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By Kyle B. Hansen (contact) 
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.
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The fight over funding and reforming Nevada’s public schools came into living rooms across the state last week as a nonprofit group launched a TV ad campaign.
The ads show teachers sitting in classrooms warning the best teachers could lose their jobs under a state law that requires teacher layoffs to be based on seniority instead of performance.
“We’ve got to change the system,” the ad says. “It’s time to put students first.”
The ads are the product of a group called StudentsFirst, led by the former leader of the Washington, D.C., school system, Michelle Rhee.
The focus of the campaign is Nevada’s version of the “last in, first out,” method of teacher layoffs, said Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for StudentsFirst.
“We stand to lose so many of Nevada’s best teachers because we’re not looking at performance, we’re looking at how long they’ve been in the school system,” she said. “It’s a bad policy for students.”
Gov. Brian Sandoval has been working with Rhee on his education plans. She attended the State of the State address in January and was in Carson City for meetings with state leaders last week.
The ad campaign is the first for StudentsFirst, a nonprofit organization that was formed in December. The organization is working in 12 states, and has about 275,000 people who have joined online. There are about 3,000 members in Nevada.
Ads began airing May 4 on TV stations in Las Vegas and Reno and on cable channels in the state. The organization hopes to eventually expand to print and radio ads.
Who exactly is funding this failure, Michelle Rhee, and her failed policies? Quick research shows that she pulled this same "in bed with the governor" stunt in Washington, D.C., and the second she was gone they had to pay out hundreds of millions in lawsuits and are still fighting lawsuits over broken contracts. The worst part is she, spitefully, fired over 700 teachers and every single one had to be hired back to prevent even more lawsuits. How exactly does any of this ideological garbage help Nevada's children once this overly simplified fantasy hits reality?
Good point, sebring. Rhee's actions have even prompted an investigation by federal authorities to see if federal funds were used improperly. These kinds of facts should be addressed in the article.
Public education is such a mess it can't be fixed. Allow this bloated corpse to die and just start over. Teach the three R's and be done with it. It is fundamental, basic education. If teachers can't do that just have real people in real jobs come in and do it. They have lived their knowledge, not plunked their fat butts in a classroom and studied the easiest stuff in the easiest curriculum in "college".
Rejecto, the offer still stands come to my classroom, do what I do for a week, and then tell me public education is broken. As far as easy curriculum, not sure if that applies for me. Does West Point count as an easy college?
I wonder if "the Nevada Teacher"of three years would like to lose her job to a Nevada Teacher of one year, who gives everybody A's therefore is a better teacher than she?