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StudentsFirst was formed by Michelle Rhee in 2010 after resigning as chancellor of D.C. schools.  The name 'StudentsFirst' implies that they have a mission to oppose those who put students second, third, or even last.  In very clear terms, they say that it is the teacher's unions who are putting the needs of the adults above the needs of the students.  When the New York franchise of StudentsFirst started a few months ago, they even described it as a "union for students." The name 'StudentsFirst' is well chosen.  It definitely makes anyone who says they oppose them have to give a big explanation along with it.  There are other organizations that have similar names, like 'Stand For Children', or that have slogans like it, most notably in New York City where the slogan of The Department of Education is "Children First.  Always."  That 'always' kind of makes me chuckle.  It's like they are saying "Children First," and then someone says "but aren't there some times where putting the children first could be bad for the system as a whole?," and they just answer "Always."

"Michelle Rhee continues her descent into parody. You might have thought that teaching students to read would be a good way to evaluate educational performance, but no. Rhee's StudentsFirst organization has released a report card grading states-on their education policies, not their educational results. In fact, not one of the states StudentsFirst ranks in the top five is in the top half of states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, "the nation's report card," when it comes to eighth grade reading scores, and only one is in the top half when it comes to eighth grade math."

Bain helped develop the strategy and business plan for launching StudentsFirst, the new organization founded by Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. StudentsFirst is leading a national movement to advocate for common sense reforms that accelerate student achievement. The Bain team worked with Rhee and her team to build an indepth plan that has helped guide the initial launch and early success of the organization. We have committed to an ongoing partnership with StudentsFirst and are excited by the opportunity to support them in their mission of significantly improving the US educational system. That is one part of our launch of a new education practice in the US that will include pro bono teams in every office.

The Pennsylvania legislature is working on a "school choice" bill-meaning school vouchers and expanded charter schools. Rachel Tabachnik has detailed the network of Betsy DeVos-funded think tanks and PACs that are pushing privatization. But no move to undermine public education that works for all kids would be complete without Michelle Rhee, and Karoli at Crooks and Liars details how Rhee's StudentsFirst has been involved. After a string of Rhee appearances with voucher supporters and at DeVos-funded events, StudentsFirst has hired a lobbyist with some hardcore Republican credentials

Few people define themselves as being a member of a special interest. That term applies to the folks on the other side -- the people you disagree with. New Yorkers got more evidence of that this month with the formation of StudentsFirstNY. In a nutshell, the group wants to preserve and extend the education policies of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and battle the teachers union, which has had an increasingly rancorous relationship with Bloomberg. In its mission statement, the group declares, StudentsFirstNY will be New York's leading voice for students who depend on public education for the skills they need to succeed, but who are too often failed by a system that puts special interests, rather than the interests of children, first. Nice sentiments. But the people behind this statement hardly qualify as disinterested observers anymore than the United Federation of Teachers does. The New York StudentsFirst group is an offshoot of the national organization StudentsFirst, created by former Washington, D.C. schools superintendent Michelle Rhee. It includes many who have backed the Bloomberg administration's education policies over the years -- people who even their foes have come to call reformers. The name persists after 10 years of "reformers" running the city's schools and racking up a decidedly mixed record. Whatever they have or have not done for students in New York City and beyond, though, these policies have helped make some people rich and successful.

To understand the attack on public education in Pennsylvania, begin with Rachel Tabachnik's comprehensive report on the partnership between far right-wing funders like the DeVos family with Michelle Rhee's national StudentsFirst organization, and the Pennsylvania StudentsFirst organization, which shares the same name as Rhee's group, but has very different people running it.

Doris and Donald Fisher, founders of the GAP clothing company, began contributing to education-related causes through various philanthropic organizations in the late 1990s. The Doris and Donald Fisher Fund is the current foundation, although it was formerly known as the Doris and Donald Fisher Education Fund, is still sometimes abbreviated as D2F2, and earlier was known as the Pisces Foundation. The Fishers were early supporters of Edison Schools, and have been major supporters of KIPP and Teach for America. Although I cannot find some of the Fisher's earliest IRS 990s, the family also supported a young organization, The New Teacher Project, founded by Michelle Rhee. As noted on the Fisher's 2011 Form 990, the foundation contributed $250,000 to Rhee's newest organization, StudentsFirst. I gathered Form 990s for the fiscal years ending in 2003 through 2011, and pulled information about contributions made during each of those years. You can find all of these Form 990s through Guidestar.org or Foundation Center's 990 Finder. You can see the information I pulled in an Excel file on my Data page or check out the results below.

The second largest school district in the nation, Los Angeles Unified, is in the midst of what must surely be the costliest school board race ever. This month we have seen report after report of billionaire donations rolling in, totaling almost $3 million. First we learned that Eli Broad and former Univision head Jerrold Perenchio had each pitched in $250,000. Then New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg dropped a cool million into the effort. Most recently, Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst lobby has added in their own quarter million. The billionaire's money is being spent to pay for what the usually staid Los Angeles Times calls "junk ads," and "serious exaggeration and distortion." The big concern among these "reformers," is apparently that the pace of charter school expansion might be slowed. They are also very focused on eliminating or weakening due process and seniority protections for teachers. And most of all, they want board members who will offer strong support to Superintendent John Deasy, a favorite of the Gates Foundation.

If there is a clear sign of the growing influence of a new breed of national education advocacy organizations, it surely lies in their entry into state-level politics. That involvement has advanced the groups' similar policy priorities on such issues as overhauling teacher evaluation and expanding charter schools. The story of SB 191's passage in Colorado is among the most striking examples, but in just five years, groups such as DFER, Stand for Children, and the more recently launched StudentsFirst have helped shape legislative proposals in statehouse after statehouse. Although the list is not comprehensive and the details vary by state, their efforts include these examples

A new generation of education advocacy groups has emerged to play a formidable political role in states and communities across the country. Those groups are shaping policy through aggressive lobbying and campaign activity-an evolution in advocacy that is primed to continue in the 2012 elections and beyond. Bearing names meant to signal their intentions-Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform, StudentsFirst-they are pushing for such policies as rigorous teacher evaluations based in part on evidence of student learning, increased access to high-quality charter schools, and higher academic standards for schools and students. Sometimes viewed as a counterweight to teachers' unions, they are also supporting political candidates who champion those ideas. Though the record of their electoral success is mixed, such groups' overall influence appears to be growing, and it has already helped alter the landscape of education policy, particularly at the state level.

Dear Michelle Rhee, former D.C. schools chancellor and current leader of StudentsFirst: I just wanted to dash off a quick note about that commentary you wrote in Education Week about the big value-added teacher evaluation study that made headlines this month.

Among my son's favorite books are the ones in Richard Scarry's Busytown series. In What Do People Do All Day?, Able Baker Charlie puts too much yeast in the dough, resulting in a gigantic, explosive loaf of bread that the bakers (and Lowly Worm) need to eat their way out of. The opposite problem -- a lack of yeast -- is present in Michelle Rhee's recent op-ed in Education Week. In it, she limits her call to "rethink" teaching policy to "how we assign, retain, evaluate, and pay educators" and to "teacher-layoff and teacher-tenure policies." (And she casts the issue of retention purely as one about so-called "last-in, first-out" employment policies rather than about school leadership, collaboration or working conditions.) The utter absence of any focus or mention of teacher development either in this op-ed or in her organization's (StudentsFirst) expansive policy agenda leaves me wondering if Rhee believes that teachers are capable of learning and improving.

Russo's underhanded dig is followed up with his suggestion that billionaire funded astroturf groups like StudentsFirst, Stand For Children, and TeachPlus have the potential to correct what he perceives as an "imbalance." For Russo, the corporate education reform astroturf need to step up and post comments under articles, use twitter, blog, and avail themselves of social media. It simply isn't enough to be funded by the likes of the wealthiest one percent including names like Walton, DeVos, Broad, Bradley, Gates, Koch, Hastings, Dell, Powell-Jobs, Scaife, Tilson, et al. It's not enough to have the unwavering support of a bipartisan neoliberal consensus at every level of government including the most anti-public education administration and Department of Education of all time. It isn't sufficient to have the unquestioning editorial support of every mainstream media outlet-not to mention Rupert Murdoch's vast propaganda empire-all of which spew a nonstop stream of privatization propaganda with nary a dissenting note. This last point is of paramount importance, since it's often forgotten that outside the realm of privilege that has regular access to the Internet, there's a majority that obtains their information from more traditional sources.

Listen as Diane Ravitch dismantle Rhee's proxy, Tim Melton, on issues of teacher tenure, seniority, testing, and teacher evaluation.

"Recent days has seen a nasty tweet fight break out, as Mayor Bloomberg's proxies - Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson, StudentsFirst honcho and former Bloomberg Albany lobbyist Micah Lasher, and former television anchor Campbell Brown - have used the 140 character forum to launch a vicious slander that the UFT protects sexual predators, defending their return to the classroom.  Their argument is that since arbitrators who decide dismissal hearings against tenured teachers are jointly selected by the Department of Education and the UFT, they split the difference in decisions and do not fire teachers who have engaged in sexual misconduct or sexually inappropriate behavior. The only solution, they argue, is to overturn tenure and give the DoE the power of judge, jury and executioner. The UFT has a position of zero tolerance on sexual misconduct, and we have negotiated in our contract the strongest penalties for sexual misconduct in any collective bargaining agreement in the state of New York. If an adult violates the trust that is at the heart of the educator-student relationship with an act of sexual misconduct or with sexually inappropriate behavior, dismissal is the only appropriate response."

An often quoted 'statistic' by various 'reformers' is that an effective teacher is three times as good as an ineffective one.  Sometimes it is said that the ineffective teacher gets a half year of progress while the effective teacher gets one and a half years of progress. I don't doubt that there are a small percent of teachers who have little classroom control, mostly new teachers, who only manage to get a half a year of progress.  I also can imagine a rare 'super-teacher' who somehow gets one and a half years of progress.  (I think I'm a pretty good teacher, but I doubt I get a year and a half worth of progress.)  I don't think there is a very accurate way to measure this nebulous 'progress' aside from test scores, but I could still imagine that there is a 'true' number, even if we will never be able to accurately calculate it. As this statistic has been quoted by Melinda Gates recently on PBS and by Michelle Rhee in various places, including the StudentsFirst website I thought, in response to a recent post on Diane Ravitch's blog I would investigate the source of this claim.

Moderated by Charlayne Hunter-Gault Essence, Africa Bureau Chief, and author of New News Out of Africa: Uncovering the African Renaissance Lawrence D. Bobo W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University James P. Comer Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine's Child Study Center Angel L. Harris Associate Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies, Princeton University Diane Ravitch Research Professor of Education, New York University Michelle A. Rhee Founder and CEO, StudentsFirst

"A few weeks ago, Students First NY (SFNY) released a report, in which they presented a very simple analysis of the distribution of "unsatisfactory" teacher evaluation ratings ("U-ratings") across New York City schools in the 2011-12 school year. The report finds that U-ratings are distributed unequally. In particular, they are more common in schools with higher poverty, more minorities, and lower proficiency rates. Thus, the authors conclude, the students who are most in need of help are getting the worst teachers. There is good reason to believe that schools serving larger proportions of disadvantaged students have a tougher time attracting, developing and retaining good teachers, and there is evidence of this, even based on value-added estimates, which adjust for these characteristics (also see here). However, the assumptions upon which this Students First analysis is based are better seen as empirical questions, and, perhaps more importantly, the recommendations they offer are a rather crude, narrow manifestation of market-based reform principles."

The future of the fight over public schools has a fresh, highly visible face, and it's called StudentsFirstNY. But the new school-reform supergroup, founded by former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and ex-D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee, is in fact not that new at all. It builds directly one of the biggest lobbying forces in New York State, called Education Reform Now. In the last two years, Education Reform Now and the associated Education Reform Now Advocacy have spent more than $10 million to influence state law on hiring and firing of teachers, as a counterforce to the state's two major teachers' unions. Those funds helped force a change in teacher evaluations that unions had opposed, and also backed Mayor Bloomberg's push for layoffs based on teacher performance in place of the current system, in which the most recently hired teachers must be the first to be let go. The $10 million is as much money as StudentsFirstNY director Micah Lasher - until now, Mayor Bloomberg's chief Albany lobbyist - says the new group will spend to influence the next mayoral election.

Last Friday, Michelle Rhee was on Brian Lehrer's radio show. The segment, unsurprisingly, is a textbook example of the incoherence of the corporate reform movement. I'll have more to say about the rest of the interview later, but for now, I want to focus in on a remarkable passage, starting at 18:19. I have transcribed it in its entirety because I think it needs to go on Rhee's permanent record (all emphasis mine)