Pro Bono Privato

Rex Organization donates half a million dollars to local efforts to privatize education, hosts a party for union-busting Teach For America members because.. well.. because they are Rex and that's the sort of thing they do.

In a related matter, here's a link to last week's Frontline on education reform con-artist Michelle Rhee in case you missed it.

One moment that stands out is this bit where Rhee makes a mockery of the practice of open government.

JOHN MERROW: With no time to waste, Rhee had been criss-crossing the district, talking about ways to improve the schools. But she kept her most controversial proposal under wraps, closing two dozen half-empty schools, schools that were draining the system of resources.

MICHELLE RHEE: It would have been extraordinarily unwise of me to have started this process by saying, “So I’m going to close some schools. What do you all think?” I would lose faith immediately in that person. You have to have a vision. You have to have a strategy. You have to have methodology, and then data. Then people can react to that once it’s laid out.

JOHN MERROW: But her proposal was leaked to The Washington Post. The next six weeks were all about damage control as Rhee tried to explain the proposed closures to angry parents.

MICHELLE RHEE: The bottom line is that we made the proposal, which was a proposal. We wanted to have a number of community forums during which we could hear people’s input.

A lot of the decisions that I’m going to be making, as long as I’m chancellor, are going to raise this kind of opposition. For me, it’s about the fact that if we make these decisions now, and we take on the people who are not in favor of it now, what it will result in is greater resources quicker for kids in classrooms. And that to me is way more important than how many nights I have to sit around getting yelled at.

Obviously Rhee doesn't actually value any of the "input" she's soliciting at the forums if she is withholding relevant information up front.  We see this sort of empty outreach PR exercise all the time.  Mayor Landrieu's community budget hearings are a good local example. We also see Rhee's arrogant style emulated in Louisiana Education Superintendent John White's use of "deliberative process privilege" exception to state open records law.

The proliferation of such arrogance depends, in part, on belief in a "Great Man/Woman" theory of government where one righteous sounding butt kicker enters into an arena full of incompetents and evildoers and "fixes" everything through force of will.

Despite the stereotypes and prejudices we've developed in recent years, front line employees are not overwhelmingly incompetent or evil.  But the "Great Person" who trades on those prejudices is almost always a grifter. Rhee's con revolves around using standardized test scores as a pretense to abuse as many bogeyman teachers as possible.  She may say it's all about "greater resources quicker for kids in classrooms" but that doesn't seem to be the overriding factor for her in measuring results.

The placing of these two states (Louisiana and Florida) at the top of the list is curious. StudentsFirst gave higher ratings to states that emphasized the use of charter schools and teacher evaluations based on high-stakes testing. But her organization ignored actual results. For example, it gave a “D” rating — the second-worst — to Massachusetts, which has some of the highest test scores on the  National Assessment of Educational Progress exam.

There is one thing that Florida and Louisiana have in common — they are among the worst states for teacher compensation. Florida in 2011 ranked 47th in the country for teacher salaries. Louisiana’s average teacher salary is 42nd in the country.

By and large what we currently call a "reform" movement in education is funded by elites, executed by grifters, and aimed, not at improving this essential public service but at looting it.  Much of what's being looted is coming directly out of the pockets of teachers. Which is one reason you see so many of them trying to escape now.