Comments on: Starving the Child

By: Michael Fiorillo

Michael Fiorillo — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:59:07 +0000

Ruben Brosbe,

Did you ever consider that your,”Well, they may be hurting kids and destroying schools, but that’s not because they intend to,” shtick is why you have the platform you do? Even when you purport to criticize, you validate the premises of ed deform.

As for playing the ingenue, my personal favorite is, “…as standardized tests become more authentic and meaningful…”

QED

By: Pogue

Pogue — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:23:08 +0000

I’ll go with naive.

By: ASTRAKA

ASTRAKA — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 19:43:22 +0000

Ruben,
regarding “without assuming they have malicious intentions for kids and schools.”
Think carefully and analyze the effects of the reform movement. Imagine yourself in a school that will be closed, and see how the DOE is starving those schools to slow death. Imagine yourself branded as an ATR with all the negative connotations that the brand caries. Imagine being evaluated by statistical methods that at the least questionable. Imagine yourself teaching using “New” textbooks of questionable quality. I will not call “naive, or a sell-out or whatever label you prefer”. That accomplishes absolutely nothing.

By: Ruben

Ruben — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:47:15 +0000

There are definitely issues I’m sure Michelle Rhee and I don’t agree on, but I don’t think that excludes me from adding my voice to her organization. In fact, it makes more sense to me to include a diversity of ideas within a group.

I noticed, the charter school issue is one in particular that I am most at odds with the policymakers on, but again, I don’t think that means that the people in charge aren’t trying to help all kids learn or are trying to destroy public schools. This might make me naive, or a sell-out or whatever label you prefer. I just believe that I can strongly disagree with decision makers, without assuming they have malicious intentions for kids and schools.

By: Pogue

Pogue — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 17:26:44 +0000

Why didn’t anyone in the video, including you, Ruben, talk about the benefits of taping young students’ mouths shut?

Rhee says it works and it’s not too painful.

Studentsfirst, my arse.

By: I noticed that

I noticed that — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 15:52:43 +0000

Why are you not supporting the public school system and you’re in a Michelle Rhee promotional video for her education deforms called StudentsFirst.org? I saw your 50 second spin (slide the time to 50 seconds) on teachers having parents more involved, if we had more books, etc. You know that the DoE have set-up the public schools for failure. You know that Klein and his Tweed deformers created an unfair, somewhat biased, progress report that strategically label schools with a low grade in order to phase out those schools. Most of the schools being closed are in the Bronx and don’t you work in District 10? Why would you be in a video that promotes the ousted D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who does not care for the children but only promotes charter schools. Do you not work in a public school? Do you love working with the children in your public school? Don’t you think it is unfair that the ed deformers are taking away all the public school resources and giving them to these charter schools, where reports show that charter schools are not successful.

I hope that you can shed some light on the matter of why be involved in a Michelle Rhee video to promote her agenda to destroy public schools.

By: Mr Bill

Mr Bill — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 19:34:21 +0000

Ruben is nothing but a shill for Michelle Rhee. See the video. Fifty seconds in.

youtube.com/watch?v=YWpiq5IgRdE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

By: Bronxactivist

Bronxactivist — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:59:24 +0000

The sad part is that as teachers there is no say. Everyone gets in test prep mode overdrive. The kids hate it but are scared of being held back for the most part. Except the kids that say hey I will retake the test after summer school and move to the next grade. Thank you for exposing these test prep factories that the city encourages as opposed to the whole child being educated.