Dana Goldstein, a talented writer on education and other social issues, has just written a lengthy profile of Diane Ravitch titled Diane Ravitch, the Anti-Rhee.

It’s well-worth reading….

Here are some recent good school reform posts and articles:

Merit Pay: Pay teachers enough so that money is no longer an issue is by Mel Riddile. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning Why Teacher Merit Pay Is A Bad Idea. Thanks to David B. Cohen for the tip.

Teach For America: From Service Group to Industry is by Rachel Levy. I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles Raising Concerns About Teach For America. I’m also adding What happened to my TFA? by Gary Rubenstein to the same list.

Rhee Battles Last in, First Out: An Unemployed, New Teacher’s Perspective comes from the Political Ennui blog. I’m adding it to The Best Articles For Helping To Understand Both Why Teacher Tenure Is Important & The Reasons Behind Seniority-Based Layoffs.

Creating Educational Monocultures is by John Thompson. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The Role Of Private Foundations In Education Policy.

Bolder, Broader Action: Strategies for Closing the Poverty Gap is by Paul Reville. I’m adding it to The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher & Outside Factors Have On Student Achievement.

Report: Test-based incentives don’t produce real student achievement is by Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post. I’m adding it to The Best Posts/Articles On National Research Council Finding That Carrots & Sticks Don’t Work.

The New York Times has just published a fascinating article headlined “In Public School Efforts, a Common Background: Private Education.” It lists a very, very long number of key leaders whose actions, in my opinion, are doing great harm public school education — and they all attended private schools.

The list includes Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, and even President Obama.

Here’s an excerpt:

Does a private school background give them a much-needed distance and fresh perspective to better critique and remake traditional public schools? Does it make them distrust public schools — or even worse — poison their perception of them? Or does it make any difference?

Your call.

Here is a “round-up” of the latest useful school reform posts and articles:

Choice schools not outperforming MPS is the headline of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning Why School Vouchers Are A Bad Idea.

The misleading data and debate on class size is by Joanne Yatvin and appeared in The Washington Post. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About How Class Size Does Matter.

Déjà vu all over again: A lesson from the history of school reform is by Mike Rose and appeared in The Washington Post. I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles Explaining Why Schools Should Not Be Run Like Businesses.

Michelle Rhee’s Cheating Scandal is by Dana Goldstein. I’m adding it to The Best Posts On How To Prepare For Standardized Tests (And Why They’re Bad).

‘Value-added’ teacher evaluations: L.A. Unified tackles a tough formula is from The Los Angeles Times. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The “Value-Added” Approach Towards Teacher Evaluation.

Thoughts on the Failure of Merit Pay is by Diane Ravitch. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning Why Teacher Merit Pay Is A Bad Idea.

I’ve just read one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in awhile — a guest column on CNN by professor Sheena Iyengar titled The Michigan Fish Test And The Middle East.

In it, she describes an apparently famous experiment of showing a picture of three large fish in a sea scene. When people from the United States were later asked to describe it, they focused on the large fish. When Japanese participants were asked to describe the same picture, they gave a much more holistic description of the picture. Ms. Iyengar states that it demonstrates the difference between the typical American individualistic approach versus the more collectivist one found in Asian cultures. She writes:

The divergent accounts point to differing narratives of what controls what in the world, and how individual people fit into it.

Her column got me thinking about how this same difference might apply to present school reform efforts.

Many school reformers continue to have a laser-like focus on the role of teachers, often dismissing any consideration of outside factors like poverty as just “excuses.” This despite abundant research showing that teachers have control of only one-third of the factors that affect student achievement. These reformers apparently see teachers as the “big fish” who are omniscient in their power — in the classroom.

At the same time, however, many of these same reformers seem to think that they themselves are the “big fish” when it comes to making any major decisions about what occurs in the schools. This kind of cult of personality has most recently been exhibited by Michelle Rhee’s announcement of her new StudentsFirst organization, which she announced in a Newsweek article filled with too many “I’s” to count. It seems that they often believe that only they have the needed wisdom and only they have the true interests of students in mind. They do not appear to see that power is not a finite pie — if teachers and parents get some, that does not mean they they will have less. In fact, more possibilities and opportunities are created as a result of that partnership.

School reformers might be wise to keep in mind Professor Iyengar’s description of this more collectivist model:

The individual isn’t powerless in these conceptions, but he or she is just one player in a larger drama of life, not its center.

The words humble and humility come from the Latin root humus, which means the soil or earth.  I’d like to suggest that a dose of humility could help many school reformers get a little more “grounded” in what is really happening in our schools, and what really needs to happen.

Looking beyond the “big fish” would be a start…

Michelle Rhee has been all over the news, and on this blog (see The Best Posts About Michelle Rhee’s Exaggerated Test Scores and 4 concerns about Michelle Rhee). If you’re not tired of hearing about her, here are two good articles that have just been published:

Still Waiting for Superwoman: What Michelle Rhee’s fans don’t get about education reform is from Slate.

The Meaning of Michelle Rhee is by Mike Rose.

Today brought a bumper crop of excellent posts and articles about school reform issues:

* Here are some new additions to The Best Posts & Articles Raising Concerns About Teach For America:

Marie Levey-Pabst: Will the Teach For America Elite Save the Poor? is a guest post in Anthony Cody’s Ed Week blog.

Poise & Ivy: Judging Teachers by their Credentials is from Nancy Flanagan.

* Jim Horn wrote a good post on the PISA international test scores. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Getting Some Perspective On International Test Comparison Demagoguery.

* There’s a fascinating article about the battle between researchers questioning the validity of the study used by the Los Angeles Times to rank teachers and make those assessments public. Included in the article is a comment by well-known and respected education professor Mike Rose:

I cringed at the cheap insinuation that the Colorado study is influenced by the source of some of its funding. Shall we consider the vested interest of Mr. Lauter, Mr. Felch, etc. in this project? Or the fact that Thomas Kane, who Mr. Lauter approvingly quotes, is a high-level official at the Gates Foundation, overseeing a project which has invested heavily in Value-Added methods? The point is that there are all kinds of personal, professional, and institutional investments in this debate, so if you’re going to lay them out, lay them all out. And if you suspect a biasing influence, do the reporter’s job of demonstrating it.

But the big, big question for me is how is it that this newspaper moved so strongly toward advocating a particular technology in school reform? The Times is not just editorializing that we need reform, but within its news department is taking a side on a technique. The paper is no longer reporting the news, but creating it and spinning it.

Thanks to David B. Cohen for the tip.

I’m adding this info to The Best Posts About The LA Times Article On “Value-Added” Teacher Ratings.

My post sharing my concerns about Michelle Rhee was reprinted today in Valerie Strauss’ blog at The Washington Post.

She retitled it “4 concerns about Michelle Rhee.”

A local magazine here in Sacramento is doing a big story on Michelle Rhee who, apart from Governor Jerry Brown, might be Sacramento’s most famous newest resident. Their writer asked if I would be willing to answer a few questions, and we arranged a time to talk. The article won’t come out until late March, and who knows if anything that I said will even make it into print, but I thought readers might be interested in a short summary what I told him when he asked what I thought of the policies she and her allies in the “school reform” movement are promoting.

I responded by saying that I had four main concerns:

1) She seemed primarily interested in doing “to” teachers and families instead of doing “with” them. This lack of willingness to work in partnership and to listen, symbolized by her TIME Magazine cover holding a broom in a classroom, showed a lack of understanding of the basic tenets of power — sharing it with others doesn’t mean you have less; in fact, it means that the pie gets bigger for everybody with the new possibilities that are created.

2) I was very concerned with her focus on using test scores as the most important tool to evaluate teacher and student success. I referenced the discovery last week that the test scores her own students supposedly achieved when she was a teacher were far lower than she had claimed (see The Best Posts About Michelle Rhee’s Exaggerated Test Scores). That doesn’t mean she wasn’t an excellent teacher — she might very have been. It does, however, point out that standardized test scores are easy to misinterpret and are probably not the best evaluation tool for teachers — or for students. At our school, we talk about being data-informed, not being data-driven. Test results are just one of many pieces of information that should be used when we reflect on our work.

3) I didn’t appreciate Ms. Rhee and her allies regularly portraying themselves as the “true” champions of children, while the rest of us were just “defenders of the status quo.” I believe that she and many of her allies truly do want to do what they think is best for children — I just don’t agree with their overall analysis of what needs to be done. That does not mean that I do not have the best interests of my students in my heart and mind everyday. I am wary of anyone, anywhere, in whatever policy or personal arena, feeling like they have a monopoly on the truth.

4) Plenty of research has shown that two-thirds of the factors that influence student achievement occur out of school. I don’t appreciate Ms. Rhee and her allies telling us that when we state that fact, we are just making “excuses.” That doesn’t mean that my colleagues and I don’t do everything within our power to push the boundary of that “one-third” area we can influence, including working with parents to try to combat some of those other factors. But saying that poverty doesn’t have a huge impact on our students doesn’t make it so.

What do you think about what I said?  Am I missing some things?  Might I be “off-base” somewhere?

President Obama will give his State Of The Union address on Tuesday.

Jim Horn from the excellent blog, School Matters, has written what he’d like the President to say at his post, The State of the Union’s Schools: That Part of Mr. Obama’s Speech We Would Like to Hear But Won’t.

And Michelle Rhee has shared her own perspective in The New York Times.

It’s easy to guess which one is closer to my preference.

What would you like the President to say?

Leave a short paragraph in the comments section of this post and I’ll publish them all on Tuesday.

(By the way, in case you’re interested, I wrote my own post last year prior to a major speech by the President sharing my recommendations about the points I would have liked him to make)

Today, the Sacramento Bee ran a fairly extensive front page story on Michelle Rhee’s move here. Headlined Former D.C. schools chief to headquarter new education advocacy lobby in Sacramento, it also discusses her local plans:

Rhee said there are “many local organizations we have talked about working in concert with” and that StudentsFirst likely would partner with Stand Up, another education nonprofit started by Johnson.

As far as Rhee is concerned, there is much work to be done. “Sacramento is probably behind the curve in terms of some of the progressive work being done around the country,” Rhee said.

Her decision to headquarter the organization in Sacramento adds significant weight to the reform movement here, education advocates said.

It’s also a move that could prove beneficial for the mayor. By landing StudentsFirst, the national focus of a controversial debate will be cast on his city.

I can only imagine what her definition of “progressive” might be….