By @BGinKC

File this in that bulging folder labeled “This Session Can’t Be Over Soon Enough.”

One thing the Missouri General Assembly did right — no thanks to Casey Guernsey, who voted the way the speaker told him to, the schoolchildren of his district be damned, Speaker Tim Jones (and more importantly, the Speaker’s benefactor Rex Sinquefield) wanted him to vote “aye” on the legislation, so he did what any good mindless, brainless, clueless drone would do — he voted “aye.” Because he’s a whore for Rex and ALEC and the Koch brothers. Fortunately for the schoolkids, most of the Democrats and 42 Republicans voted “no.”

 In a stinging rebuke to Speaker Tim Jones, the heavily Republican House has rejected for the second time his drive to tie educators’ job evaluations to students’ academic progress.

The latest defeat came shortly before midnight Wednesday, when legislators refused to accept a scaled-down bill that would have applied the mandatory evaluation system to public school administrators only – not teachers.

Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, said the new plan aimed to create “a system of continual improvement in our schools for the people in charge … the people, as Harry Truman would say, who sit at desks where the buck stops.”

Though Jones, R-Eureka, held the voting board open for nearly a half-hour and his lieutenants roamed the chamber wrangling votes, the proposal fizzled on a vote of 76-82.

Forty-two of the 110 House Republicans voted against the bill. Opponents were not given a chance to speak but said afterward that the plan was poorly drafted and would have done little to improve education.

“If we have problems, we remove the School Board,” said Rep. Chris Molendorp, R-Belton. “I don’t need a top-down, bureaucratic, big-government approach to local education.”

Some Republicans also resented Jones’ tactics; he recently removed two GOP members of a fiscal review committee who opposed the bill.

The bill was a priority of a national reform group, StudentsFirst, founded by former Washington, D.C., schools leader Michelle Rhee. The group contends that a statewide system would improve the transparency and consistency of educator evaluations.

Originally, the bill would have affected teachers’ tenure, as well as the evaluation system. That broader proposal was defeated 102-55 last month.

Personally, I found this sentence absolutely delicious, and reread it a dozen times, each time my smile getting broader. “The bill was a priority of a national reform group, StudentsFirst, founded by former Washington, D.C., schools leader Michelle Rhee. “

My husband and daughter are teachers. I consider Michelle Rhee to be not just a grifter, although she is that too, but she is more dangerous than any grifter. She is a terrorist who targets the education system and wants to blow it up. The bitch ought to be in jail for fraud, not a top-dollar consultant/lobbyist, after she faked the improvements in student performance in D.C. She only has credibility among people who want to destroy public education. Like Rex Sinquefield. Learn that name, outstaters. He is who your republican senator and representative that YOU sent to Jeff answers to, not you. Unless you’re a billionaire, too.