Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
CPS Parent Matt Farmer Puts Penny Pritzker on Trial at CTU’s Stands Strong Rally
Rahm Emanuel promised to “shake up the Windy City’s schools” when he campaigned for mayor of Chicago in 2011. One of his main goals was to change the teacher evaluation process. He is a big proponent of using students’ standardized test scores in determining the effectiveness of classroom practitioners.
On September 12th, Mike Klonsky wrote the following on his blog SmallTalk:
It appears this morning that our autocrat mayor has decided to stonewall the negotiations. While he’s moved on compensation issues, he’s refusing to even discuss teacher evaluation and the power of principals to hire and fire teachers at will.
Rahm is operating here without the benefit of knowing much about education. He’s that just-right combination of street-thug ward politician and Wall St. hustler who thinks that because he believes something to be true, he has the right (power) to force it on the public. First case in point was his notion that more seat time in school necessarily produces better results. It doesn’t. Now he’s convinced that you can evaluate a teacher based wholly or largely on their student’s score on a standardized test. You can’t.
Yesterday Rahm hauled a few of his pet principals, (including Ethan Netterstrom, principal at Skinner North) in front of the TV cameras, to claim that in order to be “successful” they need the unchecked power to hire and fire whoever they choose, regardless of qualifications and experience and without any due process. This is a recipe for City Hall-style patronage and going back to the days when teachers (and principals) worked at the pleasure of ward politicians. It is also a recipe for principals getting rid of teachers who may be the wrong color or political persuasion. It’s interesting to note here that principals already have lots of authority over faculty hiring and that black and Latino teachers have been the victims of these kinds of hiring practices. Today, just 19 % of the teaching force in Chicago is African American, down from 45 % in 1995.
This is what happens when you make the school system a wing of City Hall, weaken collective bargaining, take power away from popularly-elected school boards and Local School Councils, and dismantle public space and public decision making.
This strike really represents a last stand for teachers and all public employees against moves by Tea Party governors and their Democratic Party counterparts in urban districts like Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit, to eliminate teachers collective bargaining rights altogether. This was the original idea behind SB7 which made it illegal for teachers in Chicago (nowhere else in the state) to bargain over anything except salary and benefits — two issues that could easily be reneged on after the contract was signed for budgetary reasons. Remember, the board agreed to a 4% raise in the last contract only to take it back once the contract was signed.
All this leaves Chicago’s teachers with only one option. Dig in and fight back with the only tactic left to them under SB7 — the power to withhold their labor and put their bodies on the line in defense of their profession and of democracy. What happens here in Chicago will ultimately determine the fate of teachers and public worker unions everywhere.
Emanuel’s children do not attend public schools. They are enrolled at an elite private school—the University of Chicago Lab School, where the tuition is said to be more than $20,000 a year. According to Mike Elk, the conditions at the school Emanuel’s children attend are far different from those one finds in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
Elk provided information about the U of C Lab School:
The Lab School has seven full-time art teachers to serve a student population of 1,700. By contrast, only 25% of Chicago’s “neighborhood elementary schools” have both a full-time art and music instructor. The Lab School has three different libraries, while 160 Chicago public elementary schools do not have a library.
“Physical education, world languages, libraries and the arts are not frills. They are an essential piece of a well-rounded education,” wrote University of Chicago Lab School Director David Magill on the school’s website in February 2009.
Magill also wrote the following in his Director’s Address to Returning Faculty in 2010:
I believe that the “business model” of improving education will fall on its own sword.
It is unfortunate that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation developed primarily by politicians and enacted in 2002 morphed into what many refer to as a “business model” of improving education. Measuring outcomes through standardized testing and referring to those results as the evidence of learning and the bottom line is, in my opinion, misguided and, unfortunately, continues to be advocated under a new name and supported by the current administration.
In the past decade, there have been many critics of the educational policies promoted by the so-called corporate reformers. Only recently have some voices been taken seriously—in particular, the voice of educational historian Diane Ravitch. Her recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, provides a compelling argument to examine the data that tells us that reforms of the past ten years are not working and are actually degrading the intellectual potential of students. And this comes from one of the early architects of many of those reforms. This is a book worth reading, authored by a person who admits she was wrong yet is forceful when advocating for change. Listen to this from Ms. Ravitch:
“We must honor those teachers who awaken in their students a passionate interest in history, science, the arts, literature, and foreign language. Such teachers (if acting today under NCLB) would be stifled not only by the data mania of their supervisors, but by the jargon, the indifference to classical literature, and the hostility to their manner of teaching that now prevails in our schools.
“Without a comprehensive liberal arts education, our students will not be prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy, nor will they be equipped to make decisions based on knowledge, thoughtful debate, and reason. . . . Not everything that matters can be quantified. What is tested may ultimately be less important than what is untested, such as a student’s ability to seek alternative explanations, to raise questions, to pursue knowledge on his own, and to think differently.”
And to that, I say AMEN and thank you, Ms. Ravitch, for seeing the light and for cracking the armor of the “business model.” Because of her and others like her, I believe this disturbing chapter in American education history is coming to a close.
I must admit that I am not as hopeful as Mr. Magill is that this chapter in American education history is coming to an end. What I hope is that the teachers’ strike in Chicago will awaken many Americans to what has been happening to our public schools over the past decade in the name of school reform…to how high stakes testing of students has perverted the educational process in this country…to the narrowing of the curriculum because everything is focused on prepping children for tests and not on helping them to become critical thinkers and doing what is best for each individual child…to the elimination of art and music teachers and school librarians.
Matt Farmer, the speaker in the first video that I posted, is a lawyer, musician, local school council member, and a CPS parent. He stands with and supports the striking teachers. He wrote the following in an article for the Huffington Post titled Teachers Don’t Like Bullies last May:
Teachers and their union representatives are simply gearing up — outside of the classroom, mind you — to fight for their professional lives this summer, and I’m glad they’re finally getting engaged.
I say that both as a longtime CPS parent and as a local school council member. I talk to a lot of teachers around the city, and from Rogers Park to Gage Park they’re angry.
They’re tired of being made scapegoats for the devastating effects of the generational urban poverty that Emanuel and his aides would rather not talk about. They’re tired of having their students used as over-tested lab rats by an ever-changing cast of out-of-touch, out-of-town “reformers” who specialize in “public education by press release.” But what really angers the teachers I’ve talked to is the absolute lack of respect that this mayor and his hand-picked team have shown them during the last year.
In fact, I’d fear for my fourth-grade daughter’s next eight years in the CPS system if her teachers were not mentally and emotionally invested in the ongoing contract negotiation process.
Make no mistake — I want my kid in class next September. But if her teachers ultimately vote to go on strike, my daughter will know why.
She may not have a deep understanding of tenure issues, pension contributions, or “step and lane” increases, but (like most kids I know) she has a solid grasp on the basic concept of “fairness.”
Even a 10-year-old can understand that if 75 percent of the CTU’s membership ultimately concludes that our charter-school-loving mayor is trying to give them (as Emanuel might say) “the shaft,” then those teachers need to stand up and fight, not only for their individual jobs and their profession, but also for the well-being of the kids in the classrooms in which they now teach.
The deck is undeniably stacked against the teachers in their current negotiations with the Board of Education, and a strike vote is the only leverage teachers have to secure a fair contract.
You want to call mock strike votes a scare tactic, be my guest. But don’t forget to call out Emanuel and his high-priced media machine the next time the mayor starts talking about putting 55 kids in a classroom, or complaining that CPS teachers enriched themselves for years while “cheating our children,” whom, he claims, teachers effectively “left on the side of the road.”
It’s easy, I suppose, to make a habit of dumping on CPS teachers if the only parent-teacher conferences you ever have to attend take place at a private school.
Chicago Public Teachers Stage Historic Strike in Clash with the Mayor on Education Reforms
Striking Teachers, Parents Join Forces to Oppose “Corporate” Education Model in Chicago
Chicago Teachers Strike Could Portend Referendum on Obama Admin’s Education Reform Approach
CTU President Karen GJ Lewis Speech May 23 Rally
Addendum: The Worst Teacher in Chicago (This is a true story.)
CHICAGO. In a poorer city school, one English teacher–I won’t use her name–who’d been cemented into the school system for over a decade, wouldn’t do a damn thing to lift test scores, yet had an annual salary level of close to $70,000 a year. Under Chicago’s new rules holding teachers accountable and allowing charter schools to compete, this seniority-bloated teacher was finally fired by the principal.
In a nearby neighborhood, a charter school, part of the city system, had complete freedom to hire. No teachers’ union interference. The charter school was able to bring in an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field – for $29,000 a year less than was paid to the fired teacher.
You’ve guessed by now: It’s the same teacher.
It’s Back to School Time! Time for the editorialists and the Tea Party and Barack Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan to rip into the people who dare teach in public schools.
And in Arne’s old stomping grounds, Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is stomping on the teachers, pushing them into the street.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves. This is what Mitt Romney and Obama and Arne Duncan and Paul Ryan have in mind when they promote charter schools and the right to fire teachers with tenure: slash teachers’ salaries, bust their unions.
NOTE: Chicago Teachers Strike May Near End As Union Releases Deal (Huffington Post)
SOURCES
Autocrat Rahm draws a line in the sand on test-based evaluation (SmallTalk)
Director’s Address to Returning Faculty 2010 (University of Chicago Lab School)
Director of Private School Where Rahm Sends His Kids Opposes Using Testing for Teacher Evaluations (In These Times)
Teachers Don’t Like Bullies (Huffington Post)
The Worst Teacher in Chicago (Chicago Tribune)
It is true that teachers in Chicago have dug in their heels against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s demands for “reform,” some of which are not unreasonable. I’d dig in, too, if I were constantly being lectured by self-righteous crusaders whose knowledge of the inner-city schools crisis comes from a Hollywood movie.
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Rahm Emanuel likes to jump on top of the desk. When I was in boot camp there was an E4 Petty Officer instructor who thought he could do that. Do you know what happened with his underwear?
Elaine,
How can I argue with your research? And I agree that most failing schools are located in the disavantaged neighborhoods – neighborhoods where kids struggle just growing up and CPS resources are directed to the more affluent neighborhoods. I agree that Rahm is a misereable bully and I certainly don’t want privatization of public education.
But can we just talk about a few numbers? The salary range for teachers is $50K for starters, $71K is the average, and $90K for the highest paid. I don’t begrudge them those salaries. Am I out of touch in thinking that those salaries are reasonable? And I do have a problem when I learn that 89% of 8th graders are not at grade level in reading and 90% are not at grade level in math. And I do have a problem when I learn that Chicago teachers have the shortest school day, and I think it includes the shortest school year, of all the largest urban systems but are the highest paid. I would be willing to have my property taxes increase in order to give them a 16% raise over four years if those raises are linked to similar increases in reading and math scores. Nobody gets fired. But nobody get raises unless city scores improve. I thought maybe this could be imposed at the individual school level, but that would not be fair to the teachers who work in more disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Do you think this could be the beginning of a workable framework?
Rahm Emanuel Should Send His Kids To Chicago Public Schools
By Matthew Yglesias
Sept. 14, 2012
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/14/chicago_teachers_strike_mayor_rahm_emanuel_doesn_t_send_his_kids_to_chicago_public_schools_but_he_should_.html
Excerpt:
The Chicago teachers strike has led to the fanciful notion that big city school systems’ problems could all be solved if we just banned private schools, thus forcing folks like Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama to send their kids to them. That’s probably wrong (some families would move to the suburbs, leaving urban schools with less tax money even as suddenly they have to serve more kids) but politically it does seem to me to send a bad message when politicians refuse to participate in public services. What’s more, it sends a misleading message about where the problems are in the education system.
The fact is that as best we can tell Chicago Public Schools are doing a bang-up job of serving kids like the Emanuels.
You have to delve a bit into the mysteries of the NAEP Data Explorer but that can get you demographic breakdowns and comparisons. We see that on the 8th Grade Math test, white kids from non-poor English-speaking households get 308 in Chicago Public Schools and just 299 nationwide. On the 8th Grade Reading test, white kids from non-poor English-speaking households get 287 in Chicago Public Schools and just 277 nationwide.
Who Is Victimizing Chicago’s Kids?
Joanne Barkan
September 14, 2012 11:38 pm
http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=835
Excerpt:
Yes, schoolchildren in Chicago are victims, but not of their teachers. They are victims of a nationwide education “reform” movement geared to undermine teachers’ unions and shift public resources into private hands; they are victims of wave after wave of ill-conceived and failing policy “innovations”; they are victims of George Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which turned inner-city public schools into boot camps for standardized test prep; they are victims of Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program, which paid states to use student test scores—a highly unreliable tool—for teacher evaluations and to lift caps on the number of privately managed charter schools, thus draining resources from public schools. Chicago’s children are victims of “mayoral control,” which allows Rahm Emanuel to run the school system, bully parents and teachers, and appoint a Board of Education dominated by corporate executives and political donors.
The city’s current reform wave began in 2004 with Mayor Richard Daley’s Renaissance 2010—a massive program, funded in part by $90 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to transform the city’s schools by 2010. The strategy included firing and replacing entire staffs in low-income neighborhood schools, shutting down dozens of schools, and setting up charter schools. When reckoning day came, here is what the Chicago Tribune reported on January 17, 2010:
Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city’s school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.
…The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010—that displaced students ended up mostly in other low performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn’t lived up to its promise by this, its target year.
Given the failed reforms, the rational next step would have been to change course. Instead, Rahm Emanuel, shortly before confirming his candidacy for mayor, declared support for doubling down on Daley’s education strategy. On October 18, 2010, the Tribune summarized an interview with him:
In making his case, Emanuel said he would like to see a local, privately funded version of the federal education competition called Race to the Top, the signature Obama administration plan that rewarded states vowing to reform public schools.
“We’ve raised a ton of money for the Olympics,” Emanuel said. “Let’s raise a ton of money for school reform right here on our own Chicago version of Race to the Top. Let’s not wait for the feds.”
…Emanuel also criticized teachers unions, a significant political force in the city, for their opposition to the federal Race to the Top program, closing underperforming schools and charter school expansion.
Yes, schoolchildren in Chicago are victims, but not of their teachers. They are victims of a nationwide education “reform” movement geared to undermine teachers’ unions and shift public resources into private hands; they are victims of wave after wave of ill-conceived and failing policy “innovations”; they are victims of George Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which turned inner-city public schools into boot camps for standardized test prep; they are victims of Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program, which paid states to use student test scores—a highly unreliable tool—for teacher evaluations and to lift caps on the number of privately managed charter schools, thus draining resources from public schools. Chicago’s children are victims of “mayoral control,” which allows Rahm Emanuel to run the school system, bully parents and teachers, and appoint a Board of Education dominated by corporate executives and political donors.
Narrowing the Curriculum
Although gutting bilingual education, curtailing culturally relevant and critical pedagogies, and teaching to the test were byproducts of Chicago’s high-stakes accountability policies before Duncan, since he took over, accountability has increased. Before Duncan, schools could be put on probation and have external partners forced upon them, but now schools are phased out, closed, or “turned around” by private contractors (some funded by the Gates Foundation). In the turn-around model, everyone is removed from their position, from principal to custodial workers. Accountability measures drastically increase pressure to do well on standardized tests. “Extracurriculars” rapidly disappear, like art, physical education, and recess, as reported in an Aug. 25, 2008, Chicago Sun Times article.
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/29-10
Bron,
Read the “Dumping Democracy” section of the Arne Duncan article that I just posted an excerpt from.
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/29-10
Published on Friday, May 29, 2009 by Rethinking Schools Online
Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?
by Jitu Brown/Eric Gutstein/Pauline Lipman
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/29-10
Excerpt:
When ex-President Bush was elected in 2000, he brought with him former Houston Superintendent of Education Rod Paige to be Secretary of Education. He also brought the “Texas miracle”-supposedly increased test scores attributed to Texas’ strict accountability system. All eyes smiled on Texas as those measures quickly became part of No Child Left Behind, passed into law in 2001 by both political parties. Before the end of Bush’s first term, Paige would leave in disgrace, thanks to revelations of cooked scores, forced-out students, and other barely legal means of inflating test results.
With the appointment by Barack Obama of Arne Duncan-a noneducator from the business sector who was Chicago’s “chief executive officer”-as U.S. Secretary of Education, this phenomenon may repeat itself. For the past several years, Chicago’s model of school closings and education privatization has received national attention as another beacon of urban education reform. This may have special relevance as the number of schools “identified for improvement” by NCLB criteria grows, numbering 11,547 nationally in the 2007-08 school year. Other school districts across the U.S. have already undertaken programs similar to Chicago’s-New Orleans, in the wake of Katrina, has had a massive privatization of schools (see the special report on New Orleans in Rethinking Schools Vol. 21, No. 1), New York City has proposed closing and phasing out schools using criteria similar to Chicago’s (e.g., test scores), and Philadelphia has followed suit as well, with a number of new charter schools. As Chicago Mayor Daley said in a 2006 press conference, “Together, in 12 years we have taken the Chicago Public School system from the worst in the nation to the national model for urban school reform.” The Chicago Commercial Club’s Renaissance Schools Fund Symposium, “Free to Choose, Free to Succeed: The New Market in Public Education,” in May 2008, was attended by school officials from 15 states. The headline for a Dec. 30 article in the Washington Post claimed, “Chicago School Reform Could Be a U.S. Model.” And outgoing Secretary Margaret Spellings praised Duncan as a national leader for his teacher incentive pay program.
However, Chicago school policy has not really been set by Duncan-Chicago’s education agenda is bigger than him and is about more than schools. Of course, he brought to the job his own strengths and weaknesses, and undoubtedly his own perspectives. We do not argue with those who claim that there have been some constructive steps while Duncan was CEO of Chicago’s schools. We recognize that his administration has responded to some initiatives that have emerged from the community and been organized by grassroots organizations. These include, for example, support for the state-funded Grow Your Own Teachers program, designed to recruit community members to be credentialed in order to teach in local schools and a program to help 8th graders make a smoother transition to high school. However, the larger agenda has been corporate and privatizing.
But Chicago Public Schools (CPS) policies are not really about Duncan or his successor. The biggest threat to finally achieving equitable and quality education in Chicago’s low-income African American and Latino/a schools is not the individual who carries out the policy but a system of mayoral control and corporate power that locks out democracy. The impact of those policies includes thousands of children displaced by school closings, spiked violence as they transferred to other schools, and the deterioration of public education in many neighborhoods into a crisis situation.
So it is important to describe the agenda in which Duncan is complicit. Two powerful, interconnected forces drive education policy in the city: 1) Mayor Daley, who was given official authority over CPS by the Illinois State Legislature in 1995 and who appoints the CEO and the Board of Education, and 2) powerful financial and corporate interests, particularly the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago whose reports and direct intervention shape current policy. As Pauline documented in her book, High Stakes Education, the mayor and Civic Committee are operating from a larger blueprint to make Chicago a “world-class city” of global finance and business services, real estate development, and tourism, and education is part of this plan. Quality schools (and attractive housing) are essential to draw high-paid, creative workers for business and finance. Schools are also anchors in gentrifying communities and signals to investors of the market potential of new development sites. For Chicago’s working-class and low-income communities, particularly those of color, this has meant gentrification and displacement, including of thousands of public housing residents. As in other U.S. cities, Chicago has also handed over public services (public housing, schools, public infrastructure) to the market and privatized them, and public education has been in the forefront. Although not the architect, Duncan has shown himself to be the central messenger, manager, and staunch defender of corporate involvement in, and privatization of, public schools, closing schools in low-income neighborhoods of color with little community input, limiting local democratic control, undermining the teachers union, and promoting competitive merit pay for teachers.
On the Ground in Chicago
CPS is the nation’s third largest public school system, behind New York and Los Angeles. According to the CPS website, the slightly over 400,000 students attend around 655 schools (including 56 charter campuses), and are 46.5 percent African American, 39.1 percent Latino/a, 8.0 percent white, 3.5 percent Asian/Pacific Islander/Native American, and 2.9 percent multiracial. The student body is 85 percent low-income. Chicago’s principals are majority African American (54.1 percent), and 13.2 percent Latino/a, and 31.3 percent white. The almost 25,000 teachers are 35.8 percent African American, 13.2 percent Latino/a, 47.3 percent white, and 3.7 percent Asian/Pacific Islander/Native American. And Chicago is well-known for having one of the most segregated school systems (and housing patterns) in the nation; literally hundreds of schools are 90 percent or more African American or Latino/a (e.g., 216 are 99 percent or more black!).
Let’s separate myth from reality. The myth is that Chicago has created a new, innovative way to improve education-Renaissance 2010. The heroes in this myth are Mayor Daley, who introduced Renaissance 2010 in June 2004 at a Commercial Club event, and Arne Duncan, who oversaw its implementation and was its chief spokesperson. Renaissance 2010 was touted as the future of education in Chicago, with a plan to close 60 schools and open 100 new, state-of-the-art, 21st-century schools. These schools would be either small, charter, or contract schools. Renaissance 2010 was (and is) marketed as an opportunity to bring in new partners with creative approaches to education. That’s the myth.
There is a completely different reality on the ground. For affected communities who have longed for change, Renaissance 2010 has been traumatic, largely ineffective, and destabilizing to communities owed a significant “education debt” (to quote Gloria Ladson-Billings) due to decades of being underserved.
The first phase of Renaissance 2010 was called the Mid-South Plan, announced in 2004. The Mid-South is a historic, primarily African American community on the South Side. It is also important to know that the Mid-South Plan ran parallel to the Chicago Housing Authority Plan for Transformation-the dismantling of public housing, a large concentration of which was in the Mid-South and on the African American West Side.
Collateral Damage
The Mid-South Plan was designed to close 20 of its 22 schools, almost entirely African American, over a four-year period, replacing them with Renaissance 2010 schools. Parents received notice from the Board the final day of school in 2004 that their children’s schools were closing. Children have been treated as cattle, shuffled around from school to school. One Mid-South school, Doolittle East, received over 500 students from June to September 2005 without additional resources to facilitate this change. This resulted in spiked violence. On the west side, the closing of Austin High School (another African American school) resulted in over 100 students who used to walk to school having to leave their community to go to Roberto Clemente High School, a primarily Latino school over five miles away. The results were spiked violence. When Englewood High School closed in 2006, hundreds of students were parceled out to Robeson, Dyett, Hyde Park, and Hirsch High Schools-all are African American. The community warned CPS that these moves would result in increased violence and put children’s lives at risk due to crossing neighborhood and gang boundaries. As usual, Duncan and CPS ignored community wisdom, and the results at all of these schools were destabilizing spikes in student violence.
Arne Duncan has overseen the beginning destruction of neighborhood schools with neighborhood students. Schools are no longer community pillars because many students no longer live in the area. When CPS closes schools and reopens them as Renaissance 2010 charter or contract schools, there is no guarantee or requirement that students who attended the old schools will go to the new ones-and many don’t. For example, not all new schools are the same grade level as the old schools. There are complicated applications and deadlines, limits on enrollment, requirements of families, and informal selection processes that may disadvantage some students.
Families with multiple children who used to attend one school have had to scramble as schools close and their children are split up. Young children who walked to their neighborhood school have had to leave their community and cross heavily trafficked streets. Schools that are “turned around” terminate all adults in the building, including security, custodial, clerical, paraprofessional, and kitchen staff (as if they contributed to students’ poor performance), causing severe dislocation and job loss in the community. Tenured teachers who are released are reassigned for 10 months as negotiated in the union contract. During this time, they receive their salary and benefits, sub some days of the week, and look for a position on other days. At the end of the 10 months if they have not found a position, they can be “honorably terminated.” As one parent of a child in a closing school said, “when you close a school, you kill the heart of the community.”
Elaine:
the interview of Lipman is unclear. It appears that city executives not private sector executives are in charge. What is the connection between the private sector and these schools?
It seems like it is the federal government trying to make a pseudo-private school using government funding. Let’s be clear, that is not capitalism but Fascism.
A Look at Arne Duncan’s VIP List of Requests at Chicago Schools and the Effects of his Expansion of Charter Schools in Chicago
March 26, 2010
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/26/a_look_at_arne_duncans_vip
Excerpt:
JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re also joined by Pauline Lipman, professor of education and policy studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Could you talk about the significance of this list and also the battle of parents in Chicago to get into these elite schools in the city?
PAULINE LIPMAN: Yes, good morning. I’m really glad that Azam has done this story, because it provides some evidence for what we’ve pretty much known on the ground all along. And as you said, I think that what it reveals is a bigger scandal.
The larger scandal is that Chicago has basically a two-tiered education system, with a handful of these selective enrollment magnet schools, or boutique schools, that have been set up under Renaissance 2010 in gentrifying and affluent neighborhoods, and then many disinvested neighborhood schools. So parents across the city are scrambling to try to get their kids into a few of these schools. So instead of creating quality schools in every neighborhood, what CPS has done is created this two-tier system and actually is closing down, as you said, neighborhood schools under Renaissance 2010 and replacing them with charter schools and a privatized education system, firing or laying off, I should say, certified teachers, dismantling locally elected school councils, and creating a market of public education in Chicago, turning schools over to private turnaround operators. And this is, in the bigger, bigger scandal, this is now the national agenda under the Obama administration for education.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And amazingly, Arne Duncan doesn’t have that much of a — he’s not an educator by trade, to speak of. Could you talk a little bit about his background?
PAULINE LIPMAN: Yeah, not only is he not an educator by trade, I mean, he was a functionary in the Daley administration. But because Chicago is under mayoral control of schools, which is another part of Obama’s and Duncan’s national agenda under the federal stimulus Race to the Top funds, because of that, what we have is exactly a school system that is led at the top by virtually no educators. There is only one educator in a high position. The board are all appointed by Daley. They are all bankers or corporate heads. The CEO of schools before Duncan, Paul Vallas, was in Daley’s budget office. The new CEO, Ron Huberman, ran the Chicago Transit Authority. So we have a school system that, as a whole, is led by corporate managers, not by educators.
And in fact, that’s revealed in the fact that there’s basically no research that supports any of the interventions that they’ve made under Renaissance 2010. And there’s a good deal of research that demonstrates that it has been damaging to students and to communities and has not improved their education.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Professor Pauline Lipman. She teaches education and policy studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Arne Duncan said Katrina, you know, the hurricane, may have been the best thing to happen to New Orleans when it comes to education. How do you see what’s going on right now in Chicago playing out on the national scape with Arne Duncan, head of education in Chicago, now become the Education Secretary?
PAULINE LIPMAN: Well, I think that that’s a really good question, because I think probably the best phrase to describe what is happening nationally is what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism.” So we have a situation in which there’s a fiscal crisis in the cities and in the states. We have a situation in which we have a long history disinvested public schools in communities of color. And in that context, there is now a move to privatize public education, just as happened in New Orleans, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and then that was seen as an opportunity to actually move in and privatize public schools.
So the federal stimulus money that’s being offered now to the states is being offered on the condition that they raise charter school caps, that they tie teacher evaluations to students’ test scores, that they close what they call failing schools, that they turn them over to private turnaround operators. So we have a neoliberal project nationally, which was tested out in Chicago and then is now being pushed out nationally.
And one of the ways that this was dramatized so clearly to me was that almost immediately after Arne Duncan was selected to be Secretary of Education, he flew to Detroit, which is one of the most disinvested, economically devastated cities in the country. And it was — their school system has been decimated because of the economic crisis in Detroit. And he offered millions of dollars, but on the condition that they would do the Chicago plan.
Fighting Poverty Is Part of Education Reform
Christopher Hayes
September 17, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/blog/169989/fighting-poverty-part-education-reform
Standing up for teachers
By Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer
9/17/12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-standing-up-for-teachers/2012/09/17/ad3ee650-00fd-11e2-b257-e1c2b3548a4a_story.html
Teachers are heroes, not villains, and it’s time to stop demonizing them.
It has become fashionable to blame all of society’s manifold sins and wickedness on “teachers unions,” as if it were possible to separate these supposedly evil organizations from the dedicated public servants who belong to them. News flash: Collective bargaining is not the problem, and taking that right away from teachers will not fix the schools.
It is true that teachers in Chicago have dug in their heels against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s demands for “reform,” some of which are not unreasonable. I’d dig in, too, if I were constantly being lectured by self-righteous crusaders whose knowledge of the inner-city schools crisis comes from a Hollywood movie.
The problems that afflict public education go far beyond what George W. Bush memorably called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” They go beyond whatever measure of institutional sclerosis may be attributed to tenure, beyond the inevitable cases of burnout, beyond the fact that teachers in some jurisdictions actually earn halfway decent salaries.
The fact is that teachers are being saddled with absurdly high expectations. Some studies have shown a correlation between student performance and teacher “effectiveness,” depending how this elusive quality is measured. But there is a whole body of academic literature proving the stronger correlation between student performance and a much more important variable: family income.
Yes, I’m talking about poverty. Sorry to be so gauche, but when teachers point out the relationship between income and achievement, they’re not shirking responsibility. They’re just stating an inconvenient truth.
According to figures compiled by the College Board, students from families making more than $200,000 score more than 300 points higher on the SAT, on average, than students from families making less than $20,000 a year. There is, in fact, a clear relationship all the way along the scale: Each increment in higher family income translates into points on the test.
Sean Reardon of Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis concluded in a recent study that the achievement gap between high-income and low-income students is actually widening. It is unclear why this might be happening; maybe it is due to increased income inequality, maybe the relationship between income and achievement has somehow become stronger, maybe there is some other reason.
Whatever the cause, our society’s answer seems to be: Beat up the teachers.
The brie-and-chablis “reform” movement would have us believe that most of the teachers in low-income, low-performing schools are incompetent — and, by extension, that most of the teachers in upper-crust schools, where students perform well, are paragons of pedagogical virtue.
But some of the most dedicated and talented teachers I’ve ever met were working in “failing” inner-city schools. And yes, in award-winning schools where, as in Lake Wobegon, “all the children are above average,” I’ve met some unimaginative hacks who should never be allowed near a classroom.
It is reasonable to hold teachers accountable for their performance. But it is not reasonable — or, in the end, productive — to hold them accountable for factors that lie far beyond their control. It is fair to insist that teachers approach their jobs with the assumption that every single child, rich or poor, can succeed. It is not fair to expect teachers to correct all the imbalances and remedy all the pathologies that result from growing inequality in our society.
You didn’t see any of this reality in “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ” the 2010 documentary that argued we should “solve” the education crisis by establishing more charter schools and, of course, stomping the teachers unions. You won’t see it later this month in “Won’t Back Down,” starring Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal, which argues for “parent trigger” laws designed to produce yet more charter schools and yet more teacher-bashing.
I’ve always considered myself an apostate from liberal orthodoxy on the subject of education. I have no fundamental objection to charter schools, as long as they produce results. I believe in the centrality and primacy of public education, but I believe it’s immoral to tell parents, in effect, “Too bad for your kids, but we’ll fix the schools someday.”
But portraying teachers as villains doesn’t help a single child. Ignoring the reasons for the education gap in this country is no way to close it. And there’s a better way to learn about the crisis than going to the movies. Visit a school instead.
all of this crap about how Americans are dummies and our children or stupid is insufferable.
Will someone please tell me what flag is on the moon and what robot is on Mars?
Name just about any high tech gadget or advanced medicine and chances are it was developed here in the US.
Now some of that is the result of smart people from other countries but we have smart people too, educated in public schools.
The problem isnt teachers it is people who think education is a right for everyone. There is no respect for teachers or public education. Throw a few kids out who disrupt the classroom and maybe things will change.
Eeyore,
I did a lot of reading about what has happened to the Chicago Public Schools in the past decade or more. Arne Duncan–no educator–and the Renaissance 2010 he pushed has caused some of the problems that the schools are faced with today. It’s the same type of corporate education reform model he took to Washington. It’s all about charter schools and high stakes testing for kids and using the tests to evaluate teachers.Chicago closed down some neighborhood schools and then spent tons of money establishing new charter schools. They fired entire staffs of teachers. The closings of these schools has been a factor in the increase in crime. They gave more resources to some of the “mostly white” schools and left many of the schools in poorer neighborhoods without libraries, arts programs, social workers, etc. In addition, Rahm has vilified teachers and has treated them with utter disrespect.
The financial meltdown of 2008 certainly drained pensions funds of much of their value.
shano,
There are plenty of excellent authors writing for children and young adults these days. That said, some popular fiction series are not always topnotch literature. Some contemporary realistic fiction authors may use slang and other language to reflect the way young people actually speak these days.
I was an elementary teacher for many years and a school librarian for three years. I also taught a children’s literature course at Boston University for several years. One thing I have seen happening in recent years is that some states no longer require education students to take a children’s literature course in order to get their teaching certificates. I don’t understand why. I felt the children’s literature course that I had in college was the most valuable education course that I took, It gave me an excellent background in the best literature for children.
Elaine
It’s hard to get really good reporting here what with local journalsim not being so important these days. BUT, I’m not yet ready to condemn Rahm for closing schools while opening charter schools. I think there may be some justification for closings because neighborhood populations have changed considerably. Many families have moved to the suburbs as they search for jobs and/or better housing and safety. I’ve read that some school populations are down 50%. A half empty school is a terrible idea and I hate, hate, hate privitization. I haven’t read all the comments yet, but I am really torn about this strike. Has anyone mentioned about the reading and math scores for 8th graders?
I believe in taxes. I live in the city, in an ordinary middle class neighborhood, and I pay $6K in property taxes out of a fixed income. The state income tax doubled last year and the pension problem seems insurmountable. We can’t plug the education budget hole under the old contract. How the hell are we going to manage a 16% increase (with step increases) and a bunch of new fine art teachers?
I don’t think either side is willing to do the math. And they’re hoping we won’t either.
Darren,
You missed my point (and sarcasm) and it leads me to believe that you’re not aware of the Chicago killing rate – a rate that kills a good number of kids. The testing of school children will put a great deal of pressure on teachers. The “testing” of the killing rate in Chicago will put a great deal of pressure on the mayor as will that giant hole in the education budget. Rahm deserves the same accountability as the teachers. And do you know that the teacher’s pension funds are in deep trouble? They are in trouble for all the usual reasons – one being that previous mayors have signed teachers contracts but had no ability (intention?) to meet those financial obligations. I want Rahm to figure it out NOW, not as he is getting ready to move on.
He is a big proponent of using students’ standardized test scores in determining the effectiveness of classroom practitioners.
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Sounds like the federal government’s performance evaluations. They can make you look like a hero or a dunce at their whim.
I went to ChiTown public schools. I received a good education and had great teachers. On this strike I am for the goals that Rahm wants and for the teachers to get paid right. But, we are about teaching, not sports, or odd stuff like social studies of social animals et al. Math, science, history, literature. Make school a year round thing. Give parents the summer off from taking care of the brats. Look how they are all demoralized because September came around and kiddo was not back in school. Compete with China for technology and all things. Not Peoria in Football. Notice I capitalized Football, like it is an ideology. Chicago is a great place and if you are just getting out of college and want to be in the best place in America to launch a career in any sphere, then go there. Cut a deal fat girl with the Rahm and be done with it.
Elaine: interesting posts. One reason I have always loved to read for pleasure was a reading segment in elementary school that had a page or two of great writers (Steinbeck, Jack London, etc), each was color coded for reading difficulty, but all the reading was from magnificent writers. It made me want to read more!
My niece recently showed me a sample of the writing that her son has to read in elementary school. It was total crap, using slang language- Valley Girl language at that. What happened? Are they misguidedly trying to ‘relate’ to students?
Any kid is going to enjoy a great writer and they should be introduced to great writing early on. Now they try to ‘write’ something to fit in any given grade level, leaving out all the artistry that makes reading interesting. It was a shock. I wonder if this came about when all the arts were kicked out of public schools.
Bron,
It’s educational bureaucrats and outsiders with an agenda and a motive to make money off of public schools.
It’s of great import to have parents who value education. Unfortunately, not all children have such parents. We also need to address the problems of children who live in poverty–children who may be homeless, who come to school hungry, who live in unsafe neighborhoods.