On the Wolverine

Heading for Detroit on the Wolverine for the NDSG meeting. I love trains. A ticket to Motown -- $28 each way. Plus I got free upgrade from previous trips. I can't drive it for that and the travel time is about the same. Wish we had high-speed rail with a Chicago hub. I'd hardly ever fly.

Detroit power outage. A metaphor?

Power Struggle… Detroit schools continue to be a disinvestment basket case, even more so since the state takeover. The latest news is about school power outages which shut down 30 schools in the city Tuesday. Before Tuesday, schools had missed 130 days collectively through the end of January because of power outages. Now that number has climbed to 160.

While in Detroit, I'm hoping to see the Grace Lee Boggs and Jimmy Boggs school, a small school named after two of the heroes of the city's freedom movement. In a good piece in Huffington, Laura De Palma described the beloved community being created at the school, largely based on Dr. King's legacy.

She writes:

Many Detroiters have been resisting the city's emergency manager laws and the downtown corporate takeover and fighting to reinvent the city in a way that is just, transformative and paradigm-shifting. Activists in Detroit have been asking, "What kind of revitalizing does Detroit need at this point in history?" Gentrification and social entrepreneurship that ignores history and context and does not address the root causes of the economic disinvestment in the city of Detroit is not the kind of change we need.

Front Page...Check out the front page of today's Defender. It's Prof. Timuel Black still looking great at 95.

Go Portland...It looks like it's on in Portland. PPS leaders say they will try and scab out the strike. "We expect our regular PPS substitutes to work during a strike and plan to hire replacement teachers on a temporary basis while you are on strike," the document reads. "Staffing will be deployed where it is needed most." 

The Whitenizing of Detroit

I'm heading to Detroit next week for the annual meeting of the North Dakota Study Group. I used to attend every year for at least part of the meeting. But since it was moved from near Chicago to Motown, I haven't been able to make the trip. But withdrawal has been tough. I miss hanging out with some of the best progressive educators and public intellectuals in the country who are doing some of the best democratic education and social-justice work -- people like 98-year old movement hero, Grace Lee Boggs, who will once again welcome NDSG to Detroit. So it's back on the road. Hope to see some of you there.

******

As everyone knows, Detroit has become the poster child for post-industrial urban devastation, corporate dis-investment (forced bankruptcy) and white abandonment. In Detroit and other hard-hit cities in Michigan, voters no longer have the power to elect their own local government and school systems have been privatized and handed over to corporate operators. I can still remember the chilling headline in the Detroit Free Press a couple of years back, which asked: "Is Detroit Public Schools worth saving?"

Detroit’s population loss may even leave Michigan without a black representative in Congress for the first time since 1955, a shift that would punctuate the erosion of African-American power in a region.

Michigan's Tea Part Gov. Rick Snyder

Now Michigan's Tea Party Gov. Rick Snyder is putting the finishing touches on his plan to whitenize (ethnic cleanse?) Motown by the further push-out of thousands of African-Americans and their systematic replacement, through a special visa program, with 50,000 white and Asian imported immigrants.

A New York Times editorial criticizes the localness of Snyder's plan but is generally okay with it. In one chilling scenario, the Times editors write:

One way to avoid the unwieldiness of a one-city visa program is to go big. Angelo Paparelli, a prominent immigration lawyer who grew up in Detroit, has suggested doing for immigrants what the “Race to the Top” competition has done for schools.

Race To The Top indeed. 

Deb Meier's latest

Deb Meier

In her latest post on her Bridging Differences blog, ("The Left Wing of the Possible") Deborah Meier poses the question to Diane Ravitch: "How best to fight back?"

There are many ways, says Deb. She gives two examples of vehicles for starting and re-framing the national discussion around education, a discussion that so far, both political parties have been trying to avoid. The Democrats appear caught between their DFER hedge-fund reform wing on one side and the two large teacher unions with their millions of voting members on the other. The Republicans seem to have only only two points in their platform, cut taxes and bust the unions.

Deb, who is an elected member of the Save Our Schools (SOS) national steering committee offers this as her first example:

SOS (Save Our Schools) is holding a "People's Convention" Aug. 3-5 at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel in Washington D.C. Our plan? To come together around a small list of actionable planks—ones we wish the two political party conventions would adopt. We're not pretending they will, but we are also not claiming they couldn't. Our purpose: To begin to outline what the "other way" might involve if we turned away from No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, our standardized testing obsession and, above all, the gradual privatization of the American public education experiment.

Her second example is a Manifesto drafted by members of the North Dakota Study Group. Writes Deb:

Started in 1972 by Vito Perrone, the NDSG has met every year since. Brenda Engel, a retired Lesley College faculty member, was there at the start. She volunteered to put together a draft manifesto representing our priorities. After lots of back and forth, it is now available for public comment:

In recent weeks several local organizations, including the Chicago-based group of academics and researchers called CReATE, a group of 1460 N.Y. principals, and the March 30th Open Letter to the New York State Regents from New York State Professors Against High Stakes Testing, have all issued similar statements critical of current education policies. Most focus on opposition to the misuse of testing in school and teacher evaluation. Others hit at corporate reform policies of privatization of public schools and the erosion of public decision making, exemplified by the attack on union rights, vouchers and charter schools, and the re-segregation of public schools.

As the lead paragraph of the NDSG Manifesto describes it:

 Many of our country's enduring dilemmas are the products of inequalities in power and wealth created by social class, race, culture, and sexism. Challenges exist inside and outside the education system. Although the society has made visible historic progress on many fronts, our nation's most pressing educational problem remains the opportunity gap between the children of the haves and those of the have-nots; this gap has grown with the mounting social inequality of the last 40 years. 

 With all that said and written, now comes the really difficult part. How can we begin to unite this locally-based and fragmented movement around some of these basic, common, democratic ideals and images of schooling? And how can we use whatever interest is generated by the upcoming national elections to create new possibilities for change?

More on this to come. 

From Brenda Engel of the North Dakota Study Group

To the NDSG: An account of my experience Saturday (requested by a French journalist in Paris, Sylvie Laurent, who is a friend of my son-in-law). Feel free to quote any part of it if useful. Brenda

 
Madison, Wisconsin, February 19, 2011

“The North Dakota Study Group,” a national group of progressive educators, was holding its annual conference in northern Illinois over the weekend of February 18th. The second morning, Saturday, a scheduled speaker – a teacher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin – spoke eloquently and movingly about the mass demonstrations in the state capitol, Madison, not too far to the north of us, and made an urgent appeal for support. The Group, of which I’ve been a long-time member, voted to cancel activities for the remainder of the day and about fifty of us drove in tandem (in a fleet of vehicles) to Madison – a trip of something over two hours.

Arriving in mid-afternoon, we parked our van in a huge multi-leveled garage and proceeded on foot towards the Wisconsin State Capitol. As we neared the scene of the demonstration, our feelings of expectation began to intensify. The distant waves of sound became louder, the elements more distinct: magnified voices of speakers, roared responses of the audience, occasional shouts and whistles: the expressed reactions of a multitude– an estimated fifty thousand – of outraged citizens, outraged at the union-busting, reactionary bill proposed by their newly elected Republican governor.

We entered the crowd, holding onto each other in order not to become lost – although, as is usual in these high- tech times, each of us (with one exception) was equipped with a cell phone and we had, with forethought, exchanged numbers in advance. At about fifty feet before us rose a hill, also dense with people, crowned by the magnificent State Capitol itself, a luminescent, neo-classical building with high Corinthian columns and lofty dome – in style non unlike other state capitols but at that moment it seemed more beautiful than any, almost celestial, a symbol - of what? democracy? people power? hope for the future?

Before the building was the podium on which a knot of people clustered, one of whom was speaking, exhorting, encouraging and eliciting a huge response from below. Some of the words were understandable but we got the idea even when they weren’t. We were surrounded by placards, posters and banners, among them: “This is what democracy looks like” (my favorite); “Governor Walker, the whole world is watching;” and “Kill the Bill!” People of all ages and ethnicities surrounded us. More speakers, ending with a speech by an eloquent snow-plow operator: “This is not just a movement; this [has to do with] a way of life!”

After the speeches ended, we climbed the hill and joined a line entering the Capitol itself. I was surprised both at its accessibility and by the friendly welcome given us by the guards. (Of course, they are public servants as well and vulnerable to the Draconian measures being proposed by the Governor.) There were signs everywhere cautioning that the demonstration was to be “peaceable” – an echo, not the first, of Cairo. In the rotunda under the dome, a small group of teen-agers were beating out rhythms on drums and calling out slogans, on an electric megaphone, in support of “our teachers,” words then chanted by the surrounding crowd. For the first time we felt comfortably warm. After a while we were aware it was getting late, we were getting hungry and felt ready to leave.

The crowd outside was thinning; it was dark and becoming colder. As we left, I turned back and had one last view of the Wisconsin State Capitol, artfully lighted – glowing gold against the night sky.  Please reply to Brenda by email at: brendaengel@gmail.com

IN MY MAILBOX

From Deborah Meier in Madison 

Mike,


It was anything but an "angry crowd"! There is something joy-prodcing about this kind of protest--as though in releasing our voices we are refilled with energy and affection for each other. An occasional Tea-partyer (a few thousand at most of "them" amongst 75 thousand pro-unionists, etc hardly made for ay problems at all! In fact sometimes their slogans just fit into ours. It was only the media saw it as a serious "confrontation" between Wisconsin citizens! Bah humbug.)


What ingenuity the signs themselves showed, as families and kids held up their ingenious ideas. Finding rhymes and slogans that were filled with the fun of language. Lots of it fgocused on respect and democracy. Chants and songs that have grown up over the years since I was a regular demonstration goer. I needed a day like this one--and appreciated those who stayed behind to get some other work for the North Dakota Study Group done. The Wisconsinites really appreciated our presence and folks came up to ask us were we "really" from Boston, California, Texas, etc???

Bob Peterson spoke at 9am at the Mundelein center and by 10:45 we were all abuzz--shall we go? How can we stay away? We're "this close" (2-3 hour drive away) how can we not go? By noon we were all in cars and vans and off we went. Poor Bob P's van got a flat! He got picked up by others in our retinue. Some were a little cold--as we rushed off without proper sweaters, coats, mittens, etc. But we warmed each other with many hugs.


Deb

NDSG 2011

North Dakota Study Group stopped work and went to Mad City. Here's Francisco Guajardo's video.

Bits & Pieces

Out of the closet: Michelle Rhee dropped her Dem cover. The Waiting for Superman hero and Broad Academy grad has joined Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott's T-Party team.

Scott was elected last month to succeed Gov. Charlie Crist (I), who had quit the Republican Party to make an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate. Florida, with one of the nation's most closely watched school systems, won a $700 million Race to the Top grant from the Obama administration to improve education. Crist vetoed a bill this year that would have expanded teacher merit pay. (WaPo)

^^^^^^^

FairTest's Monty Neil posts an interesting response to the the Ravitch/Finn debate over at NDSG group.

For quite some time Checker Finn of Fordham Foundation has been one of if not the most important ideologue and strategist for neoliberal ed 'reform' (deform). In a reply to Diane Ravitch's Wall St Journal op ed of a few days ago, Finn redefines 'local control' as form of the market, a commercial exchange: parents purchase (with government $) a slot in a 'local' school. Read the rest here.

^^^^^^

I'm not sure why Alexander Russo became so exasperated after watching the terrific PBS report [video] on Chicago's fledgling Austin Polytech High School.

According to PBS "Austin Polytech is the only CPS high school dedicated to teaching students manufacturing skills. Along with social studies and English, students here take three to four years of pre-engineering courses." OK, but what about the school's success rate -- are the kids staying in class, staying in school, and passing those NIMSs tests?  About that we aren't told very much, and that makes me a little bit crazy.

So I say to Russo, don't go crazy--even a little bit. Get off your duff and find out how this small, themed school is doing. I asked school founder Dan Swinney who reports: "We have 25 kids with NIMS credentials. Now with an instructor we expect 80 kids will get one credential, and 60 kids will get the NIMS CNC credential." 

Swinney also sent along a 12-page progress report, "Austin Polytech; Building the Road as We Travel." 

which is available upon request from Dan at dswinney@clcr.org>. Go get 'em Russo.

Scenes from last week's NDSG

This year's North Dakota Study Group was one of the best ever. Check out the video. Boggs, Ayers, Stovall, Meier, Featherstone, learning through play, & more.