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Sunday, October 14, 2012

Is Michelle Rhee the Ann Coulter of Education? « Diane Ravitch's blog

Is Michelle Rhee the Ann Coulter of Education? « Diane Ravitch's blog:


Is Michelle Rhee the Ann Coulter of Education?

Jeff Bryant asks whether Michelle Rhee is the Ann Coulter of education.
Rhee expends great energy insisting that Democrats support the hard-right agenda of ALEC. She tries to sell the idea of a bipartisan consensus to eliminate collective bargaining rights, teacher tenure, test-based evaluation, and privatization via charters and vouchers.
Democrats would be wise to stick to their historic agenda of equality of educational opportunity and public education.
Rhee has no popular base for her agenda. Although she claims two million members, most of those “members” seem to be people (like me) who innocently signed an online petition supporting teachers. When she held a rally in Hartford, Connecticut, last fall, no one showed but media and a handful of onlookers.
What she does have is a load of money, contributed by Rupert Murdoch, the Waltons, and assorted rightwing