And then there is the tour for her new book “Radical.”  Rhee’s is currently touring to support her new book, and using her non-profit organization to promote it.  Not sure how that squares with the tax code, especially if the money goes to benefit Rhee Enterprises LLC, Michelle’s personal enrichment vehicle.

Take a look at her schedule and decide for yourself how Rhee feels about publicity:

“Rhee purported to be the face of a bipartisan movement to “transform education,” while simultaneously battling Democratic teachers unions and appearing chummy in photo ops with conservative Republican governors like Rick Scott (Fla.) or John Kasich (Ohio).

All the while, a small cadre of influential Democrats stood behind her, helping her craft messages on things like her positions on unions (that they are entitled to collective bargaining on salary issues), and trying to fend off attacks from the progressive community (one in particular thwacked her explicitly for her right-wing contacts). But in the last few months, these Democrats — including the group’s vice president of communications, Hari Sevugan, as first reported by education blogger Alexander Russo — have left the group, ceding control to a group of new hires, including president Kahlil Byrd.

Dmitri Mehlhorn, the group’s former COO, has left to lead Bloomberg Law. Mike Phillips, who served as Rhee’s chief of staff for communications, took a leave of absence this fall to work on Sen. Chris Murphy’s (D-Conn.) campaign, but ultimately never rejoined. Tali Stein, a former Hillary Clinton fundraiser who led StudentsFirst’s development, left two months ago to focus on other projects. Ximena Hartsock, a Democratic lobbyist, also left.

“There were known to be some significant differences on political strategy and policy matters, especially in StudentsFirst’s approach toward unions and partisanship,” said ao be named in order to preserve working relationships.”

Not everyone in Ohio is buying it, though. Teacher of the Year Maureen Reedy, in a post on Plunderbund, shreds the school privatization pitch, making her case using research findings and facts like these:

• “77% of our public schools are receiving A, B and C ratings while 77% of Ohio’s charter schools are receiving D and F ratings.”
• “Ohio’s top two charter school CEOs, David Brennan of White Hat Charters and William Lager of ECOT charters are earning multi-million dollar salaries while graduating only 30 – 40 % of their students, an ‘F’ average and paying their teachers about $34,000 a year.”
• “One of the top four recommendations from the IES is reducing class size in grades K – 3 where the average student in small classes scores about 60% higher on reading and math achievement tests.”

Reedy’s analysis gets even sharper when the StudentsFirst staffer, attempting to explain why merit pay is needed, says “teaching is not a profession.”* Reedy writes, “We teach our students to research the facts, let’s examine the research regarding merit pay reward systems for the teaching profession. Extensive studies have been done in New York City, Chicago and Nashville. There has been no proven link over time to support an increase in student achievement linked to a merit pay system for teachers.”

Read the entire post here.

* Is this StudentsFirst’s official position on teaching? If so, it explains a lot.

“Jaffe definitely worked on Radical to some extent. Examiner editor Stephen G. Smith, whose paper runs Jaffe’s column, says Jaffe told editors that he was working on the book. At the end of her memoir, Rhee thanks him for his help, writing, “Harry Jaffe’s writing guidance was essential.”

A more revealing disclosure comes at the end of a story Jaffe wrote for Washingtonian about DCPS in October. The disclosure reads: ‘Harry Jaffe is collaborating on a memoir with former DCPS chancellor Michelle Rhee.’”

This is interesting, because StudentsFirst staff told edu-blogger Alexander Russo that Rhee wrote the book herself.

What’s been the StudentsFirst reaction to the conflict between these two versions of reality?  So far, it seems like they are taking a page from the DC cheating scandal playbook, when Rhee dodged interviews with anyone who dared to ask her anything but softball questions.

A recent presentation by Klein shows how seamlessly you can go from StudentsFirst talking points (pages 7 through 9) to explaining how much of the $673 billion dollar education “market” you plan on siphoning off (page 57).

As it turns out, the “education empire” lawsuit was filed by StudentsFirst lobbyist Rich Thompson.  When Thompson isn’t filing nonsense lawsuits, or regaling Tea Party ralliers with tales about how women lack business acumen, he’s out doing Michelle Rhee’s bidding.  He lobbied for StudentsFirst in the Georgia legislature, and even turned up in Missouri to speak in favor of a StudentsFirst-backed bill (on the same day as several other StudentsFirst employees).  Thompson was also featured in a video supporting the Georgia initiative, released by Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, which partnered with StudentsFirst to push for the statewide charter authorizer law.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is among the more-recognizable faces of this movement, having purchased education technology firm Wireless Generation for $360 million in November 2010.

“When it comes to K-12 education,” Murdoch said at the time, “we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.”

Murdoch’s ranks were recently bolstered by former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, who was tapped to lead Amplify, the new edu-products division of News Corp.

Klein also serves on the board of the New York branch of Students First, the Orwellian-named national lobbying PAC founded by former Washington, D.C., school chancellor Michelle Rhee. Given that Rhee has vowed to raise $1 billion in private donations for Students First, one might wonder whether Murdoch is backing her organization – but the group isn’t required to disclose its donors to the Federal Election Commission, and Rhee won’t confirm or deny any of her sponsors.“

Proposal 2 is supported by a coalition of unions and Democrats that collected more than $8 million, according to a July campaign finance report. And updated report is due this week.

Supporters have said the proposal will give teachers more of a say in their working conditions and preserve local control of education.

‘When teachers have a voice on the job, it improves the quality of education,’ said Sara Wallenfang, a spokeswoman for Protect Working Families.

‘But corporate special interests are actively trying to turn our schools into profit centers. StudentsFirst.org is paying several hundred thousand dollars to silence teachers because they expect a return on that investment, which will come at the expense of our kids.’”

“It sounded at first like a familiar story: school administrators, seeking to meet state and federal standards, fraudulently raised students’ scores on crucial exams.

“But in the cheating scandal that has shaken the 64,000-student school district in this border city, administrators manipulated more than numbers. They are accused of keeping low-performing students out of classrooms altogether by improperly holding some back, accelerating others and preventing many from showing up for the tests or enrolling in school at all.“

But banning likely low performers from test-taking is nothing new to those who follow Michelle Rhee’s tenure in DC. Bill Turque of the Washington Post reported that Rhee took several steps to prevent groups of low-performing students from bringing down test scores. Turque wrote:

“Less-visible strategies pursued by Rhee and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty] involved cleansing and reorganizing the school system’s databases. In past years, officials said, high schools did not have a clear idea of which students were eligible to be tested, which resulted in some who were not 10th-graders (the only high school testing year for the District’s standardized tests) sitting for the exams. Starting in the 2007-08 school year, Rhee’s staff reviewed transcripts and calculated which students should be tested on the basis of credits earned.

“Other score-leavening methods included redefining a failing test. During the first two years that the District used the Comprehensive Assessment System exams (before that, it used the Stanford-9), any student who did not take the test counted as having failed. Starting in 2008, students who did not take the test did not count as either a pass or a fail.”

Scores went up when Rhee made sure low-performing, technically ineligible students were no longer allowed to take the test. And they went up after Rhee “redefin[ed] a failing test.”

The situations in El Paso and DC are different. There’s been on real investigation in DC and no finding of illegality. However, as Michael Kinsley has said, “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal, the scandal is what’s legal.” Then, when test scores in later years were slow to rise, Rhee conveniently forgot that she had blocked low performers from taking the test and instead pretending that she had raised scores by firing. This omission has allowed Rhee to claim credit for test scores that rose before her favored policies were enacted.

* In a 2009 piece, parent activist Caroline Grannan used “juking the stats,” a phrase borrowed from “The Wire, to Rhee’s early actions as DC schools chancellor.