The Education Gadfly Weekly

New research unveiled at this year’s AERA conference documents a disturbing trend among the nation’s secondary schools: Between 2001 and 2012, high school graduation rates regularly spiked in late May and early June, ballooning from near zero to a staggering average of 78 percent. This $400 million, eleven-year study analyzed all 26,749 secondary schools in the United States, employing a differentiated ANOVA regression-correlation curved-linear analysis on microdata from each of the fifty states. Controlling for a host of variables, from student demographics to the number of NASCAR fans per county, analysts demonstrated that no random variation in graduation rates could have yielded the observed rate. Instead, they concluded that the spike is caused by heightened—and unfair—accountability pressure arising from No Child Left Behind: School officials artificially inflate graduation rates in May and June after realizing that their rates in preceding months were far below federal standards. This pattern is repeated year after year. In an equally worrisome finding, the analysts discovered that teacher- and school-administrator-absence rates jump at nearly the same time and actually increase through July and early August. Researchers posit that these employees, ashamed of their data manipulation, take leave in order to conceal their culpability.

SOURCE: Perry Dox and Shirley U. Jest, “The June phenomenon: Graduation rates and teacher absenteeism,” Boring Journal of the AERA, February 2013.

By some accounts, 2012 was the year of the MOOC—Massive Open Online Courses. Entrepreneurs and universiy administrators alike crowed about the “paradigm-shifting” potential of this new approach to delivering higher education. (Dom Pander Ark, for example, exclaimed "it’s even bigger than my ego.”) And politicians across the spectrum welcomed news that bargain BAs are finally within reach. So leave it to wet-blanket economist Erik Poxby to poop on the party. In a new NBER working paper, he estimates the likely longevity of brick-and-mortar universities as MOOCs gain in popularity (and students gain degree credit): “They’ve got about a year,” Poxby concludes. “Maybe two for the Ivies.” In related news, NCES Commissioner (and super smarty) Jack Buckley announced suspension of the IPEDS post-secondary data-collection program. You connect the dots.

SOURCE: Erik Poxby, “The Financial Sustainability of Free Higher Education Courses” (Crimebridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2013).

You don’t get on the cover of Time by being a wilting flower, and central to Michelle Rhee’s meteoric rise and media prominence has been her meticulously crafted image as a take-no-prisoners, Lord-of-the-Flies-conch-wielding, butt-kicking executive. But what if her hard exterior surrounds a marshmallow middle? That’s the central allegation of this unauthorized exposé by Rhee’s younger daughter. “My mother’s no ‘Tiger Mom,’” writes Tee Hee Rhee. “She’s a total pussycat.” And that’s certainly the impression created by the book’s anecdotes. It reports, for instance, that Rhee has enrolled both girls in a Waldorf school, “where we learned to whittle before we learned to read.” And that Rhee refused to allow them to play soccer—“not because we suck—we don’t!,” according to Tee Hee, but because “Mommy was worried about the ‘corrupting effects of competition.’” “Maybe she was tougher when we were babies,” speculates the adolescent author, “but after enough trips to Aspen anyone will go soft.” Both Michelle Rhee and the StudentsFirst press secretary declined to comment on the book, but insiders report that, on hearing of its publication, Rhee senior gave wee Rhee “a big hug,” reminded her that she “loves her no matter what,” and offered to add a second weekly therapy session to her daughter’s regimen.

SOURCE: Tee Hee Rhee, Free Radical (Sacre-pimento, CA: DaughtersFirst Publications, 2013).

The following is a real-life excerpt from a standardized assessment that Ohio plans to put to K–2 kids—and the only piece of this Gladfly that is 100 percent true.

TRUE or FALSE:

1.   When you hop, it means that you start on one foot and land on the same foot.
2.   When you run fast, your hands should come across the center of your body.
3.   When you slide, you keep the same lead foot as you move sideways.
4.   When you skip, you step and hop on one foot and then with the other foot.
5.   When you jump, you should bend your knees as if you are sitting in a chair.
6.   When dribbling a basketball, you should always be looking at the ball.
7.   When rolling a ball, you should release the ball at the bottom of your forward swing.
8.   You should use your toes to kick a soccer ball if you want to kick it hard.
9.   For a good overhand throw, you should bend the elbow in the shape of an “L” behind the head before throwing.
10.   When you roll or toss a ball underhand, you step forward with the same foot as your tossing arm.
11.   When throwing to a target, you should follow through toward the target after letting go of the ball.
12.   When catching a ball at head height, point your fingers upwards.

No joke.

Featuring (in order of appearance):

Michael Petrilli - Executive Vice President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Amber Winkler - Vice President for Research, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
John Chubb - Interim CEO, Education Sector
Anne L. Bryant - Executive Director, National School Boards Association
Gene I. Maeroff - Founding Director, Hechinger Institute
Mike Miles - Superintendent, Dallas ISD
Christopher S. Barclay - President, Montgomery County Board of Education, Maryland
Geoffrey Jones - founding principal, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Chester E. Finn, Jr. - President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Rick Hess - Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute

After Tony “the Idol” Bennett’s ousting in November from Hoosier chiefdom, reform funders commissioned public-affairs experts ED 08 Associates and The Acropolis Group consulting firm on how the stalled reform movement can regain momentum. Herewith the executive summary of their report.

Like the Republican Party, the education-reform movement has been searching its soul, examining its slogans, and bickering over who’s in charge. Those who lost hard-fought elections in typically reform-minded states in November understandably wonder: Are our policies off and our principles awry? Is it just “message” and “tone”? (Or could it be our weird spokespersons?)

Well, be of good cheer, reformers. Our state-of-the-art research has found that your policy prescriptions are still popular with the unwashed masses whose tax dollars you crave, whose children you yearn to change, whose neighborhood schools you insist on closing, and whose favorite teachers you are bent on firing. All you need to do is change your messaging and explain your intentions in focus-group-validated language uttered by hypnotically beautiful spokespeople.

We’ve learned that your present message is too often perceived as “dour,” “tough,” “mean,” and “divisive.” You must become the happy movement!

For example:

Closing sh***y, no good schools

Our research revealed that people hate this idea. Doubly so if Michelle Rhee is the one doing the closing—and that mishap with Rhee, the bulldozer, and Akron’s Coolidge Elementary School’s fifth-grade classroom didn’t help. (Luckily, the kids were out at recess.)

But do not despair. That eyesore of a school building need not stand in the way of new luxury condos for philanthropy-supported do-gooders. All you need is the right tone, message, and personality.

Our recommendation:

• Rather than “This school evokes a World War II bomb shelter,” say, “We must transform education for the twenty-first century.”

Firing worthless “teachers”

• Rather than “This teacher’s grasp of pedagogy is on par with that of a Barbie doll, her classroom presence wouldn’t fog a mirror, and her content knowledge is surpassed by my dog,” say, “We must open up new, twenty-first-century career opportunities for our struggling education professionals.”
• And stop soliciting layoff tactics from Donald Trump and Simon Cowell; instead, recruit someone more supportive, like Tim Gunn or Oprah Winfrey. “Everybody gets more free time! You get more free time! You get more free time! YOU get more free time!”

Raining public dollars upon private schools

To be sure, some policy ideas are harder to message than others. With vouchers, liberals drone on about obsolete minutia like “the First Amendment,” while conservatives yammer about black helicopters assaulting independent schools. As for people in the relatively sane middle, they inexplicably appear to like their public schools (see “closing sh***y, no-good schools,” above).

So how to thread the needle?

• Rather than “Our nation’s urban public schools are in the toilet, and poor kids should be allowed to hoist themselves out,” say, “In our twenty-first-century education system, every family deserves a private lavatory, er, school of its choice.” 
• Refuse to take questions after.

Letting helicopter parents fly via the parent trigger

• Surprisingly, this one polls quite well—especially in the South, where it is sometimes confused with gun rights for parents. Others (teachers, mainly) think it is a proposal to hold parents accountable. When the actual policy proposal is explained to voters, support drops dramatically. So don’t ever do that.

Getting on with those national standards

Finally, there is growing concern about the Common Core initiative. Parents and the public believe in “high standards” and “accountability” in the abstract, but they don’t generally like their precious cherubs “writing twenty-page analyses of bus schedules.” They also claim to hate the idea of anything “national.” So what to do?

• At every available opportunity, explain slowly and plainly that the Common Core will prepare students for the twenty-first century—and that it is a state-led initiative.

While we can’t guarantee this strategy will lead to electoral success everywhere, we do firmly believe that the next time an articulate, attractive, reform-minded, Republican state superintendent is up for re-election in a heavily Republican state, he or she at least won’t get beat so soundly.

It was yet another difficult week for Karen Lewis, whose recent rhetoric has her own flock calling for her head.

Math teachers United in Resenting Dumb Education Reform (MURDER) and Secondary Teachers After Blood (STAB) joined hands in protest on Wednesday outside Chicago City Hall, urging the teaching proletariat not to be taken in by Lewis’s “corporate-style” labor strikes. The past month has seen mounting dissatisfaction with what many crazed, leftist agitators perceive to be her massive—er, passive—leadership and supposed ties to Wall Street. (Sources have implicated her as possessor of a public pension, which may include so-called “investments.”) In a recent Mother Smith article, STAB executive director Mike Clownsky declared, “Ms. Lewis clearly lacks dedication. While she's half-heartedly suggesting that we decapitate the corporate pawns, we're in the streets pulling out their entrails and hanging them from the walls of school buildings. With her, it’s always too little, too late.”

In front of a riotous gathering of hopped-up educators and Hessian mercenaries, representatives from STAB and MURDER read from their list of demands:

• Classes no bigger than eight kids
• Tenure after one year of teaching (rounding up any partial years)
• Rahm Emanuel’s head on a plate
• Rahm Emanuel’s hide as a coat
• Rahm Emanuel’s ears on a cat
• Ten-year moratorium on standardized testing
• Free ponies for all

Reacting to these events (and to Clownsky’s declaration that the ghost of Hugo Chavez—or, for that matter, Cesar Chavez—would be a better leader for the CTU than Ms. Lewis), Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced (from his ski chateau) his decision to close all Chicago public schools and recommended that any education-minded families who remain in town engage in home schooling. Karen Lewis—reportedly barricaded in a bomb shelter and subsisting on Spam—could not be reached for comment.

RELATED ARTICLE: Romper McFlomper, “If you give a union a cookie…” Chicago Fun-Times, March 25, 2013.

Maybe it goes back to when no one believed his UFO sighting during Kindergarten. Or possibly the time a remote-control car ran over his foot when he was ten. Whatever its deep-seated source, Senator Rand Paul has a thing against drones. Recall his tiresome outburst the other week about CIA drones and U.S. citizens. Yet ‘twas nothing compared with his recent fulminations over Arne Duncan’s Common Core classroom-drones program, officially the “Race to Observe Archaic and Simple-minded Teaching” (ROAST) program. Not only is Senator Paul revealing himself to be a one-trick pony, he doesn’t even seem to grasp the game-changing potential of this new technology for the revitalization of primary-secondary education.

Let’s set the record straight. These drones are not (heavily) armed, nor will they clog up U.S. airspace or bandwidth. (The Senator’s satellite re-runs of “Howdy Doody!” will continue to stream just fine.) These “child-centered” drones simply float around classrooms, observing and recording teachers’ instructional practices. It’s not really all that different from the Gates Foundation’s MET program—and we don’t recall Paul filibustering that.

As for privacy, fret not: The drone pilots at 400 Maryland Avenue SW are sworn to secrecy. Their mission, after all, isn’t to spy on little Jamal and Emma, only to check on their teacher—to make sure she’s putting all of the Common Core’s instructional shifts into practice. What’s more, unlike innumerable earlier ED initiatives, this one is working! Since the drones were launched in January, not a single eighth-grade English teacher has asked her students to write about their feelings. Not one! Nada.

The real shame is that news of the successful ROAST program leaked, thanks to Secretary “Loose Lips Sink Ships” Duncan. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: If the Administration wants to help, it needs to keep its trap shut about all things Common Core. After all, it’s a state-led initiative!

RELATED ARTICLE: Candice B. Fureal, “Taking helicopter policy-making to new heights,” Keeping Mum Gazette, March 25, 2013.

Thirteen days after an infamous Obama-Boehner rock-paper-scissors battle brought the sequestration conflict to a head and the federal government to its knees, the Department of State is eerily quiet and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving has stopped making dollar bills. Yet at the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) offices servers hum, emails fly, and scrawling STATA printouts cover the walls as NAGB prepares to release the latest NAEP results. After a decisive move by Board Chair David Pistol, NAGB is the only operational federal outfit in town. “Instead of throwing in the towel like those wimps at Homeland Security,” Pistol said proudly, “I put on my thinking cap.”

So how have congressionally nixed “line items” like test creation, test administration, and results tabulation become redundant?

Simple: NAGB hired Nate Silver.

By acquiring Silver, the statistician who reportedly spends his post–happy hour evenings wandering the New York subway telling strangers the day they will die, NAGB was able to slash its budget to a workable $100,000, covering twelve months of dial-up internet and fifty pounds of Swedish Fish—all Silver needs to accurately and efficiently predict NAEP scores down to the last eighth-grader.

Not everyone was thrilled with Pistol's decision, however. Harvard test-grinch Dan Koretz, for instance, shook an angry fist, muttering something about “reliability and validity.” But others gave Pistol and his team great credit for saving NAEP. “I’ve always believed in doing more with less, next-generation testing, and the omniscience of Nate Silver,” cooed Arne Duncan from his Arlington home office. “I mean, the man can recite Pi…backwards.” Pistol just grinned.

RELATED ARTICLE: Edgar Cayce, “Yes, he is that good,” Significance Magazine, March 29, 2013.

The gauntlet was truly thrown when charter tycoon Eva Moskowitz issued a public challenge to fellow New Yorker Chris Whittle. In the latest battle for rich-kid enrollment, Moskowitz insists that charters will prevail over private schools. “Chris is charging parents a zillion-dollar tuition for his Avenues Schools venture,” she said. “But there’s no rational reason that rich people should pay for their own children’s plush educations when taxpayers are perfectly willing to foot the bill. My charters,” she declared, “with their IB curricula and teachers swiped from Andover and Choate—not to mention climbing walls, on-campus spas, water-polo facilities, and vegan dining options—come with all the amenities of Avenues without the personal price tag.”

“I welcome the competition,” snarled the usually affable Whittle, while sorting through his ascot collection. “Despite Eva’s claim that her charters provide everything, she’s going to have to hire expert lobbyists to amend state charter laws or else charge parents fees for the horseback-riding instruction, flying lessons, and personal valets. My schools are truly all-inclusive, and parents will happily pony up for pony lessons. Besides, my schools are now importing math and science teachers from Singapore and Shanghai. Astute families appreciate the added value.”

“Trust me, rich folks got that way by being smart about money,” replied Moskowitz during an interview on her yacht. “Chris doesn’t appreciate the marvelously regressive effect of my publicly financed schools. Wealthy parents will seize this opportunity—and the political base for charter schools will widen accordingly. I learned a lot in Cobble Hill.”

Sources familiar with expansion plans at Success Academy Charter Schools report that realtors are currently seeking suitable properties in Beverly Hills, Scarsdale, Winnetka, Wellesley, and Scottsdale.

RELATED ARTICLE: Howard Cosell, “Welcome to the main event,” Old Pork Times, March 25, 2013.

A recent re-analysis of the Head Start Act of 1981, which significantly expanded the eligibility requirements of federally funded pre-Kindergarten, revealed a startling loophole that has nearly two in three Americans trading in their Outlook accounts and Crackberries for Green Eggs and Ham and naptime: It was recently revealed that the law does not specify a maximum age of enrollment (see sec. 645. [42 U.S.C. 9840] (b)). Recent publicity afforded this otherwise buried statute has resulted in an unexpected turn: Nearly 200 million U.S. adults have gone back to preschool.

Those who have enrolled cite numerous benefits: Justin Baker, a civil engineer in Denver, CO, related, “During play time, we’ve experimented with different types of building blocks. We’ve learned that structures made of Lego are more durable than those made of Lincoln Logs. Plus, there’s Play-Doh!” Ellen Shaw, a lawyer in San Diego, CA, enthused, “I’m learning skills I never was never taught in law school, like how to work out problems before suing someone over them.”

Although some parents of three- and four-year-olds expressed concern that the influx of larger students put their kids at a disadvantage in time-honored games like Duck, Duck, Goose, and though a handful of employers worried about the loss of productivity as employees take leave from their jobs to go back to school, the overall reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. According to Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Greasy, “Three months of pre-K and our teachers now know that they can’t just throw a tantrum to get what they want? I’d say it’s worth it!”

RELATED ARTICLE: Hal E. Luya, “Accountants and actuaries amazed at the efficiency of counting on fingers,” Mall Feet Journal, March 24, 2013.

North Korea’s pudgy young Supreme Leader, fresh from his triumphal get-together with Dennis Rodman, has determined to broaden his ties to influential individuals named Dennis and non-governmental organizations in the United States.

“We will conquer America with love and other weapons,” Kim declared on Radio Pyongyang, “and I look forward to addressing my comrades in the National Education Association during their convention in July. I shall deliver an address in which I instruct America’s teachers on how to resist the malevolent policies of Great Satan Obama and will offer them online courses delivered by my glorious nation’s expert nuclear physicists to counteract the shortage of qualified high school science teachers in the United States—and also counteract the malevolence of Obama and evil henchman Harold Duncan.”

NEA president Dennis Van Roekel told the Dayton Daily News, “We need all the help we can get.” The White House declined to comment.

RELATED ARTICLE: Tennis Codman, “From one Dennis to another,” Ewe Cork Rhymes, April 1, 2013.

Continuing his stunning career ascent, Common Core architect David Coleman has agreed to take a top post in Pope Francis’s inner circle, just months after joining the College Board. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Coleman through a spokesperson, who also noted that he’s converting to Roman Catholicism. He will be in charge of designing a new church liturgy, which will focus on close reading of Biblical texts and won’t shy away from the most demanding passages in scripture. “Previously, the church was afraid to assign many readings from the Book of Revelation because of its text complexity,” Coleman said in an interview. “But if we expect our faithful to be ready for Heaven—not to mention college and career—we need to aim higher.” Still, Coleman stressed, regardless of Rome’s involvement, the Common Core remains a state-led initiative.

French President Francois Hollande faced international ridicule last year when he banned homework. Undeterred by the ensuing jibes and mockery, he recently announced new national mandates from the Élysée Palace: So as not to give undue advantage to some children, Hollande proclaimed that French parents may no longer read to their kids, spend any time with them, or show them any love at all. To which one commentator asked, “And this changes things how?”

In a misunderstanding of supersized proportions, San Francisco mayor Edwin M. Lee has pushed through a new “weighted-student” funding plan that bases schools’ budgets on the BMI of their pupils. The silver lining (or golden arches?) is that the move has bolstered the city’s fast-food industry, as schools take thrice-weekly “field trips” to McDonald’s and Burger King. “Campbell’s Law! Campbell’s Law!” chanted Richard Rothstein to no one in particular.

According to the Delaware Day-Before-Tomorrow, the rumors that the First State is looking to outsource its government are true: Billionaires Rupert Murdoch and Eli Broad have each approached Gov. Jack Markell with complexly structured offers to buy the state and take it private. Murdoch is said to have thrown in free access to the Amplify Education Unit for every household with school-age kids, while Broad has offered to put his own name on every one of Delaware’s schools. “Carnegie did it for public libraries,” a Broad spokesperson pointed out.

We’re relieved that Alabama’s latest skirmish over the Common Core has ended without excessive bloodshed. The brief incursion by the National Guard (which, despite its name, is, like the Common Core itself, a state-led initiative, under the control of governors!) came to a relatively peaceable conclusion when Tea Party legislators backed off their demand that the Heart of Dixie instead adopt the “Common Standards of the Confederacy.” They did, nevertheless, push through a bill to abolish the state’s public education system. But the Core remains intact!

More financial shenanigans by Bernie Madoff came to light last week when the FBI revealed that the teacher-pension plans of Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Wyoming are Ponzi schemes designed before the scoundrel entered prison (but still overseen by his third cousins). “The only way that retired teachers in those four states—and possibly in others yet to be uncovered—are receiving pensions today,” said FBI director Robert Mueller, “is because current teachers are paying into those pension plans to keep them afloat—just barely. It’s sort of like, you know, Social Security.”

In keeping with her Texas origins and in the footsteps of conservative trailblazers who preceded her, Diane Ravitch recently launched the Network for Ossifying Public Education (or NOPE). “We want this to be the National Review of the education-reform movement,” Ravitch explained. “In the tradition of Buckley and Burke, my colleagues and I intend to ‘stand athwart history yelling STOP!’ at a time when no one is inclined to do so.” No specific agenda has yet been announced, as the group intends to be 100 percent reactionary. “Our plan,” Ravitch explained, “is to wait and see what Jonah Edelman supports and then rally behind the opposite. Our forthcoming Gates grant makes it all possible.”

Featuring (in order of appearance):

Michael Petrilli - Executive Vice President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Amber Winkler - Vice President for Research, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
John Chubb - Interim CEO, Education Sector
Anne L. Bryant - Executive Director, National School Boards Association
Gene I. Maeroff - Founding Director, Hechinger Institute
Mike Miles - Superintendent, Dallas ISD
Christopher S. Barclay - President, Montgomery County Board of Education, Maryland
Geoffrey Jones - founding principal, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Chester E. Finn, Jr. - President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Rick Hess - Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute

Featuring (in order of appearance):

Michael Petrilli - Executive Vice President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Amber Winkler - Vice President for Research, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
John Chubb - Interim CEO, Education Sector
Anne L. Bryant - Executive Director, National School Boards Association
Gene I. Maeroff - Founding Director, Hechinger Institute
Mike Miles - Superintendent, Dallas ISD
Christopher S. Barclay - President, Montgomery County Board of Education, Maryland
Geoffrey Jones - founding principal, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Chester E. Finn, Jr. - President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Rick Hess - Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute

New research unveiled at this year’s AERA conference documents a disturbing trend among the nation’s secondary schools: Between 2001 and 2012, high school graduation rates regularly spiked in late May and early June, ballooning from near zero to a staggering average of 78 percent. This $400 million, eleven-year study analyzed all 26,749 secondary schools in the United States, employing a differentiated ANOVA regression-correlation curved-linear analysis on microdata from each of the fifty states. Controlling for a host of variables, from student demographics to the number of NASCAR fans per county, analysts demonstrated that no random variation in graduation rates could have yielded the observed rate. Instead, they concluded that the spike is caused by heightened—and unfair—accountability pressure arising from No Child Left Behind: School officials artificially inflate graduation rates in May and June after realizing that their rates in preceding months were far below federal standards. This pattern is repeated year after year. In an equally worrisome finding, the analysts discovered that teacher- and school-administrator-absence rates jump at nearly the same time and actually increase through July and early August. Researchers posit that these employees, ashamed of their data manipulation, take leave in order to conceal their culpability.

SOURCE: Perry Dox and Shirley U. Jest, “The June phenomenon: Graduation rates and teacher absenteeism,” Boring Journal of the AERA, February 2013.

By some accounts, 2012 was the year of the MOOC—Massive Open Online Courses. Entrepreneurs and universiy administrators alike crowed about the “paradigm-shifting” potential of this new approach to delivering higher education. (Dom Pander Ark, for example, exclaimed "it’s even bigger than my ego.”) And politicians across the spectrum welcomed news that bargain BAs are finally within reach. So leave it to wet-blanket economist Erik Poxby to poop on the party. In a new NBER working paper, he estimates the likely longevity of brick-and-mortar universities as MOOCs gain in popularity (and students gain degree credit): “They’ve got about a year,” Poxby concludes. “Maybe two for the Ivies.” In related news, NCES Commissioner (and super smarty) Jack Buckley announced suspension of the IPEDS post-secondary data-collection program. You connect the dots.

SOURCE: Erik Poxby, “The Financial Sustainability of Free Higher Education Courses” (Crimebridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2013).

You don’t get on the cover of Time by being a wilting flower, and central to Michelle Rhee’s meteoric rise and media prominence has been her meticulously crafted image as a take-no-prisoners, Lord-of-the-Flies-conch-wielding, butt-kicking executive. But what if her hard exterior surrounds a marshmallow middle? That’s the central allegation of this unauthorized exposé by Rhee’s younger daughter. “My mother’s no ‘Tiger Mom,’” writes Tee Hee Rhee. “She’s a total pussycat.” And that’s certainly the impression created by the book’s anecdotes. It reports, for instance, that Rhee has enrolled both girls in a Waldorf school, “where we learned to whittle before we learned to read.” And that Rhee refused to allow them to play soccer—“not because we suck—we don’t!,” according to Tee Hee, but because “Mommy was worried about the ‘corrupting effects of competition.’” “Maybe she was tougher when we were babies,” speculates the adolescent author, “but after enough trips to Aspen anyone will go soft.” Both Michelle Rhee and the StudentsFirst press secretary declined to comment on the book, but insiders report that, on hearing of its publication, Rhee senior gave wee Rhee “a big hug,” reminded her that she “loves her no matter what,” and offered to add a second weekly therapy session to her daughter’s regimen.

SOURCE: Tee Hee Rhee, Free Radical (Sacre-pimento, CA: DaughtersFirst Publications, 2013).

The following is a real-life excerpt from a standardized assessment that Ohio plans to put to K–2 kids—and the only piece of this Gladfly that is 100 percent true.

TRUE or FALSE:

1.   When you hop, it means that you start on one foot and land on the same foot.
2.   When you run fast, your hands should come across the center of your body.
3.   When you slide, you keep the same lead foot as you move sideways.
4.   When you skip, you step and hop on one foot and then with the other foot.
5.   When you jump, you should bend your knees as if you are sitting in a chair.
6.   When dribbling a basketball, you should always be looking at the ball.
7.   When rolling a ball, you should release the ball at the bottom of your forward swing.
8.   You should use your toes to kick a soccer ball if you want to kick it hard.
9.   For a good overhand throw, you should bend the elbow in the shape of an “L” behind the head before throwing.
10.   When you roll or toss a ball underhand, you step forward with the same foot as your tossing arm.
11.   When throwing to a target, you should follow through toward the target after letting go of the ball.
12.   When catching a ball at head height, point your fingers upwards.

No joke.