Oinks & Squeals

"I misspoke"

How do you know if the Civic Committee's Ty Fahner is lying? Notice his snout is moving.

First, the man my brother Fred calls "Eden Martin's bastard child", brags how he and other CC members made phone calls and pressured Moody's and S&P to lower state's credit rating -- which they did.  Now he's telling Rich Miller at Capitol Fax that it never happened. But Miller's not buying it.

******

* From an e-mail I received yesterday from Civic Committee President Ty Fahner…

Regarding my comments at the Union League Club in March, I misspoke.
First, while I may have said so, I didn’t call the ratings agencies, nor did any of our Civic Committee staff. My response to the questions was very confusing and inarticulate. If you notice, at the end of my answer, I close by saying it wouldn’t be the responsible thing for me to have done so with our members being the state’s largest employers. But I did say it.

He misspoke? That’s a pretty long story for a simple misspeak. Here’s the complete Fahner quote…

“The Civic Committee, not me, but me and some of the people that make up the Civic Committee, some of the same names I mentioned before, did meet with and call, in one case it was in person, a couple of calls to Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s, and say, ‘How in the hell can you guys do this? You’re an enabler to let the state continue. You keep threatening more and more and more.’

“And I think now we’ve backed off, because we don’t want to be the straw that breaks the back, But if you watch what happened over the last few years, it’s been steadily down. Before that, it’s been the blind eye, and that’s a whole different topic, as you know, about how the rating agencies act and don’t act. That’s more in your field and stuff. It has been irresponsible. We have told them that we thought they were being irresponsible, but we stopped that a couple months ago. I do know that we suggested that they talk to the governor, the governor’s staff to see if he could give them comfort on where the state was going, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re really close now. I hope we’re close.”

“Inarticulate,” maybe, but not really confusing. He said what he said, and it was pretty darned detailed.

* Anyway, Fahner told me nobody from staff spoke with the ratings agencies, so I followed up with a question about whether any Civic Committee members had meetings and here’s his e-mailed response…

Rich, to be clear, I am not aware of anyone connected with the civic committee that contacted the rating agencies to urge Illinois be downgraded or for any other reason.

So, he made the story up out of whole cloth? And this guy is running the most powerful business group in Illinois?
* Back to Fahner’s original e-mail…

Finally, if there’s any good news in this, it’s that even a cynical political columnist like you now cares about pension reform, something we’ve been screaming about for a while now. We appreciate that. Stay on it. Illinois is in critical condition and we need everybody’s hands on deck.

Whatever.

Gov. "Squeezy" and autocrat Rahm

It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. It's not only the low point of this once-progressive governor's career, it is characteristic of the buffoonery that marks state Democrats' attack on public employees' pensions and on their own political base. Of course I'm referring to Gov. "Squeezy's" pet python and his "grass-roots" campaign to "reform" the pension fund.

It all makes me wonder:   first, why are we taxpayers footing the bill for this crap? And second, what idiot on the gov's staff ingested enough drugs to come up with Squeezy? As I said the day Quinn was chased out of the state fair by thousands of pissed-off union members down in Springfield -- he's toast.

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The school board appointment means that two former CPS principals — Azcoitia and Mahalia Hines — will be voting on what could be the closure of scores of schools as the system begins to “right-size’’ the nation’s third-largest school district. -- Sun-Times

If we had an elected school board, I would be applauding the selection of Carlos Azcoitia. But with the mayor continuing his assault on neighborhood schools, I take little comfort in his appointment to Rahm's  rubber-stamp school board. Azcoitia has been one of Chicago's best community educators with a legacy of leadership in the creation of two wonderful small schools in Little Village -- Telpochcalli and Community Links.

But I'm sure that autocrat Rahm made it clear before appointing educators Azcoitia, Hines and CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett to his billionaire-dominated board that he expects nothing less than their uncritical support for the Civic Committee's plan to close 100 neighborhood schools in the city's most under-served black and Latino communities to pave the way for 100 privately-run charter schools. There are no NO VOTES allowed on Rahm's hand-picked board.

But it's still hard for me to imagine Azcoitia playing a role in the closing of some of the very schools he helped to create. Nevertheless, the CTU, parents and community groups aren't going to sit around hoping that Azcoitia, Hines, Byrd-Bennett or anyone in the City Council will have enough spine to stand up to the little autocrat when push comes to shove.

Resistance to the school closings has already succeeded in forcing the Board's current stall tactics. Now they want to delay providing us a list of school closures until March 2013. And they want to undercut the power of the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force (CEFTF) by establishing their own school-closing commission that meets in secret.

But this won't fly, as I'm sure CTU President Karen Lewis will tell the City Club when she speaks at their luncheon this afternoon.

More on Clemente firings

Thanks to some of the many anonymous commentators on the Clemente story for the factual corrections; i.e., the number of principals at Clemente since Irene Damota's departure.  The best accounting I have been able to come up with is this, starting with Kenebrew in June 2010: Kenebrew, Gilligan, Dr. Heiu, Soli, Rodriguez, Soli, Sorensen. While open to further corrections on this, I think the point I made about instability and lack of community cohesiveness stands.

I have stopped posting any anonymous comments allegedly coming from some Clemente teachers debasing their fellow teachers. I find this a self-demeaning, unprofessional practice, which says more about the current culture and leadership of the school than it does about any of its teaching and career staff.

I have been an active supporter of Clemente High School since it was opened in 1975 and have worked with hundreds of teachers and several principals there over the years to try to help solve some of the school's many problems. I found that most of these problems were caused by forces outside the control of either the many school principals or teachers. These include the very size and physical design of the school itself, the poverty and violence in the surrounding community, and the instability caused by thoughtless bureaucratic interventions on the part of CPS leaders. To blame teachers for these problems and to engage in mass staff firings is horribly unfair but characteristic of the times.

One of the most horrific of these interventions came from Arne Duncan with his Renaissance 2010 closure of Austin High School in 2007 and the shipping of hundreds of kids from the west side over to Clemente and Wells. This led directly to an explosion of violence and disruption inside the massive 7-story complex.

Here's a quote from the AP wire story at the time.

In the largely African-American Austin neighborhood, about half of the 7,000 high school-aged students were forced to travel outside the community to other schools after Austin High School was shuttered in 2007. Some ended up at the mostly Latino Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School, where school officials weren't given "any kind of a warning," said Idida Perez, a community organizer with West Town Leadership United. The result was near daily fights between the newcomers and the neighborhood kids, she said.

"You have a trail of blood and tears ever since they launched (Renaissance 2010)," said Tio Hardiman, director of the anti-violence organization CeaseFire Illinois. "There's a history of violence associated with moving kids from one area to another." 

 Only Herculean efforts by the principal and a solid group of teachers, plus Clemente’s small-schools plan, kept the situation from deteriorating further into all-out war. Ren10 school closings also caused a spike in school violence across the city, at schools like CVS and Gage Park.

CPS has tried moving principals around (even sending in "super principals"), fired hundreds of teachers (including many with experience and high ratings). They have  pushed one magic bullet after another on schools like Clemente, only to dump them a year or two later as the guard changed. One of the silliest that comes to mind was the so-called Culture of Calm during CEO Huberman's short-lived regime. Huberman claimed he could statistically identify specific students who were most likely to be killed in gun violence and then use interventions to move those students out of the line of fire.

At the time I wrote:

Resembling a kind of obscene game of Russian Roulette research, Huberman is spending $30 million to guess which of the city's 400,000 public school students will most likely be killed this year, notify their parents and get them to "change their life styles."

And this from the Wall Street Journal.

The 200 students assessed as being in the "ultra high risk" category were deemed to have greater than a 20% chance of being shot over the next two years. An additional 1,000 students had between a 7.5% and 20% chance of being shot, and an additional 8,500 had a 1% to 7.5% chance of being shot.

So now there's a new sheriff in town with a new hired hand, new games of Russian Roulette and more magic bullets in his gun. No one dares mention the words Renaissance or Culture of Calm any more. Now it's longer school day,  turnarounds and transformations. It's pretty much the same half-baked, top-down ideas hatched in board rooms of the Civic Committee. Only now it's all about privatization of public space and union busting.

I have no beef with the new wall-to-wall IB curriculum at Clemente. It's as good as any other they've had there in the past and seems to be supported by the local community. But what I abhor is the way this was consciously used as a scheme to fire up to 20 teachers, including many with excellent records of service. I hate the way it was cynically used to pit teacher against teacher and to add one more brick in the wall of the current union contract negotiations. None of this has anything to do with IB itself.

It's more about the hidden curriculum of schooling, that is, lessons which are being learned by Clemente students but not openly intended -- like when they come to school one day and find that once again their favorite teacher is gone. It's all about the culture of sorting and tracking, winners and losers in a race to the top. It's the kind of practices you will mainly find in inner-city schools with large numbers of Latino and African-American students.

Teacher pension grab bill killed -- for now

How do we know? Ty Fahner told us so

Fahner

Under pressure from hundreds of thousands of people (including me) who made phone calls and sent emails, IL legislators pulled the plug on a bill that would have increased the amount current public employees would have to pay for their pensions. The great lesson in all this is that if you don't hit it, it won't fall. This was a victory for the grass roots forces inside and outside the teacher and public employee unions against a vicious assault on teachers and public schools.

I am glad that the forces of darkness revealed themselves this time, in a statement announcing the withdrawal of SB 512 signed by none other than House Speaker Michael Madigan, House Minority Leader Tom Cross, and Ty Fahner, the president of the anti-union Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, saying the issue is dead until the legislature’s fall veto session.Why would Ty Fahner be signed on to such a statement, you may ask? Who elected Ty Fahner and the Civic Committee to speak for the state legislature, you may ask? Exactly!

As things turned out, even some self-respecting Republican legislators were put off by Civic Committee bullying.

Rep. Jim Watson, R-Jacksonville, a member of the House Republican leadership, said some GOP members were told by leaders in the Civic Committee, a group of chief executives from Chicago’s largest corporations, that they would face primary challenges for re-election, if they didn’t vote for the bill. 

"Hopefully they learned something from this, that if you do want help implement change, top down may not be the best model,” Watson said. “Calling caucus members and threatening them — that doesn’t play well -- Springfield State Journal

Are they really trying to resurrect Renaissance 2010?

HUBERMAN: We're continuing to learn from what's worked well in Renaissance 2012…2010!...and what we need to improve on…

ambi: tape rewind

Did he say Renaissance 2012??

HUBERMAN: No, that was just a slip, Linda.--WBEZ report from Jan. 12, 2010.

Chicago's local public radio station WBEZ jumped into the exciting world of school reform program evaluation this week and as one might expect, they made quite a muck of it.

While several previous studies and analysis of Mayor Daley's signature Renaissance 2010 campaign have either been inconclusive or shown it to be a flop, leaving the district with a widening so-called achievement gap and essentially no better off than it was before the expensive and divisive campaign started, this new "study" is dazzling only in its mystification.

It was  supposedly concocted with the help of Columbia Teachers College, appears to be little more than a pre-election gambit at resurrecting a discredited reform strategy of mass school closings in targeted neighborhoods and turning them over to private operating companies.

The study pitches itself, "a progress report, not a final grade." But that implies that Ren10 is still alive and kicking with the final verdict still in doubt. The BEZers like Linda Lutton must not have read or listened to their own report from a year ago, "Renaissance 2010: A Tainted Brand", announcing that the mayor and former schools chief Ron Huberman had already declared the program over, kaput, dead and buried. In fact after the plan's Civic Committee architects called the results of the mayor's reform "abysmal," Huberman  even banned use of the term Renaissance 2010 within the hallowed halls of 125 Clark Street. And for good reason.

WBEZ report's low-lights

This is what WBEZ did: grade by grade, subject by subject we compared test scores from the Renaissance 2010 schools to the neighborhood schools right around them.

Do any credible researchers still consider this a valid way to measure school reform progress? Please write in and let me know who you are.

WBEZ found a third of the city’s Renaissance 2010 schools do not beat out their neighborhood comparisons even half the time.

Huh? What?

Interim schools chief Terry Mazany: Clearly, as I’ve been saying, there is no silver bullet.

Who could argue with that? Although Ren10 was pitched as a silver bullet by the mayor, Arne Duncan and the Civic Committee. Duncan even rode the rigged results of this Chicago Miracle all the way to Washington.

Overall, WEBZ  found Renaissance elementary schools outperformed nearby schools 58 percent of the time on the grades and subjects students were tested in.

And what did they do the other 42 percent of the time or in subjects that weren't tested? For example, Huberman cut important foreign language programs, ostensibly to save money, because foreign languages aren't tested. Is this making any sense yet? It's more or less left to the University of Chicago's Tim Knowles, himself a charter school starter/operator to sum all this up.

KNOWLES : Are we willing to live with some margin of error? We should be, because we’re trying to create new paths forward for children and family.

Tim, of course there is always some "margin of error." That's not the problem here. It's comparing, closing, or privatizing schools and firing thousands of teachers based on a single, standardized test score. Ah, but you already know that. Right? Remember Tim,  it's those kids, parents and teachers that have to live with your margin of error, not you.

KNOWLES: The city should make Renaissance 2010 routine.

But why, Tim? The study is inconclusive. Previous studies called it a failure. Why make it "routine"/

KNOWLES: But along the way, we should be doing careful cost-benefit analysis. And asking ourselves is this worth the upheaval.

Ah yes, a cost-benefit analysis. Harvard grad school tuition wasn't wasted. But why along the way? Why not do it before we embark?

KNOWLES:  The critical question is whether more children are being better educated now. And whether the results justify the costs.

Yes indeed. Now you're talking. Please consider real studies, not just those done by radio stations, that answer those two questions along with questions of equity (the gap, remember?) before resurrecting Ren10 and "making it routine."

Previous looks at Renaissance 2010

The Chicago Tribune, January, 2010:

• "In Renaissance 2010 elementary schools, an average of 66.7 percent of students passed the 2009 Illinois Standards Achievement Test, identical to the district rate."
• "The Ren10 high school passing rate was slightly lower on state tests than the district as a whole -- 20.5 percent compared with 22.8 percent."
• "Only a quarter of Renaissance 2010 schools had test scores high enough to meet the federal goals set by No Child Left Behind."
• "Nothing created more disruption to the city's educational landscape."
• "Chicago students as a whole still post some of the lowest test scores on national math and reading exams."
• "Even in schools with single-digit pass rates, violence-filled hallways and embarrassing absentee patterns, parents picketed the streets and filled the school board chambers, begging that their schools be left alone."
• "The new schools mirror the district demographically, except they enroll fewer special education students and those who speak English as a second language."

SRI International and the Consortium on Chicago School Research  (August 18, 2009)

Furthermore, although researchers note that the initiatives are still in the early stages and that more time may be needed before drawing definitive conclusions, descriptive analyses show that the average standardized test performance of freshman students in most high schools in all three initiatives remained similar to historical levels relative to overall CPS performance.

SRI International (June, 2009)

Overall, we found no dramatic improvements. We did find a few hopeful signs, but results were generally mixed.

Balancing the budget with teachers' pensions

Like thieves in the night, Illinois Gov. Quinn and machine-boss Mike Madigan, heisted more than $100 billion from the teachers' pension fund Wednesday. Not only that, but the Chicago Civic Committee, calling the heist, "reform," wants more.

"This bill is a small step in the right direction but it doesn't begin to solve the state's urgent fiscal problems," said R. Eden Martin, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. "The only way to achieve significant cost reductions now is to reform retirement benefits for current state employees prospectively and new hires moving forward."

 Question: Why hardly a peep from the leaders of the state's teacher unions?

Wanted--a new brand name for Daley school closings

What ever happened to accountability?

As I have been pointing out for the past few months, the words Renaissance 2010 are rarely even uttered these days, either by Mayor Daley, his appointed schools chief Ron Huberman, or by Ed Sec. Duncan, who rode the myth of the "Chicago miracle" all the way to Washington. The parents of the failed school reform plan, Chicago's Civic Committee, haven't been heard from since their report last June ("Kids Left Behind") which called the Daley/Duncan reform, "abysmal."

Listen to WBEZ's Linda Lutton's latest report, Renaissance 2010: A Tainted Brand? which pretty much confirms what I've been saying. Interesting--Linda has one of the plan's architects, Greg Richmond, currently head of the National Assoc. of Charter School Authorizers, complaining that Ren10 was never supposed to be about massive school closings, but rather a new small-schools creation program. Was he naive? Misled?

Now that Ren10 is being seen for what it is; now that study after study is confirming the "abysmal" verdict; now that the current upsurge in student violence is being laid directly on Ren10's doorstep; now that the brand name has become a bloody flag for a growing community protest movement, Daley and Huberman still say they will continue with the plan, only this time under a different brand name.

What happened to accountability?

Huberman gives his charter school chief the boot

Toast

The Chicago grapevine is buzzing about CEO Ron Huberman's latest central office house-cleaning. Friday he dropped the axe on his charter school and new start-up school chief, Josh Edelman. You can hear the whispers down the hallways and in the smoking areas at Central Office--"Why Josh?" "Who's next?"

Edelman came to Chicago 2 years ago to run Arne Duncan's close 'em & start 'em operations. Edelman 's fiefdom down on Clark Street became the center of attention under Daley/Duncan's Renaissance 2010 initiative and Harvard grad Edelman was the fresh face in town, wooed by progressives because of his pedigree (son of civil rights leader, Marian Wright Edelman) and by the business community for his apparent entrepreneurial skills.

All of Ren10's credibility rested on the possibility that Edelman's new start-up charter schools, most of which run by outside management companies, could outperform the "failing" neighborhood schools.

For the most part, they haven't, according to latest research coming out of Stanford, the University of Chicago's Consortium, and the Civic Committee itself (authors of Ren10). That's bad news for the Mayor (he needs good school news for his Olympics campaign), for Duncan (he was hailing Ren10 as the "model" for the nation) and for the business community (can't sell real estate without good charter schools).

Was outsider Edelman over his head to begin with? Probably. Did he run afoul of some of the big players and charter operators among the Mayor's allies? Most certainly. It was unavoidable as charter school handouts became the coin of the patronage realm (like taxi medallions) in the Windy City.

Bottom line (as they're fond of saying down at Clark St.)--Edelman's toast.

Briefs

Mayoral out of control

In response to the Civic Committee's charge that Chicago test score increases were the product of changes in the test:

"Why don't you mention where you go to school? Or your grandchildren? Why haven't they mentioned them? Ah hah. Why? That's the question.''

Stop the presses!

Talk about your duh! headlines. From Edweek: NEA, Obama Administration May Not Be in Sync

Congratulations...

...to Small Schools Workshop alum Gabrielle Lyon and Paul Sereno. Project Exploration just won the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mentoring.

Data-driven reform?

"Suppress it!"

I have received more confirmation on Tuesday's post , re. attempts by the Civic Committee and the Renaissance Schools Fund (RSF) to suppress or delay the release of a study of Chicago Renaissance 2010 schools. The study, released in April, showed mixed results for the Daley/Duncan reform initiative.

The Ren10 schools, mostly charters run by outside management companies, did no better than the "failing" neighborhood schools they were supposed to replace. This despite having lower rates of bilingual and special education students.

Obviously, the mediocre results were not to the the liking of the study's sponsors, nor to those who have been touting Chicago as "the model" for districts nationwide to follow. Yesterday I received further confirmations of suppression efforts by Civic Committee and RSF leaders, including threatened lawsuits, to prevent the study from being shown to the public.

One correction: In my earlier post, I attributed the study solely to the Consortium on Chicago School Research. But, I was informed, the study was actually done by SRI International with the Consortium serving as a sub-contractor. Since it was published on the Consortium's website, I had assumed that the study was theirs. But it was the SRI that became the target of the suppression and intimidation attempts. Kudos to them for not being cowed and releasing the study in good time.

Take that, Civic Committee

On the heels of the Civic Committee's report, calling Chicago school reform an "abysmal" failure, Mayor Daley called a press conference of his own to announce (hold on to your hats) that reading scores went up 1.1 % over last year. That's not all. Math scores increased by 3% and science by 1.7%.

Take that R. Eden Martin.

Daley:"We are...convinced that our progress is truly being made in every school," said Daley.

The Tribune: "Of the 519 elementary schools in the city, 320 showed improvement over last year's test scores. That leaves roughly 200 performing at the same or worse, though the district did not provide data for those schools."

Russo: "The City Hall press release here (PDF) reveals quite a bit of hedging and uncertainty -- taking credit for increases at the same time as it acknowledges the sorry state of affairs. It's a delicate line to walk. "

Catalyst: "Catalyst didn’t receive word about the press conference and therefore didn’t attend. Let’s just call it a technical glitch that we are working on remedying."

Don't feel bad, Catalyst. Neither did SmallTalk. Our invitations probably got lost in the e-mail.

Failed attempts to suppress Chicago study

Whispers over at the Consortium on Chicago School Research are all about attempts by members of the Civic Committee and the Renaissance School Fund to suppress a Consortium report before it hit the street this past April.

The report, "Renaissance Schools Fund-Supported Schools: Early Outcomes, Challenges, and Opportunities" offered evidence that the new, privately-managed charter schools created under the Mayor's Renaissance 2010 initiative, were producing no better results than their traditional, neighborhood school counterparts.

At least two sources tell me that Civic Committee President R. Eden Martin along with unnamed members of the RSF, "tried to suppress or slow the release of the data" to avoid embarrassment to the Mayor and Arne Duncan. Duncan has been touting the Chicago model and pressuring other states and school districts to follow it or risk losing stimulus dollars.

When Consortium researchers went ahead, despite pressure and published the report, the usual panic, butt-covering and scapegoating set in, leading to the publication last week of the Civic Committee's own report which painted Chicago reform as an "abysmal" failure. The report made no mention of the Renaissance 2010 plan, authored by that very same Civic Committee under mayoral control. Ren10 became the blueprint for the failed reform. Duncan, who had faithfully carried out the plan before going to Washington, now becomes the fall guy.

The Consortium followed up on the report with another devastating study in June, "The Schools Teachers Leave: Teacher Mobility in Chicago Public Schools," revealing CPS's chronically high rates of teacher turnover, especially in schools serving low-income, African-American children.

Kudos to the Consortium.

The answer

In the new National Journal Online, Arne Duncan continues spreading the Chicago miracle manure around. He's still insisting that, in Chicago and other cities, "mayoral control is the answer for turning around schools." I guess he's ignoring the report from his old bosses at the Civic Committee who are calling the past decade of Chicago reform "abysmal."

I'm no hoo hoo

BTW, I tried to respond to Duncan's silly claims at NJO, but the new Gates-sponsored site, which Edweek's Dakarai Aarons calls, "a veritable who's who among education policymakers" only allows comments from "invited participants." No practitioners allowed. They're not hoo-hoos.

Sun-Times Editorial on Civic Committee Report

Mostly, it's an overly simplistic analysis of test data, assembled largely to bash traditional public schools and promote the business group's preferred solution -- expanding the number of charter and other privately managed schools.

I agree

Quotables

It's an illusion

The stark conclusion: Nothing that Paul Vallas or Arne Duncan did in the last 15 years has had any significant effect on the number of CPS students who can read and write acceptably and do arithmetic, fractions and elementary algebra easily. It's all an illusion. (Bill Sweetland, Huffington)

Duncan on the education business

Q & A with the Chicago Tribune:

Q Why include business in the policy debate about public education? A We all need to work together on this stuff, business leaders and educators. Everyone's mutual interests are absolutely aligned.
Q Business leaders want reform but don't want to pay for it, right?
A No; there's been unbelievable generosity, not just in resources but in ideas. We've had a great relationship with the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable. I've met with a number of CEOs.

Disconnected youth

The costs of leaving six million young adults completely out of the economy and bereft of hope are going to be dangerously high. Everyone recognizes that this population is inevitably a source of crime. Currently, New York State has 60,000 people incarcerated and 23,000 on parole and the fifth highest recidivism rate in the country. It destroys individuals, their victims, and their families (David Jones, President and CEO, Community Service Society of New York).

Civic Committee's Martin denies blaming Duncan for failed reform

Sorry, I couldn't get the embedded video of Rick Arruza's interview with R. Eden Martin to play here. But you can watch it at WTTW Chicago's websight HERE.

Only "vested interests" to blame...LOL

Catalyst's Lorraine Forte sets him straight--It's not just about being a charter. There are good and bad. Both charters and neighborhood schools need good teachers and resources.

CTU's McGuire touts the Stanford report that shows only 1/3 of charters doing well. Martin responds--"But in Chicago, they're all good."

Background on R. Eden Martin from my August 19, 2006 post on SmallTalk, "R. Eden Martin, anti-monopoly warrior???"

Is anyone buying the Civic Committee's bogus report?

The Sun-Times finally notices the Civic Committee's report that discredited the past ten years of Chicago school reform. Kudos to the editorial board for not falling for their BS.

Mostly, it's an overly simplistic analysis of test data, assembled largely
to bash traditional public schools and promote the business group's preferred
solution -- expanding the number of charter and other privately managed
schools.

They could have also mentioned that it was the Civic Committee's and Mayor Daley's own bogus Renaissance 2010 plan that led to the reform flop. Can you imagine a report on Chicago school reform that never mentions Ren10 nor the mayor?

Covering the back-stabbing

Catherine Gewertz posts today at Edweek's High School Connections blog re. the Chicago Civic Committee's back-stabbing of Arne Duncan.

Ouch. Not what Arne wants to hear as he crisscrosses the country encouraging folks to do more of what he just did in Chicago.

Strange. Neither the Sun-Times and Trib even covered the story. Is it an embarrassment for the mayor? Not an importnat enough story? What? Will we really miss them when they are gone? Yes to the Sun-Times. Where else will I get my daily patternless crossword puzzle or read Telander's sports column?

Civic Committee stabs Duncan in the back

He toiled faithfully on their plantation for 10 years before going to D.C. to serve as Obama's education chief. He did all their bidding without question, closing dozens of schools in under-served communities to make way for gentrification and privatizing much of the system.

But now the Chicago Civic Committee, the city's ruling elite, has turned on Arne Duncan and in a report released yesterday, titled "Still Left Behind," attacked the Duncan-led Chicago school reform as an "abysmal" failure. Ironically, it was the Civic Committee that designed and financed the Mayor's Renaissance 2010 plan--the very plan that Duncan was hired to implement and enforce.

A flabbergasted Duncan, who rode the myth of the Chicago turnaround miracle all the way to Washington, tried to defend his record. But, well, 8th grade test scores did rise by a few points, was the best he could do.

Crain's Chicago Business blogger Greg Hinz writes:

The report directly challenges widespread claims by current and former CPS officials that local students have shown substantial progress over the last decade on standardized tests. For instance, it notes a 2006 letter from then schools CEO Arne Duncan, now U.S. secretary of education, stating that the share of CPS students meeting or exceeding state standards had leapt 15 points in one year. In fact, it says, the change occurred because of a change in the test, not because of real educational gains.

The fallout from the Civic Committee's report will be felt way beyond the city limits. Duncan has been touting the Renaissance 2010 model on his current "listening tour" and has even been threatening districts who won't follow along, with loss of federal dollars.

There are two lessons I hope Arne Duncan will take away from all this: 1) Tell no lies and claim no easy victories, and 2) He who lies down with dogs, wakes up with fleas.