We are at a crisis point. Either we are going to step up and demand the truth about Michelle Rhee and the Washington, D.C. cheating scandal, or we're going to sweep this entire thing under the rug and pretend that Rhee's vision of the world is valid: that our nation's massive inequity can be laid at the feet of a few "bad" teachers.
It is time - once and for all - to have an honest conversation about the legacy of Michelle Rhee.
For Rhee to dash around the country pushing ed deform policies like they actually worked for her and appearing on Morning Joe and Oprah and elsewhere to be feted as a "warrior woman" putting "students first" against the greedy, lazy tenured teachers who just want to hold onto the failed status quo is no longer tenable.
There are major indications a whole lot of cheating took place at DCPS schools while Rhee was chancellor, Rhee was informed of this cheating and did NOTHING about it.
She disciplined one teacher for alleged cheating while firing over 600 for low test scores.
That there is now a memo showing DCPS brass were alerted to the cheating and instead of looking into it, they fired hundreds of teachers for low test score results puts her in Beverly Hall indictment territory.
If the powers that be - Obama, Duncan, her media shills, Gates and Broad and the Wall Street/hedge fund crooks that pony up the money for Rhee's lobbying group - want to continue to back her despite the now deafening evidence that something funky took place under Rhee, she knew about the funkiness, and did nothing about it, that's fine.
But they can no longer pretend that the ed reform character Rhee portrays during the day bears any semblance of reality with who and what Rhee really is.
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