Not buying this NYT piece about how Rahm's principals fixed Chicago schools

The principals that are making gains are making them, not because of the system, but in spite of CPS. -- Principals Assoc. Pres. Troy LaRavier 

I'm not sure who in Rahm Emanuel's oversized City Hall PR Dept. planted this story in the New York Times, but kudos to them for getting this piece of fluff  past the fact checkers and custodians of common sense. Peter Cunningham swears it wasn't him, but I congratulated him anyway.

The Op-ed by David Leonhardt, "Want to Fix Schools, Go to the Principal's Office" focuses on Chicago and gives all the credit to the mayor and CPS super-principals for the district's supposed "fastest in the nation" gains in student achievement, rising graduation rates and lower dropout rates.

Using cherry-picked data, he makes a case that Chicago is on or near the top of the nation's public schools, even while 85% of its students continue to live in poverty and the entire district teeters on the brink of financial collapse.

In other words, Leonhardt is whistling past the graveyard. He's over his head when it comes to writing about education in Chicago.

All this reminds me of the Arne Duncan, Chicago Miracle  in 2008, when no success claim about turnaround schools was ludicrous enough to be challenged by a compliant media.

As for fewer dropouts and spiraling graduation rates, I'd love to believe the reports but don't know how anybody can, given CPS's history of deception in reporting such data.

Remember when in 2015 they were forced to lower the official high school graduation rate following revelations that thousands of dropouts were being misclassified as "transfers"?

According to the NPR report:

At just 25 CPS high schools, more than 1,000 students were mislabeled as moving out of town or going to private schools. But they had actually dropped out and were attending CPS alternative schools, the investigation found. More than 600 were listed as getting a GED. State law is clear that students who leave school to enroll in GED programs or attend alternative schools should be classified as dropouts.

Now they claim that the percent of students graduating CPS schools has hit an all-time high of 73.5%, outpacing  national average gains and representing "a monumental 16.6 percentage point increase since 2011."

Makes me wonder how they even know what the rate was in 2011 since that year marked the beginning of four years of inflated high school graduation rates. Little has changed since then. Students who transfer to privately operated "alternative schools" within the CPS system still won't count as dropouts — and the district still continues its practice of crediting a student's graduation from an alternative program back to the school they originally left.

The reason they like to use average-gains data is that it masks the effect of the great decline in CPS student population over the past two decades, matching the out-migration of Chicago's quarter-million mostly-black residents.

One scenario has it-- get rid of your poorest African-American kids, close their schools, and your test scores (if you use the same test) and other selected performance data is likely to go up -- right alongside your neighborhood crime statistics.

Crediting principals for these "amazing" gains, Leonardt claims the progress has "multiple causes, including a longer school day and school year and more school choices for families. But the first thing many people talk about here is principals." He offers not one shred of evidence to back up the claims. This while Rahm is now threatening to shorten the school year by three weeks.

He then quotes Rahm:

“The national debate is all screwed up,” Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s mayor, told me. “Principals create the environment. They create a culture of accountability. They create a sense of community. And none of us, nationally, ever debate principals.”

Ironically, Leonhardt's pat on the principal's head comes at a time when Chicago principals are threatened with 30% budget cuts and are being hard hit by the board's privatization scheme's which have left their buildings in shambles, massive staff cuts and exploding class size. Not to mention the fact that CPS principals are rarely in a school long enough to lead any substantial school improvement effort.

I raised the issue with Troy LaRaviere, president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association

Here's what he had to say:

One of the things the article talks about is test scores. But I recently was in Madison Wisconsin where I had a conversation with the mayor. He told me test scores there had dropped significantly and they couldn't figure out why until they dis-aggregated the scores of the kids who had always attended schools in Madison and the kids who had moved to Madison from Chicago. The first group were testing at about the same level as they always had. But the kids who had migrated from Chicago, many of them public housing refugees, tested so poorly, they dropped the average of the Madison school district. So it would make perfect sense that the averages in the district that they left would climb. 

I then put Troy in a tough spot by asking him about attributing the reported gains to star principals. But Troy got right to the point:

Chicago principals are working in a district that continues to make it far more difficult for them to do their jobs. They pull one resource after another. For example, if you're a CPS principal now, you may not have an assistant principal. If you really value the position as the article claims, then you invest in the position. The words don't line up with deeds.

Finally, we're all not making the gains we could be making if they invested in us and in the schools. The principals that are making gains are making them, not because of the system, but in spite of CPS.  

CPS principals are also competing for jobs and credibility with an invasion of newbies coming out of private leadership training programs. These TFAers and New Leaders often are hired by district charter schools while having little or no teaching experience and are willing to work for less money.

So yes, principals deserve lots of credit for trying to "do more with less" using tricks like leasing out their buildings or their parking lots, charging student fees each year, or asking parent to raise money for school operations. But to single them out over classroom and special-ed teachers, who have been steadfast, even while baring the brunt of cuts, losing their planning time while class sizes explode, is is divisive and misleading at best.

New principal standards omit any mention of social justice, ethics, cultural responsiveness

The latest revision of school leadership standards which guide the training and professional development of principals, eliminates social justice, cultural responsiveness, and ethics. Aside from that, they're perfect.

The proposed new version of the principal standards—known as the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium Standards, written by the Council of Chief State School Officers and supported by corporate reform groups like New Leaders, is scheduled to be released next week.

Murphy

Joseph Murphy, an education professor and expert on education leadership at Vanderbilt University, who wrote the original standards in 1996, said that it was “problematic and outrageous” that those three sections and other key language were removed. Once the language is erased from the standards or the actions that accompany those standards, he said, they will not be incorporated into state laws and district policies or programs that build on the standards. Murphy is the past vice-president of AERA.

He said that while he does not object to some revisions, he and the two educators who helped him lead the rewrite—Margaret Terry Orr, a professor of educational leadership at Bank Street College of Education in New York City, and Mark Smylie, a retired professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago—do not support the current version of the standards.

Look for a battle over this one. At least, I hope so.

Lesson Plans

Nice piece of writing by Chicago high school teacher and Louder Than a Bomb poetry coach, Dave Stieber at Huffington, "Lessons Learned in Englewood: 8 Years of Reflections From a CPS Teacher". Worth sharing with my students and fellow educators.

Dave Stieber's I Teach website is here.

THE POINT OF PRODUCTION... I did some classroom walk-throughs and observations (not evaluations) with a middle school principal yesterday. Watched him interact and give good, welcomed feedback to teachers. He's trying to help build a professional community based on trust and collaboration.

The classroom, for him, is where most good discussions of school improvement and teaching/learning start. But few principals I see are prepared or have the time or inclination to be instructional leaders, coaches, connoisseurs of good teaching, and many of the new ones, coming out of the power philanthropists' training programs, have little teaching experience themselves. They're increasingly sent in to become building managers and ramrods. Walk-throughs and observations, little more than gotchas, trying to affirm the dominant narrative about "bad teachers" being the problem. 

Thanks for that narrative, Arne Duncan.

ANOTHER REASON I'M A FAN of Karen Lewis. She's carrying on the legacy of our first black mayor, Harold Washington.. Chicago Reporter's Curtis Black writes:

The New Era Windows Cooperative was the perfect setting for Karen Lewis to deliver her core message to an enthusiastic group of supporters: What Chicago needs is “a restoration of participatory democracy.”

“When you have participatory democracy, people can determine what’s best for their communities, as opposed to waiting for years for some development from on high that may or may not be meaningful” in addressing issues faced by residents, the teachers union president and prospective mayoral candidate told a gathering sponsored by the McKinley Park Progressive Association this week.

Karen's rap got Black to remark:

 It sounds like she would restore something like the community hearings on the city budget that Mayor Harold Washington instituted in 1983. Mayor Richard M. Daley continued those hearings, though their number was reduced sharply and they became rather perfunctory. Mayor Rahm Emanuel canceled them after his first year in office.

Remarkable isn't it, that 30 years later, Harold's name is still invoked by all sides as the model of good government.

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

Principals Revolt? Or not...

Bob Moses

I'm taking part in a great event, "Youth Organizing For Social Justice -- Then and Now", at DePaul Student Center this evening. Bob Moses, 60s Civil Rights leader and founder of the Algebra Project, will interact with participants and discuss the significance of the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, describing what actually happened, and its implications for America's future. Bob will also be the commencement speaker at DePaul's College of Education graduation ceremony tomorrow morning at the Rosement Theater in Rosemont.

PRINCIPALS REVOLT?...Some friends tell me I'm overstating the case by calling it a Chicago "principals revolt" when only a handful are daring to speak out (See Melissa Sanchez and Sarah Karp's excellent series in Catalyst). They may be right. Maybe listening to Blaine's forthright leader Troy LaRiviere, Gresham's Diedrus Brown and a courageous few others, ripping CPS' plantation culture has left me in a state of delirium. I should probably take a cold shower and tone it down a bit. But I have reason to believe there's a lot more of this, churning just below the surface.

I also happen to know that the growing principal ferment has got Rahm acting all conciliatory and Byrd-Bennett and her damage-control team at Clark St. scrambling to stomp out the sparks before they ignite a full-blown prairie fire. After last night's secret meeting with Principal Assoc. leaders, look for BBB to finally offer principals an overdue pay-increase, apart from the private foundation bonus money currently handed out to the worthy few, and throw some other goodies principals' way. Let's see if that quiets things down for a while.

BTW we haven't heard much from Rahm's attack-dog consultant John Kupper since the Little Emperor made him publicly apologize for his verbal assault on CPA. Pres. Clarice Berry. After all, Kupper was hired to collect negatives on County Board Pres. Toni Preckwinkle to dissuade her from running against Rahm next year, not stirring up the normally passive CPA.

The "fall of Saigon" April 29, 1975

AFTER THE FALL...One line in this morning's N.Y. Times report on Iraq evoked memories of the "fall of Saigon" nearly 40 years ago.

Since then the militants seem to have been emboldened by the capture of American-supplied military equipment left behind by government forces as they withdrew.

This was all too predictable when Bush and the neocons (with support from Clinton and the Democrats) invaded Iraq 11 years ago. Remember, WMDs? al-Qeada? They weren't there then, but they are now. Almost 5,000 American servicemen and women dead. Over 110,000 Iraqis (officially, maybe a million unofficially) killed. An estimated $2 trillion in war costs leading directly to the Great Recession and the global financial collapse, as well as the near destruction of our public school system...need I go on?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES 60 years after Brown

Grandparent Ollie Clements at Gresham sit-in

Donna Brazile 

"Sixty years later, 'separate and unequal' is still alive...privatizing our school systems results in increased segregation, not improved opportunities." -- CNN

Gary Younge

Racism is far more than old white men using the N-word -- The Guardian

Ollie Clements, a grandparent of a Gresham student

“Not just books and textbooks and other materials. We need teachers. Why can’t we have music? Why can’t we have art?” -- CBS Chicago

Michelle Obama

“Many districts in this country have actually pulled back on efforts to integrate their schools, and many communities have become less diverse, leading to schools that are less diverse." -- New York Times

Paul Tough

“Whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make.”  -- NYT: Class, Cost and College

It's the new, improved Rahm. 'Doesn't believe in personal insults...'

Here's Blaine Principal Troy LaRaviere laying it all out on Chicago Tonight.



PARTY LINE...You can always tell when the line comes down from the 5th floor at City Hall. It's picked up quickly and echoed down the halls and through the cubicles at Clark Street -- "That LaRaviere guy and those other principals are in league with Karen Lewis and the teachers union."

But by the time flack Sarah Hamilton's message reaches the end of the line, it doesn't always come out the way it was intended. Yesterday it was first mouthed clumsily by Rahm's attack dog, John Kupper who came right out and called CPA Pres. Clarice Berry, "a CTU shill". Yes, and that was the message coming from Hamilton's newly-created version of the warm, fuzzy ("I welcome principals' concerns and ideas") Rahm.

After Berry fired back with both barrels, Rahm made Kupper apologize.

“I regret my reckless remark and offer Dr. Berry my public apology,” Kupper wrote in an email to the Sun-Times.

BTW, Berry's full statement, which appeared in an earlier version of Fran Spielman's E&O report is now gone. But you can read it in full, here.

In a separate emailed statement, Hamilton wrote:

“Mayor Emanuel does not agree with what John Kupper said nor the sentiment behind it, and he believes personal insults have no place in public debate." 

Wait, what? Rahm doesn't believe in using personal insults in public debate? That's right. This is the new, improved Rahm. Not the one who dropped the F-Bomb on Karen Lewis. Not the one who called a group of liberal activists "f—ing retarded." Not the Rahm who repeatedly insulted Chuck Todd, suggesting he was ignorant about charter schools, was "backward" looking, and that being in Washington had affected "your brain." Not the Rahm who threatened to kill  Energy Sec. Stephen Chu if he talked about climate change.

C'mon Rahm. Don't wuss out on us now.

Next came this toned-down version of the line from gadfly blogger Alexander Russo. No he's not on staff but he's a quick study.

I keep wondering whether LaRaviere is an independent mind speaking out against CPS and anyone else who gets in the way of making Chicago schools better or whether he's one among many who've come to loathe the Mayor so much that he's allied himself with the union across the board.  

Yes, he was just "wondering."

LOVE THIS...Thanks WBEZ, Young Chicago Authors, Free Write Jail Arts and the Chicago Community Trust for helping Louder Than a Bomb give voice to the brilliant young poets locked up inside the Cook County Detention Center. And be sure and check out these amazing WBEZ photos by By Bill Healy.

Stay dry and have a great Rahm-less weekend.

Rahm's attack dog, Kupper is on the loose

No sooner had Rahm tried to reinvent himself as a gentle, warm and caring ("I welcome principals' concerns and ideas") mayor, than his CPS plantation ignited once more. The arsonist this time was Rahm's own attack dog, John Kupper who in one single mouth-fart, attacked both the Sun-Times for giving too much play to the mayor's critics and Chicago Principals Assoc. Clarice Berry, for being a "CTU shill."

Chicago principals leader Clarice Berry

Here's Pres. Berry's response:

“I am appalled at the demeaning and disrespectful characterization by Mr. Kupper and, by extension, to my principals. That man does not know me. He’s never spoken to me. He has no idea what my relationship is to the CTU or Karen Lewis. We are colleagues. We respect each other and we’re friends,” Berry said.

“I want the mayor to direct his employee to make a public apology to me and to my members, whom he insulted in public. I hope the mayor reprimands him. He should work on the political side — not the education side. We want the politics out of our job.”

Berry accused Kupper of “engaging in the same kind of intimidation and repression of principals” that her organization and its members have been complaining about for the last week.

“We have every right as citizens of the United States to exercise our First Amendment rights to say things are upsetting us,” she said.

“What credentials does he have to assess that my principals’ complaints don’t have validity just because he works for the mayor? l invite him to shadow a principal in an urban school to see how tough the job really is.”

 If it's any consolation to Clarice Berry, she's not attack-dog Kupper's only target. He was actually brought on staff to plan the mayor's slime attack on Toni Preckwinkle in case she decides to take him on in 2015.

The CPS principals revolt: A single spark can start a prairie fire

She [Byrd-Bennett] can't "get to the bottom" of it when the culprit is at the top. -- Principal Troy LaRaviere

A SMALLTALK SALUTE goes out to Blaine Principal Troy LaRaviere for standing up and speaking truth to power. His May 9th letter in the Sun-Times, "Under Emanuel, principals have no voice", has sparked a firestorm and has Rahm and CEO Byrd-Bennett, once again running for cover.

It's not often you hear a CPS principal tipping his hat to democratic and pro-teacher educators, John Dewey and Linda Darling-Hammond, two names that strike fear into the heart of the CPS bureaucracy.

The world’s highest-performing school systems are built on the ideas of American education professionals ranging from John Dewey to Linda Darling-Hammond, ideas that recognize school improvement is not an individual race, but a team sport. Yet, our own elected officials have been ignoring those ideas in favor of teacher-bashing, privatized choice, fly-by-night fast-track teacher licensing and over-reliance on testing — ideas that have not improved schooling in any nation that has tried them.

LaRaviere said Monday that the way CPS treats its principals “is doing a disservice to our students. . . . Our rights are less of an issue than the rights of our students to get a quality education. That is what drives us. That’s why we got into this.”

Also on Monday, at least three other principals echoed LaRaviere’s criticism of the mayor's gag-order leadership style, leaving Rahm flack Sarah Hamilton speechless (Ah...) and causing the mayor's buffer, BBB threatening to "get to the bottom of this." 

“The privatization of education in our city and nation wide alarms me,” Heather Yutzy, principal at Belding Elementary, wrote on the blog, calling on fellow principals to organize. “Unfunded mandates (PE and art) weigh heavily on my shoulders as I prepare to present a budget recommendation to my LSC. My deep passion for differentiation and meeting the needs of all students is extremely difficult to make a reality with such a bare-bones budget . . .

“Principals and the Chicago Teachers Union should be working shoulder-to-shoulder and standing together at microphones on most matters in education,” Yutzy wrote. Deborah Bonner, principal of Dett Elementary School, 2131 W. Monroe, wrote on the same blog of feeling “like a puppet.”

“Why is there the need to treat professionals as if we work in sweat shops?” she wrote. “The annoying micro managing and finger pointing without the slightest bit of intelligent conversation and support . . .  I just wanted to write to you and say that you have sparked a great deal of conversation in many of us and I thank you for having the courage to do so.”

And in a lengthy piece published Monday at Catalyst-Chicago.org, Principal Adam Parrott-Sheffer of Mary Gage Peterson Elementary School, 5510 N. Christiana, wrote that administrators who have raised concerns in meetings — “such as what to do when we see lunchroom employees in tears from being overworked as the district cut school positions by 33 percent to 50 percent” receive no response.

(WBEZ/Linda Lutton)

Principal Troy LaRaviere was one of only a few principals to speak against budget cuts announced last July. LaRaviere says under Mayor Rahm Emanuel's hand-picked schools administration, principals have been told they must voice support for policies such as the longer school day. 

Responding to BBB's get-to-the-bottom threat, LaRaviere's said:

“The thing I don’t want to get distracted from is, this is less about our ability to speak than what it is we want to speak up for. We want to speak up for the end of a school system that relies on shaming rather than capacity building ...”

And then there's his great tweet:

Troy A. LaRaviere @TroyLaRaviere  ·  56m http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/three-more-principals-join-colleagues-blast-mayors-office/mon-05122014-233pm … She can't "get to the bottom" of it when the culprit is at the top.

Also, listen to Linda Lutton's report on WBEZ which quotes Chicago Principals Assoc. Pres. Clarice Berry saying that principals are under a "gag order." The BEZ report also shows that there were other principals, like Gresham's Dr. Diedrus Brown, standing up and speaking out against the budget cuts months ago along with LaRaviere. 

Here's more from Berry:

“People are so frustrated and so angry. We were trying to get a count of the number of principals who have thrown their keys on the desk and walked away from the job in the last year. It’s in the double digits,” Berry said Monday.

A single spark can indeed start a prairie fire.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Principal Troy LaRaviere

So when people ask me, “Aren’t you afraid of losing your job if you speak out?” this is my answer: I did not travel across an ocean and risk my life to defend American freedoms only to return and relinquish those freedoms to an elected official and his appointed board of education. -- Sun-Times

Valerie Leonard, N. Lawndale community activist

 "It's depressing. What we're seeing is a consolidation of our schools under private interests. For us as a community, we're the ones that are bearing the brunt of all this." -- Tribune

Parent Nivia Simmons

"There's so many kids in the area and there's not enough schools. When they closed down schools, class sizes went up. And for parents who have to work or they don't have a car, their options have been taken away." -- Private operators dominate public schools in North Lawndale

UC Berkeley Prof. Bruce Fuller

“It’s like putting a Burger King kitty-corner to a McDonald’s and expecting — in the same location and competing for the same families — warm and fuzzy cooperation." -- NYT: Charters, Public Schools and a Chasm Between

Paul Krugman

First, modern inequality isn’t about graduates. It’s about oligarchs. Apologists for soaring inequality almost always try to disguise the gigantic incomes of the truly rich by hiding them in a crowd of the merely affluent. -- New York Times

On the removal of Principal Zoila Garcia from Whittier Dual Language School

Parents, teachers, and community members meet to protest the removal Principal Garcia. (Photo: Un-Official Whittier Dual Language School)

To the extended Whittier Dual Language School Family

Whittier Dual Language School, under the direction of Zoila Garcia, was visited before she was abruptly removed by PLV Network Chief Steve Zrike, with no input from the LSC or Whittier School Community, by the one of the national authorities on Dual Language, The Dual Language Education of New Mexico, who participated in an all day instructional round observation in nine classrooms. The DLeNM is an organization that knows more about dual language education than anyone in CPS.

In the report, they wrote the following of our principal, Ms. Zoila Garcia:

"School principal, Zoila Garcia, possesses an exemplary understanding of dual language instruction and programming that she has translated into consistently high quality practices amongst her teaching staff. Principal Garcia and her staff were receptive to the observations and recommended next steps from the instructional rounds team, and had already begun discussing their ideas for the implementation of next steps before the debrief had ended." DLeMN

It begs the question on why Dr. Steve Zrike, pulled the principal from her job at this moment!!! Strange that her contract was renewed only the summer before and now she is gone.

Dr. Zrike now handles the Whittier Dual Language School budget. What surprises does he have in store for our school.

You can't run a Dual Language program by placing someone with no real operational knowledge of Dual Language and rebuilding a program by taking pages from different books on dual language. It doesn't work like that in education. Running a dual language school is about time on task, living and breathing it. Dual Language has to be done right, not light!

Our Dual Language program runs in spite of the lack of resources provided by CPS. Dual Language programs are not just for the more affluent neighborhoods, but for all children. We ask that the larger extended family of Whittier Dual Language School, take time to call to defend our program.

Call CPS CEO Barbara Bird Bennett and ask her to return Ms. Zoila Garcia to Whittier School and support our dual language program. (773) 553-1500

Call CPS Chief of all Networks and tell Dennis Little to return Ms. Zoila Garcia to Whittier School and support our dual language program. 773 553 3430

Cal Dr. Stephen Zrike Jr. and ask him to return Ms. Zoila Garcia to Whittier School, support our dual language program and stop trying to manipulate our LSC.

Chief of Elementary Schools Pilsen-Little Village Network
773 5351900

For more go to The Un-Official Whittier Dual Language School at FB

CPS privatizes its training of principals as test pushers

Yesterday, as local parent groups at 37 schools, gathered signatures on petitions calling for more limited assessment tests, CPS announced that new principals are going to trained by private companies, basically as test pushers.

The board has handed out lucrative contracts to politically-connected New Leaders for New Schools and Teach For America (TFA) to train Chicago principal candidates.

Local school councils, who by law have the power to hire new principals, will now be limited to selecting those who have been trained by these two corporate "reform" groups. One can only imagine what's on the new Five-Step Principal Quality Strategy training table. The Sun-Times report gives us a clue.

Anyone aiming to take the helm of a school will have to prove a knack for dealing with parents who are upset or breaking up a student fight in the hall and other routine situations, Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said.

Yes, "dealing with parents." If there was ever a motto to be inscribed in Latin over the front door at Clark Street., this is it. Or maybe something like -- Parentes Sunt Stulti (Parents Are Fools)

As one would expect, no mention is made of the role of principals as teacher supporters, modelers of good teaching, trust builders, power sharers, or community leaders. That's the kind of principal preparation we were doing at UIC and other schools of education back in the early days of school reform, when LSCs had some real power and the principalship was gradually being liberated from the backwardness of white-only political patronage.

But under mayoral control, the clock is being turned back and principals are once again being rapidly rotated and sent out as anti-union enforcers for City Hall and the corporate school reformers. They are now going to be  evaluated and paid not as professionals, but on the bonus system, like a sales manager, with the product being standardized test scores. The bonus money is coming from private sources and the power philanthropists with half of the criteria for these bonuses based on higher student test scores.

It's hard to believe that principals and their association will let all this go down without a peep. Shame on them if they do.