Michelle Rhee, tool of corporate edu-privatizers, is using Care2 to astroturf her anti-teacher, anti-union, Students First Foundation with a petition entitled "Save Great Teachers". (The foundation title itself is propaganda. For someone who is all about accountability, she should change the name to Profitsfirst.org, it would be more accurate.) Studentsfirst.org is well financed by the Billionaires Boys Club, Diane Ravitch's apt descriptor of the wealthy edu-privatizers who are crawling all over DoE, congress and state legislatures to lobby for laws to break teachers unions and teachers employment safeguards.
According to Ken Libby at http://www.schoolsmatter.info/... Rhee intends to raise $1billion through her Students First Foundation. Her sugar daddies are putting serious money behind initiatives to sell public schools to Wall Street.
Rhee said grants from foundations -- including several that sponsored the teacher merit pay plan Rhee introduced in the District -- will fund Students First, alongside membership dues and individual donations. Her goal is 1 million members and $1 billion.
The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Robertson Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation are the four foundations that sponsored Rhee's teacher merit pay plan.
More below the fold.
Care2 Petition Site is a free, worldwide, community organizing website for groups to raise awareness about many issues important to progressives. Individuals and groups who don't have corporate sugar daddies can send action alerts to large numbers of people using e-mail petitions, site blogs, e-cards, and social networking tools. Some of the causes Care2 features are in education, animal welfare, corporate accountability, health, human rights, politics, etc. Care2's petition process is simple and far reaching. From their website:
It's quick, easy, & free to start a petition
Every petition created on Care2 is automatically available on Facebook
An online petition is your direct line to your Congressperson, Senator, heads of Corporate America, & even the President.
The Care2 community is passionate and has created 70,041 petitions resulting in 46,538,085 signatures.
One Care2 member got 450,000 signatures on her petition. That's huge!
Michelle Rhee's studentsfirst.org created a false flag petition to end "last in first out" public school hiring policies. Her implicit message is: old = ineffective teacher vs young= exceptional teacher. Essentially, her premise and the petition perpetrates a lie by suggesting that young teachers all over the country are being fired to keep older teachers hired. By signing this petition, we will help END this disaster. Save our children from those old teachers!
Essentially, last in- first out is the standard seniority rule endorsed by every union. The purpose of the seniority rule is to prevent corporations from firing older, higher paid employees (e.g., workers too EXPENSIVE for corporate profit margins). Rhee is using Care2 to mask her anti-public school union busting organization as a grass roots movement. Rhee sent out his petition through the Care2 action alert with an e-mail titled: "Save Great Teachers". Nowhere on this e-mail is there a reference to studentsfirst.org or Michelle Rhee.
http://news.webshots.com/...
I found Rhee's petition on the Care2 site after much digging and it's there, that studentsfirst.org is referenced. Still, how is one to know that Rhee is involved and that 'studentsfirst' is an oxymoron?
http://news.webshots.com/...
The only way edu-privatizers can make money on education is by cutting the cost of "human capital". Eliminate experienced, higher paid teachers, end contracts and churn short-term, inexperienced, untrained, Teach for America clones in and out of schools. Rhee's corporate deformers impose this model under the guise of "saving" children from poor teachers. Their standard marketing tactic casts teacher's unions as anti-reform for protecting teacher seniority.
Everyone in the education profession knows that poor, inner city schools NEED experienced teachers, not 5 week trained TfA neophytes, who quit after 6 mos to 2 years and leave a wake of chaos in inner city classrooms. Nor do they need the constant instability and uncertainty of having teachers who can be fired on a whim.
NO OTHER profession has had experience devalued like the teaching profession (e.g., do you want a heart surgeon who has 20 years of experience or who has 1 year of experience cutting your chest open?). White, upper class communities will never accept staffing their children's schools with inexperienced teachers, nor do these corporate reformer's own children go to schools with inexperienced teachers or TfA clones.
Does Care2 screen these petitions or is Care2 a petition factory for corporate or government propaganda? If Care2 does not screen their petitioners, how will an average person know if the petition they sign truly represents their interests and is not a propaganda tool?
As a progressive community we want Care2 to be available to grassroots organizations and persons who do not have access to deep pocketed financial backers, not corporate backed, astro-turfing scams like Michelle Rhee's petition.
Tell Care2 1) explain the purpose and financial backers of studentsfirst.org to the Care2 community, and 2) refuse petitioners unless all backers of the stated cause are made completely transparent to the community.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/