Is Rhee the Answer? Or Did Someone Fill the Bubble In Later

When Gov. Rick Scott began his transition to Tallahassee, everyone wondered what sort of government experts this private sector leader would seek out for guidance. I doubt any of his choices got as much attention as Michelle Rhee, the controversial education reformer who had made significant waves in Washington, D.C., and become a bit of a darling for conservatives in the education arena.

Since Scott just pushed Education Commissioner Eric Smith out of Tally, this connection is especially important to consider.

But anyone who thinks Rhee needs to play a leadership role in Florida's education system better pay close attention to what is happening in D.C right now where an erasure scandal threatens to undermine every bit of success there. Read the entire USA Today article. You will understand why "holding teachers accountable" makes for much better bumper sticker debate than public policy. And you will understand why Rick Scott cannot turn to Rhee right now if anything positive is to happen with Florida's school system.

From USA Today:
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In 2007-08, six classrooms out of the eight taking tests at Noyes were flagged by McGraw-Hill because of high wrong-to-right erasure rates. The pattern was repeated in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, when 80% of Noyes classrooms were flagged by McGraw-Hill.

On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.

"This is an abnormal pattern," says Thomas Haladyna, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who has studied testing for 20 years.
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Basically, there is strong evidence indicating someone at the "most improved" schools in D.C. benefiting because somebody was scrubbing bad answers off tests and replacing them with correct ones. This shows why standardized testing is not only a bad single measure for grading scales, but an extremely corruptible one as well. One must truly wonder why a newspaper investigation is what has prompted more investigation.

After Rhee initially bristled at the investigation, calling it work by the "enemies of school reform," she has gotten behind a criminal investigation.

I would be surprised if we learned Rhee had any direct involvement in the erasures, but make no mistake, without "reforms" which valued test scores above all else and which punished teachers for the performance of students on said tests, there would be no incentive for cheating on these tests. This is a direct result of the right's idea of reform.

If Scott decides right now to put Rhee, or a Rhee surrogate, in charge of Florida's statewide education system, and to follow further in D.C.'s footsteps, it will mean only further national embarrassment for a much-maligned school system and an administration which is already becoming a national joke.

Vouchers, the Republican's Public Option

As people in the last year tried to label the public option as a socialist plot, it struck me that the system the plan was most comparable too was not British health care, Canadian health care or Nazi health care, but Jeb Bush's plan for educational vouchers. Now that Rick Scott is planning to double-down on the education policy, I think it might be worth asking why the GOP is fine with using tax dollars for private education, but considers doing the same to fund health care for sick people is some type of Bolshevik plot.

First, a short primer on Bush vouchers. The A-plus plan never went all-in on vouchers, but said that children at consistently underperforming schools should be eligible to take government vouchers and attend private schools. As the link above notes, this ran into some church-state issues, though frankly, I think there were much bigger problems with the plan.

Now, the public option. As imagined by Obama and company, the government would require everyone to get insurance, the same way all children are mandated to go to school. If there was no insurance available through work or other reasonable means, then a citizen could enroll in a public insurance program. There was never anything imagined in the legislation about health providers working for the government, as they do in the UK, so the money for health care would be directed to private doctors and other providers.

(I realize these are very simplified explanations of both A-plus vouchers and the public option. Please don't throw minutia at me. I am talking about the basic political philosophies here.)

Now, does anyone see the similarities? For those who are underserved by the current status quo, the government will step in and empower a citizen with the funding to go seek a private alternative to solve their problems. The biggest difference I see is that Bush's education plan actually sought to take money away from schools to pay for vouchers, and nobody important in Washington has to backbone to push a system which takes anything away from private insurance companies.

I can tell you reasons why I think the public option is a reasonable policy in lieu of universal healthcare (guaranteeing all citizens have coverage without letting the insurance giants screw us over) and reasons why I don't think much of vouchers (the inequity of using tax dollars to send some children to private school where other children pay and the problems with not holding private schools to the same standards even though they begin receiving public funds).

But at a time when the right is calling insurance mandates "unconstitutional" and the public option "socialism," I wonder why requiring all children to go to school is not viewed as some kind of tyranny, and why setting up a program that diverts tax money into the hands of private sector education providers isn't viewed as some sort of bailout.

According to Mother Jones, Rick Scott is upping the ante and suggesting vouchers be available to a broader range of people. Call is universal education care.

The publication says he plans to give $5,500 vouchers for people to use for public, private, charter or virtual outlets, and even if parents can afford to send their kids to private school anyway, they can just use that money to buy a new printer at their house. I guess this is how Republicans deal with inequity issues.

There are so many reasons I see why this is bad policy from a liberal progressive perspective. But given the absolute derangement about the public option, I don't understand how the modern conservative can stand for this type of "reform" in education without being lambasted as some hind of Soviet operative breaking into their ranks. I mean, why not just have the government pay people for going to school? Why not force teachers at private institutions to get their checks signed by the state?

But I guess this is the socialist public option that Republicans can get behind.