If Chicago could vote, Claypool wouldn't have been CEO in first place.

Marching through the rain yesterday through Chicago Loop. 

Visitors in town yesterday from the west coast were awed by this city's political life. First by the march for immigrant rights and Fight For15 march they encountered on their drive in and second, by the vote of "no confidence" in schools CEO Forrest Claypool, they read about this morning.

The conversation made me recall the reasons I left the warmth, smog, the earthquakes and my beloved Dodgers in L.A. for the frozen winter tundra and steamy summers of the Windy City back in 1968 and then again in 1975.

Yes, I explained, if you miss the protest today, stick around. There will be another tomorrow. This is a vibrant political and cultural community, a union town and a sanctuary city. It was here that candidate Trump met his first major sign of mass resistance, turned a fled the city.

I've grown to love Chicago.

If Chicago could vote, Claypool would not be here. 

THE 99% VOTE OF CTU MEMBERS sent another powerful message both to the mayor and city and state officials, that Chicago teachers are a force to be reckoned with and that his hand-picked CEO has no juice as far as they are concerned.

The vote may give the mayor the excuse he's been looking for to get rid of this, his 3rd CEO and the 7th so far under mayor control began under Daley. We recall how Rahm Emanuel's second CEO, J.C. Brizard was hired after suffering his own vote of no-confidence back in his previous district of Rochester. Rahm and the Civic Committee must have taken that vote as a feather in Brizard's cap and a sign that he wouldn't be afraid to put the hammer down on the CTU and be a buffer for the mayor against political blow-back.

The result was Brizard's botched handling of the 2012 teachers strike leading to Rahm tossing him under the bus and J.C. himself getting back-stabbed by his own former friend and colleague, Barbara Byrd-Bennett. BBB was slipped in through the back elevator to replace Brizard in the contract negotiations. She then went on to close 50 schools four years ago this month. Then she committed fraud, bilking the city's school children out of millions.

She's on her way to prison. Claypool look like he's toast. But we will have to wait til the next election to get rid of Rahm Emanuel.

How will this vote of no confidence play out is anybody's guess. But it's already a win for the CTU, another show of unity in the face of Gov. Rauner's drastic budget cuts and the mayor's own failure to respond beyond making teachers bare the burden of the funding crisis.

It's also an indication of the mass support needed to end the budget crisis and win the right to an elected school board Chicago. If citizens could elect our school board here, Claypool wouldn't have been here in the first place.

Former CPS liar-in-chief leaves Rahm's Super PAC to start her own biz.

Substance photo

"She will be a real asset to those that work with her," says Michael Sacks, CEO of Grosvenor Capital Management. -- Crain's

Becky Carroll served as J.C. Brizard's and Byrd-Bennett's liar-in-chief at CPS before moving over to run Rahm's campaign Super PAC. Now, after a year and a half at Chicago Forward, Carroll is setting out on her own. Her new money-making venture is called Chicago Backward (just kidding) C-Strategies LLC and I assume her specialty will be union-busting, school privatization, and attacking progressive political candidates, as always.

Carroll's time at CPS was mostly spent trying to cover up Brizard's ineptness (admittedly an impossible job) and then keep a lid on the BBB/SUPES affair and the UNO corruption scandals. Then there was her CPS budget deception and her selling of the school closings (she named it, "right-sizing"). 

Oh, I almost forgot her efforts to spread dis-information about the Chicago teachers strike in 2012. Quite a track record.

After her relationship with local reporters crashed and burned last year, the mayor pulled her out of CPS' massive Communications Dept. and moved her over to run Chicago Forward where she headed the PAC's $5M effort to elect Rahm's favored puppy-dog aldermen. $2M of that was used to target two progressives, Scott Waguespack in the 32nd and Carlos Rosa in the 35th. Both won handily over machine candidates.

For more on Chicago Forward's failed run at the progressives, see Paul Blumenthal's piece at Huffington, "Chicago Progressives Emboldened After Rahm Emanuel's Super PAC Fails To Beat Them."

Despite this trail of losses, I'm sure Carroll, with investors like Michael Sacks behind her, will make a pile of money in her new venture. Carroll says she's already signed up 10 or so clients, including the Illinois Restaurant Association, who's leading the charge against increasing the minimum wage, and  union-busting education group, Stand for Children.

I can't say I wish her well.

Thanks Kenyon... Hey where's J.C. Brizard? ... Day 25 for hunger strike

Thanks to Kenyon super Prof. Peter Rutkoff for inviting us to come engage with students at Kenyon College yesterday. Undergrads we met, including some from Chicago, were reading Jonathan Kozol's "Savage Inequalities", analyzing it against conditions in urban schools today, and brainstorming ways to support struggling schools, parents and students in Knox County and other communities in Ohio.

Peter helped to create the college’s interdisciplinary American Studies program in 1990. His books cover subjects such as the origins of Bebop, styles of baseball, and social theory in Europe and America. Some of his titles include: his novel, Irish Eyes, New York Modern: The Arts and the City, Shadow Ball: A Novel of Baseball and Chicago, and Cooperstown Chronicles: Camp and Other Love Stories.

Rahm bounced Brizard

CONNECTIONS...Former Chicago schools CEO J.C. Brizard was a disaster for CPS. He was bounced unceremoniously by Rahm Emanuel to make room for triple disaster, Barbara Byrd-Bennett. But don't worry. His golden parachute landed him on his feet and Brizard will be using his insider connections to try and hustle big consulting contracts for Cross & Joftus.

Cross refers to Christopher Cross, a former Education Department assistant secretary who now is connected with the Broad Foundation.

DYETT PARENTS and Chicago community activists are now in the 25th day of their hunger strike. Essence Magazine reports:

Though Mayor Emanuel, who has shuttered nearly 50 schools since 2013, says that the school closures are beneficial to students and allow them to attend better high schools, many parents feel that the reforms target Black residents.

You think...?

The group announced that three activists, Brandon Johnson with the Chicago Teachers Union, Susan Hurley with Chicago Jobs With Justice and Asif Wilson with Teachers for Social Justice have now joined the hunger strike.

Claypool will run Rahm's Clark St. Operation. Otherwise known as CPS.

At a news conference with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, CTA President Forrest Claypool talks about making the Red Line trains run on time.. (Sun-Times photo)

Okay, so it looks like the hated David Vitale is out and ComEd/Excelon nukes guy Frank Clark is in as Rahm's hand-picked school board chief. And Rahm's faithful sidekick Forrest Claypool replaces Byrd-Bennett and interim Jesse Ruiz as the 6th schools CEO in 6 years.

For those who don't know Clark, he was the head of the commission that managed the secret list of supposedly "underutilized" schools and made the recommendations leading to the closing of 49 neighborhood public schools, mainly in the city's black community. He also did the suspect deal  with the Civic Consulting Alliance—a politically connected group of private business consultants linked to the pro-charter group New Schools For Chicago  -- to run the work of the same school-closing commission.

He's so into privately-run charter schools, he even had a Noble charter named after him (a la Gov. Rauner). It stands as a monument to his and Excelon's stewardship over the privatization of public space.

I thought Fran Spielman's reference to Claypool, back in April, as Rahm's "wartime consigliere" was appropriate.

He's the Clark in Rowe/Clark Charter

Having had it up to here with Broad Academy careerist education types --  J.C. Brizard and Byrd-Bennett -- and apparently steering clear of the Tribune's recommended "Mussolini" type, the Mayor has moved his fixer Claypool over from City Hall to run his Clark Street operation, otherwise known as CPS. Forget about national searches, public input, City Council review and all that small-d democratic crap. This is war.

Claypool can hit the ground running since he's already marshaling the CTU contract negotiations while doing damage control around the various federal investigations and grand jury hearings over UNO charter corruption and no-bid contract kick-backs. Claypool btw, is the master of privatization and no-bid contracting from his days as Daley's chief of staff as well as his running the park district and the CTA for Rahm. Remember the 2012 fiasco with Bombardier?  I do.

He's also got to be the guy who can cut the grand bargain agreement between Rahm, Madigan, Cullerton and Rauner to bail out district and find some short and long-term revenue (that means taxes, folks) to make pension payments and hopefully save the system from collapse.

I'm trusting that teachers, parents, the CTU, SEIU and the rest of us won't be just spectators while this grand bargain is made at our expense.

At the risk of repeating myself, Rahm's choosing another white, male Paul Vallas/Ron Huberman (Arne Duncan?) prototype manager as opposed to another traditional ed bureaucrat as schools CEO will matter little as far as teachers, parents and students are concerned.  So long as the schools CEO works solely at the pleasure of a mayor who has autocratic power over the schools, the change means little more than putting a ribbon on a donkey.

We need an elected school board and a taxing system that's fair.

Next CEO an educator, business manager or Vallas? Makes little difference under mayoral control.

“I think Barbara Byrd Bennett's legacy is going to be she'll be remembered by educators and community members as the person who sold the mayor's schools closings,” --  CTU VP Jesse Sharkey.

Carol Felsenthal at Chicago Mag interviews Paul Vallas and comes away thinking he may be the man for the job. I come away thinking, what has Carol been smoking?

Actually, my blog was intrigued by the idea. It kept whispering to me, "Oh please, yes, yes. Bring him on. Especially now, right in the middle of the Byrd-Bennett/SUPES grand jury hearings."

I mean, the guy has been running one step ahead of the feds and grand jury hearings since he left Bridgeport, where he gave FUSE a fat no-bid consulting contract a la SUPES/Synesi.

I know I have at least 70 more Vallas exposés stored away in virtual SmallTalk file cabinets. A Vallas appointment, while a total disaster for public ed, as it was in Philly, N.O. and Bridgeport, would be a windfall for SmallTalk.

But then my brain answers my blog: "No way in hell will Rahm go there". Mr. Brain is right. My sources tell me that Rahm will go with another loyal bureaucrat/manager, turnaround type like CTA boss Forrest Claypool. Think Ron Huberman. What could possibly go wrong?

We got a hint of another Huberman type from last week's Tribune editorial. Remember the Mussolini reference? Make the trains run on time? Get it? However, even Mussolini would be just another bureaucrat serving totally at the pleasure of the mayor.

Meanwhile, the media debate is all about whether Rahm should appoint another career educator like BBB or J.C Brizard, or another non-educator business guy? I don't think it makes a damn bit of difference so long as either one, along with the hand-picked school board, are mere puppy dogs. It's mayoral control of the schools that's the real issue here. The fact that Rahm is shopping for Chicago's 6th CEO in 6 years following Huberman, Mazany, Brizard, Byrd-Bennett, and Ruiz, makes my point. Instability is the name of the game and when things go south, like a major scandal or a teachers strike, they are all easily replaceable.

We need an elected school board and an end to autocratic rule over the schools.

Finally, Vallas appears on the crime scene.

The Synesi/SUPES Connection 

Once S-T reporters finally discovered the Synesi/SUPES connection in the current federal investigation of CPS contracting, I couldn't understand why they missed the obvious connection between Synesi/SUPES founder Gary Soloman and Chicago's first schools CEO, Paul Vallas. For some reason, no reporter would dare mention Vallas' name. This even though he had a direct connection to Synesi and was a central player in Synesi/SUPES expansion into other school districts including Chicago.

I can almost understand the omission. Vallas tried to keep his ties to Soloman and Synesi a secret, especially once the investigation began, even while setting the table for their consulting contracts in district after district. Then Soloman came out and claimed, "he had used Vallas’ name without permission and it was a mistake.”

Sorry -- It always takes me a while to stop rolling on the floor with laughter when I hear stuff like that.

I kept badgering the reporters on Twitter. Sometimes it takes a poke in the eye with a sharp stick to get their attention:

@AJCGetSchooled And it's not just in Chicago. DeKalb too. http://t.co/fL8fXBtD5K… #Supes #Synesi #Soloman Still no mention of #Vallas

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) May 7, 2015

Remember, Vallas got his asst. in La., LaVonne Sheffield, hired as Rockford Supt. (Shades of Byrd-Bennett #Synesi) https://t.co/K2RtuV6MQ1

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) May 7, 2015

I warned about this in '09. http://t.co/I722w2SgXE

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) May 7, 2015

Remember Vallas' Chief Education Officer in Chicago, Cozette Buckney? http://t.co/4qALUi2Shx

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) May 7, 2015

#Vallas has a new consulting firm. http://t.co/SWEHo5ZVit No more Soloman. They're the ones doing DeKalb Cty. http://t.co/0pKrHMRzR2

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) May 7, 2015

Finally in this morning's S-T we find the following. Credit reporters Lauren Fitzpatrick, Dan Mihalopoulos, and Fran Spielman.

 [Former CPS CEO, J.C.] Brizard is not the only former top CPS executive Solomon knew.

Paul Vallas, who was former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s first schools chief, said he met Solomon about 10 years ago, when Vallas led Philadelphia’s public schools.

Vallas said lawyers for the Philadelphia district sent Solomon a cease-and-desist letter because Solomon’s consulting company at the time boasted of holding “the exclusive rights to Paul Vallas’ model” for education reform. “He apologized and dropped it from his website,” Vallas said...

Another Solomon company, Synesi Associates, worked in Louisiana while Vallas was the top official in New Orleans. On the Synesi website, the company says it participated in “the successful implementation” of Vallas’ goals and led efforts that landed a $10 million grant from a private foundation.

Those assertions and other by Synesi are vast exaggerations, Vallas said. “He played no role in policy development,” Vallas said of Solomon.

See how they run.

Does Rahm deserve the credit for bump in grad rates? Uh uh.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett claim credit for a reported 4% bump in CPS grad rates. 

Rahm Emanuel has rankled the Pilsen and Little Village communities with a new campaign ad — one in which, anti-coal activists say. he attempts to grab full credit for closing two area coal plants, when in fact it had taken years of work. Community response has been quick and angry.

But I'm wondering why there isn't the same angry response from parents and educators as Rahm and CEO Byrd-Bennett try and take credit for the reported steady rise in CPS graduation rates which began more than 5 years ago when Daley was the mayor and the likes of Ron Huberman and J.C. Brizard were running the schools for him and all claiming credit for improved graduation rates? This is also part of a national trend that began about the same time as in Chicago.

Perhaps Rahm and BBB will claim credit for the upward national trend as well.

It's my hunch that few even know how graduation rates are determined or how much credibility goes with the latest calculations, let alone what's driving them.

University of Chicago researchers report that grad rates have increased by 15% since 2008. But given a 2011 change (see below) in the way graduation rates are measured, it's hard to know how they got that figure. They attribute the increases in large part to the power of their own research, which shows a strong correlation between freshmen being on-track and graduating on time.

A TIME Magazine report points to studies released in 2005 and 2007 by researchers at UC's Urban Education Institute’s Consortium on Chicago School Research which "made a simple but powerful finding: Graduation is mostly determined in the ninth grade year."

Institute leader Tim Knowles touted this research back in April:

Freshmen who are on track to graduate in the ninth grade (earning no more than one semester F in a core course and accumulating sufficient credits) are four times more likely to graduate than students who are off track. Researchers found that being on track in the ninth grade is a better predictor of high school graduation than a student's race, family income, the neighborhood they come from and prior test scores, combined.

 Suddenly, addressing the dropout problem was not about the host of factors over which educators have no control — neighborhoods, poverty, violence or prior academic achievement. There was a single, manageable intervention point: ninth grade course performance.

There! claims Knowles. Finally, a magic bullet. Just examine the Institute's data. Forget about all those silly distractions like race, poverty, gun violence, family circumstances and the decimation of neighborhoods (including the mass closing of neighborhood schools), over which we supposedly "have no control". Then implement a few early interventions in the freshman year -- not a bad idea but certainly not a new one -- and voila!

When I say it's not a new one, I'm thinking back to the small-schools movement of the early '90s in Chicago, where early interventions like freshman academies were short-lived. As for 9th-grade on-track rates, you can go back earlier than that. There are tons of early intervention studies showing, for example, that 3rd-grade reading proficiency drives future academic success and that retaining (failing) elementary grade students increases the probability of them dropping out by 5X.

This is not to say that there's no value in the U of C study. Consortium researchers like Melissa Roderick have been pointing to the need for early intervention to reduce high school dropouts for years, and without overstating the power of good data, she and they deserve lots of credit for their focus on urban schools and students.

But research aside, whenever there is reported progress in public education, you can bet your last buck that teachers will be the last ones to receive the credit. First in line are glory-grubbing politicians like Rahm Emanuel who are quick to claim all the credit for last year's bump in grad rates. This, even though his current approach drains these very schools of badly-needed resources and shifts them instead to crony-run charter networks like UNO as well as to pet selective-enrollment schools.

An all-too-compliant media is quick to play along, either rendering unto Caesar... or trying to be "balanced" (OMG, even my pal, the usually critical-thinking Ben Joravsky).

But whether you buy all of the U of C research or not, there is little evidence that the current mayor's top-down, imposed education policies; i.e., more seat time, mass school closures, replacing neighborhood public schools with privately-run charters, whitenizing the teaching corps, cutting community-based health clinics, etc... have anything to do with improved graduation rates.

Other factors to consider

• Has anyone considered the possibility that CPS' shrinking student population along with the mass exodus of nearly a quarter of a million African-Americans, including thousands of school-aged children, has impacted graduation rates?

• In 2011 new federal guidelines set up a single, uniform standard that all states must follow when calculating these rates. Now, the rate will be based on a strict measurement of what is called a “four-year adjusted cohort.” The formula divides the number of students who earn a diploma in four years or less by the number of students who formed the original cohort—that is, the number of students who entered 9th grade together—of the graduating class. So the question is -- how much of the small 4% increase should be attributed to the way dropouts and grads are counted? I'm thinking back a few years to 2006, when this same Consortium found that  only 6.5% of CPS freshmen went on to earn four-year college degrees by their mid-20s, and among African-American and Latino males, only 3%. I'd be curious to see how that number has changed.

• I still haven't seen how newly-reported graduation rates break out by school, neighborhood, race and poverty. As I reported before, I am concerned that the rate increase may be more reflective of the changing demographics in the city than any single school intervention. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"My best meeting with him was off stage, away from the lights at a private table in a steakhouse." -- J.C. Brizard 

CPS grandmother Irene Robinson

"This is safe passage? No, this is murder city," Robinson said, shaking her head. -- Aljazeera

 Ex-Marine  Col. Tom Tyrell

There are obvious differences between closing 50 schools and starting a new country or fighting terrorism. But there are also similarities. "Surge teams are available." -- WBEZ

 J.C. Brizard

“We severely underestimated the ability of the Chicago Teachers Union to lead a massive grassroots campaign against our administration... It takes a ton of inner strength to watch 4,000+ people in red shirts outside of your window protesting while a very heavy police presence looked on." -- Flypaper 

Dave Zirin

The people at this march are the face of resistance to what Dr. King called the “evil triplets of militarism, materialism and racism.” -- The Nation

Wilbur Millhouse 

 ...there are a ton of ideas pouring in about what to do with the 50 shuttered school buildings and the possibilities are somewhat unlimited.  I can’t say that if that community says they want to make it a charter school that we would say no. That hasn’t been given to me as a parameter to stop any community from turning it into a charter school. -- CBS News, Emanuel Names Panel To Decide Fate Of Shuttered School Buildings

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Byrd-Bennett

Barbara Byrd-Bennett (for future reference)

“I’m here for the long haul. I don’t know what to do other than sign in blood. . . . I’m here. I’m not gonna say ‘I’m outta here.’ That’s not who I am.” -- Chicago's 4th CEO in last 2 years.

Michelle Gunderson ‏

It takes a Chia Pet longer to grow than the 6 weekends a person spends at the Broad Academy training to be a superintendent. -- Tweeting @MSGunderson

Dan Quinn, Texas Freedom Network

 "That's where all these culture war battles will come to a head over what students learn about evolution, about civil rights, about church and state separation. All those battles will come in 2013 and 2014, and the textbooks will be in the classrooms for a generation." -- Monitoring Texas school board elections

Brooklyn parent, Lori Chajet

“I want my school to use tests to help instruction, to help find out if kids don’t know fractions. I don’t want my child to feel like her score will decide if her teacher has a job or not.” -- NYT: "Dear Teacher, Johnny Is Skipping the Test"

Brizard was never more than Rahm's front man

What we all knew months ago is now official. Jean-Claude ("Don't call me a puppet") Brizard is out. Barbara Byrd-Bennett is in. 

It was all so predictable. J.C. Brizard was never anything more than Rahm's front man. Just another of those itinerant, what-do-you-want-me-to-do-boss, bureaucrats who moves from job to job every couple of years collecting a fat pay check and a golden parachute. If he's Arne-Duncan-lucky, he may even be primed for a political career and go to Washington to play in the big leagues at the DOE. If he's Paul Vallas, he moves on to Philadelphia and then New Orleans, where he turns a natural disaster into a Mecca for privatization.

But unlike his non-educator predecessors, Vallas, Duncan and Huberman (who was brought over from the police department and then the CTA to City Hall's education department for two years)  Brizard was what my brother Fred jokingly calls, a wuzza -- a former real-life New York City educator.

But he had long been gone from the classroom or any direct contact with teaching and learning. Instead he had been recruited from the ranks to go through Eli Broad's superintendent's training academy where, like his friend, Michelle Rhee in D.C., he learned the art of union busting, mass teacher firing, school closing and privatization -- the prototype leader/manager for corporate reform. Former N.Y. Chancellor Joel Klein hired him as a manager and then he was brought in to Rochester to take on the teachers union.

It was Klein who made clear the role bureaucrats like Brizard play. He served the mayor as his buffer, ready to take the political fall after doing Bloomberg or Emanuel's dirty work.

"If you're going to take a tough stand on certain issues, talking about closing down schools, which he did, or talking about teachers' evaluations, you're going to rock some boats," Klein said. "(Brizard) understands that." -- Chicago Tribune 

He lasted only slightly more than three years in Rochester before becoming politically untenable when his autocratic style, a testing scandal, and fiscal mismanagement earned him an unprecedented 95% no-confidence vote of the city's teachers. Rahm looked at that vote and said to himself, "Ah, perfect. Just the man I need." When Rahm called, Brizard jumped ship without giving his board notice, leaving them in the lurch.

Just in case anyone had any illusions that this guy was anything more than Rahm's go-for, he wasn't even allowed to talk to the press for days after his arrival in Chicago, long enough to be sequestered and scripted by Rahm's boys.

Finally cornered in the corridors of the Rochester School District Thursday evening by a Sun-Times reporter, the man the mayor-elect picked to run the nation’s third largest school district beamed his winning smile, leaned in and asked, “How can I help you, without getting in trouble?” -- Sun-Times

He still didn't always get it right and often blurted out his disdain for public schools and his bias towards privatization. Speaking before a group of corporate reformers back in March, Brizard said:

“It doesn’t make sense (that) our parents pay taxes and then pay tuition (for their children) to go to (private) school as well.”

Brizard's role in school closings earned him the hatred of not only teachers, but community groups as well. At one board meeting in December, 2011, community protesters drowned out Brizard's voice as he was about to announce the closing of more schools, turning them over to private charter school management companies.  

“You have failed…You have produced chaos…You should be fired” they chanted. When they paused, billionaire board president David Vitale said he hoped they had “gotten it out of their system.” They hadn't.  

Byrd-Bennett

We all know now that Brizard's final undoing was his "mishandling" of the contract negotiations. When it became clear that Brizard had no juice, he was pulled from the negotiations and they were turned over to board president David Vitale to manage directly. The victorious strike and Rahm's plummeting poll ratings were final nails in Brizard's coffin. But even in the weeks leading up to the strike, Brizard could be seen running from the media and cancelling public appearances. He must have known he was already toast. 

His replacement, former Cleveland Supt. Barbara Byrd-Bennett -- more on BBB later-- was actually put in place (without the customary search) in April, serving as a mysterious shadow figure as "interim Chief Education Officer" but never showing her face until a few weeks ago. It soon became clear that she was already playing the role in the contract negotiations in place of Brizard who had lost all credibility. 

Rahm's quickie guide for non-teachers

At Peet's this morning, I'm practically choking on my coffee while reading, "CPS’s How To Guide for workers at strike contingency school" in  the Sun-Times.

The guide is supposed to be a quickie preparation handbook (are you watching, TFA?)  for the gaggle of principals, assistant principals, Central Office Staff and non-CTU employees, as well as yet-to-be-approved scab vendors. Also, anyone else Brizard can scrape up to man his 144 (don't-call-them-schools) "holding centers". I call them scab schools. CTU Pres. Karen Lewis calls them, "a train wreck" waiting to happen.

Among the suggestions on “how to prepare” for classroom duties:

• “Wear a watch — your room may not have a functioning clock.’’

• Dress comfortably as “many schools are NOT air-conditioned.’’

• “You will need to bring your own breakfast and lunch. Please note that you cannot rely on access to refrigerators or microwaves.’’

• “Keep personal items to a minimum.’’

• Sessions for kids run from 8:30 to 12:30 but “you should arrive as early as possible” and be prepared to stay late.

• Bring 30 sharpened pencils, 30 pens and a personal pencil sharpener.

• Bring “stickers or other small inexpensive incentive items.’’

• Bring old magazines and newspapers, puzzles and games.

There's one other tip the guide could have included: Don't drink too much coffee or water before school and be prepared to hold it in because there won't be anyone to relieve you (pun intended).

I can't imagine these poor suits from Clark Street still favoring a longer school day after this experience. But maybe they will gain a little respect for teachers once this is over.

A panicky Brizard sent Lewis a letter Friday, asking the union to voluntarily forgo picketing the 144 “Children First’’scab sites. He claims that he has “deep concerns’’ about forcing “impressionable” kids to “walk through a picket line with their parents.’’ He's also going to have to find a way to slip his forced-labor principals and A.P.s in through the back door to keep them from crossing picket lines. Remember, at some point they will have to go back and work with their teachers again and try to rebuild the trust that Rahm has shattered.

Of the 144 school sites offering half-day sessions, Lewis said, “They are going to be a mess. I wouldn’t send my children [there].’’ So if Brizard wanted to avoid picketers, she said, “I think he should shut them down.’’

.4 bump in Chicago tests scores 'phenomenal' says Brizard

Dizzy with success

While Rahm and Brizard become delirious over a slight bump in ACT scores, Bob Schaeffer helps us understand why, "the stagnant trend in ACT college readiness scores just released is yet another piece of evidence that test-driven K-12 education in the U.S. is a sweeping, expensive failure."

According to the Sun-Times, Chicago’s average ACT score "soared" to its highest level in at least 11 years, jumping from 17.2 last year to 17.6. That’s still well shy of the 18 generally considered minimally acceptable and the 20 CPS officials have used as a goal.

Emanuel called the scores "great news," while his Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said the growth was “phenomenal.” Brizard added, “I won’t take credit. It belongs to my teachers and principals.’’ -- Sun-Times

Thanks for reiterating the obvious J.C.

Neither Rahm nor Brizard everr mentioned the widening of the so-called "achievement gap" among white, Hispanic and African-American students. The percentage of white students who met or exceeded standards on the PSAE was 44.6 points higher than African-Americans and 32.2 points higher then Hispanics.

CTU V.P. Jesse Sharkey couldn't resist:

“Wow. If they are getting record success, why do we need a longer day?’’ asked Sharkey, among the CTU officials now negotiating a new contract with the district. “Now it turns out, before we had all these changes, we were actually improving at a record pace."

Schaeffer sums it up nicely:

But ACT averages for the high school class of 2012 (see chart below) show that neither of these predictions is close to becoming true. Overall ACT test scores are unchanged since 2008. Gaps between white and Asian American students, on the one hand, and African American, Hispanic and Native American, on the other, have grown slightly larger. Clearly current K-12 policies are not working. -- The Answer Sheet

CPS stonewalling FOIA requests on Clemente conversion

Matt Farmer on Clemente paper trail

My June 25th post about "Rahm's Monday Massacre at Clemente" caused quite a stir. As readers will recall,  Roberto Clemente High School was to be the city's third public high school converted into a wall-to-wall International Baccalaureate (IB) school. The first thing that the new principal Marcey Sorensen, who was brought over from reconstituted Tilden High, did was to use the IB transition to "clean house", firing more than 20 teachers without any due process.The Clemente firings set the stage for the current firing of veteran teachers at another mainly-Latino high school, Social Justice H.S. in Little Village.

Lots of you responded with comments, many of which were heated, taking both sides of the firing issues. Then, as school prepared to open, things kind of died down. Back to business as usual? No way, says  parent-union activist-blogger Matt Farmer who is now locked in a battle with CPS as he tries to track the paper trail leading to Clemente's IB conversion. Matt posts at Huffington:

As a taxpayer and a public school parent, I want to believe that some thoughtful analysis went into that decision.Maybe a memo or two explaining why Clemente might be a good candidate for this program? Perhaps a couple of pieces of paper discussing the cost estimates associated with this proposed transformation? A few e-mails talking about things like staffing and training requirements for the new program? A summary of feedback from the Humboldt Park community?

As you might expect, CPS gives Matt the brush-off telling him where to stick his FOIA requests. Brizard says, we don't need no stinkin' transparency. But Matt is a bulldog, as any of you who heard his dynamite speech at the big union meeting in May will testify (no pun intended). 

His experience as a lawyer tells him what the rest of us know by instinct. Whether it is Romney stonewalling requests for his tax returns, or CPS making Clemente documents dissappear, there's something there, right?

Keep at it Matt.

There's a man going round taking names

There's a man going 'round taking names
There's a man going 'round taking names
He's been taking my father's name
an' he left my heart in vain
there's a man going 'round taking names
-- Leadbelly

By asking CPS principals to spy on their own teachers and report "lawful" union activity back to the central office, Rahm and Brizard have taken their anti-teacher, anti-union crusade to a whole new level. By doing it openly, in the form of a "confidential" memo, which they must have known would be leaked by union-friendly principals, the pair have sabotaged any possibility of trust between school leaders and their staffs as the school year opens. They have also made it clear that instead of bargaining with the CTU in good faith to try and reach a fair settlement and avoid a strike, the pair have instead decided to wage a campaign of intimidation. It's nothing less than an open declaration of war on the CTU.

CTU leaders plan to brief the union’s House of Delegates this Wednesday on what they are calling intransigent negotiations on the part of CPS— and possibly ask for issuance of a 10-day notice of intent to strike.

Last night, I asked AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten if she would take action in response to the spy memo. She called the CPS action "stupid, terrible" and promised to "reach out to the CTU" and "follow up."

Now I'm waiting to hear what the Principals Association is going to do. Brizard's memo more or less redefines the role of school principal from instructional leader anti-union spy. Brizard has already put in place  “performance contracts” for principals, setting specific goals in areas such as “effective school organization." I guess we now know what that means to the folks downtown.

A report in today's Sun-Times indicates that Rahm/Brizard are preparing to use CPS' 15,000 non-teaching employees as scabs in the event of a strike. In it, CPS liar-in-chief Becky Carrol tells reporters Spielman and Rossi Carroll that  CPS merely sent principals a “straightforward” email directing them “not to interfere with union activities.’’ As we all know now, here's what the memo actually said.

Bernie Eschoo, a 29 year CPS veteran, who was among dozens of teachers who picketed Monday outside six CPS schools, told the Sun-Times reporters, “when you get to the cliff, at some point, you have to make a stand, and he [the mayor] has forced us into that.’’

Joe Scotese, an English teacher at Whitney Young High School who picketed Monday at a school on the South Side, told the Tribune, that in addition to pay and working conditions, he's concerned about larger issues like taking a stand against the private companies that run charter schools.

'We all know the economy is tough, we all know we're in a recession, but part of the fight here is making sure this is an attractive profession for people to get into now and in the future."

When I asked one south-side principal about the memo, he responded, "are they out of their fu**king minds?"

Brizard says "it's practically settled." CTU says, "keep saving."

Teachers returned to work in Chicago schools without a contract. But CEO Brizard is telling everyone that the new contract is a sure bet. 

“I’m optimistic that we’re going to come to a resolution soon, hopefully before Labor Day,”’ Brizard said after ringing the school bell at Lindblom High School, 6130 S. Wolcott, one of the city’s elite selective-enrollment high schools. 

But many CTU members I've talked with seem to think otherwise. A post on the CTU blog urges members to keep on putting money away in preparation for a strike.

Despite the interim agreement, there are many open issues still on the negotiating table in which there has been little movement. Public school educators also remain concerned about the District’s refusal to provide adequate wrap-around services for students severely impacted by poverty and violence in addition to threats of ballooning class sizes. Teachers are concerned about the new evaluation process of which 40 percent of the review is based on how students perform on standardized tests. Job security, health benefits and teacher pay have not been resolved.

 Rahm's top-down imposed longer school day began for about one-third of CPS students today. But there's still no clarity on the content of that day or what if any new resources will be made available to the impacted schools.  So far the teachers have held their own in the contract negotiations and the union has forced several important concessions in an  interim agreement signed by the Rahm-appointed board.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Thousands of union members and workers rallied in Philadelphia's Center City Saturday afternoon. While labor is obviously supporting Obama's candidacy, the rally hit at anti-union policies of both parties including the holding of the Democratic Convention in anti-union North Carolina.

Rick Smith, CWA activist

"This is much like the tea party started out to be, These are people who are tired of being screwed over." -- Daily Times

 AFL-CIO Pres, Richard Trumka 

"Anyone who says America can't afford retirement security, or health care, or decent pay for honest work, or great schools, or a postal service, or cops or firefighters and teachers and nurses, well they don't know what they're talking about and we won't accept their defeatism!" -- The Mercury

Columnist Eric Zorn

Jesus Christ is said to have fed multitudes with a handful of loaves and fishes. CPS CEO  Jean-Claude Brizard is planning to lengthen the school day for multitudes with a similarly minuscule deployment of new resources. -- Chicago Tribune 

Charter school cheaters 

"We are a corporation that is winding down and we are not required to provide that information to you," said Crescendo board member Donna Jones. -- L.A. Times

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"Firing teachers is not a school improvement strategy...Killing a neighborhood school is like putting a knife into the heart of a community." -- Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch

"Value-added Assessment, used as it is today, is junk science."  -- AFT Convention speech 

Randi Weingarten

The fixation on testing, the attacks on teachers and their unions—they’re all proxies for attacks on public education. That’s what this comes down to: whether people believe that kids have the right to good public schools close to where they live (and despite what anyone says—parents are with us on that), or whether our public education system should be privatized, bled dry or abandoned altogether. -- Speech at the AFT Convention

J.C. Brizard

Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said Tuesday that an elected school board would be “a disaster for the city” due the possibility of cronyism, nepotism and political agendas of elected officials getting in the way. -- Defender

Anthony Cody

I will be there because SOS has once again created a crossroads for our movement, just as it did last summer. -- Living in Dialogue

Caterpillar striker Bruce Boaz

“It’s corporate greed, plain and simple.” -- Sun-Times

Sen. Bernie Sanders

"... not content to own our economy, the 1 percent want to own our government as well.” -- Republic Report

CTU and community protests force more Rahm concessions

Rahm feeling the pressure

With national elections drawing near and a threatened teachers strike only 30 days away, Rahm is feeling pressure from inside his own camp to reach an agreement with the CTU. The Civic Federation is attacking his proposed school budget from one side while pro-union protests hit it from the other.  CEO Brizard can't go anywhere these days without being greeted by community protests, even backing out of a scheduled meeting at UIC last week which was cancelled for "security reasons."

The school board was scheduled to pass it's $5.2 billion 2012-13 operating budget which would have locked in a meager, strike-inciting 2% raise for teachers right in the middle of heated contract negotiation and on the heels of the fact-finders report recommending a much higher pay raise. But, this morning, faced with the threat of massive protests at Wednesday's board meeting, the board announced that the budget vote would be postponed until after an agreement was reached with the union."

We are going to wait until August to allow for contract negotiations to continue because our budget outcomes will have to reflect those decisions,” schools spokeswoman Becky Carroll said.

Jackson Potter of the Chicago Teachers Union called the delay a good-faith effort by the district in ongoing negotiations. “It’s common sense as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “This is an opportunity to stand away from the precipice and talk about what are the ways in which we can get our schools back on track by investing in them."

The decision to delay the budget vote drew an angry response from the city's charter school crowd which stood to gain millions of dollars at the expense of city schools if the budget was passed on Wednesday.

At a rally Monday, leaders from some of the city's most prominent charter networks, including the United Neighborhood Organization, Noble and Chicago International Charter Schools, attacked union teachers for demanding a double-digit raise and  called on the board to deliver on the $76 million allocated to them in the proposed budget. UNO's executive director, Juan Rangel, taking a page from The Sopranos, threatened,

"I know how this game gets played, and we're not going to allow the CTU to negotiate charters out."

But later today, the board announced even more concessions: 

Instead of requiring teachers to work a 20 percent longer day, the Chicago Public Schools have agreed to hire more teachers to handle “enrichment programs” that include art and music. Teachers will continue to work the same hours they do now. Additional time in the classroom — adding up to a 7-hour day in elementary schools and 7.5 hours-a-day, four-days-a-week in high school — will be handled by the new hires. 

Whether or not these announced concessions by Rahm's team are just a ploy or will be enough to avert a strike, community pressure for such concessions are certainly having an impact. Of course the devil is in the details and there's nothing in the board's announcements about teacher pay raises.

But it's clear that Rahm's strategy of posturing and refusing to bargain seriously has been upended. This in itself represents a victory for the CTU whose hand has been strengthened by growing community support and a solid 90% strike support vote of it's membership.

Despite total focus on testing, CPS scores stay flat

Despite Rahm/Brizard making a total fetish of testing while diverting thousands of hours of classroom time and millions of badly-needed dollars towards test-prep, scores remain flat in CPS elementary schools. In fact during the first year of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s watch scores rose by the smallest margin — only 0.9 of a percentage point (statistically insignificant) — since 2005. Charter schools — whose $76 million planned expansion drew boos and hisses at recent budget hearings — posted increases that were only fractionally better than the district average.

Only 17.8 percent of CPS elementary schools “exceeded” state standards. Both the “meeting” and “exceeding’’ gains were the smallest since 2005. This year's gap between African-American and white students remained at nearly 22 percentage points, and between white and Hispanic students about 15 percentage points.

This didn't stop Rahm's overstaffed, giddy-with-success CPS spin squad from talking about "record high scores" and attributing even this statistically insignificant bump to the top-down-imposed longer school day. Nobody was buying that B.S. CPS Chief of Instruction Jennifer Cheatham (pronounced cheat-um) said she was “excited” about the “promising” longer day results but even she had to admit that, “it’s hard to attribute the [longer] school day in isolation to test score gains.’’

By the way, what is a chief of instruction anyway, and how is that different from the system's currently missing chief education office. Inquiring minds want to know.

The Sun-Times reports: 

Three of the five longer-day "Pioneer Schools" actually posted worse gains than the system. Two went down; one (Skinner North) showed no change in its 100 percent passing rate but dropped 10.5 percentage points in its "exceeding state standards" rate. Two went up -- including Fiske Elementary, where the passing rate jumped a massive 11.8 percentage points. Of the 12 schools that started a longer day by January, half had better gains than the system and half had worse. 

Some 220 elementary schools that did not receive up to $150,000 per school and teacher stipends to institute a longer day also beat the systemwide average gain, according to the S-T analysis.

Consultant Barbara Radner of DePaul University’s Center for Urban Education calls the CPS analysis “distorted,’’as it drew averages from only a handful of schools with widely mixed results.

“This is inaccurate, misleading and dangerous. Clearly the minutes were not the magic….. Other schools without the 90 minutes did better. So the question is, what should schools do with the minutes they do have? The question is what is the best way to teach kids, not how many minutes do you have. The emperor has no clothes. I would call this a failed experiment.’’

Rahm lied about Clemente's new IB program

The joke is on us. While all of us were focused on the firing of at least 22 Clemente teachers last week, over at the Clark St. wing of City Hall, J.C. Brizard and the mayor were figuring out how to pull another fast one on the Humboldt Park community.

Rahm's announced plan to turn Clemente High School into a wall-to-wall IB academy turns out to be a hoax. Emanuel had told parents and community leaders that the wall-to-wall schools were an expansion of the city’s International Baccalaureate diploma programs, which operate inside 13 neighborhood high schools and offer students a curriculum originally designed in Switzerland for the children of diplomats. Emanuel and school officials have said the wall-to-wall IB schools would put every student through the rigorous program, not just a select group.

But, according to WBEZ' Linda Lutton: ,

...what the mayor and schools CEO have not said is that a good percentage of students in Chicago’s new wall-to-wall IB schools could actually end up in a new and untested International Baccalaureate technical education track—not in the IB Diploma Programme researchers have lauded for its success at getting low-income minority kids into selective colleges.

Asked directly by WBEZ about the possible vocational track in the new schools, Emanuel said Thursday there would be “gradations” in the IB offerings at the wall-to-wall IB schools. “But it’s built towards college, that’s what it’s really built for.”

Or not.