We need a radical change in the way we rate our schools

You know, buy a house near a Level 1 school and pay $20K more for not much of a house. 

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." -- John Dewey

Watching my 2-year-old granddaughter, Izzy, learn is one of the great pleasures in my life. Whether she's helping her grandma cook up some eggs, finding a worm while digging on the lawn, pedaling a trike, or stomping around with a tap dancer at a recent birthday party, it's a joy to actually watch her grow and develop physically and intellectually at the moment it's happening.

It's authentic learning. No standardized testing required.

I bring this up once more after reading about another CPS plan to tweak the way the system rates its schools; i.e., Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, etc...  in a high-stakes competition where the loser may have their school closed. I always thought these ratings were more for the benefit of realtors than educators. You know, buy a house near a Level 1 school and pay $20K more for not much of a house.

The new tweaked plan will be presented at Wednesday's first meeting of the mayor's newly-appointed school board.

According to Chalkbeat:

Chicago Public Schools has proposed tweaking its school rating policy to reflect how well elementary schools prepare students for high school and how well high schools help students plan life after graduation — and the district also will finally grade dozens of specialty high schools that had lacked rating systems.

CPS says its School Quality Rating Policy (SQRP) is "a five-tiered performance system based on a broad range of indicators of success, including, but not limited to, student test score performance, student academic growth, closing of achievement gaps, school culture and climate, attendance, graduation, and preparation for post-graduation success."

To tell you the truth, I don't care that much whether or not the board tweaks or doesn't tweak. Neither do I care what indicators they add or take away behind student test scores -- the only ones that really count in the current system.

I certainly don't know what is meant by "post-graduation success." Success at what? Do schools even track their former students to find out if they have been successful (as good, productive citizens, small-d democrats, parents, lovers, artists, poets, scientists, athletes...)?

This whole approach to rating schools and pitting them against one another should be dumped as it does great harm to children and educators and hits especially hard at communities of color which have been devastated by mass school closings.

But there is one part of the current policy I especially take issue with. I don't like the language of preparation and how it's used in its narrowest form. The purpose of current schooling, it seems, is to prepare the student for the next grade, the next school, college, job training and then life. What that language misses is the value of authentic learning ("education is life") and the relationship between school, teacher, student, parent and society. Children learn best when they are engaged with other children and adults in important, meaningful, enjoyable work. Adults do as well.

If by preparation we mean preparing students to be good citizens and active participants in a democratic society, then I am down with it. If it's simply job training for prep for the next round of testing, then I'm not.

Yes, schools do it differently and some do it better than others. But current standards and tests don't seem to get at that. What the scores do reflect much more, is poverty.

I wish the new school board the best of luck in their effort to save and transform CPS. The mayor couldn't have picked a better group to take on this enormous task. I hope the board includes in its agenda, plans for a radical change in the way we evaluate schools.

The new loyalty oath for teachers

From my perspective, academic freedom means that we have the right to engage in public discourse, the right to engage certainly in academic discourse, about issues that are of great importance, both long-term and short-term, both historical issues and current issues, both domestic issues and foreign issues, both popular issues and unpopular issues, and popular ideas and unpopular ideas. -- Marc Lamont Hill

I'm looking back, remembering the McCarthy period and the red scare, when thousands of teachers and other government workers, lost their jobs after being accused of being reds. My own parents were victims of that period.

Back then, teachers were forced to sign loyalty oaths to the United States and the flag. The oaths included swearing that you weren't a communist, socialist or member of any organization or movement opposed to the U.S. government or to the capitalist system.

In many states today, teachers and professors must still take a loyalty oath, but it's usually not as broad, after many 1st Amendment court suits. 

Fast forward and we find teachers and college faculty now being forced to sign a new type of loyalty oath. But this time it's not to the U.S., but to the state of Israel. The new oath includes a promise not to support the boycott movement (BDS) at risk of being fired or worse.

Many have refused to sign, including Bahia Amawi, a children's speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas. Amawi, an American citizen of Palestinian descent, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school district. A lawsuit on her behalf was filed Monday alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech.

Bahia Amawi,

According to the Intercept,

On August 13, the school district once again offered to extend her contract for another year by sending her essentially the same contract and set of certifications she has received and signed at the end of each year since 2009.

She was prepared to sign her contract renewal until she noticed one new, and extremely significant, addition: a certification she was required to sign pledging that she “does not currently boycott Israel,” that she “will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract,” and that she shall refrain from any action “that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel, or with a person or entity doing business in Israeli or in an Israel-controlled territory.”

...That’s one extraordinary aspect of this story: The sole political affirmation Texans like Amawi are required to sign in order to work with the school district’s children is one designed to protect not the United States or the children of Texas, but the economic interests of Israel. As Amawi put it to The Intercept: “It’s baffling that they can throw this down our throats and decide to protect another country’s economy versus protecting our constitutional rights.”

The latest assault on our First Amendment rights is not exclusive to Texas, nor to teachers. A few weeks ago, CNN severed its ties to African American Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill after Hill gave a speech at the United Nations supporting Palestinian rights. While the president of Temple University defended has right to free speech, the school’s Board of Trustees has condemned Hill's remarks.

Here in Chicago in 2015, in a shameful display of aldermanic toadyism, the city council unanimously passed -- 50-0 -- Resolution 2015-569 , pushing the Municipal Employees' Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago to divest from foreign companies seeking to economically boycott Israel.

That same year the Illinois legislature voted unanimously in favor of a similar bill impacting the state’s pension funds.

The unanimous vote came without a peep of resistance from progressive council members or even from socialist Ald. Carlos Rosa. Rosa, at one time a candidate for Lt. Gov., would later split with his running mate for governor, Daniel Biss over Biss' support for Israel.

Go figure.

I just read a Tribune article from 1996 pointing out that the state's loyalty oath can be traced to Clyde Choate, a former state representative from Anna.

Elected to the state House in 1946, he sponsored legislation creating the oath in 1951 after serving on an anti-communist legislative committee.

It was an anxious time, Choate said. What with the Second Red Scare when China fell, the dividing of Berlin and McCarthy making claims of communists in high government, the threat of the Soviet Union seemed quite real.

"You've got to remember, this is immediately after the cessation of hostilities in World War II. The whole world was extremely conscious of any `ism' other than `Americanism,' " he said.

Choate said he's surprised to hear that the oath still is being given out. In fact, he came to see it as unnecessary and ineffective and tried unsuccessfully to repeal it.

The state loyalty oath in Illinois is now "voluntary". But I'll bet even the late Rep. Choate couldn't have imagined a mandatory loyalty oath to Israel.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Robert Kraig, Wisc. Citizens Action

“We have a political party in the United States that has decided it’s completely OK to hold on to power by reducing the number of people who are voting. It’s fundamentally undemocratic.” -- Guardian

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) 

...summed it up another way: “It’s been a bad week for Individual Number One.” -- WaPo

Gery Chico, Chicago mayoral candidate

Ald. Eddie Burke “has been a friend for years,” Chico wrote, praising the alderman for “cooperating with the current federal investigation.” -- Sun-Times

Carol Burris, veteran educator and public ed advocate

It is time to acknowledge that what may have begun as a sincere attempt to promote innovation has given rise to fraud, discrimination and the depletion of public school funding. Thirty years of charters have resulted in an increase in profiteering far more than it has resulted in innovation. Democratic governance is disappearing. -- Answer Sheet

Nora Murphy, librarian and parent of L.A. school children

I will tell you this, my family will be picketing with my child's teachers because what they are asking for is the bare minimum any school district should provide for its schools, its families, its students. -- Answer Sheet

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Azalia Martinez

NEIU student Azalia Martinez 

I’m not scared anymore. I’m not accepting it. I’m ready to fight, because you know, contrary to popular opinion, this is my country. The only country I’ve ever known.” -- Sun-Times 

Jacques Charbonnier, a 63-year-old resident of St. Martin 

“All the food is gone now. People are fighting in the streets for what is left.” -- New York Times 

Miami-Dade Principal Bernie Osborn

 "We are a Title 1 [high poverty] school. My students don't have a lot as it is. I am worried that their resources will be drained. We have a great staff at JFK Middle, and whatever we have to do to assist our families, we are going to do it." -- EdWeek 

Columnist Charles Blow

You could stay in hell for a little while if you knew that you were going to get out. -- New York Times 

Kurt Andersen

Donald Trump is a grifter driven by resentment of the establishment. He doesn’t like experts, because they interfere with his right as an American to believe or pretend that fictions are facts, to feel the truth. -- The Atlantic

Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg

Let me assure you; Chicagoans are not all like Rahm Emanuel — in fact, it’s just him. -- Memo to Amazon's Founder 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES: Duncan wants more NCLB testing madness

NCLB Redux: Duncan wants more and more testing. 

Arne Duncan...said Monday that testing U.S. schoolchildren annually in math and reading is critical for measuring their educational progress, setting the stage for what is likely to be a contentious Capitol Hill debate on the federal role in education.

 "That means all students need to take annual, statewide assessments that are aligned with their teacher's classroom instruction in reading and math in grades 3-8, and once in high school." -- Star-Tribune

Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust

" Kids who are not tested end up not counting." -- ABC News

Lily Eskelsen Garcia

NEA Pres. Lily Eskelsen García

If he truly wants to build a legacy, Obama ought to drop the testing mandate and lead “us out of the dry, awful desert of No Child Left Untested”. -- Politico

Conservative think-tanker Michael Petrilli

 “We don’t really give a damn what the administration thinks. Congress is driving this train.” -- Politco

 Photographer/Author Teju Cole 

Witch burnings, heresy trials, and the untiring work of the Inquisition shaped Europe, and these ideas extended into American history as well and took on American modes, from the breaking of slaves to the censuring of critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom. -- New Yorker

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Bruce Rauner

 "I've worked with Rahm Emanuel and (former Mayor) Rich Daley because they control the schools," Rauner told the Tribune earlier this year. "And we've talked about school reform fairly extensively. We disagree on many things ... but on school reform we see things the same way. He believes in charter schools and competition and choice. He's starting to come around and be supportive of vouchers, which I am a definite believer in." -- Chicago Tribune

 Melissa Harris-Perry 

So, see, Ed? There’s no need for your teachers to change the subject. Because what we do as teachers is to offer guideposts, context, and space for disagreement. We can teach our students not to be afraid of the unknown and the complicated, by confronting the hard topics as well as the easy. Now is the time to teach, not to hide. -- Open Letter: How to teach students about Ferguson

 Chicago Tribune Editorial from Feb. 4, 2007

"Terrence Carter represents a new breed of principals who entered the profession from business through an excellent principal training program called New Leaders for New Schools. The program, which operates in Chicago and five other cities and is about to add two more, imposes higher expectations on principals." -- The Courant

Univ. of Illinois faculty members

 “With this vote of no confidence, the faculty of UIUC’s American Indian studies program also joins the thousands of scholars and organizations in the United States and across the world in seeing the chancellor’s action as a violation of academic freedom and freedom of speech.” -- New York Times

Bill Ayers speaks to huge Univ. of Wyoming crowd

University President Tom Buchanan (not the Gatsby character) had banned Ayers from speaking to a group of students last month, using threats of violence from right-wingers as his excuse. But a law suit initiated by student Meg Lanker and favorable ruling by U.S. District Judge William Downes  opened the university to the "dangerous" Mr. Ayers.

Result? Instead of the expected 150 ed students who likely would have shown for the earlier talk, an enthusiastic, overflow crowd of 1,200 turned out on a Wednesday evening. A handful of T-baggers picketed outside. And guess what?--the university is still standing.

Addressing the media beforehand, Ayers said he would have given the speech even if he’d been as “sick as a dog."

“Because in my view, when the people gather at the gates of an institution like this, with pitchforks and torches, and say the things that were being said, that they would burn the place down,” Ayers told reporters. “And I was told several times in e-mails that they were going to take me out to the Matthew Shepard fence and teach me a lesson. That’s exactly when I’m going to show up.” (Billings Gazette)

An important victory for academic freedom and social justice. Bill should send Pres. Buchanan some flowers.

Goodbye academic freedom

Banning Ayers

The banning of Bill Ayers has become a symbol of the collapse of academic freedom, residue from eight years of neocon power and the use of the politics of fear to push a conservative agenda in the schools.

Debra Pickett has a pretty good piece on Ayers in Chicago Magazine this month. It's good because it focuses on Bill Ayers the educator, not Ayers the cartoonish radical monster created by the Palin/McCain gang and then ratified in the media and even by many liberal educators and academics.

Writes Pickett:

Many of his tenets are hardly revolutionary—that parents and communities should control their own schools, that students learn better in “small learning communities,” that teachers are most effective when they ask questions and facilitate projects and discussions, rather than simply lecture or drill. These ideas in particular have become components in most major school reform efforts across the country, influencing not only educators but also private philanthropists and public policymakers.

But even though the elections are over, Ayers the caricature, is being banned from speaking at schools and public meetings across the country. Ironically, those doing the banning aren't mainly the right-wing Palin types any more. All too often they are liberals who are quick to abandon academic freedom and 1st Amendment rights out of fear. Shades of the '50s.

The most recent cases: the principal of Naperville (IL) High School where Ayers was invited and then dis-invited to address only those students who had signed parent permission slips. And then at Boston College, where Ayers' invitation was yanked and where even his virtual speech via satellite was virtually (I guess) banned.

A sign of the times

Just to show where the country is at right now, there was even serious talk about banning Pres. Obama from speaking at Notre Dame because his position on abortion and stem cell research upset the church hierarchy. Somewhere, the late senator from the state of Wisconsin is resting comfortably in his grave.

One voice that leaves me with some hope, is that of UMass Professor David Lisak who was scheduled to give a lecture at Boston College later this month. In the wake of the College’s decision to ban Ayers from campus, I received a copy of an email Lisak sent to the individual who had invited him to campus:

Dear Dr. Marchetti,

I am very sad to have to cancel my colloquium at Boston College, “The Undetected Rapist: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of Interpersonal Violence,” scheduled for April 27^th. I do so because I cannot, in good conscience, provide a lecture to the Boston College community in the immediate wake of the College’s decision to block Mr. William Ayers from speaking on campus, and to further prevent him from being heard by the campus community. Freedom of speech is a critical component of vibrant public discourse and a pillar of our democracy. When it is attacked – and I view Boston College’s decision as such an attack – it is incumbent on each of us to take whatever steps we can to challenge such actions. Unfortunately, the step that I can take creates an inconvenience for individuals who likely had no part in the College’s decision, and who may strongly disagree with that decision. For that I am truly sorry, and I ask you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

David Lisak