Cops in schools revisited and a good compromise on community oversight

“By shifting the conversation towards more holistic approaches to safety, we believe that the new plans will enable schools to use strategies that are more proactive and supportive in keeping our students safe.” --Jadine Chou, CPS’ chief of safety and security.

I'm glad CPS, the City Council, and the mayor opted to allow Local School Councils (LSCs) to have a say over keeping cops in their schools or using meager discretionary funds to pay for alternative security options. 

Yesterday, more than 30 Chicago high schools voted to redirect money spent on uniformed police officers towards alternative behavioral and mental health supports a year after intense student-led protests put a microscope on the role of cops in public schools.

The votes will shift about $2 million from policing to restorative justice programs, with a total of 31 high schools choosing to remove at least one of the two officers typically stationed inside their buildings. 

In this case, those school communities made the right decision. But more importantly, it was their decision.

This should reaffirm our support for LSCs, a democratic reform we fought for and won more than 30 years ago, and my long-held belief that most basic decisions about the conduct and content of schooling should be made locally by teachers, parents, and students. In Chicago, top-down reform imposed on schools by the board, the mayor, state legislators, or the aldermen, has always been a failure. 

Austerity -- It's shameful that this choice, like most others within our public school system, had to be made primarily on the basis of austerity rather than on principle or best practices.

A WIN FOR COMMUNITY OVERSIGHT

Yesterday, another good decision regarding community control of the police was made by city political leaders. Mayor Lightfoot and a City Council majority came together at long last on a police oversight ordinance that establishes a seven-member Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. 

The City Council voted 36-13 to pass the ordinance. The compromise represented a defeat for the FOP and the pro-FOP caucus of aldermen who want less, not more community oversight of CPD. They included no-voters: Brian Hopkins (2nd); Anthony Beale (9th); Patrick Daley Thompson (11th); Marty Quinn (13th); Edward Burke (14th); Matt O’Shea (19th); Silvana Tabares (23rd); Ariel Reboyras (30th); Nick Sposato (38th); Samantha Nugent (39th); Anthony Napolitano (41st); Brendan Reilly (42nd) and Jim Gardiner (45th).

While it's a far cry from the original CPAC proposal demanded by some left activist groups, both the mayor and many of her die-hard council opponents are cheering the compromise.

Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), a strong advocate for civilian oversight, said “democracy is messy” for good reason. Ordinary people need to have “great involvement” at all levels.

“There’s a disconnect between police and our communities as it relates to solving crimes. In order for us to get back to that, we have to get the community involved. This takes a strong step with re-engaging, resetting our relationships between the community and the police,” Sawyer said.

And listen to the leader of the anti-Lightfoot caucus from day-one, Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th): 

“Sometimes, we were at odds. But we came together because we knew that our city had to get something right ... to ensure that people in every single community feel safe. That they are safe. No one should be afraid of violence — whether by another citizen or by those tasked to protect and serve them." 

Lightfoot called the debate “one for the ages” and made passing reference to the contentious negotiations that set the stage for the compromise. 

“We’ve come a long way. We’ve had some stumbles. We’ve had some disagreements. But because of the hard work [of so many], we are on the precipice of making history,” the mayor said.

A little over-the-top? Maybe. But I'll take it for now.  

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 Already there have been more global cases in 2021 than in all of 2020, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Dr. Anthony Fauci 

“We don’t want to declare victory prematurely because we still have a ways to go." -- Guardian

Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Chicago school board member

"Turnaound is a relic..." -- Chalkbeat Chicago 

Rebecca Solnit

Stop glorifying ‘centrism’. It is an insidious bias favoring an unjust status quo. -- Guardian

Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, the bill's sponsor

“For years, folks were showing up to Chicago Police Board meetings for their civic duty and every citizen who showed up experienced a background check. That’s a violation of so many people’s rights.” -- -- Capitol Fax

Fred Klonsky

We live in a country where the state legislature must mandate play but congress doesn't need to approve a war. -- Tweet

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Loyola Prof. Charles Tocci

To push our schools to even greater levels of sustainable success with long term stability, we must deepen democracy and grow public participation in the district. -- Medium

Lauren Peace

When [West Va teachers] get back into their classrooms, hopefully sooner rather than later, they must talk to their students about how, under intense pressure, and with little more than the support they found in each other, they fought for what was right, and they were heard. -- New York Times Op-ed.

Dan Mihalopoulos

“Judging by the numbers, Illinois may be closer than any other state to becoming a plutocracy — government by the wealthy." -- Sun-Times  

Marie Newman, IL congressional candidate

A good guy with a gun against a bad guy with a gun never works. That's been statistically proven. So we don't even have to have that discussion because it's nonsense. -- Guest spot on Hitting Left 

  Donald Trump [Oink alert]

But [Sen. Elizabeth Warren] said that Rex Tillerson and I should sit down with the leaders of Iran and North Korea and smoke a peace pipe. ... I didn’t like that Pocahontas. -- Gridiron Club dinner

These Schools Belong to You and Me

My old and dear friend Deb Meier and her former Mission Hill School colleague and co-writer, Emily Gasoi have a new book out and it's well worth the read. These Schools Belong to You and Me is an elegantly-written call to defend and preserve the public or democratic part of what's left of public education itself.

They cover a lot of ground in 180 pages, including a biting critique of Trump's Ed Sec. Betsy DeVos, privately-run charter schools, the misnamed "accountability" wave, and Deb's reflection on the cooptation/disembowelment of the small schools movement which she helped launch at Central Park Elementary School in East Harlem more than 40 years ago.

Deb and Emily are among the few practitioners still writing about democracy and education. John Dewey lives.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Laura Washington

Black Chicago must be suffering from a bad case of buyer’s remorse...We can’t get fooled again. -- Sun-Times

No respect for democracy

Carol Burris

Bill and Melinda Gates do not understand teaching and learning, yet they comfortably assume an air of expertise... The first couple of reform neither appreciate nor respect the role democracy plays in the governance public schools. -- The Answer Sheet

Joel Shatzky

WE just might find a way to establish a new cultural norm: "values economy" in which a cooperative form of economy functions through valuing what people freely give to one another rather than what they buy from one another. -- Huffington: Educating for Democracy: Something of value 

Emanuel campaign strategist Pete Giangreco

“The mayor spent what was necessary to win. It’s not uncommon for campaigns to go into a little bit of debt." -- Politico: Emanuel campaign fund underwater

Democrats are long on rubbernecking at GOP disarray, short on a plan to win downballot races. http://t.co/zjg2U8BvUP pic.twitter.com/oR9VVyrvvY

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 19, 2015

800 years after Magna Carta, Chicago schools are still ruled by an autocrat

This week we're celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta which is widely considered the foundation of parliamentary democracy, human rights and the supremacy of the law over autocracy. It established the principle that the monarch is not above the law.

Meanwhile in Chicago, where the public schools have been placed by law under the autocratic rule of one man --the mayor -- there's much being made over questions of who approved the decision to hire now-disgraced CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett back in 2012 and who approved that $20 million no-bid contract to SUPES. Everyone knows the answer to these questions but they are still the topic of the day for federal investigators in the midst of grand jury hearings. It's doubtful that indictments, if any are brought, will reach anywhere near the fifth floor of City Hall.

As Rahm and his predecessor might have put it: "We don't need no stink'n Magna Carta".

The only reason there's even a question, is that mayoral control of the schools, which was intended to bring greater transparency and accountability to a bureaucratic system, brought instead its very opposite. Since CPS was made a wing of City Hall, there has been a cloud of secrecy and a lack of public disclosure with one chief bureaucrat after another, all hand-picked by the mayor himself, being tossed under the bus in order to deflect attention away from the misdeeds and corrupt behavior of the autocrat.

Since the signing of the Magna Carta, democratic revolutions have swept the world clean of many czars and monarchs. But when it comes to urban public education, the trend appears to have been reversed. This was highlighted by Gov. Rauner's recent appointment of state "education czar", Beth Purvis following a Chicago Tribune editorial calling on CPS to put a turnaround expert at the top of the school system, with "Mussolini-like powers to execute and implement."

Duncan pinned his success to mayoral control of schools.

When Arne Duncan was first appointed U.S. Secretary of Education by Pres. Obama back in 2009, he made his number-one priority the expansion of autocratic control of the schools by urban mayors. This was the only way Duncan could forsee his plan for corporate-style, top-down school reform being driven past the resistance of educators, parents and community groups. He argued that the revolving door of urban superintendents was leading to too much instability and churn.

Ironically, mayoral control in Chicago has resulted in 6 school chiefs in six years and greater instability than ever before. Another teachers strike seems almost inevitable.

Duncan proclaimed at the time:

"At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed."

By next year his tenure will have ended, his race-to-the-top and his planned expansion of mayoral control tossed in the waste bin of history. He will, by his own admission, have failed.

By then, hopefully Chicago will have joined with the rest of the state and most of the country in having an elected school board and the spirit of the Magna Carta may have survived yet another test.

What we can learn from Escuela Nueva

Decades ago, John Dewey, America’s foremost education philosopher, asserted that students learned best through experience and that democracy “cannot go forward unless the intelligence of the mass of people is educated to understand the social realities of their own time.” 

I'm not a big educational "models" guy. But it's hard to argue with this one.

Escuela Nueva is an educational model designed in Colombia in the mid 1970’s by Vicky Colbert, Beryl Levinger, and Óscar Mogollón to improve the quality, relevance and effectiveness of the schools in the country. With simple, concrete strategies, Escuela Nueva promotes a classroom environment where students actively learn, participate, and collaborate; and strengthens the relationship between the school and the community. It is a flexible educational model tailored to meet the needs of each individual child, allowing students to complete units and advance to higher grade levels at their own pace.

A 1992 World Bank evaluation of Colombia’s schools concluded that poor youngsters educated this way — learning by doing, rather than being endlessly drilled for national exams — generally outperformed their better-off peers in traditional schools. A 2000 Unesco study found that, next to Cuba, Colombia did the best job in Latin America of educating children in rural areas, where most of the schools operate with this model.

This reminds me of the kind of research that was done in Ralph Tyler's renown "Eight-Year Study" (1933–1941) which compared the academic success rates of students in traditional and progressive alternative schools. In his widely read and used, post-study book, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949), Tyler popularized the lessons from the study and described learning as taking place through the action of the student. "It is what he does that he learns, not what the teacher does."

According to U.C. Berkeley Prof David Kirp, writing in the N.Y. Times:

Escuela Nueva turns the schoolhouse into a laboratory for democracy. Rather than being run as a mini-dictatorship, with the principal as its unquestioned leader, the school operates as a self-governing community, where teachers, parents and students have a real say in how it is run. When teachers unfamiliar with this approach are assigned to these schools, it’s often the students themselves who teach them how to apply the method. “In these schools, citizenship isn’t abstract theory, It’s daily practice.”

Rachel Lotan, a professor emeritus at Stanford, is quoted the Times story:

“Doing well on the high-stakes test scores is what drives the public schools, and administrators fear that giving students more control of their own education will bring down those scores.” Officials, and those who set the policies they follow, would do well to visit Colombia, where Escuela Nueva has much to teach us about how best to educate our children.

The question is, can a model of democratic education take root in a country like this one where testing, sorting and tracking students is the name of the game?

The Purpose of Education

Gov. Walker tried to change the mission of the University of Wisconsin

Arthur H. Camins, is the director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. I'm reading his excellent piece embedded in Valerie Strauss' WaPo column today, on the purposes of education, and wondering if it's still legal to even broach the topic. After all, I thought the case was closed. Schooling is all about global competition over reading and math scores and providing workers for the corporations. Isn't it, Sec. Duncan?

Strauss frames the question this way:

What is the purpose of education? The question came into stark relief when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently tried to quietly change the century-old mission of the University of Wisconsin system by proposing to remove words in the state code that command the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and replacing them with “meet the state’s workforce needs.”

Camins argues instead, that education should prepare young people for life, work and citizenship.

Critical thinking, creativity, interpersonal skills and a sense of social responsibility all influence success in life, work and citizenship.

A science educator, Camins refers to the National Research Council’s Framework for K-12 Science Education which offers some good examples.

The framework describes the practices that scientists and engineers utilize to build new knowledge and designs, but also the student engagement that leads to learning. To be clear, the framework starts from the premise that science is a means to develop explanations about how the natural world works, and engineering is a means to develop solutions to human problems. 

Camins' qualifies his piece by ending with a note about equity.

Application of the systems thinking that characterizes progress in science and engineering to education policy means that real sustainable improvement depends on addressing inequity in areas such as well-paid employment, health care, food, and housing security. You can’t have one without the others.

Well put.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES -- R.I.P. JOHN GOODLAD

John Goodlad (1920-2014)

John Goodlad on social justice

“It is my expectation that Teacher Education for Democracy and Social Justice will become a rich resource for continuing this multi-layered conversation-from democratic belief to democratic action-that is the hallmark of educational renewal.” -- Forward to Teacher Education for Democracy and Social Justice,

...On more schooling

However, a need to expand the length and breadth of schooling does not necessarily follow from well-founded arguments regarding the critical importance of education. As I have said repeatedly, schooling and education are not synonymous. -- A Place Called School 

...On test & punish

In our system, we receive test scores without having the faintest idea under what conditions students worked. For instance, we heard a lot about how the U.S. ranked so poorly in international tests. Why didn't we go study British Columbia, which is so much like us, and find out what students did to score better than we did? But we just blame the teachers and the schools; we have always used the villain theory. -- Ed Leadership

...On curriculum

 “The division into subjects and periods encourages a segmented rather than an integrated view of knowledge.  Consequently, what students are asked to relate to in schooling becomes increasingly artificial, cut off from the human experiences subject matter is supposed to reflect.” -- A Place Called School (Marian Brady in WaPo)

Prof. Roger Soder 

"John always argued strenuously against test scores as a serious measure of whether we had good schooling. He said what we really needed to talk about was the relationship between schooling and what it takes to maintain a free society." -- L.A. Times

Valerie Strauss, WaPo education writer

Dr. Goodlad’s research and teaching focused in part on curriculum and the “hows” of school teaching and management. But there was always a deeper issue. Teaching is an ethical act, Dr. Goodlad argued, and a critical part of being ethical is having a good sense of who you are. -- "The Passing of a Giant in Education

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

English teacher Kit McCormick, left, discusses Garfield High School teachers' decision to refuse to give the MAP test to their students (Seattle Times)

Garfield H.S. teachers 

We are not troublemakers nor do we want to impede the high functioning of our school. We are professionals who care deeply about our students and cannot continue to participate in a practice that harms our school and our students. -- Petition

Nancy Carlsson-Paige

"I have decided that because of your collaboration with TFA, it would not be wise for me or for Matt [Damon] to be nominated for the Friend of Education Award. I regret this turn of events." -- Letter to NEA Pres. Dennis Van Roekel. 

Barbara Byrd-Bennett

“We recognize the need for a more granular level of community engagement."  -- Sun-Times

Bill Ayers

In a free society education is based on a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being; it’s constructed on the principle that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each, and, conversely, that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all. -- A Letter to the President

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Chicago teachers now working without a contract

CTU President Karen Lewis

“It is our responsibility to work toward a contract that is fair and equitable to our members and one that will help us give our students the high-quality, first-class education they deserve. While there has been progress in some areas, we remain far apart on many others.” -- NBC News Chicago, CTU Contract to Expire Over Weekend

Michelle Chen

After Katrina, the city became an incubator for non-unionized charter schools and “experimental” restructuring plans. But rather than “saving” New Orleans schools from failure, the overhaul has aggravated divides between black and white, wealthy and poor, by pushing schools to operate more like corporations.  -- In These Times

Fred Klonsky

"I'm starting a new union. Send me your dues." -- Fred Klonsky Blog 

Michelle Obama

"Democracy is also an everyday activity. And being an engaged citizen should once again be a daily part of our lives." The first lady said such engagement involved "the tireless, the thankless, relentless work of making change, you know, the phone-calling, letter-writing, door-knocking, meeting-planning kind of work." -- ABC News

John Jeremiah Sullivan

This is a strange time to be alive in America, in that regard. Close one eye, and we can seem to be moving toward a one-race society; close the other and we seem as racially conflicted and stratified as ever. Racism is still our madness. -- "How William Faulkner Tackled Race — and Freed the South From Itself."

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Colorado Gov. Ritter on Race to Top

It was like the Olympic Games, and we were an American skater with a Soviet judge from the 1980s,” (NYT)

Joel Shatzky: Educating for Democracy

Henry Ford explained that he gave his employees high wages so that they could afford to buy his products; Wal-mart reverses the process by paying such low wages that its employees can only afford to buy its products. (Huffington)

Howard Blume: An L.A. high school struggles to turn around

Last month, the Los Angeles Board of Education could have turned over the job of improving Jefferson to an outside operator. Instead, it chose a plan created by Jefferson's teachers. With new authority, staffers at Jefferson have taken on the crucial test of whether they can fix one of the most historically troubled, low-achieving campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District. (L.A. Times)