Change.Org dumps Rhee, Edelman

 Here's a video about the petition drive that led to Change.org dumping Rhee & Edelman

In response to an avalanche of protest, Change.Org, a progressive online website that enables activist groups to generate petition-based campaigns, has dropped two anti-union clients, Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst, and Jonah Edelman's Stand For Children. The move comes in the wake of a massive, angry response following Change.Org's circulation of a petition disparaging the Chicago Teachers Union and its members who voted overwhelming to give their union the authority to strike. The relationship with union-haters Rhee and Edelman was attacked  as a violation of Change's supposed progressive orientation.

Chicago teacher, Jennifer Johnson (Huffington got her name wrong and calls her Jennifer Jones) deserves lots of credit for initiating the protest with a petition which drew thousands of signatures.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Jonah Edelman

Jonah Edelman of Stand for Children bragged last year that “the union cannot strike in Chicago. They will never be able to muster the 75 percent threshold needed to strike.’’ -- Sun-Times, "Sources: CPS teachers authorize strike"

N.Y. high school student

“Everyone in school either has a prescription or has a friend who does.” -- Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill

Valerie Strauss

In the ‘you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff’ category, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending about $1.1 million to develop a way to physiologically measure how engaged students are by their teachers’ lessons. This involves “galvanic skin response” bracelets that kids would wear so their engagement levels could be measured. -- Washington Post

Diane Ravitch

It’s the New Normal.
Don’t accept it. Don’t avert your eyes. It’s not supposed to be this way. Schools need a stable staff. Schools need continuity. Schools need to be caring and supportive communities. Schools need to be learning organizations, not a place with a turnstile for teachers, administrators and students. Don’t lose your own values. What is happening today is wrong. It is not education reform. It is wrong. It does not benefit children. It does not improve education. It is wrong. -- Diane Ravitch's Blog

Todd Farley

In other words, all this hoopla about a study Tom Vander Ark calls "groundbreaking" is based on a final conclusion saying only that automated essay scoring engines are able to spew out a number that "by and large" might be "similar" to what a bored, over-worked, under-paid, possibly-underqualified, temporarily-employed human scorer skimming through an essay every two minutes might also spew out. I ask you, has there ever been a lower bar? -- "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics, or What's Really Up With Automated Essay Scoring" 

The greater flow of life

No reason for doom and gloom here in Chicago. Spring is in the air, Derrick and the Bulls are streaking and the Cubs are getting ready for another World Series run.

Yes, I know that Judge Hyman just tossed out the civil rights suit, filed by Local School Councils, that sought to block the Chicago Public Schools from closing 17 schools in mainly African-American neighborhoods. But he also left an opening for the case to be refiled. If that fails, the LSCs can try again in federal courts.

“The deeper issues that underlie this lawsuit will not disappear anytime soon,” he wrote. “Yet before the court today is a narrow question involving the legal sufficiency of the amended complaint. As such, the answer is dry, cold, removed from the greater flow of life.”

"Removed from the greater flow of life," my ass.  I'll tell you what's removed from the greater flow of life, your honor -- closing our neighborhood public schools and turning them over to private "turnaround" companies and charter operators.

Special thanks should go out to attorney Tom Geoghegan, who is handling the suit.

Yet, another gleam of sunshine has burst through the cold Chicago winter's gloom. Parents are beginning to speak out against the mayor's longer-school-day scheme. 19th Ward parents are asking why CPS seems stuck on a 7.5-day for all students when the national average is 6.6 hours, the state average is 6.5 hours, and the top-10 suburban elementary average is 6.5. Good question.

The Tribune reveals the continued involvement of the anti-teacher, corporate reform group, Stand For Children, in promoting the longer-school-day. You might remember how the group came into Chicago spreading millions of dollars around to local pols' war chests, and how Stand leader Jonah Edelman bragged about selling the scheme to the mayor as a way to break the union.

Now, according to the Trib, the group is robo-calling 20,000 households from various zip codes across the city to push the 7.5-hours of seat time. Those who remain on the call will then be invited to participate in a longer school day discussion with schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard.

Another bright ray of hope was the victory for the coalition of organizations that pushed the board to extend the registration deadline for LSC candidates. The board responded positively, showing that they're worried about the growing grass-roots resistance movement. 

Finally, the sun has shown its light on Brizard's plan to use federal education dollars to support private schools. An unsolicited confession from the CEO that confirms what everyone's already been thinking.

Go Bulls!

Stand for Children back in town to 'educate us' about turnarounds

Like Freddy Kreuger, he's baaack!  

It could be time for a mic check as Jonah Edelman and his well-funded, out-of-town gang of professional union busters at Stand For Children, return to Chicago. On Wednesday, the group announced that it is launching a radio campaign to “educate Chicagoans about the value of public turnaround schools.” Thank goodness we have people from Portland here to educate us about how great these turnarounds are.

According to Catalyst,  

[SFC director] Gonzalez is aware that the organization carries with it a negative weight, especially among unionized teachers and grassroots organizations. Stand for Children was a staunch supporter of Senate Bill 7, which limited teacher tenure and made it more difficult for teachers to strike. Senate Bill 7 also gave Chicago school leaders the power to unilaterally lengthen the school day, which had previously been a subject in collective bargaining. After the bill was passed last year, in a speech in front of the Aspen Institute, Executive Director Josh Jonah Edelman described how his group outfoxed the CTU in getting the bill passed and bragged that the bill would effectively prevent the teachers from ever striking.

I don't think Jonah will be assigned to do any follow-up panels up in Aspen after this one. Do you?

Who fed Rahm his longer-school-day talking points?

It was Jonah Edelman & Co.

 "The data shows that the longer you stay in the classroom learning, you'll learn more..." -- Rahm Emanuel

In my May 5th Huffington Post, "Rahm Still Believes in Texas 'Miracles,'" I ask who it was who fed the mayor his talking points about Houston's supposed longer school day. Rahm, as you may recall, was misleading some local students from Malcolm X College by claiming that kids in Houston end up with 3 more years of classroom seat time, by the time they graduate, than do Chicago kids.

"If you start in the Chicago Public School system in kindergarten," offered Rahm, "and your cousin lives in Houston, and you both go all the way through high school, the cousin in Houston spends three more years in the classroom."

 Now we know who the feeder was -- no other than the infamous and now self-discredited Jonah Edelman. In the video where he brags how he bamboozled union leaders into giving up many of their collective bargaining rights, he and his billionaire Stand For Children patron, Jim Crown, also take credit manipulating the mayor. Here's an excerpt from video, transcribed by Caroline Grannan [thank you Caroline] and posted at Parents Across America's website.

So in the intervening time, Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor … and he strongly supports our proposal. Jim [apparently Crown] … talked about the talking point that we made up and he [Emanuel] repeated about a thousand times, probably, on the campaign trail about the Houston kids going to school four years more than the Chicago kids. That was another shoe that dropped, and it really put a lot of pressure on the unions, particularly on the Chicago Teachers Union because they didn’t support it.

 As I pointed out in my article, I'm not necessarily opposed to a longer school day (or year). It all depends on what happens during that extra time in or out of the classroom and how teachers and students are actually impacted. But it is interesting to see how the mayor's views on education (and he does rule the schools in Chicago) are shaped, not by empirical evidence, but by politically motivated talking points spoon fed him by the corporate reformers.