic Argument Against Market-Driven Education Reform

The trouble with Alexander Russo

The irony is that Russo suggests we critics have been successful because WE are coordinating ourselves! And the "reformers" ought to do the same! We are seeing the most coordinated, sustained and systematic campaign ever mounted in public education. Once again, if you have not done so yet, watch the video in which Stand For Children CEO Jonah Edelman drops the veil and reveals exactly how his group coordinated with other non-profits, with the Chamber of Commerce and major newspapers in Illinois to gain clout. But Russo slyly suggests that somehow those of us crying foul are the ones doing the coordinating. I think there is a term in magic for this - misdirection. — Anthony Cody

Photo courtesy of LS4C1.

Over the holiday break Beltway insider Alexander Russo launched a broadside against activists, community members, and educators standing up to the corporate education reform juggernaut. His piece, Media: Reform Opponents Are Winning Online (For Now), was a heavy handed cheap shot in the guise of a compliment. Rather than dedicate too much space responding directly to Russo's piece, please see the following responses:

• Anthony Cody - Are Critics of Corporate Education "Reform" Winning the Online Debate?
• Nancy Flanagan - Reform vs. Anti-Reform: Quoth the Raven
• Kenneth J. Bernstein - Did you know I'm a Goliath?
• Anthony Cody - Lopsided Debate Over Education Reform Reveals a Broken System

Russo's underhanded dig is followed up with his suggestion that billionaire funded astroturf groups like StudentsFirst, Stand For Children, and TeachPlus have the potential to correct what he perceives as an "imbalance." For Russo, the corporate education reform astroturf need to step up and post comments under articles, use twitter, blog, and avail themselves of social media. It simply isn't enough to be funded by the likes of the wealthiest one percent including names like Walton, DeVos, Broad, Bradley, Gates, Koch, Hastings, Dell, Powell-Jobs, Scaife, Tilson, et al. It's not enough to have the unwavering support of a bipartisan neoliberal consensus at every level of government including the most anti-public education administration and Department of Education of all time. It isn't sufficient to have the unquestioning editorial support of every mainstream media outlet—not to mention Rupert Murdoch's vast propaganda empire—all of which spew a nonstop stream of privatization propaganda with nary a dissenting note. This last point is of paramount importance, since it's often forgotten that outside the realm of privilege that has regular access to the Internet, there's a majority that obtains their information from more traditional sources.

This means that there are broad swaths of society that are only exposed to what Professor Diane Ravitch calls "the dominant narrative" in regards to education policy. Bearing testament to the sage philosophers who declared "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas," we see this one-sided dominant narrative played out both everywhere and in the absurd. This is why Oprah can declare child abuser Michelle Rhee a "Warrior Woman" despite Rhee's abject failures in D.C. It's how the reactionary Jim Newton, Editor-at-large of the dubious Los Angeles Times can:

cast an all African American CUSD Board as "civil rights villains" and then speak of the wealthy white Ben Austin, and his right wing charter school trade association as heroes for hoodwinking parents into handing a community school over to the vile Vielka McFarlane

without batting an eyelash. It's how supposed liberal darling Davis Guggenheim had no qualms taking money from both arch-reactionary Philip Anschutz and right leaning libertarian Bill Gates [1] to fabricate a privatization propaganda film so mendacious and malevolent that celebrated education historian Diane Ravitch called it a "a pernicious movie."

Indeed, this dominent narrative is so pervasive, that it's almost unconscionable that Russo would suggest that his fellow proponents of neoliberalism should see themselves as plucky Davids against a chimerical Goliath consisting of a ragtag group of educators, activists, and community organizers.

It would be easy to dismiss Russo's screed as mere bombast, but it goes much deeper than that. Russo, despite his churlish claim that he was "not taking sides" [2], has always served as a mouthpiece for the policies and ideas of the powerful. When I and several PESJA colleagues were a little more pointed in our criticisms of Russo on Twitter, he took exception. Speaking only for my interactions, Russo accused me of misplaced anger (there's anger, but it isn't misplaced). When I reminded him of his continual kowtowing to power he wrote "you obviously don't read my blog or know my views the labels dont fit." Russo's assertion (much to my chagrin) is patently false, not only do I occasionally read his blog, I periodically post comments there. I've also written about Russo before, but we'll get back to both of those things in a bit.

Anthony Cody makes a very important observation:

the online debate is rather meaningless if the real decisions about our schools continue to be made based on misinformation, bribery and political gamesmanship. I believe the online debate has been deliberately ignored by the corporate reform sector, as they see it as a battle they can well afford to lose, given the access to real power their funds buy them.

The Cody quote reminded me of when I was at a talk by author and activist Paul D'Amato and he made the following remark about the phrase speaking truth to power: "The problem is that power already knows the truth, they just don't care because they're power." That sums up much of the so-called education debate, but I want to mention one of the more insidious aspects of the concept that there's an actual "debate" over corporate education reform.

Russo and his ilk use the word "debate" to imply there are two sides possessing ideas of equal validity and equal promulgation, and that the best ideas will rise to the top, a rehash of the vacuous "marketplace of ideas" concept. As noted above, the corporate education reform behemoth has unlimited outlets to promote their ideas even when they know they're wrong. If recent history has shown us anything, it's that if you repeat a wrong idea enough, a sufficient amount of people will believe it. [3] The aforementioned quote from the The German Ideology reminds us that the ruling class will use every means at its disposal to ensure their ideas are the dominent ideas. Russo is right that there's an imbalance, but he is utterly duplicitous to suggest that it's in favor of public school advocates.

Couple the fact that the amplification of ruling class ideas is unmatched with the oft suggested concept that all ideas have equal validity. Even a cursory look at this proves it untrue. There's plenty of "ideas" propping up bigotry, racism, sexism and homophobia, but that doesn't make them valid or worth debate. If there really was a marketplace of ideas where ideas were judged solely on their merit, such ideas would have died long ago. Instead they persist because they serve the needs of the ruling class that in turn relentlessly perpetuates them. This is equally true of the ideas proffered by the corporate education reform industry and the nonprofit industrial complex pushing neoliberalism on the last of the public commons. Bad ideas are passed off as solutions and the shoddiest ideas are packaged up in policy papers and passed off as research and studies. While this topic deserves far more space, see my recent NCTQ essay for an example of how reformers publish information that can only charitably be called "biased and dishonest."

Ultimately Russo does a great disservice to suggest that not only do the reformers hold valid ideas, but that they are somehow not being heard, or that there's, in his words, an "imbalance." Why would Russo, who portrays himself as a neutral education blogger, side with the powerful?

Revenue for the second quarter was $685.3 million, up 3% from $667.9 million a year ago. Earnings per diluted share from continuing operations were $2.62, including one-time, mostly non-cash expenses of $0.21 per diluted share related to cost reduction actions. These results compared favorably to earnings per diluted share from continuing operations of $2.20 in the prior year period. Improved profits reflected higher sales of educational technology and services, children's books and ebooks, and classroom and supplemental educational materials. Consolidated earnings per diluted share were $2.60 in the quarter compared to $2.14 a year ago. [4]

The above quote is from Scholastic Inc., which is the huge corporation Russo writes for. Scholastic, like Pearson, McGraw Hill, Harcourt, and Kaplan, stands to profit far more from policies that corporate reformers push, especially the racket surrounding standardized testing and preparation thereof, but also scripted curriculums. [5] To be sure Russo would probably deny his writing is influenced or biased by his relationship with Scholastic. I'll leave it to the reader to determine that for themselves.

Getting back to my past interactions with Russo, let's start with Russo's recent book Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors. While I've only read excerpts, I wasn't impressed with the pro Green Dot narrative, although it's marginally less of a cheerleading job than Russo usually performs for the lucrative charter sector. Moreover, there's no mention in Russo's work of the possible payola scandal in which Locke principal Frank Wells was promised a well paying "consulting" job with Green Dot if he provided material assistance in the hostile takeover of the school. Russo is cloying and obsequious when discussing Green Dot, and his exaggerated reports of the supposed Locke "turnaround" leave out the fact that given the tremendous resources poured into the project, using the word turnaround is sardonic at best. I address this in Millionaires, Mendaciousness, and Miserable English Scores: the false Locke success story. I would also posit that, as in the case of Richard Whitmire's schoolboy-like crush on a thoroughly discredited D.C. Superintendent which turned into a lackluster book, Russo's book sales are tied into his maintaining that his subject has a modicum of credibility.

During the twitter skirmishes that follow his post, Russo took exception to the following tweet by PESJA:

"The preponderance of @alexanderrusso's writing finds him providing cover for privatization minded plutocrats, reactionaries, and profiteers."

Yet this is precisely what Russo does. A perfect example is his essay Philanthropy: The Myth Of The All-Powerful Billionaires which stakes out a stalwart defense of plutocracy that would make even the most servile sycophant to power blush. Here are a few quotes from his dubious work:

Nor do I really believe that the richest people in America have free rein to impose any extreme or cockamamie idea they feel like on American schoolchildren.

Most of all, I don't believe that there is something inherently sinister, or malicious, or even all that new about philanthropic involvement in public education -- or all that much better about public, for-profit, or nonprofit involvement. The fat cats are easy targets, convenient scapegoats, excellent distractions...

Near the end of his article Russo takes a nasty swipe at the distinguished Joanne Barkan, whose Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools is perhaps the most cogent and well known work exploring how the plutocrat class operates in the education arena. Russo goes as far as to suggest that Barkin peddles "conspiracy theory" and that her denial of that is "disingenuous." This brazen assault on Barken's character comes from a man so thin-skinned that he responded PESJA's mild criticisms by saying: "obviously i was wrong to even bother engaging you with you. all you want to do is attack people. bye!"

In another Russo piece he tries to piggyback on Dana Goldstein wrongheaded Why Not Occupy The Schools? When time permits, I will dismantle Goldstein's subpar essay, especially the imbecilic turn of phrase "meritocratic innovation." [6] More importantly, both Goldstein and Russo, in their rush to try and draw a distinction between the one percent pushing school privatization policies and the Wall Street bail out recipients that tanked the world economy, forget that one of the key players in the former is also one of the latter. In a recent exchange with the derisive Lynne Varner I discussed who this is:

...Eli Broad who received hundreds of millions in TARP bailout funds for his preferred shares of AIG. As you must know, Broad's foundation is just a complicit in the privatization of public education as the Gates Foundation. In one of the most disturbing ironies of our time, Broad now uses those bailout funds to wage war on the remains of the public commons.

Fenwick English, in a manuscript endorsed by the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) Publications, cited Eli Broad as the top neoliberal offender on his The ten most wanted list of enemies of public education leadership. [7] To pretend that there's any diference between the criminals that the Occupy Movements protest and the neoliberal cabal destroying public education is to create a false dichotomy and a false narrative. Indeed, they are one and the same. The ruling class certainly isn't entirely homogeneous, but they do have a committee managing their common affairs called the state, and they do tend to stick together when the perceive their interests are threatened.

Additionally, it's somewhat disingenuous for Russo and Goldstein to speak on behalf of the occupy movements. I can't speak for the entire movement either, but at the very least I was one of the organizers of OccupyLAUSD and spent several nights camping for education justice in front of the Beaudry LAUSD headquarters, not to mention being interviewed on the day OccupyLAUSD started as an offshoot of OccupyLA. I think I might have a little better idea of what occupy is about than apologists for neoliberal mechanizations in education. Russo's asinine statement "reform opponents need to make sure not to discredit themselves by trying to turn Democratic-funded philanthropies and well-intended nonprofit CMOs into Wall Street or heartless corporations" is as vapid and vacuous as it gets. They are Wall Street and heartless corporations!

Lastly I want to turn to an exchange I had with Russo in November of 2011. Russo had written a vicious diatribe against Professor Diane Ravitch so mean-spirited, it made my sharpest polemics look like eulogies. Even the title of Russo's piece, Diane Ravitch's Reform Vilification Industry, is offensive in the extreme. After a tangent dig at Michael Moore, Russo has the unmitigated gall to suggest:

Ravitch's description of NCLB's impact and destructiveness (closings, firings, charter conversions, etc.) is exaggerated and unsupported by data. She also vastly overestimates the power, coordination, and reach of all the reform groups, which suits her purposes in terms of creating a straw man but is also unsupported by the facts and does little to inform readers about what's really going on.

Each of these assertions are false, but it's interesting how Russo, adept like no other at devising straw men, projects that onto Dr. Ravitch. My response to Russo was:

How wonderfully reactionary and expected of you Mr. Russo. Are you sure you didn't mean to say "the world doesn't need another "it's-all-about-me" Michelle Rhee," or is anyone defending the working class from your plutocrat buddies a target for your biting invective.

You always rail against anyone standing up for public education, but you really outdo yourself when you lash out against the most celebrated experts on education of our era.

You make it a point to say Dr. Ravitch's various assertions are "unsupported" by "data" and "facts." How so? I write alongside and correspond with several of the top education researchers and experts in the world. None of the so-called reforms that you and the plutocrats you gush about favor, is supported by any legitimate peer reviewed research that I'm aware of. It is you sir, that is devoid of data and facts.

Professor Ravitch sent me a private note on twitter thanking me for standing up to Russo, and while I was honored, there's more at stake here than just defending individuals. All of us that have seen the brutal effects of neoliberalism (structural adjustments) played out in South and Central America via the International Money Fund and The World Bank at the behest of the Washington Consensus know that we are fighting for our very lives. Ask a Bolivian peasant or Oaxacan schoolteacher if our struggle against neoliberalism is a product of paranoia or conspiracy theory.

In an interesting irony, Russo commented back:

from ed sector's elena silver to regular contributor john thompson on the same subject:

"You can try to lump us all into one scary camp of accountability hawk reformers who are bent on launching an educational civil war, but you can't make it true. More importantly, I'm not sure how it helps the cause of improving public education to do so."

http://www.quickanded.com/2011/11/dear-john-education-sector-thinks-a-lot-about-teachers-and-more-school-time.html

Dr. John Thompson is a common acquaintance of Russo's and mine, and we both feature Thompson's guest posts. My correspondence with Thompson started when I commented on one of his essays about the President's education policies and he didn't take exception to my sharp criticisms of the Administration. We've been corresponding ever since, and he even shared an email with me the other day he received from the late great Gerald Bracey on the day he passed. Thompson said it was Professor Jim Horn's recent repost of one of Bracey's works that prompted him to dig up the email. Thompson seems to get along well with Russo, so I'm sure he's not a bad guy in person. It's Russo's politics that I despise.

Back to the irony of Russo's response. I had already responded to Elena Silver's (as had Thompson) piece before I knew Russo had responded to me. My response to Silver works perfectly here:

Dr. Thompson is being far too kind.

Education Sector is widely known as a mouthpiece for the most reactionary anti-public education ideologies. Writing for them and then disavowing allegiance with the "camp of accountability hawk reformers" is disingenuous at best.

Working with a privatization minded right-wing think [tank], by definition, puts you precisely in the camp you claim you're not in, even if just by being there you give cover to the Chubbs, Hesses, and Hanusheks.

My admonishment of Elena Silver extends equally to Alexander Russo. If you provide cover for or are an apologist for the "scary camp of accountability hawk reformers," then you merit the dubious distinction of being "lumped" in with them.

The ascendancy of neoliberal corporate culture into every aspect of American life both consolidates economic power in the hands of the few and aggressively attempts to break the power of unions, decouple income from productivity, subordinate the needs of society to the market, and deem public services and goods an unconscionable luxury. But it does more. It thrives on a culture of cynicism, insecurity, and despair. [8] — Henry Giroux

_____
NOTES
[1] Both Anschutz and Gates donate money to the fringe right Discovery Institute. While Anschutz funds a host of other extremist organizations like the Institute for American Values, Gates is no slouch in this regard either, pouring cash into the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

[2] PURE's Julie Woestehoff's response to Russo on this gets to the heart of the matter. She says 'You can't claim you're "not taking sides" when you call one side of the debate "reform opponents" and "reform critics." Deb Meier correctly comments about your "reformy types" that "they have the daily regular media as their constant blog site."'

Confer Woestehoff with Paulo Freire's ‎"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. "

[3] Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

[4] Scholastic Reports Fiscal 2012 Second Quarter Results see all of their lucrative income derived increasing from corporate reforms.

[5] Think also Common Core Curriculum.

[6] We've discussed Dana Goldstein here before in Dana Goldstein "Hearts" Yellow Unions and Company Crafted Contracts. In the piece I write "Goldstein, while not as deceptive or reactionary as Matt Ygelsias, nonetheless provides a progressive veneer to reactionary right wing education policies espoused by nefarious organizations like the billionaire funded Democrats for Education Reform and Communities for Teaching Excellence."

[7] English, Fenwick. The Ten Most Wanted Enemies of American Public Education's School Leadership. Connexions. 8 Nov. 2010 <http://cnx.org/content/m34684/1.4/>.

[8] Quoted in ibid. Giroux, Henry A. The Terror of Neoliberalism. Paradigm Publishers. 2004. (p. 105).

Peggy Robertson to Obama, Duncan, and the Billionaires Who Own Them

From Valerie Strauss's place at WaPo:

My guest is Peggy Robertson, who taught kindergarten, first, second, fourth, fifth and sixth grade in Missouri and Kansas for 10 years. She was hired by Richard C. Owen Publishers in 2001 to serve as a Learning Network coordinator and spent the next three years training teacher leaders and administrators in educational theory and practice in various states. In 2004 she became literacy coordinator for the Adams 50 School District in Westminster, Colorado. A version of this appeared onher blog, Peg with Pen..

This is an open letter to President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and other billionaires who have invested millions of dollars in support of business-driven education reforms.

A letter by Peggy Robertson

Dear President Obama, Mr. Duncan and The Billionaires’ Club:

We neglect children if we do not provide them with food, adequate clothing, and an environment which allows their health to thrive. We neglect them, too, if we starve them intellectually by depriving them of books and other reading material.

Your favored school reform centers around standardized tests. Children will be tested at the beginning of the year, the end of the year, during the year (could be monthly, weekly; this remains to be seen) and they will be tested in many subjects – not just reading and math. We plan to Race to the Top, quantifying our students’ achievements as we go.

I know you like statistics so here’s one for you: Almost 25% of our children live in poverty.

Talk to a hungry child and try to quantify how the child feels. Talk to a sick child and try to measure the short and long term effects of untreated illness as they trudge to and from school. Visit a child in a school without books and you just try to tell me how you’re going to measure those spiritless, vacant eyes.  

As a teacher, I never found a standardized test to be useful in telling me about the needs and strengths of my students. I already knew these things by observing my students every day. I listened to them, asked them questions, read and evaluated their work. I talked to them, watched them, and saw how my students changed from day to day.

I worked in very wealthy schools and very poor schools, so I have been able to watch how wealth and poverty play a part in a child’s education.

When a child came to school hungry, he or she couldn’t pay attention. When a child came in dirty and smelled bad, I noticed that he or she turned inward and avoided their classmates and avoided my eyes.

When a child came in tired because he had been babysitting his younger siblings while his mom worked the night shift, I noticed that he fell asleep at his desk.

When a child spent the previous night hooking up a long extension cord from the neighbor’s trailer to their family’s trailer to get electricity, she was filled with anger, unable to concentrate and had an impulse to lash out.

When children were poorly clothed, they were uncomfortable, often cold, sick and lacking confidence to even consider their own potential.

A child who browsed a school library that was filled with only old, tattered books was less likely to read, and more likely to get involved in gangs.

The standardized test did absolutely nothing to support the child, nor did it do anything to support my ability to meet the needs of the child. I already knew what the child needed. And I knew that the standardized test was the least of my students’ worries.

I have also watched children in wealthier schools. I have seen their clean clothes, their well-packed lunches, their light skip as they enter my classroom. I have seen their independent reading books fall out of their desks due to lack of room to store the surplus books that the parents keep buying.

I have seen their keen, excited glances as they talk, share and brainstorm new ideas and creative thinking. I have heard their laughter fill my classroom and spill into the hallways and the playground. I have seen their parents go off to work where they make money to provide food and shelter for their children. I have heard the parents discuss the child’s college fund and the unlimited opportunities in the child’s future.

The standardized test was useless in improving achievement in these schools as well. I already knew what these students needed, because I am a teacher and I am a professional.

I can tell you my students’ strengths, their needs and their attempts without looking at the results of a standardized test. I evaluate my students during the school day, at home and in my sleep. I assess them as they read, write, talk, move and breathe. Educator Stephen Krashen states, “The repeated judgments of professionals who are with children every day is more valid than a test created by distant strangers.”

I am highly offended, President Obama, Mr. Duncan and the Billionaires’ Club, by your lack of respect for me, and your audacity in assuming that you can help me evaluate my students. You don’t know my students and you don’t know what I know about teaching, learning and children.

You see, I studied education and actually did extensive teacher training, as well as completing my master’s in English as a Second Language and pursuing additional doctoral work in Multicultural Education. I am a teacher and I am a professional.

I have read Krashen’s article entitled “Children need food, health care, and books. Not new standards and tests.” It is crystal clear that we do not need state standardized tests to tell us how America’s children are doing within the public school system.

In addition to the teachers’ observations, we also have the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which “is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas. Assessments are conducted periodically in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history.”

The NAEP is given to a sampling of children across our country and is then used to show how the results would look within larger groups. As Krashen says, “If we are interested in a general picture of how children are doing, this is the way to do it. If we are interested in finding out about a patient’s health, we only need to look at a small sample of their blood, not all of it.”

I can dance, laugh, sing and do somersaults in my classroom in an attempt to help the child pay attention and do well on the state test. But if a child is hungry, tired or sick, I doubt that the resulting test score will reflect and enhance what my student really needs and really knows.

Butthe wealth of knowledge they have about life leaves me speechless. You should read one of their reading logs. Now that is an evaluation that would be useful. Many of the children living in poverty know how to problem-solve and maneuver through life in ways that would leave me crying alone in a corner if I attempted to do the same. They don’t need standardized tests to label them failures.

American children not living in poverty, by the way, score extremely well on international tests. Our children living in poverty are the ones scoring poorly. Poverty is the problem.

As Krashen states, we can protect our children from poverty by feeding them, providing them with health care, a clean environment and school classrooms and libraries filled with books.

Arne and  Eli at Inauguration Ball 

Studies state very clearly that fewer books mean lower reading scores. Since scores are what you’re looking for, why not take that test money and buy books instead? The books would remain in the library for years to come and be read numerous times – not held under lock and key and placed on students’ desks at designated times each year. And imagine how much time our children would have to read if teachers could quit teaching to the test.

Let’s ditch our reliance on standardized tests. If the United States would provide our poorest children with healthy food, school nurses, clean school environments and books, we could easily score at the top of the world. We wouldn’t need to concoct a crazy race to get there.

Professionally,

Peggy Robertson

DC's Non-Search for Rhee's Replacement

In a city where the mayor acts as Dictator of Public Schools, the thing that got the previous mayor into the weeds with parents was acting like the dictator he was.  From the current "process" underway now to ensure the continuation of the Rhee regime, minus the radioactive personality, it would appear that Mayor Gray has learned nothing. 

Instead of conducting a national search, Gray has allowed the Eli Broad stooges from CityBridge Foundation to put together a "search committee" to hold a praise session for the only applicant, Kaya Henderson.  Oh yes, there were ideas galore for how the new chancellor could "communicate" better, such as bowing as she presents the Broad Boys' plans to the parents, and smiling rather than snarling and snapping at microphones. 

Why, they filled up numerous "20 easels of paper" with ideas on how the new chancellor, whomever that could be (wink, wink), could be more collegial than commandant-ish. 

At the end of the 5 hour meeting, not even a vote was taken as to whether the Mayor's only choice (as if he had one) would be chosen.  The backroom Billionaires have already decided.

Another charade for the parents and teachers of DC to reject outright.  Let the Spirit of Cairo continue to remind us there was once a democratic government throughout the Land.  From Bill Turque at WaPo:

Mayor Vincent C. Gray, who plans to name a permanent schools chancellor this week, said Monday that he was “comfortable” with a search process that has focused on just one candidate: Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson.

Gray (D) would not confirm a Post report that he is about to name Henderson, 40, who has held the job on an interim basis since former chancellor Michelle A. Rhee resigned in October. But he has left little doubt that he is sold on Rhee’s former top deputy. The advisory committee he appointed last month to evaluate candidates in whom he has interest has met just once and discussed only Henderson.

Asked if he owed the city a more thorough search for a schools leader — given the importance of the position and in light of recent disclosures about his administration’s vetting and hiring practices — Gray said: “I think what we owe to citizens is to select the person who is best suited to lead the D.C. public schools.”

Without mentioning Henderson, who was standing behind him, Gray told reporters at a press briefing at D.C. Prep Edgewood Middle Campus, a public charter school in Northeast, that the best vetting process is watching someone serve in the position.

“Frankly, if we’ve got someone who has a track record, someone who we know, I think that benefits a vetting process,” he said. “Someone who we’ve seen in operation, someone whose leadership skills have been demonstrated and who has lived in the city for some time. So I’m comfortable with the process we’ve used.”

But there remains some skepticism about the pro-forma nature of the search. While Gray satisfied the letter of the 2007 law requiring establishment of a search committee with a cross section of teachers, parents and community leaders, some said that, given the stakes, the effort lacked rigor.

“If you’re going to do the process, do it and do it right. Otherwise, it’s window dressing and make-work,” said Terry Lynch, a parent at School Without Walls High School and executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations. Lynch was a Rhee supporter.

Washington Teachers’ Union President Nathan Saunders, a member of the search advisory panel, said over the weekend that Henderson was unacceptable because of her close philosophical ties to Rhee.

The co-chairs of the panel defended its work Monday. “A lengthy search process, in my view, would have been both a distraction and unnecessary,” said Michael Lomax, CEO of the United Negro College Fund.

He said he understood that those who crossed swords with Rhee, especially the union, consider Henderson too closely aligned with her predecessor. But he said: “In my view, Kaya is her own person. She is tough, she is committed and absolutely thoughtful. She will do this work very differently than it’s been done in the past.”

In addition to Saunders, the panel included four teachers, who were named by the city; four parents; two students; and two principals. It met for about five hours on Feb. 24 at the Reeves Center. Co-chair Katherine Bradley, president of the CityBridge Foundation, served as a facilitator for the discussion, which participants said was broken into two basic parts: what residents wanted to see in the next chancellor, and whether Henderson fit those criteria.

“We must have filled up 20 easels of paper,” said Daniel Holt, head of the PTA at Brent Elementary in Ward 6. He said panel members were essentially seeking someone “with deft communications skills, the ability to make decisions and to tell people bad news in a way that they are willing to receive it.”

Holt said no formal vote was taken but that closing statements made by each member reflected a heavy consensus for Henderson. In the end, he said, he was comfortable with the process.

Boston's Charterizers on the Prowl, Pushing for Closure of Public Schools

Boston's corporate education deform movement has been a study in contrasts to the fuming, snarling Michelle Rhee of DC fame and others of the public education bombardier wing.  The bombers of Boston act with the restraint of Harvard dons in contrast to Rhee and, let's say, the super-sized governor of New Jersey.  Maybe it's because there are, indeed, Harvard dons among them, like master chef of voucher research, Paul Peterson, who is apparently training a new generation of ideologues like himself who can abuse the reputation of a great university to push for the demolition of all things public.  Of course, Peterson is not the only academic turned corporate pawn among the edupreneurs and corporate welfare ditto heads who take orders from the big time oligarchs running the Billionaire Boys' Club.

For Boston's"creative destruction" disruptors, the game is subterfuge, influence peddling, and stealth bombing of the public schools and the teaching profession, when compared to open warfare that has been waged in Chicago and Detroit and New York.  So it must come as a rude and embarrassing shock to see hundreds of parents and teachers and students openly and loudly trying to save their public schools, none of which are on the state's Worst list, from being turned into segregated charter properties to benefit the Eli Broads of the Commonwealth.

From WBUR:

BOSTON — Hundreds of parents and teachers turned out Tuesday night to protest a Boston Public Schools plan to close or merge eight schools.

The district says the cuts are necessary because of an expected $50 million shortfall next year. There are also as many as 5,000 unfilled school seats because so many kids have transferred to charter schools.

WBUR’s Monica Brady-Myerov joined Morning Edition Wednesday to break down the meeting.

Bob Oakes: What was the mood like at the meeting?
Monica Brady-Myerov: It was loud and angry. Before the meeting started, a crowd was chanting, “Save our schools.” This chanting went on for about 20 minutes. Several hundred parents — some with their children — and teachers came with signs and T-shirts. When the meeting started, they charged the stage as school committee members started to take their seats. Boston school police had to get in front of the stage to keep them away.
This shows how hard it is for any district to close a school because every single one of the schools had a representative there Tuesday night, and they’re fighting this.

What has the school committee told these parents about why their schools need to close or merge?
Tuesday night was a hearing, so the committee members didn’t speak, but in previous communications they’ve told parents their top priority is giving students access to stronger programs. And the schools they want to close just aren’t good enough. So the district is citing MCAS scores or the high-school dropout rate to explain why each school should close, but I should note that none of the schools selected by the district are on the state’s “under-performing” list; they’re not in turnaround status. So there are many schools that are doing much worse in the district and they’ll stay open.

What did the teachers, parents and students tell the school committee?
They each had very personal stories, but the message was the same — these schools are being misrepresented by the district as under-performing as an excuse to be shut down. Kenny Jervis, a parent at Roger Clap Elementary School, says he was taken by surprise when he learned his child’s school would close:

Never before have us as parents, our administrators or those children been told they were an under-performing school. We find we had a bad year. Many people, many things, many teams have bad years. The answer is not closing.

Parents also said they learned about these closures through a notice sent home in their kids’ backpacks in early October, and the note said there’d be a meeting that night. They say it’s just all happening too quickly and it’s not fair.

So, what are they asking for now? And are the committee and officials listening?
The parents want the process to start over. The school committee is scheduled to vote on this plan next week and they say the schools would close by the end of this year. And Tuesday night they didn’t say anything about it, so they say they’re listening, but they’re voting in a week. So it’s unclear how much they heard is going to affect their vote.
Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union, spoke for teachers:

To close these schools primarily because they are small, or because they want to reuse their buildings or give them to a charter school, is a disservice to all of us who care about good schools, and it will only drive more people away from our schools, especially those schools that work.

Superintendent Carol Johnson shows she is listening to some people because she changed one of the plans Tuesday night: She said the district would not close the Community Academy of Science and Health (CASH School) in the Hyde Park complex. They didn’t give a reason why, but the school officials believe it’s because they refuted the district’s numbers and showed that they do have high MCAS scores. So they’ve shown a willingness to change their minds, but the vote is next week.

So there’s no indication at this moment that they’re not going to ram this thing through?
That’s right.

White Billionaire Boys' Club to Save Poor People of Color with Apartheid Schooling?

Email notice from Rethinking Schools:

In the article “Ultimate $uperpower: Supersized dollars drive Waiting for Superman agenda,” investigative journalist Barbara Miner looks at the money behind the movie, its promoters and those who will benefit from the movie.  She writes, “In education, as in so many other aspects of society, money is being used to squeeze out democracy.” After examining the role of hedge funds, foundations and other players, she asks, “Should the American people put their faith in a white billionaires boys club to lead the revolution on behalf of poor people of color?”

To view the article and/or to obtain a downloadable PDF go to:

http://www.notwaitingforsuperman.org/Articles/20101020-MinerUltimateSuperpower

Eli Broad's Bonus Boob, Robert Bobb, Gets Grilled in Court about Ties to Billionaire Boys Club

Broad Superintendent Academy alum, Bob Robert Bobb (Class of '05) was brought to Detroit to convert the public schools to a charter system built to segregate, contain, and psychologically modify the children of the poor.  In so doing, Bobb has become the Idi Amin of the BBC's hired guns, scheming to push aside a referendum that ended mayoral control of schools and making himself the Decider on which textbooks to buy. 

The story from Michigan Public Radio:

DETROIT, MI (Michigan Radio) - Lawyers for the school board say Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb overstepped his authority when he waded into decisions about things like which textbooks to purchase, and which tests to administer.

School board attorney George Washington says Bobb cooperated with private foundations and charter school backers to draft a plan that calls for a mayoral takeover, and for replacing traditional schools with charter schools.

"Somebody who comes in as an emergency financial manager should not be scheming behind the back of the people to overturn a referendum that the people spoke on only two years ago," said Washington.

That referendum put an elected school board back in charge of Detroit Public Schools following a state takeover.

Bobb says the accusation and the lawsuit are diversions from the fact that he's working to turn around the troubled school district.

"I mean we have some tremendous challenges in front of us," Bobb said. "So every hour that we spend here, we're making it up by extending our day, or on the weekends."

Bobb says decisions about the district's finances and academics cannot be separated.

Hearings are scheduled to continue next week.

Turque Interviews Rhee: Listening to a Liar Lie

From Bill Turque at WaPo (with my comments interspersed):

I spoke to Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee Tuesday afternoon, a few hours after she told the D.C. Council that a $34 million surplus in the DCPS budget would help pay for teacher salaries under the new proposed labor contract. Rhee said evidence of the extra money--which is expected to decrease the District's reliance on private funds--was discovered by a senior aide in late February, three months after she laid off 266 teachers. The layoffs were driven, she said, by budgetary forecasts supplied to her last summer by the office of D.C. Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) Natwar M. Gandhi.

Here are excerpts from the 30-minute conversation:

BT: When did you learn about the $34 million?
MR: Late February.
BT: Did you share this with anybody? At the bargaining table? The council?
MR: No.
BT: Do you think in retrospect it might have been better to share this?
MR: Why? What do you mean?

BT: There was so much anxiety about the private funding....
MR: Let me say this. I thought it was good news. The good news was that we were going to be able to allay the fears a lot of people had about the fact that [the contract] was going to be all funded by external dollars and that this wasn't sustainable in the long term. And so in my opinion it was good news.
BT: So why not share the good news?
MR: Because we were in the middle of negotiations....There's sort of a time and a place for all of this.

Comment: So Rhee discovers an extra $34 million in late February. The "good news," however, cannot be shared until the middle of April, after a tentative agreement has been reached. Why now? Part of it has to do with the skepticism expressed by teachers and DC citizens that $65 million from the Oligarch fund would go unpaid, and part of it has to do with the disgust among the citizenry that Broad, the Waltons, and Gates are running DCPS. Not even the stone-headed Eli Broad could have missed the surprise registered by DC residents who have not been keeping up with the public school takeover by the Billionaire Boys Club (BBC). So Broad had no choice but to make public now what Michelle has known since February. To do otherwise would be to surely lose the PR battle and the tentative agreement, itself--especially if the Gift of the Oligarchs got tied up in legal wrangling or procedural uncertainty. After all, it is Rhee who must now go before the microphone to lie and dissemble her way out of this.

BT: This revives all the old charges and suspicions that you manipulated and gamed the budget process to get here. To get to this contract.
MR: I understand that there is a group of conspiracy theorists out there...All I can do is go back to facts. So people can conjecture all they want on hearsay and happenstance...What I think is important though is that the [d.c. chief financial officer] and the agency do not report to me. They are an independent agency. These are not DCPS numbers. These are OCFO numbers. So I think it is unfortunate. We had originally thought we needed to raise more [private] money for this contract...It was this huge concern about it not being sustainable in the long term. Now it's fortuitous, a situation that allows us to pay more city dollars. Now we're getting crap for that.
BT: [Paraphrasing critics] All of a sudden at this point, this very sensitive point, on the table is this $34 million surplus...Where did this come from? Why are we hearing about this at this sensitive moment?
MR: Realize that we didn't know about this until very late in the game.
BT: That was the end of February. It is now mid-April.
MR: So the end of February we got the first numbers. They sort became got more firm and finalized through the beginning of March. Then once we kind of had all those numbers we came to agreement with the union and came to agreement with the funders....But I'm baffled as to what people think I should have been telling someone and who I should have been telling.

Comment: This is clearly a lie, and it is not just sort of a lie. If Rhee had shared "all those numbers" prior the agreement, there would not have been an arrangement for the BBC to pay $65 million into the settlement. It was only after the tentative agreement was signed (yesterday, in fact) that "all those numbers" were shared, so that the BBC is now on the hook for $7 million, rather than $65 million.

MR cont'd: When in fact this was all a part of the process we were going through to get to the stage where we have the tentative agreement.. Now what I think is fair is if I'd known [about the surplus] for a year or had this information when we did the [layoffs]. Which was not the case. Or if I'd found this out in February or March and we were heading into budget cycle without a tentative agreement. Then we'd have to share that information.

Comment: Do you mean, Michelle, that you would have to share the information that you said that you did share just two sentences back?

BT: People say it doesn't pass the smell test.
MR: The people who are sort of saying this, they want to jump to conclusions. They want to assume that somehow we have manufactured this. Again, we have all the documentation that shows that we at every single point were only making decisions based on the information we had in front of us.

Comment: Yes, the information in front of Rhee was being prepared for her by the lawyers of BBC, and as the dependable, unrepentant face of authoritarian corporate education, she is just following orders. And she sees no reason to apologize or to feel bad about that.

BT: Do you have any remorse? Do you feel badly for these teachers [who were laid off just before a surplus emerged]
MR: I think it was unfortunate. And that's why we specially negotiated [a retroactive payment for the fired teachers] with [teachers union president] George [Parker]....I think it was important to George and we thought it made a lot of sense that [laid off] teachers receive a retroactive payment.

Read the rest here if you have the stomach for it.