WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Alfie Kohn

"Whoever Said There's No Such Thing As a Stupid Question Never Looked Carefully at a Standardized Test" -- Huffington Post

Nancy Pelosi

Republicans are "using the budget deficit as an excuse to destroy the public space, medicare, medicaid, social security, food safety, clean air, clean water, you name it, public safety, public education... it fits very comfortably in their anti-public space attitude." -- Up w/ Chris Hayes MSNBC

Karen Lewis

“It’s a nightmare. You expect this stuff out of Republicans.” -- NYT, "Chicago’s Mayor Challenges Teachers Union"

Mike Klonsky

"What you're seeing is that, under mayoral control, a two-tiered school system is under development [in Chicago]: one for the elite, middle-class kids and another system for the poor; one filled with enrichment programs and things like that and the other has a test-and-punishment curriculum." -- Huffington Chicago Editor Joseph Erbentraut

Vito Perrone Sr., Who Fought Standardized Tests, Dies at 78

Harvard Public Affairs & Communications Office

Vito Perrone Sr., in 1997 with students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he taught. He advocated for flexible teaching methods that did not rely on standardized testing.

I met Vito and became familiar with and inspired by his work after hearing him speak on a panel at the UIC Small Schools Workshop some 15 years ago. I looked forward every year since then to hearing him open up the annual North Dakota Study Group meeting out in Woodstock, IL. Vito died on Aug. 24 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 78.

Thanks to New York Times writer, Paul Vitello for this excellent piece on Vito Perrone's life and work..

Vitello writes:

Among those who considered Dr. Perrone an inspiration was Jonathan Kozol, the educator and writer whose 1967 book, “Death at an Early Age,” ignited nationwide public outrage over classroom conditions in one of Boston’s poorest neighborhoods. Another adherent was Deborah Meier, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner who founded the progressive East Park Secondary School in East Harlem and led the Mission Hill School in Boston.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Kozol said Dr. Perrone’s influence could be seen in the mounting opposition to the No Child Left Behind law, which has fueled widespread school standardization since it was signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. 

“Deborah Meier and I heard it over and over again at the march on Washington last summer,” Mr. Kozol said, referring to the July “Save Our Schools” demonstration that drew about 5,000 teachers from around the country to demand increased financing for public schools and limits on standardized tests. “They were saying, ‘Where are the deans of education who will stand up for public education the way Vito Perrone did?’ ”.

Among those who considered Dr. Perrone an inspiration was Jonathan Kozol, the educator and writer whose 1967 book, “Death at an Early Age,” ignited nationwide public outrage over classroom conditions in one of Boston’s poorest neighborhoods. Another adherent was Deborah Meier, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner who founded the progressive East Park Secondary School in East Harlem and led the Mission Hill School in Boston.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Kozol said Dr. Perrone’s influence could be seen in the mounting opposition to the No Child Left Behind law, which has fueled widespread school standardization since it was signed by President George W. Bush in 2002.

“Deborah Meier and I heard it over and over again at the march on Washington last summer,” Mr. Kozol said, referring to the July “Save Our Schools” demonstration that drew about 5,000 teachers from around the country to demand increased financing for public schools and limits on standardized tests. “They were saying, ‘Where are the deans of education who will stand up for public education the way Vito Perrone did?’ ”

N.Y. stops ranking teachers based on student test scores

NYT reports:  New York City education officials announced Thursday that they would end their effort to rank teachers based on their students’ standardized test scores, adding a surprise twist to one of the most contentious issues facing the city’s teaching force.

Joel Klein, the former schools chancellor who now fronts for Rupert Murdoch, championed the rankings, and the city has been supporting their release to the public against a teachers’ union lawsuit for the past year.

But now it appears that the state board will pick up where the city left off making it appear that Mayor Bloomberg and the city are simply trying to avoid the suit.

A victory of sorts, I suppose.

In Ohio, it's Obama school construction vs. 'Boehnernomics'

Obama spoke at the Fort Hayes Art and Academic High School, which has recently received federal funding for renovations.

“There are construction projects like this all over the country just waiting to get started,” Mr. Obama said. “So my question to Congress is, ‘What on earth are you waiting for?’ ”

The crowd of more than 3,000 people at the school acted like they were at a campaign event, too. They chanted: “Pass this bill! Pass this bill! Pass this bill!” -- NYT

White House officials said the $25 billion, if approved by lawmakers, would help at least 35,000 public schools.The investment would make rural schools a priority, as well as schools financed through the Bureau of Indian Education. The money, White House officials said, could be used for a tasks such as repairs or technology upgrades.

Here'a the Republican's "Boehnernomics" alternative.

CTU offers up a real plan for longer school day

Univ. of Chicago Lab School

Based on the Lab School

“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.”-- John Dewey, founder of University of Chicago Laboratory School

Lab is where the mayor sends his kids to school at $22,000 a pop. It's where Arne Duncan went to school and where the president sent his kids. The Chicago Teachers Union has now crafted has crafted a proposed schedule, based on Lab's that adds 75 minutes to the typical public elementary school student’s day. The CTU plan offers students an enriched academic program -- something the mayor's plan failed to do. 

Just like at what U of C kids often call “the Lab School,’’ the CTU proposal offers a well-rounded curriculum featuring far more art, music, physical education and other extras than most CPS kids now get and even includes the study of a second language.-- Ros Rossi, Chicago Sun-Times

Rossi quotes Potter:

"The University of Chicago Lab School has the reputation of being one of the best schools in the country, not just Chicago,’’ said Jackson Potter, chief of staff to CTU President Karen Lewis. “And obviously, the mayor sends his children there. The president [Barack Obama] sent his children there. So it’s highly regarded by people who make education policy. That seems a good method for determining how this district should operate.

Now we'll see if this is all really about a longer school day or rather an attempt by the mayor to neuter the CTU by going around the contract and thus limiting teachers' collective-bargaining rights. After all, could this whole crisis and latest round of the war on teachers have been about 15 minutes of seat time?

More on this at Chicago Magazine which also gives me a mention.
Thanks also to Eric Zorn at the Chicago Trib for posting clip from Small Talk.

Duplicitous Duncan

I loved Diane Ravitch's account of her summer encounter with Arne Duncan. It took place at an Aspen cocktail party where Duncan was the guest of honor.

The setting was beyond splendid, in a gorgeous home overlooking the valley. Secretary Duncan introduced a man who had led a campaign to build playgrounds, in fact, had created some 2,000 playgrounds. When introducing his friend, Secretary Duncan said that there was nothing more important for young children than having time for unstructured play, time to tinker, time to make things with their hands. He was wonderful. Knowing how much the U.S. Department of Education has promoted high-stakes testing, I was puzzled. My puzzlement turned to bewilderment a few days later when the Department of Education announced that the next round of Race to the Top would require the testing of 4- and 5-year-old children. Wait, I wondered, what about time for unstructured play, tinkering, etc.? So, yes, a fascinating event. I wouldn't have missed it.

QUOTABLE

Wealthy suburbs have same or less seat time.

From today's Chicago Tribune:

Ultimately, it's not about how long the day is but how the time is used. There is mounting evidence about the impact when the time is used well; that is the key, of course.If you look across the country at schools and districts that have experimented with more time, there have been some mixed results. That's why it has to be more time, thoughtfully used with quality teaching. It can't just be that you're going to add a little time here and there and expect significant outcomes." 

--  Jennifer Davis, co-founder and president of the National Center on Time & Learning, a Boston-based advocacy group for longer school days.

Two good letters to Sun-Times

Two good letters appeared in today's Sun-Times in response to the mayor's longer-school-day scam. Here they are in full:

Embarrassment all around

Shame on the mayor and the “lackey” aldermen who voted to back the mayor’s plan for a longer school day and for not standing up for the Chicago Teachers Union and the students. Ald. Ed Burke (14th) expressed his embarrassment by the CTU’s action — is this because he is trying to keep his key position? 

The CTU and the teachers all favor a longer school day — the mayor and Supt. Brizard keep overlooking this fact. The problem is in structuring the longer day. They should include the CTU and teachers in the planning for the longer day, not singling out individual schools. 

Burke is not the only one “embarrassed” — I am at the scab schools that were bought out by the mayor. Embarrassed that Brizard and Emmanuel are playing politics with the children of Chicago. Funny how this money was found and being donated for schools opting for a longer school day, but can’t be found for the teachers’ raises.

A longer school day without structure is like a restaurant serving “lots” of food — if the food is not tasty — who cares if you get a lot of it!

E. Toni Curtis,
Auburn Gresham 

Don’t blame the teachers

CPS created the shorter day and now is trying to blame the Chicago Teachers Union for it! When CPS moved most schools to closed campus, they put teachers’ lunch at the end of the day and 30 minutes planning time at the beginning of the day. We do have low instructional time (not as low as CPS claims, however) but our teacher work day is on par with most teachers around the state. There is a simple solution to the instructional time problem: Rearrange the day. Let the students be in the building during the teachers’ work day (normally, 8:30 to 3:30), stagger teachers’ lunch and a.m. planning periods so that students can receive instruction during these times. Hire art, music, library, or math teachers to teach students while regular teachers are at lunch or planning, and the short school day is over. Easy. No drama.

Carol Caref, Hyde Park

My Twitter debate with Cornelia on basketball and the longer school day

Tweeting with @Corneliagracchi -- Historian, Teacher, Gardener, Traveler,Grandmother. Very Old, both Soul and Other Wise

Cornelia:  
You are a coach. Is it better to spend more time or less time practicing? Sorry for being a grouch. We owe our students good ed.

Me:
More time (than what?) practicing might be good for my players. But I wouldn't let mayor and pols tell me how long practices should be. 

Me again:
Ur a historian. Tell me, exactly how many minutes of practice do MY players need? And tell me how you decided? 

I'm on a roll :
Tell me, what should I have them practice in that extra time? Dribbling? Passing? Rebounding? What? 

Me again: 
Yes, more practice would help my players. But not if time was used to prep for bubble tests about basketball. 

Cornelia:
Agree on bub test,but if unions, whch I strongly supp, obj to more time in classrm, makng a foolish pedagogic and PR error.

Me: 
I agree. But unions aren't necessarily opposing longer school day. Just the way it is being done in Chicago. They R right

Cornelia: 
Geez, an old lady cant keep up with yr tweets. I agree a fine line exists here wch is why we cant lose right to collec. bargain 

Me: 
Yes, fastest Tweeter in the midwest. Thanks.

Cornelia:
See, all that extra time you spent practicing has paid off!

Me:
Yes, but kids can't practice that in school. Tweeting is banned. So is FB and all social networking at CPS. 

Cornelia:
If you mean banned while in class, this old Dry as Dust says Hurrah!

Arrrgghh! An old school-er. Can't win. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

9/12

“We spent trillions on foreign wars and allowed our physical infrastructure to deteriorate and our technological infrastructure to fall behind that of the rest of the developed world. We ignored the increase in inequality and laughed off the decline in U.S. manufacturing. We fed a credit bubble that would eventually pop our economy and ran up the debt and eased monetary policy in ways that would make an effective countercyclical response almost impossible. Our problems today are not the result of Sept. 11, but they are in many ways the result of Sept. 12.” — Ezra Klein, Bloomberg News columnist

CTU Prez Karen Lewis

"The longer school day is a distraction from what's really going on in our schools, which is that we have an incoherent, ridiculous curriculum that people don't want to address. We have real problems, structural problems," Lewis said. "Because if we're doing the same thing and only doing it longer, all we're doing is torturing children." -- Tribune

Mayor Emanuel to CTU president

“F--- you, Lewis.” -- Sun-Times

Duncan in Chicago

“Class sizes are increasing. We are losing art, music and physical education. None of that is good for education.’’ Sun-Times

Monday's quiz: Guess who cut arts, music, and phys ed during 7 years he was schools CEO?

At the end of the day...

"Ah, yes. Mayors come and mayors go, but the royal ass-kissing remains." - Ben Joravsky, The Reader

In the 30-something years I've been around Chicago's public schools, as an educator, a parent, an education writer, and school reform activist, I've never seen anything like this. Mayor Rahm Emanuel's cynical, politically-motivated move against teachers and their unions dwarfs by comparison, anything his predecessors have done under the name of school reform.

After only being able to pressure and bribe four schools into accepting his longer hours for less pay scheme, Rahm has mobilized  his toadies in the city council to put the muscle on principals in their ward, who are being told in no uncertain terms to deliver their schools, or else.

The idea that adopting a longer day means waiving their contract — and scabbing on their own union — is perhaps the biggest hurdle facing Disney Magnet Principal Kathleen Hagstrom.  At a local school council meeting Thursday, Disney teachers responded by asking questions about what a longer day would look like, and worried aloud that taking the vote was akin to crossing a picket line.

They are right to worry on both counts. No one knows what a longer day would look like. Rahm has made clear that he favors using the time for more test-prep in reading and math. And it's becoming obvious that this all has little to do with actual school improvement but is rather a thinly disguised plan, most likely hatched over at the Civic Committee, to neuter the union and eliminate teachers collective bargaining rights. After all, nobody is against a longer school day, including the CTU. In fact, one reason why some teachers may vote for the contract waiver is that they often stay long after teaching hours with no compensation. The question is, what will happen in that extra time? How will it be paid for? Where is the research behind it? And most importantly, how will these decisions get made?

Yesterday, Rahm brought his pal Arne Duncan back into town to stump for the more-seat-time plan. I gagged when I heard Duncan call Chicago's school day, a "disgrace" and a badge of shame." Duncan autocratically ran the schools here for seven years under the last mayor and with a compliant union leadership.

The highest performing districts in the state as well as the elite private schools attended by Emanuel (New Trier) and  Duncan (Univ. of Chicago Lab) all have approximately the same disgraceful school day. Duncan's flack army had already prepped him in anticipation of the obvious question. After all, Duncan rode the myth of his Chicago school-turnaround "miracle" all the way to Washington.

 "We were unsuccessful (in pushing for a longer school day, and it was one of my big regrets. There's no question about it," Duncan told the Tribune.

Have you noticed how Duncan likes to preface his remarks with, "absolutely" or "there's no question about it" when there are always questions about it?

More Duncan:

"I think it's important to have a good process, to have input from teachers, from the union. But at the end of the day... 

Have you noticed how duplicitous Duncan always feeds us the b.s. first and then drops the hammer after the words, "but at the end of the day...? Like, "I'm against all this test prep, but at the end of the day...,  

"...at the end of the day, Chicago has been at the bottom of the barrel nationally in this area for far too long. Chicago now has a chance to break through, and that's tremendously exciting."

I don't expect a soft-balling media to ask Duncan to document this alleged hard-fought, but unsuccessful push for a longer day during his seven-year rein. I guess that's why we need more of us un-embedded bloggers and tweeters.


At the beginning of the day...

For the real deal on how Rahm plans to come up with $89 million in longer-school-day bribe money, be sure and read Matt Farmer's excellent piece at Gapers Block. Also check out Ben Joravsky's latest at The Reader, "Mayor Emanuel's budget show."

******

Finally, be sure and come to the next meeting of Chicago/SOS is at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 17th at Jane Addams Hull House, 800 S. Halsted. Bring a friend. 

The lies of Texas...

When Chicago's mayor and school boss, Rahm Emanuel, held up Houston as his model for school reform, it gave me the creeps. His rationale was that Houston schools are superior because of their longer school day and year. Rahm claimed that kids in Houston wound up with 4 more years of instruction. It was a political talking point admittedly fed to him by Jonah Edelman and Children First.

Now it's left to Rahm to explain why Houston's Lee High School is currently being made to emulate some Texas charter schools that have --wait, hold your breath-- A LONGER SCHOOL DAY.

But Rahm, I thought you said they already had a longer school day. I mean, how much longer can the day get in Lee's overheated classrooms before the school gets off the NCLB sh*t list. How about 10 hours? 12?

Of course more seat time is not a cure for the problems facing Lee High or any other high school in Houston (or Chicago). I know. I worked in the Houston schools back in the '90s -- two previous reform waves ago. Some of you might recall those as the "Texas Miracle" days.

Texas' football-crazy schools were all too big and we were trying to create smaller learning communities within them. While some important gains were made, we learned then that no single reform can fundamentally change and improve urban school systems so long as the majority of the kids were living in poverty. The SLCs were soon dismantled when Gates pulled the plug on funding. Many were turned into selective enrollment programs that creamed middle-class white kids and racially segregated the high performing students from the rest.

******

Sam Dillon's NYT story about Lee H.S. , "Troubled Schools Try Mimicking the Charters," has many holes in it. First off, Dillon claims that this current charter school reform experiment, where traditional schools attempt to model some charter school innovation, "is the first of its kind in the country." Doesn't he know that the early teacher-led small and charter schools were created with that exact purpose in mind? The real problem has been that very few charters are doing anything so innovative that regular public schools couldn't or hadn't been doing for decades and without becoming privatized. Charters were just doing more (or less) of it and with different kids and coming out with basically the same (or worse) results.

What Dillon left out was the context and whole history of the reform at Lee (formerly called Robert E. Lee when it opened in 1962 as a bastion of racial segregation and white supremacy, even carrying the battle flag of the Confederacy). In past decade, whites fled from Lee as HISD's population grew poorer and more Hispanic. Lee was labeled by Arne Duncan as "a dropout factory." It wasn't. Houston was.

The real "problem." as Texas schools chief Robert Scott  complains about in this interview with AEI's Rick Hess, was Houston's "changing demographics."  I'll interpret: As more poor, black and brown kids attend city schools, resources are cut and test scores go down. Why? Because the tests, as Duncan has recently admitted, are more a measure of parents income than they are of anything going on in classrooms. Scott, who opted out of both rounds of Duncan's Race To The Top, tells Hess, "there is no such thing as a magic bullet in education. Anyone that tells you this one thing will change the course of your education system is either delusional or is lying to you."

Scott is right of course. That includes Rahm's magic bullet of a longer school day. What Scott doesn't address (and Hess never asks about) is Texas' concentrations of child poverty and how that impacts teaching, learning, and yes -- test scores. The teaching at Lee High School hasn't gotten worse. The school day hasn't gotten shorter. It's poverty and segregation that is plaguing Houston schools.

Remember Obama's Labor Day speech?

"When union workers agree to pay freezes and pay cuts, they're not doing it just to keep their jobs, they're doing it so that their fellow workers, their fellow Americans can keep their jobs." --Pres. Obama 

Remember, I called it a bunch of 'horse bleep'? Well, here's what happened in Illinois. Gov. Quinn promised no lay-offs if state workers accepted pay cuts. Guess what?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... 

Mayoral control gets an F from New Yorkers

Arne Duncan has made mayoral control of urban school districts, an essential piece of his top-down school reform model. Duncan went so far as to say he would consider his time as education secretary a “failure” if more mayors didn’t take over city school systems by the end of his tenure.

But, according to a New York Times poll, New Yorkers are broadly dissatisfied with the quality of their public schools, and most say the city’s school system has stagnated or declined since Mayor Bloomberg took control of it nine years ago. In follow-up interviews, poll respondents expressed various reasons for their dissatisfaction, including frustration over the system of school choice, services for disabled children and the emphasis on standardized tests.

“Bloomberg treats the schools and the education system like a business,” said Liette Pedraza-Tucker, 41, a film editor from Brooklyn. “But schools aren’t a business. Kids need nurturing, not to be treated like adults.”

Robert Kemp, 74, a retired bank officer from Queens, said: “What they’re teaching is too narrowly focused. It’s all ‘Let’s pass tests’; it’s not about turning out educated kids.”

The poll also showed that a year of political attacks on teachers and their unions nationally hasn't registered with New Yorkers. Of those who responded, most praised classroom teachers and favored the teachers union and its call for smaller class sizes.

Teachers in the pulpit

CPS teacher Linda Boyle, of Social Justice High School | Jean Lachat~Sun-Times

That's where they were Sunday in Chicago. A CTU spokeswoman said the union took its message to about 100 churches or schools for Labor Day.

Linda Boyle at Broadway United Methodist Church, 3338 N. Broadway. Boyle, a special education teacher at the Little Village Lawndale School for Social Justice, told church members that corporate reformers  are trying to undermine public schools and weaken the CTU, which, with 30,000 members, is the largest union in Illinois.

Boyle said a longer day could hurt many children at her school. She said students who need extra help get one-on-one instruction at the end of the regular day, and Emanuel’s plan would deny them that in favor of more classroom time.

“There’s just no evidence-based research that shows the additional 90 minutes is a good idea,” Boyle said. -- Sun-Times

Where's the plan, Rahm?

Sun-Times columnist Ester Cepeda asks Rahm, "Where's the plan for your longer school day?"

Emanuel is going around town asking everyone from clergy to youth task-force members to support a plan that isn’t actually a plan but merely a vague vision of a longer school day that miraculously improves student academic achievement. Worse, he’s balking at the idea that careful consideration of exactly what students will be doing during that time — and collaboration with the teachers who will be leading those activities — should be the driving factor in formulating such a drastic change.

Obama's Labor Day speech

Yes, the president did mention Wisconsin (ever so slightly) in his Labor Day speech in Detroit. But much of the speech could have come directly from Gov. Walker himself.

"When union workers agree to pay freezes and pay cuts, they're not doing it just to keep their jobs, they're doing it so that their fellow workers, their fellow Americans can keep their jobs."

What a bunch of horse bleep. 

Brizard denies he's Rahm's tool

“I don’t care what anyone says. ... I am in charge of the system. -- Sun-Times

Of course you are, J.C. Of course you are.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Missing Studs Terkel on Labor Day

What would he say today about Obama, his chosen Democratic president, who came into office fortified with a Democratic House and Senate?  “He would be so appalled and disappointed,” said Sydney Lewis, the woman Studs called his “amanuensis,” the transcriber and adviser on many of his books. Lewis, 58, is as furious at this administration as Studs would have been, saying, “I want Obama to take off his [bleeping] Jimmy Carter sweater and have some [bleeps]!” -- Carol Marin, Sun-Times

Charles Blow

But how do we expect to entice the best and brightest to become teachers when we keep tearing the profession down? -- New York Times

Ben Joravsky

The minimum wage is currently $8.25 an hour, for you folks keeping track at home. In short, teachers get less than minimum wage while the Rickettses may get less than $200 million. -- Chicago Reader

Anonymous Skinner teacher

One teacher at Skinner, who asked not to be named, said she voted against the longer school day but said many of the staff probably felt pressured to agree to the change. 

“The preference of the principal was known, there were some strong voices against [voting no], so it doesn’t take a lot to get to 50 percent,” the teacher said. “We’re a staff of 15 people, so it doesn’t take that much, especially with a lot of new staff members who are eager not to lose their jobs.” -- Sun-Times

Chicago teachers respond to bashing by the mayor and the media

Teach-In at the Thompson Center (M.Klonsky pic)

It's sad, yet understandable that some Chicago teachers feel the need to prove to the public that they work hard. If any of our local politicians tried teaching in a Chicago school for a week, they might restrain themselves from the rabid teacher bashing that dominates campaign rhetoric these days.

With that said, I have to give credit to the small band of city teachers who engaged in a silent teach-in this afternoon, outside the Thompson Center. The group posted signs that read: SHHH! Grading and Lesson Planning in Progress and sat in the blazing summer heat for hours, in symbolic protest.

Phil Cantor (M.Klonsky pic)

Phil Cantor, who teaches science and AP psychology at North Grand High School explained the purpose of the Teach-In.

"I'm out here because teachers are being bashed in the media. Everybody should know that teachers work way more than the time they are officially on the clock. The mayor has taken back the raise that was promised us in the last contract, claiming that we don't work long enough hours. Now they're offering elementary school teachers a 2% raise (which is really a 2% cut in pay) to work 26% longer hours. What worker would ever agree to that?"

Just up the lake shore from Chicago...

New Trier High School

Rahm Emanuel continues to turn the longer school day/year issue into a bloody war, battled out with the union in the media. But a few miles up the lake shore, in Rahm's home town, the same issues are resolved quite differently.

Winnetka is among the nation's wealthiest communities. New Trier H.S. is often referred to as one of the nation's best. It has graduated such notables as Emanuel and Donald Rumsfeld (yuck!). It's not that they have discovered some new great way to teach their students in Winnetka. The curriculum is fairly traditional and there's nothing genetic or anything in the drinking water that makes their kids smarter. Their school year is the same as Chicago's.

Rather their super-high test scores (better than Finland's)  and college-going rate can best be attributed to the wealth of resources available to families and students. New Trier's teachers are highly regarded and paid well, nearly twice as much as other state high school teachers. A recent community survey said the recruitment and retention of top teachers is a "top priority."  Most students come to school well-fed from homes with high-income earning parents, many of whom are well-heeled  professionals or corporate execs. The median income for a New Trier family is $144,976 and just 1.2% of the population is below the poverty line. Property values remain high, due in large part to the proximity to the schools. If your standard is high test scores, that is the formula for school success.

I was part of a protest effort in 2008, where parents in Chicago boycotted the opening day of school and we bused thousands of kids from the south side up to Winnetka and tried (unsuccessfully of course) to enroll them at New Trier. The point was to show the huge disparity in per/student ed funding between the two neighboring Illinois districts. While we made a splash in the media for a day, nothing changed. The gap between white wealthy Winnetka and Chicago grows wider.

2008 Chicago boycott and attempt to enroll students at New Trier. (M. Klonsky pic)

Chicagoans were once again reminded of that disparity yesterday when it was announced that New Trier's teachers have won a 3.5% raise (it could swing up to 4.444%)  and that in return they agreed to add one more teaching day to the school calendar— going from 180 days last year to 182 by 2012-13.  In contrast, Chicago teachers have had their contracted 4% raise taken away and instead are being ordered to work what amounts to 10 or more extra days each year for about $4.10/hour -- about half minimum wage. Despite all of Rahm's demagogy about the short Chicago school year, its 180 day schedule is essentially the same length as New Trier's.

The raise and added school day in Winnetka were the product of relatively peaceful negotiations between the board and the union, carried out without much media fanfare. There was, as expected, some contention between the two sides. The negotiations were “sometimes heated,” according to a District 203 associate superintendent. A mediator met several times with the two sides. But in the end, they worked things out.

Of course Winnetka schools operate with a budget surplus each year as opposed to Chicago's widening deficit because 92% of their school funding comes from the high property taxes of its affluent surroundings

“The impact will be a positive one on reducing expenditures,” Dist. 203 Supt. Yonke said. “We were already looking at a balanced budget. Now we’re looking at slightly better than that.”

The raise was actually the smallest New Trier teachers had received in 20 years. Nevertheless, they will still earn on average, about $90,000/year compared to about $55,000 for Chicago high school teachers. The agreement also allows teachers to accumulate personal leave, along with sick leave, and increases tuition reimbursement from $1,750 to $2,000 per year.

Rahm's war on Chicago teachers and their union is a reflection of his low regard for the city's families and students.