Hard to understand CTU's vitriol on these charter closings.

Arne Duncan with K12 Inc. founder William Bennett

I'm having a difficult time making sense out of CTU policy statements lately. Yesterday, the union leadership came out with a blistering, overheated attack on CPS leaders. Why? Because CPS recommended the closing of two privately-run charter schools for poor academic performance and financial mismanagement.

The two schools are Chicago Virtual Charter School (CVCS) and Frazier Preparatory Academy Charter School. Both schools opened as part of Renaissance 2010, a failed initiative of former Mayor Daley’s schools chief, Arne Duncan. The initiative called for the opening of 100 new schools by 2010 amid the closure of dozens of schools the district said were "underperforming."

Private charter school operators moved in like vultures, promising that their non-union schools would outperform neighborhood schools. It turned out to be a lie. The best of the charters did just about the same as the schools they were replacing. The worst either kept getting their charters renewed with little oversight, or were closed, either for poor performance, financial mismanagement or put on probation and given a few years to improve. Several more went out of business of their own volition, as with any failed business venture.

CTU leaders have responded to the recommendation with vitriol, calling it "racist and irresponsible."

I have been an outspoken opponent of public school closings, especially the mass school closings in the black community, under Rahm Emanuel's regime, closings that disrupted the lives and learning of thousands of CPS students and drove hundreds of families out of Chicago. But that doesn't mean that no charter school should ever be closed, no matter how poorly it serves its students and their families or how corrupt they are. I know very little about Frazier, except that it has been on academic probation for several years and has failed to meet the standards set by its own operators.

According to the Tribune: 

At Frazier Prep, a K-8 school in Lawndale, CPS further cited a failure to meet a contractual requirement to implement a successful remediation plan and improve the school enough to get it off the academic warning list. Students in the community have higher-quality options, according to CPS.

 Since 2015, the Chicago Board of Education has used a “quality policy” to review charter schools. In accordance with that policy, school officials conducted “comprehensive performance reviews” and said they found that Chicago Virtual and Frazier Prep were failing to provide a high-quality education to students.

I generally mistrust evidence of "low performance" based solely or mainly on test scores. But I'd leave this decision to CPS in consultation with the school community.

CPS has assured the community that if the Chicago School Board approves the closures, CPS will provide families of current students with transition support "to help them identify a new higher-performing school that best meets their educational needs and priorities."

But we heard that before from Rahm. He lied. So far, Lori Lightfoot has shown that she's not Rahm 2.0. CTU President Jesse Sharkey told me as much on Hitting Left, last Friday.

But I do know something about Chicago Virtual Charter, a subsidiary of K12 Inc., the worst of the worst when it comes to privatization and plunder of American public education. The largest of the virtual charter chains, K12 Inc. in particular, has been a sewer of corruption since it was founded by Ronald Reagan's Ed Sec. William Bennett. The company was forced to remove Bennett as chairman of its directors following a series of racist remarks and gambling scandals which threatened the company's marketability.

K12 Inc. has been under investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, which has been looking into K12's involvement in a project that received an improper multimillion-dollar grant from the Department of Education during Bennett's tenure at the firm. MEANWHILE...

A K12 Inc. company database that included information for 19,000 students was available for anyone with an internet connection to see for at least a week, according to a report from Comparitech, which describes itself as a pro-consumer organization that offers security services. -- Digital Education

Trump's Ed Secretary Betsy DeVos touts online learning and cyber charter schools as a viable alternative to public schools. But her support for these virtual schools and the private companies that run them may have more to do with her and her husband's investment portfolio than with any positive results for students. Her husband invested in virtual school powerhouse K12 Inc. before she became secretary.

According to The Nation:

K12 Inc.’s lobbyists helped author model legislation to develop sweeping voucher laws through the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that provides state lawmakers with template legislation.

K12, Inc. initially wanted to open a full-time virtual school in Chicago, but Illinois law prohibited full-time online learning. To comply with the policy, K12, Inc. compromised by adding a mandatory, on-campus attendance requirement and thus the CVCS was born.

It's a school that never should have been opened in this city. In fact, back in 2006, the CTU filed a suit intended to stop state and city payments to the Chicago Virtual Charter School. The union sued the charter school operator, the Chicago Board of Education, which approved the school as part of its Renaissance 2010 reforms, and the Illinois State Board of Education, which gave final approval for the charter to open.

So the question is, why the sharp attack by CTU leaders, who called the CPS recommendation to close CVCS racist and irresponsible? I can understand their making a case against the closing of any neighborhood school. But CVCS was not that. Whether to close Frazier is a question worthy of community debate.

I hope the charges of "racism" against CPS leadership and the mayor's appointed school board isn't just a continuation of the negativity directed at the mayor and the board, stemming from the election and the school strike. But I see no other basis for it.

Fighting another Rahm school closure at NTA

Niketa Brar (left) and Elisabeth Greer from National Teachers Academy 

Most of yesterday's show focused on the planned closing of another "high-performing" Chicago elementary school with an African-American student population. Our two in-studio guests, Niketa Brar and Elisabeth Greer, both elected members of the Local School Council (Elisabeth is the LSC chair) at National Teachers Academy (NTA), told the story of their community's struggle to save their school.

It's both an inspiring and heart-breaking tale of a school community that has managed to survive and thrive despite district misleadership and the rigors of 15 years of top-down, corporate-style reform, only to find itself on the chopping block. After finally achieving Level 1 status, NTA has been marked for closure. Its students could be moved into an expanded (1,800 students) South Loop Elementary -- an elementary school that size is criminal -- and NTA turned into a new high school for Chinatown.

As one parent put it, "they've got us fighting over scraps".

The school was launched in 2002 against the background of gentrification of the South Loop neighborhood, with a fancy misleading title (it was never a national teacher training academy) under the direction of a consortium of 15 school partners including universities who promised to deliver strong professional development for teachers at a neighborhood school.

Instead, what the school got was a takeover by a private turnaround company, AUSL, leading to teacher firings and principal churn. Since 2006, the school has stabilized, developed a strong teacher residency program in partnership with UIC and has now been declared a Level 1 school, based on its rising test scores. Most of the credit for the gains goes to the school's teachers and students as well as its two most recent principals, Amy Rome and Isaac Castelaz. 

Niketa and Elisabeth's story recalled the legacy of then-CEO Arne Duncan's so-called Renaissance 2010 reform initiative which was launched by Mayor Daley in 2004. It called for the closing of more than 80 schools to be replaced by 100 shiny new charters, contract schools, performance schools, turnaround schools, etc...by the year 2010.

NTA

I still remember Duncan speaking to Dodge Elementary parents who were angry over his handing their school over to AUSL, without any input from the community, and promising them that they would be thrilled with his new Renaissance alternatives. But by 2013, CPS was already closing many of the schools Duncan had created.

Ren 10 was a disaster on all levels. But it was the manufactured spin of this debacle as a "Chicago Miracle" which paved the way for Duncan's appointment as head of the Department of Education.

WBEZ's Becky Vevea wrote at the time:

In 2008, Dodge was where then president-elect Barack Obama announced Duncan as his pick for Secretary of Education.

“He’s shut down failing schools and replaced their entire staffs, even when it was unpopular,” Obama said at the time. “This school right here, Dodge Renaissance Academy, is a perfect example. Since this school was revamped and reopened in 2003, the number of students meeting state standards has more than tripled.”

But fast forward another five years, Dodge and Williams are closing  their doors.

This story must have a familiar ring to the parents and students at NTA.

But, as Elisabeth assured us yesterday, "We're gonna win... We are an army of parents and allies from all over the city. This is not over." 

I believe her.

Closing Duncan's Chicago 'Renaissance' Schools

Obama came to Dodge School in 2009 and used the visit to announce Duncan's appointment as Sec. of Education

While Arne Duncan was whisking in the children of the rich and powerful into Chicago's elite, selective-enrollment schools, he was also pushing a system of new start-ups and charters under his Renaissance 2010 program.

But, according to WBEZ's Becky Vevea,  in the most recent round of proposed school closings, CPS is shutting down the very schools Duncan created.

Eleven years ago, on April 10, 2002, Duncan announced he would shut down three elementary schools—Williams, Dodge and Terrell—for chronic low performance. The idea was to start over from scratch in order to create something better.

I still remember Duncan speaking to Dodge parents who were angry over his handing their school over to private turnaround operator AUSL, without any input from the community, and promising them that they would be thrilled with his new Renaissance alternatives.

Writes Vevea:

In 2008, Dodge was where then president-elect Barack Obama announced Duncan as his pick for Secretary of Education.

“He’s shut down failing schools and replaced their entire staffs, even when it was unpopular,” Obama said at the time. “This school right here, Dodge Renaissance Academy, is a perfect example. Since this school was revamped and reopened in 2003, the number of students meeting state standards has more than tripled.”

But fast forward another five years, Dodge and Williams are closing  their doors.

CPS spokeswoman Molly Poppe said there was no one available to speak with WBEZ on the record about the proposals. She said CPS is “focusing on the challenges of today.”

Translation -- We don't need no stinkin' accountability.

The Empire Strikes Back

Emanuel/Daley rift sharpens

Smiling faces...

The rift surfaced back in November. Actually, autocrat Rahm started it with his pokes at his predecessor.

His line of attack has been the longer school day initiative. His education plan is essentially a continuation of the failed Daley/Duncan reforms, previously known as Renaissance 2010 -- school closings in under-served  communities, turning neighborhood schools over to private charter school management companies, attacking teacher collective-bargaining rights and pensions.

None of these things has ever produced any significant improvement in measurable student learning. In fact, during the past two decades of mayoral control of the schools, the so-called "achievement gap" has grown wider. 

In response, Rahm claims  it's all because Mayor Daley didn't push for a longer school day -- a plan that has no basis in ed research and one that is being met with growing opposition among parents and teachers. The Daley faction is furious over Rahm's attempt to diminish the Daley legacy. I guess they feel Daley has diminished it enough on his own by selling off the parking meters to Morgan Stanley (his brother's bank) and the UAR in exchange for a retirement job with the law firm that swung the deal.

On Tuesday, Daley slapped at the longer school day plan, claiming that what we really needed was "quality instructions" [sic].  Today, Rahm and his boy Ald. O'Connor slapped back, calling Daley a "flip-flopper."

But this is more than a petty squabble among Chicago machine factions. Rahm seems to be making enemies everywhere he goes. His approval ratings are plummeting. The Obamas hate him. Nancy Pelosi flew into Chicago and sided with Jesse Jackson in his fight with Emanuel. Then Obama pulled the G8 Summit from Chicago without consulting with Rahm. And now the feds have put Chicago under virtual martial law in the run-up to the NATO protests -- discrediting Rahm's claim that there would be business as usual down in the loop.

In the midst of current contract negotiations with the teachers union and a growing community-based resistance to Rahm's top-down "reforms", it's a rift worth paying attention to by the CTU and ed activists.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

U.S. Marine

"2nd time I've fought for my country. 1st time I've known my enemy." - At Wall Street protests

Alabama Supt.

"In the case of this law, our students do not have anything to fear," Casey Wardynski said in halting Spanish. He urged families to send students to class and explained that the state was only trying to compile statistics. Police, he insisted, were not getting involved in schools. -- A.P. "Ala. Hispanic students vanish"

The "Chicago Miracle"

So after waves and waves of reform, you thought Chicago public elementary schools had made tremendous progress in the last 20 years? Think again...Math scores improved only “incrementally” in those grades, and racial gaps in both subjects increased, with African American students falling the most behind other groups, especially in reading — an area pushed heavily under former Mayor Richard M. Daley. -- Sun-Times

N.Y. Teacher

“This time I just got a letter home, explaining, you know, that I’m no longer needed,” said Ms. Ramirez, 30, who is five months pregnant with her first child. -- New York Times, "School Layoffs About to Fall Heaviest on the Poorest and Most Struggling" 

Last night's forum in Chicago

If last night's forum at UIC is any indication, mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel won't have much of a honeymoon, especially when it comes to his role as boss of the public schools. Emanuel's school plan, which sounds a lot like Mayor Daley's and the Civic Committee's Renaissance 2010, was under assault by last night's panelists  before an appreciative, standing-room-only crowd.

The panel was organized in response to a statement on Myths & Realities of Chicago School Reform, written by a group of Chicago researchers called CReaTE (I was one of the signers to the statement). Last night's panel   included some of the city's top ed researchers and academics as well as community and union union activists, parent and student and community organizers.

The main message was, talk is cheap. Let's get organized.

Hanging with the wrong crowd

If Rahm Emanuel were to become Chicago's next mayor, expect more of the same--more school closings, more teacher firings, more privatization. Why?


Emanuel is talking to all the wrong Chicago people about education. It's the same old Ownership Society crowd that dreamed up Renaissance 2010 (I know. We're not supposed to mention that word any more). Even the Civic Committee called the results, "abysmal."

They're the Pritzkers; they're Mayor Daley's patronage boys, like Juan Rangel; they're the hedge-fund charter guys like Bruce Rauner; and they're the power philanthropists who long ago ceded leadership of Chicago's foundation community over to Bill Gates. Missing from the back room was...well, you know who was missing. Who's always missing?

Last week, Emanuel trickled out some details about his education platform to the Tribune, saying 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. (Clout Street)

Latest on the Chicago schools 'miracle'

Daley/Huberman fall victim to their own poor grades

So the sneaky bastards at the Tribune somehow got hold of Ron Huberman's secret stash of school ratings and published them. Oh, goody!

The CPS document stolen by the Tribune shows the grade ranges that corresponded with the schools' numeric standardized test scores. Shades of the Tribune Co.-owned L.A. Times' release of internal rankings of supposed value-added, based exclusively on students' standardized test scores. So why am I smiling now when I was steaming then?

Because this time around, it's Huberman and outgoing Mayor Daley who are being (apologies to Shakespeare) hoisted with their own petard. Huberman came up with the A-B-C-D-F rating system for schools, to use to justify his massive school-closing scheme under Renaissance 2010. This, after the legislature forced the district to show some rationale for its arbitrary punishment and closing policies .

Among city elementary schools, 47 of 474 received As, while just 4 of 92 high schools met that mark. Meanwhile, 104 elementary schools and 39 high schools got Fs. But these grades have little, if any validity when it comes to judging the quality of individual schools or teachers. In most cases they are just coded measures of school or neighborhood poverty. Without mentioning any school names, I know of several excellent schools that received grades of C or C-, based only on standardized test scores.

According to the Trib:

Huberman last year pushed for those scores to be tied to decisions about closings — the highest sanction a school can face. Huberrman said he did not release the grades because they need to be more nuanced. The data does not take individual student growth into account, and school-wide comparisons can be imperfect, he said.

Isn't it interesting how "nuanced" these guys can get when their own asses are on the line, rather than teachers'. Take this line in the Trib article, for example"  

Observers caution that a single grade can't assess the complex work of fashioning the school system into a functioning body.

Or how about this one from Timothy Knowles, director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute. who back in June was calling for teacher jobs and pay to be tied directly to  these same test scores.

"There has to be some recognition — beyond what letter grades are put on school doors — of just how complicated this work is,"

The release of  these very un-nuanced grades, based on 2008-2009 test results as well as on trends over time, is particularly devastating for the mayor. They explode the entire Chicago turnaround miracle myth that former schools CEO Arne Duncan rode all the way to D.C. They show once again that the Daley/Duncan Ren10 reforms of the last decade were a complete bust, leaving the majority of district schools with low marks.

District officials say they want to give fair warning when schools are at risk of closure. But a few activists accuse Huberman of using the probation policy to wrestle control from local school councils, since schools on probation for two years can also lose the authority to hire their own principals.

More than 300 schools are on probation this year, the highest number since 1996-1997, according to an analysis conducted by Designs for Change, an education nonprofit.

"Probation has become a back-door method … for recentralizing the school system to strip Local School Councils, principals and teachers of their decision-making opportunities," wrote Valenica Rias-Winstead, an associate at the research group, in a February report.

After 15 years of mayoral control of the schools and hundreds of millions of dollars invested in Daley's test-crazy, privatization reforms which included neighborhood school closings, mass teacher firings, and privately-managed charter schools, the system has again flunked its own grading system. Some of the worst grades were assigned to some of the most highly touted charter schools. The implications extend far beyond Chicago since the current secretary of education was one of the architects and chief implementer of the failed renaissance and is now leveraging badly-needed federal funding to force these same failed policies on the states.


So as the old mayor departs to spend more time with his grand kids, let's put a hold all the eulogies to the education mayor and his string of hand-picked school bosses. Give them an D for Data-driven Deception.

Blowing away the Ren10 mythology

Some of the best analysis and reportage on Daley's mess at CPS is coming from Catalyst's Sarah Karp. 

In the current issue of Catalyst, Karp blows away much of the mythology around the Renaissance 2010 "miracle" in Chicago--the mythology that Arne Duncan rode all the way to Washington and is now imposing on school districts nationwide through his Race To The Top.

The inescapable conclusion after reading Karp's story: 15 years of mayoral control,  plus 7 years of Duncan's leadership, plus 6 years of Ren10, combined with an over-reliance on charter schools at the expense of neighborhood school reform, has only succeeded in reproducing and widening systemic inequality in the city's schools. 

Mayor Richard M. Daley and then-CEO Arne Duncan stressed that goal when they announced Renaissance in a packed hotel conference room in June 2004. The launch came on the heels of a 2003 report from the Civic Committee that argued for a market approach to education: Force neighborhood schools to improve through competition from more charters. But six years later, the initiative has not sparked widespread improvement or equity. Eleven of the 25 neighborhoods identified as most in need of better-performing schools have gotten none.

Karp's expose of charter schools' reliance on private financing made it all the way to the pages of today's New York Times via the new Chicago News Cooperative. She questions the viability of charter expansion, especially in the face of the current crisis in all of public school funding.

Congratulations Sarah.

Inside Chicago's School "Renaissance"

Whose idea was this?

Gage Park junior Kelly Greenan said "it was boiling" inside her classroom Monday.
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times) 

 

Year-round school is the latest buzzword coming from the new reformers in Chicago. That's probably because Daley and Huberman sit in air-conditioned offices all day, during this brutal heat wave, and never set foot inside overheated and over-crowded classrooms in schools like Gage Park High.

Stifling hot, humid and sometimes crowded classrooms greeted some students at 10 Chicago public high schools that kicked off classes Monday under a year-round calendar. "Sweat-dripping-down-our-face hot," is how one student described her day. At that school, Gage Park High, the school year also started with a shooting. An 18-year-old senior was shot in the back as he exited a vehicle outside the school before classes began, officials said.

At TEAM Englewood, an air-conditioned high school, junior Shunnetta Brown didn't like her new larger class sizes of as many as 36 kids. Her art class had more kids than desks, Shunnetta said. "I just don't think that's a proper learning environment,'' Shunnetta said. (Sun-Times)

How the TIF game is played in Chicago

Mayoral control of the schools makes Daley's hand-picked school board merely an extension of City Hall. This in turn enables the downtown, business-friendly TIF plan to loot the public schools for hundreds of millions of dollars without a peep from the board. This, combined with some of the lowest levels of state funding in the nation results in massive teacher lay-off and swelling class size. The newly-elected leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union wants to shine a light on TIF and find alternatives to making teachers shoulder the burden of the current economic crisis.

It's all explained more in depth on the CAN-TV discussion with Lorraine Forte, editor in chief of Catalyst Chicago, and Ramsin Canon, politics editor for Gapers Block.

Duncan's "miracle"

More evidence of the fraud that was Duncan/Daley's "miracle" in Chicago. Arne Duncan rode the myth all the way to D.C.

Eighth-grade scores didn't show any significant gains between 2002 and 2009 -- a period spanning most of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's tenure here as Schools CEO.Chicago posted no substantial progress since 2002 in closing the achievement gap between white students compared with African Americans or Hispanics, and between poor and non-poor students. (Sun-Times)

Now he's forcing his Chicago "model" on the nation's schools by threatening them with the withholding of federal dollars.

If you want to hear a bogus explanation for the failure of Duncan's "miracle," look no farther than his departing chief educational officer, Barbara Eason-Watkins:

She also noted that CPS schools are focused on state tests -- which can carry huge stakes -- and not national ones.

Of course, for the past decade, CPS has been teaching to the wrong test. Why didn't i think of that?

Latest from the Chicago's school 'Renaissance'

No more foreign languages taught here

Did Mayor Daley bring Ron Huberman over from CTA to manage the complete and total dismantling of public education in the city? It's beginning to look that way.

The latest target of Daley/Huberman is the district's World Languages program. In short, it's a goner. Elementary school students will no longer have a chance to learn a foreign language at their neighborhood public school under a decision to dump "world languages" to save $3.5 million, according to this report in today's Sun-Times.

Late Tuesday, CPS Budget Chief Christina Herzog released a list of 27 affected schools and said all world language magnet program positions were being closed -- a total of 40 jobs -- for a savings of $3.5 million.

Huberman's version of "reform" in Chicago

What's causing all that wind in the Windy City? It could be the revolving door of principals. 

C.E.O. Huberman,  an education know-nothing, is left with the tired old game of replacing managers. Now he says he will get rid of 80 principals in one shot. If there ever was a recipe for chaos and instability, this is it. I'm still waiting to hear where Huberman will find 80 great (but unemployed) principals to replace them. Maybe we can switch with Milwaukee. Sounds like a windfall for the Harvard Business School- spawned New Leaders for New Schools.

The mass firings come 15 years after the mayor took over the schools system and imposed his so-called Renaissance 2010 on the district. They signal the complete and total failure of Daley's and Arne Duncan's reform plan with the blame being once again thrown completely on educators.

The lamest line on this came, as you might expect, from one of Chicago's know-nothing aldermen. 31st Ward Ald. Ray Suarez, who also touts school vouchers, is demanding that Huberman fire more principals.

"This didn't just happen last week. This has been going on for many, many years. And you still give the same excuse: 'We're working on it. We have a contract.' In private industry when you have a leader and he's not performing, I don't care what kind of contract he's got. He's out." 

 Wrong, Alderman.  In case you haven't heard, in private industry when your top people screw up and destroy the company as well as our environment and our national economy, you give them giant bonuses. Or in the case of Chicago alderman, they give themselves a big raise.

Inside Chicago's school "renaissance"

New I.G. investigation

Here's how they clean up high school dropout rates at CPS. They keep "ghost students" on the books long after they've left school. This is how they did it in Houston to produce the so-called "Texas Miracle" during the Bush/Paige era. Now Chicago schools do it in order to survive massive budget cuts. It's the same reason there's so much cheating on high-stakes tests. Watch  for classroom teachers to get blamed.

What ever happened to pay-for-grades schemes in N.Y & Chicago

Disappearing Act

2008 was the year of pay-for-grades. Remember? It was the hottest idea, heavily touted by the Ownership Society entrupreneurial crowd and headline news in the mass media. Joel Klein spent $40 million on his market worshiping scheme in N.Y. schools. But a new study shows the program was a flop and is quietly being dropped. Accountability? Never with these guys. Exxon-Mobile pushed the program in Arkansas, Alabama, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington. While in Chicago, Arne Duncan hailed the plan as a "leveling of the playing field." It didn't and now, the plan that made national headlines in 2008, has dropped off the radar screen.

Oh, and BTW, it's 2010. Where did Renaissance 2010 go?

Inside Chicago's school "Renaissance"

Huberman's "reform" plan for Chicago

6 more CPS students shot

Chicago's latest school version of school "reform": Increase class size to 37. Continue closing schools and shipping kids to other struggling schools across gang boundaries. Loot the teachers' pension fund. Will union go along?

CEO Huberman hopes to get some traction with Duncan's Race To The Top by closing more schools, turning them over to private management companies, firing teachers en masse, diverting $60 million from classrooms into his goofy "culture of calm" strategy which includes, "using "data" to predict which kids will be shot next and then urging parents to "change their life styles." But I can tell you that there will be no culture of calm with 37 kids packed into high school classes.

Meanwhile, 15 hours after a downtown anti-gun rally, 6 more CPS students were shot, bringing the total for the year to 135. There were 508 CPS students shot during the previous 16-months, enough to fill an entire elementary school.

There's no more mention of the words, "Renaissance 2010." I don't blame them. I'd be embarrassed too.

Another "turnaround" set for Marshall High

Chicago's legacy of failed top-down reform

They're "turning around" Marshall again. In case you're not up on school reform lingo, turnaround (depending on what day it is) means either replacing current students with more middle-class, high test scorers, or more recently, firing entire faculties and staff. Oh, all except for the Commandos' (yes, that's really their team name) renowned basketball coach Dorothy Gaters. Gaters, who has led the Lady Commandos to 8, count 'em, 8 state titles, will be retained while all her colleagues get pink-slipped because she is "part of the fabric'' of Marshall, Schools says CEO Ron Huberman.

Excuse me, but didn't you say that it was this very "fabric" that turnaround was trying to shred?

Sound confusing? It's all part of the latest version of Daley/Duncan's failed Renaissance 2010 initiative, a plan focused on school closings rather than school improvement; on top-down coercion and compliance, rather than community engagement. It's the plan that was hailed as the Chicago Miracle and is now being exported nationally through Arne Duncan's Race-To-The-Top.

The Sun-Times story gives us a clue as to what the likely outcome of Marshall's latest top-down turnaround might be.

Marshall's test scores have continued to dip, despite being "re-engineered" in 2000 and receiving a highly-paid principal-mentor in 2006. "Haven't they tried this before?" Marshall parent Laticia Fields asked of the latest overhaul.

"CPS doesn't know what it's doing, and that's the only reason our kids aren't learning." Past fixes weren't deep or widespread enough, Huberman insisted. The largely black, low-income school has languished on academic probation for 14 years. "This is the biggest dosage [of change] you can get,'' Huberman said.

That says it all, doesn't it. Huberman's metaphor for change is another dose of meds being tested on an ailing patient. If one pill doesn't work, ie. a new super-star principal, give 'em reconstitution or re-engineering. If that won't fix things, fire all the teachers (except the coach).

My favorite Chicago headline on all this--FIXED SCHOOLS FAIL

School closings wipe out community resources

Huge jump in number of homeless students at schools on N.Y.C. shutdown list

There's two things you need to know about Arne Duncan's Race-To-The-Top school-closing model of reform. First, it doesn't work to improve schools, raise test scores, or close the so-called achievement gap. The recent Chicago Tribune report on Renaissance 10 only adds to the already impressive pile of research confirming the failure of this approach.

Second, school closings can be and usually are devastating to the surrounding school community. The reason? Schools are so much more than schools. For one thing, they are often centers for social services, jobs and community development. When you close schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, you deplete those communities of badly-needed resources.

Case in point: The Daily News reports that at 19 of the 20 N.Y. schools that the Education Department announced last month it plans to shut down, the number of homeless kids jumped by more than 100%.

The school takes on even more of a family role for the child, encouraging them to keep going," said student affairs coordinator Stefanie Siegel. "Academic success can be hard to keep on the front of the table because you're just trying to keep the students stable."