Rhee takes credit for improved NAEP scores, bashes teachers

In a news conference at the National Press Club on the release of the district-level NAEP math results, Michelle Rhee took the opportunity to crow about the wonderful results for DC (big improvement in 4th grade, some improvement in 8th).  Rhee's bit comes around the 46th minute.  (It will be worth several vomit-inducing moments if you watch long enough to see Michelle choke on a question from a WaPo reporter around minute 50.)

It's a bizarre performance.  She leads with some advice she received from Warren Buffet: that the way to improve urban public education would be to eliminate private schools and assign all kids to public schools by lottery.  There's something to that, of course, although it would mostly start a stampede of well-heeled white families out of cities -- the few that are left -- and into priveleged suburban enclaves, but Rhee somehow twists into a story, not of race and class segregation, but of adults failing to cooperate.

She seques from that non-sequitur into a riff about the need for using test scores to hold teachers accountable:

[When I came to DC, it] was showing only 8 percent of students performing at grade level in mathematics, if you were to look at the performance evaluations for the adults, you would have seen that the overwhelming majority of them were rated as doing an excellent job, exceeding expectations.

How can you have that kind of disconnect — when only 8 percent of students are at grade level and the adults are running around thinking they are doing an excellent job?

Well, here's how: on the NAEP, considered the gold standard of educational assessment, DC NAEP scores have been consistently improving since 2003.  Michelle, it seems like DC teachers have been doing a great job, yet you never seem to tire of spouting off about how they suck.  How can you have that kind of disconnect?