Better to teach journalistic ethics by example

Why were faces blurred in this Facebook photo used in the Sun-Times story?

A routine news story became a viral controversy Sunday night after the editors of Northwestern University’s student-run newspaper issued an apology for interviewing and photographing campus protesters. Journalists from around the country quickly took to Twitter to attack the paper’s staff, saying they shouldn’t apologize for doing their job. -- WBEZ

It reads like a Who's Who in Chicago news reporting. I'm referring to the list of TV and newspaper reporters who have been lining up to teach a lesson to the students who staff the Daily Northwestern. The hubbub and overkill is about the paper's recent editorial apologizing for the way they covered the campus protest over the university's speaking invitation to arch segregationist and former Trump Atty. General, Jeff Sessions.

It was an unnecessary apology for interviewing and photographing campus protesters in a way that might put them in jeopardy. It's not the job of the press to protect the identities of protesters, say the critics and I generally agree. But I also applaud the student journalists for at least wrestling with the moral implications and unintended consequences of their actions and how their coverage might impact the lives and security of their fellow students. This, at a time when student activists, especially students of color, are often targeted for expulsion or arrest when they exercise their constitutional right to protest.

This kind of ethical and moral questioning goes to the very heart of democratic education and is something we rarely see among members of the corporate media.

There's no clearer example than the Sun-Times own coverage of a different sort of protest back in April when the racist FOP and other fascist and white nationalist groups marched in Chicago in an attempt to take down progressive States Attorney Kim Foxx and raise their profile in the city. While the article was a good exposure of some of the extremist groups involved, the Sun-Times editors also made a decision to blur the faces of some of the cops participating in the rally.

Who made the decision to blur the faces in the photo? Why wasn't there the same kind of critical response and ethical questioning from the professionals as there was around the Northwestern student editorial? I raised the question about the blurred faces at the time to a member of the Sun-Times editorial board who told me they would get back to me with an answer. Seven months later, I am still waiting for their explanation.

So until then, the pros who were silent back in April would do well to save the lecturing and teach by example.

This from Northwestern Daily's Editor Troy Closson.

/3 One of the first things I was told when I came into this position was that I was the third black EIC in The Daily’s more than 135 years of publication. I knew that would come with a lot of pressure, but didn’t realize how much until over the past two weeks.

— Troy Closson (@troy_closson) November 12, 2019

Back from Parkland. A new student movement is born.

I'm back from Parkland where I got a chance to talk with some Marjory Stoneman Douglas students, parents and educators in the aftermath of another catastrophic mass school shooting.

Like most of the country, I shared grief with the mourners and cheered on the dozens of MSD students who boarded the buses to Tallahassee to offer their reasonable gun control proposals to the state legislature only to be ignored and insulted by state pols.

Florida happens to be the state most averse to gun control legislation with a majority of state legislators receiving big campaign donations from the NRA. In FL, for example, if municipal officials pass a firearms-related law, they must pay a $5,000 fine and lose their jobs. They can also be forced to pay up to $100,000 in damages to any “person or an organization whose membership is adversely affected by any ordinance” —such as, say, the NRA.

To show how deep the divide is, the old, white male Republicans who rule the state, after refusing to meet with Parkland students to consider a ban on assault rifles, passed a resolution declaring that pornography endangers teenage health.

Refusing to be demoralized or turned around, not even by death threats from the right, the students are turning their grief and anger into militancy, organizing an NRA boycott, two national student walkouts against gun violence and lobbying for a ban on assault weapons. The shootings have sparked a new national movement with students taking the lead.

Students have traditionally been the igniters of larger and broader progressive social movements. That was true of the Civil Rights Movement (SNCC) anti-war and anti-imperialist youth revolt (SDS) of the '60s and the student uprisings here and in Europe 50 years ago.

The power of the youth movement rests in its embodiment of a vision that transcends the immediate demands and aims at reshaping the world in which the next generation will live, work, and lead.

But the emerging militant student movement alone, even with liberal supporters cheering them on and donating money, is incapable of carrying this struggle through to the end. But as it was in Paris, Berkeley, and Columbia University in '68, there is a basis for united action between students, communities of color (who are feeling the brunt of gun violence), and organized labor, now fighting the Janus decision for its very existence.

The current student protests may never approach the scope or depth of the '60s protest movement. It's impossible to predict. But hopefully, a unifying strategy will emerge from this new vital movement so that the students won't have to go it alone. 

Global anti-Trump protests

Brit protesters hang banner across the Thames. 

"It’s growing by the day," says Politico's Natasha Korecki in Illinois Playbook. She's talking, of course, about Saturday's Women's Marches in D.C. and cities around the country.

Here in Chicago, 24,000 people have RSVP’d on social media for the rally in Chicago. Organizers are expecting more than 200,000 in Washington D.C. while New York City and L.A. are likely to attract some 70,000 each.

Actually, now more than 50,000 are expected to turn out in Chicago. I'll make it 50,001.

SMALLTALK SALUTE goes out to the students at Glenbard East H.S. who have organized an anti-Trump walkout. They're also publishing The Glenbard Underground. Don't miss.

Chicago Public School students will walk out after their 7th period classes and head to the Resist Trump rally in Daley Plaza at 3:00pm.

CHICAGO (1/20) - The Chicago Students Union has coordinated a walkout across Chicago Public Schools today after 7th period to demonstrate to the Trump administration that the students of Chicago are prepared to defend their schools and communities.The nomination of vastly unqualified cabinet members like Betsy DeVos and the President's promises to deport their undocumented brothers and sisters has sparked widespread resistance. 

Following the walkout, students will head to the Chicago Movement for the 99%'s "ResistTrump" rally in Daley Plaza at 3:00pm. Sabah Hussain, a student activist, will give a speech at 4:10.

Email: chicagostudentsunion@gmail.comTwitter: @StudentUnionChiFacebook: Chicago Students Union

'NO TO TRUMP' shouted around the globe...In Buenos Aires,  a women's march is due to take place - one of hundreds planned across the world to coincide with the main marches in Washington D.C.

The “Marcha Solidaria de Mujeres: Edición Buenos Aires” will start in the neighborhood of Palermo at Plaza Intendente Seeber, near the U.S. embassy.

“We wish to make known that hateful and divisive speech and actions are not acceptable from anyone, and even less from our elected governors. We wish to announce our support for minority groups whose rights and safety are threatened by the policies and principles of this new administration in the U.S.,” organizers said of the event via Facebook.

“No to Global Trumpism” took place in Berlin, where protesters held a sign “Mr. President, Walls Divide. Build Bridges,” next to the remains of the Berlin Wall. Similar protests were expected in Paris, Madrid, Brussels and Prague.

While we take to the streets in cities around the world, the wealthiest and most powerful of the global elites sip their Cabernet at Davos in the Swiss Alps and try to come up with a response to the rise of global Trumpism, populism, and neo-fascism. It's really all about keeping the world in one piece long enough for them to spend their money.

There was even a panel on "Middle Class Anger".

“I want to be loud and clear: populism scares me,” Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio said. “The No. 1 issue economically as a market participant is how populism manifests itself over the next year or two.”

George Will in the NYT:

It has been well-said that Davos is where billionaires tell millionaires what the middle class feels.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Hundreds of CPS students walked-out of class and rallied at the Thompson Center demanding fair and adequate school funding. They targeted both Gov. Rauner and Mayor Emanuel. 

Sarah Jester, Payton College Prep student

"We live in a state where our governor calls our schools 'crumbling prisons,' but refuses to actively improve public education. We live in a city where our corrupt mayor appoints only his good friends to our Board of Education, although boards are usually elected in many other districts." -- Hundreds Of CPS Students Protest Against Rauner, Rahm On Education

Dave Zirin

To hear about the remorseless killing of predominantly Latino LGBT people during Pride month is shattering enough. To then see Donald Trump and a collection of the worst anti-gay bigots be boastful, almost gleeful, about it because the shooter was Muslim is all the worse. -- The Nation

Greg Hinz

The bottom line truly is a tale of two cities inside one.... Chicago's white population now appears to be growing while African-Americans are fleeing town. -- Crain's

Ken Burns at Stanford

Filmmaker Ken Burns 

"As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong." -- At Stanford commencement

 Gary Younge

Some will say it is about Islam. Mateen was Muslim. But mass shootings are not unique to Islam or alien to America. There were 330 last year alone. -- The Guardian

H. "Rap" Brown

 “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” -- July 27, 1967 SNCC Press Conference 

The youth movement

This, from yesterday's New York Times:

PARIS — A revolt over proposed labor-law reforms in France has set off an uprising among French youth, fed up, they say, over their government’s failure to tackle a host of problems and thus robbing them of their future. Calling itself Nuit Debout — roughly translatable as “Standing Up at Night” — the movement recalls Spain’s 2011 anti-austerity Indignados movement and the Occupy movement in the United States. But there are also echoes of France’s own history of popular revolt, including the student-led protests of May 1968.

The '68 French youth uprising left an indelible impression on me and many other young activists here in the U.S. The war in Vietnam and austerity in the colonial mother countries was at odds with the vision millions of young people had for the future of the world in which they hoped to live.

Whether in the Arab Spring or Occupy, or Paris' Nuit Debout, the youth movement lights the spark. But it becomes a real threat to the power of the 1%ers when it connects with labor movement (often a little slower on the uptake) and the freedom movements of the most oppressed sectors of society as it did in Paris 48 years ago.

This would make for a great discussion topic today at RIOTcon in Chicago where I'm doing a lunch chat, along with my brother Fred. Come join us.

But you can call off the spies, Mr. Mayor. RIOT in this case, is simply an acronym for Raging Issues of Today. The conference is sponsored by the Chicago Theological Seminary. Your citadel is still secure, for now.

According to CTS:

These two days feature a dynamic program and training schedule, including three keynote addresses, panel discussions and workshops led by the brightest minds of today.

Thank you. Thank you.

We pahked the cah...

Eve Ewing

We visited Hahvahd yesterday, only to find Chicago students tearing it up academically and politically, as expected.

First, we went over to the Law School where dozens of students have been occupying the Wasserstein Lounge, (which they've renamed Belinda Hall) trying to create a learning environment more relevant and safe for students of color. Occupiers I talked with, including Chicagoan and Whitney Young alum Keaton Allen, want more focus on critical race theory and more faculty of color.

Yesterday's speaker at the protest was none other than Harvard law prof Lani Guinier. Who could be more relevant at a time when Republicans have sworn to stonewall any Scalia replacement chosen by President Obama? Prof. Guinier is the first woman of color ever appointed to a tenured professorship at that institution.

Keaton Allen & Amanda Klonsky

But in 1993, President Bill Clinton pulled back Guinier's nomination as attorney general in the face of a brutal and racist negative Republican-led media campaign, referring to Guinier as a "quota queen." One New York Times opinion piece falsely claimed that Guinier was in favor of "segregating black voters in black-majority districts." Guinier was portrayed as a racial polarizer who believed—in the words of George Will (Newsweek 6/14/93)—that "only blacks can represent blacks." But the key to Clinton's retreat was Guinier's abandonment by Democratic senators like Ted Kennedy and even Carole Moseley Braun. What a shame.

Having heard Guinier speak before on several occasions, I took off and ran over to the Ed School to hear a presentation to the weekly research colloquium by brilliant doc student and  Chicago's own Eve Ewing.  Eve's research dissects the discourse surrounding Chicago school closings, unmasking
immoral public policy. If you haven't followed her work, a good place to start is her recent New Yorker piece, “We Shall Not Be Moved”: A Hunger Strike, Education, and Housing in Chicago."

Must be something in the Chicago drinking water, besides lead.

FOR DESSERT I caught Michael Moore's latest film, "Where to Invade Next", in Brookline. Funny and hard-hitting at the same time. Could easily be taken as a promotion for Bernie Sanders. But it isn't.

Moore at his best. Don't miss.

On MLK Day, time to talk about inequality in America and schools

Chicago State students march to save their school from closure. 

 "Inequality is inevitable; the vast inequality of America today isn’t." -- Paul Krugman in today's NYT. 

Krugman even tips his hat to Pres. Obama for raising the tax rate on top earners and pushing through his health care reform. Not only didn't the sky fall, as conservatives predicted, but over the past six years, we've had the best job growth since the 1990s.

But job growth is only a small part of the struggle for equality, especially when that growth is accompanied by flattening or shrinking real wages, union-busting, and the re-creation of a two-tier school system through privatization and charteriztion, and limited access to higher education.

Case in point -- the imminent closure of predominantly-black Chicago State Univ. as a result of Gov. Rauner's austerity program and his holding hostage the state education budget.

What Krugman doesn't mention is that Obama's job recovery has been far less beneficial to African-Americans whose unemployment rate is still high and has long been double the rate for whites.

Dr. King in Chicago in the '60s.

King Day -- I'm going to the Martin Luther King breakfast this morning. No, not the one the mayor is throwing in hopes of shoring up his dwindling support in the African-American community. That one is being boycotted. No photo-ops for Rahm with black leaders today, following the release of another video showing unarmed teen being gunned down by a Chicago cop.

I'll be at the one sponsored by the Chicago Teachers Union with CTU Pres. Karen Lewis Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, a religious scholar and leader of protests in Ferguson, Mo. doing the keynoting.

Also today -- CPS students will embark on a “education equality” march from the Thompson Center in the Loop to Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen. Along the route, students plan to march past CPS offices and the home of Chicago Board of Education President and retired Com-Ed CEO Frank Clark, calling on Rauner, state lawmakers and local pols to avoid deep budget cuts and layoffs at CPS schools this year.

Happy birthday, MLK.

"Joining The Boycott" I officially WILL NOT be attending the Mayor's MLK Breakfast and I pray that all my Pastoral Friends do the same.

— Corey Brooks (@CoreyBBrooks) January 12, 2016

DuSable librarian position restored. Thanks to 'anonymous donor' or student protests?

“Thanks to a generous anonymous gift, the librarian’s job can be restored at the DuSable campus,” CPS said in a statement.  -- Sun-Times

“That was just amazing … the kids … I’ve been here a long time, and one of the advantages of a librarian is you get to know kids when they’re little green freshman, then watch them write essays for college,” she said. “It was really very moving to me that they were willing to take that chance and take action.  -- DuSable librarian Sara Sayigh

I'm always amazed, though not surprised any more, by how money magically appears in broke-on-purpose coffers of the Chicago Public Schools.

While I'm elated to hear that students at DuSable (I still call it that) have their beloved librarian Sara Sayigh back, CPS's statement explaining the whole affair, is borderline laughable.  An anonymous donor? Really, Forrest Claypool? Are teaching and staff positions at CPS now like endowed chairs at the university, dependent on the benevolence of wealthy patrons? Is that even legal? Will it become part of the next collective-bargaining agreement (if there ever is a next)?

We've already got high schools named after billionaires line Gov. Bruce Rauner, retired ComEd CEO Frank Clark and Exelon's John Rowe. What's next? The Ken Griffin Social Studies Teacher at Lindbloom? The Anonymous Donor School Clerk at Bronzeville Military?

Sayigh's retention means we're back to three out of 28 high schools with a student population over 90 percent African-American that have a library staffed by a certified librarian. The others are Morgan Park High School and Chicago Vocational Career Academy.

Everyone should know by now that the real magic behind Sayigh's comeback was performed by DuSable students themselves, who made their voices heard loud and clear in what S-T-s Lauren Fitzpatrick calls, "a disruptive 'read-in' from high school students in the historic DuSable building."

Notice that Fitzpatrick uses the name DuSable only to describe the building and not the school itself. The reason being, DuSable High School, central to the Bronzeville gentrification plan, was closed a decade ago and replaced by three privately-run charters,  whose boards at Bronzeville Scholastic Institute and Daniel Hale Williams Prep high schools. immediately dropped the name DuSable (Betty Shabazz charter agreed to keep the name, DuSable Leadership Academy).

At the time, I worked with legendary DuSable alums Timuel Black, the late Jim Wagner and the DuSable Alumni Assoc. (of which I am a proud honorary member) to stop the takeover and keep the name DuSable -- at least on the building. Prof. Black is quoted in Fitzpatrick's story:

Civil rights icon and DuSable alumnus Timuel Black said removing the librarian “would be not only an insult to the history of the school and the library, but a disadvantage to the community which has access to the library, and certainly to those of us who have spent many years in the library even after graduation for information that would not be available anywhere else.”

When students organize, and are courageous enough to stand up and speak out to save their own schools, teachers, parents, and community come with them. Next thing you know, some victories are won over an administration that is bent on balancing the budget on the backs of neighborhood schools. It is also an administration in full retreat and reeling from mismanagement and corruption scandals. We see the potential of student/parent/teacher power in the Opt-Out movement against testing madness, Black Lives Matter, and current efforts to save special education.

Now, DuSable's Betty Shabazz charter is on the chopping block as a result of low test scores.  Makes you wonder if there will be any students left at DuSable to use the library.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

John Dewey, founder of the Lab School where Mayor Emanuel sends his children, on DuSable librarian. 

17-year-old DuSable senior Sabaria Dean

“The librarian is like a mentor to me, a resource. She's dedicated her entire life to DuSable and the children in it. She deserves to be here...“Libraries are essential to all CPS schools, not just Dusable. Without resources and reliable people, such as librarians, our resources are limited. Being on the South Side of Chicago is already a huge disadvantage."” -- DNAinfo

John Kass

Rahm Emanuel has lost the city and he can't get it back. -- Tribune

Peniel E. Joseph

The ugly truth—that historically affirmative action has been exclusively reserved for privileged white Americans (mostly male until the civil rights revolution)—is rarely, if ever, acknowledged.Certainly not by Justice Scalia. -- Newsweek

 Barack Obama on ESSA

Referred to the bipartisan bill-signing as “a Christmas miracle.” -- New York Times

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Ithaca College students in 'solidarity walkout'

Ithaca College Student Body President Dominick Recckio

"This movement has taken over the complete educational landscape of the entire institution. It has framed everyone at Ithaca College’s educational experience and will continue to do so." -- Democracy Now

Outgoing I.G. Faisal Khan

"We are the third biggest metropolis in the country. I would describe to you that the oversight in Chicago is comparable to the Wild West -- anything goes....

"...I could not believe how backwards the city was when it came to ethics. It needs to be blown up and started all over again ... I want Chicagoans to get their outrage back and say: 'enough is enough.'" 

Rahm & Ald. Joe Moore

Moore Khan...

Ald. Joe Moore called a female investigator from [Khan's] office a “bitch” and Khan himself a “bozo.” -- Politico

Sen. Ted Cruz

 “There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror." -- Washington Post

Jesse Berney

Terrorist attacks in Western cities should make us more sympathetic to refugees fleeing Syria: The horror in Paris Friday evening is a daily reality of the civil war they're trying to escape. --Rolling Stone

Corporate media turns the 1st Amendment on its head in Missouri

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law... infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.

Isn't it amazing the way giant corporate media, from TV news networks to NYT, WSJ, have been able to turn the University of Missouri black student protests upside-down in just a day?

Now the story is no longer about campus racism, threats of violence against black students, or an unresponsive school administration. No, now it's all about the new American paparazzi supposedly being denied its "1st Amendment rights" to photograph unwilling students and eavesdrop on their private conversations.

By whom? Not by the government "making any law...infringing on the freedom of the press." But supposedly by some black student protesters and a journalism professor.

How the script has been flipped.

The irony here is that this same corporate media totally blacked-out (no pun intended) any and all news coverage of the racist assaults on the students until U of M footballers stood up to be counted and the president's job was threatened. Is it any wonder that there's student distrust of the media?

This is not to say that the students and faculty member who jostled the ESPN stringer were right to do so. But either way, it's no federal case and after the initial hassle, it seemed like they worked things out. The faculty member apologized (she lost her job), and reporters were allowed entry to the gathering.

Now the Chicago Tribune, that bastion of 1st Amendment rights (remember their call for a Mussolini type to run the public schools) chimes in with an-- "How dare they!" -- editorial denouncing the students.

In a baffling display of dissonance, the protesters had pitched their tents in a public space — on a taxpayer-funded campus that is home to one of the best journalism schools in the nation — and posted a "NO MEDIA" sign.

The Tribune doesn't mention that the students had every right to this "public space" and, at least in my opinion, every right to defend themselves against violations of their own space and privacy. ESPN was the outsider here. I'm not even certain that the antagonist was a bona fide reporter. It's interesting that none of the real working journalists have made themselves the center of this story.

I can tell you from my own years as a journalist, I could never just walk onto a public school campus or any other "public space" and automatically gain entrance to meetings or take pictures of students without permission. It would have been a clear violation of school policy and -- dare I say -- journalistic ethics.

Journalistic ethics? What am I even talking about here? The Tribune Company, infamous for its Sam Zell-style buying/selling/takeover strategies and stripping its paper of working reporters and photographers, has none as far as I can tell. They're not the only ones. The Sun-Times fired each and every one of their photographers in 2013, replacing them with stringers with phone cameras. What could possibly go wrong?

The Trib's Eric Zorn, as usual, is the worst in writing about the protest. He refers to U of M President Tim Wolfe's resignation as "the fruits of extortion".

Eli Broad buys ed reporting in L.A.

The Trib's sister paper the L.A. Times is once again up for sale to the highest bidder -- most likely, the Koch Bros., Rupert Murdoch, or Eli Broad. And education reporting is now being directly underwritten by billionaire corporate reformers.

The Washington Post reports:

Three of the Times’ benefactors — the K&F Baxter Family Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation — have been major supporters of charter and school-privatization efforts that are strongly opposed by teachers’ unions.

Thus, you now have editorials like this one: "It's time to stop the whining about charter schools."

So much for "free press."

Yes, there are serious threats to our 1st Amendment rights and press freedom, but they're not coming from protesting black students at Missouri.

And while corporate media continues to make itself out to be the victims here, the racist threats against U of Missouri black students continue unabated. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

The protesting students are demanding that the institutions live up to their values. How long did we think the students wouldn't notice? — John Warner (@biblioracle)

Hillary Clinton

Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them. And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education. -- Washington Post

At Mizzou last night.

AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten

 Success Academy charter-school chain has suspended or expelled elementary students, including many kindergarteners, often for minor infractions — and at a rate seven times higher than elementary students in New York City’s public school system as a whole. -- N.Y. Daily News

Vermont Ed Sec. Rebecca Holcombe

These tests are based on a narrow definition of “college and career ready.”... If your child’s scores show that they are not yet proficient, this does not mean that they are not doing well or will not do well in the future. -- The Answer Sheet

Time Magazine's Jeffrey Kluger 

You have to accept that a single thing can exist in two states at once—alive and dead, black and white—until it’s observed or measured in some way, at which point it instantly takes on one quality or the other. -- What Einstein Got Wrong About the Speed of Light

I made this one up...

Ben Carson: "it's a witch hunt. The media keeps quoting me knowing I'm a crackpot."

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) November 8, 2015

Saying 'No' to Nobel charter expansion

A few of the many Catalyst alums (including me) with Linda Lenz

Congratulations again to Catalyst on its 25th anniversary and to friend and departing Catalyst founder and publisher Linda Lenz,

Tuesday night's party for Linda at the House of Blues was great fun. It brought together the whole gang from the first wave of Chicago school reform. Back in the day -- pre-Gates, pre-mayoral control of the schools -- there was room at the reform table for a broad range of activists from corporate reformers to black community activists to the CTU. Never again shall that twain meet, except of course, at Linda's farewell party. Cautious hugs and hand shakes. Very funny to this participant/observer.

Here's Linda's retrospective on Chicago school reform.

Teacher/Principal Retention Rates are a strong indicator of school quality. This finding is based on data just released by the State Board [Warning: You should take all data coming from ISBE with a grain of salt]. The best schools generally have highest retention rates and the lowest rates of teacher attrition. Those schools serving the district's poorest kids have the lowest retention rates. Charters are generally the worst when it comes to keeping their faculties intact.

The Sun-Times reports:

As for the city's growing charter sector, ISBE couldn't say how many staffers have cycled through each school, because in many cases, the numbers were not broken out by campus.

Urban Prep's [charter school] chief academic officer Lionel Allen couldn't believe his three campuses showed, for a second year, zero teachers remaining, saying, "We continue to be frustrated by the incorrect data that are reported for our schools and the lack of transparency around how these metrics are calculated."

Me too, Mr. Allen. Me too.

Lindblom students protest charter expansion.

A SmallTalk Salute goes out to Lindblom H.S. students who, along with some teachers, marched in protest over the Board's awarding Noble Network a competing charter school in the Brighton Park neighborhood. They marched to the Bank of America and then to Ald. Raymond Lopez's office to let them know their dissatisfaction.

They may not have known that Ald. Lopez has been openly opposed to the Noble charter in his area. Maybe he should invite the students over for lunch and let them know that he stands with them on this issue.

"Bank of America robbed our schools..." Lindblom students & staff chanting, referring to #CPS toxic swaps. @CatalystChicago

— Stephanie Choporis (@Steph_Choporis) October 29, 2015

Black aldermen mutiny. Rahm rushes to McCarthy's defense.

Supt. McCarthy goes all Che Guevara on us.

"I know what needs to happen. It's clear to me as anything on earth. It's a systematic failure and the system has to change." -- ABC 7 

Yesterday's City Council budget hearings were like none I've seen since the 70s run-up to the election of Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor. The crisis is so deep that the mutiny has spread way beyond the few and the brave in the Progressive Caucus. Previously isolated rivulets of anger with Rahm/Rauner austerity, property taxes, education cuts, school closings, charter expansion and the gun violence epidemic appear to be flowing into one big river of anger around the budget hearings.

Roosevelt H.S. students hit the streets.

Students at three high schools attempted walkouts yesterday in protest of the budget cuts and in support of their teachers. Roosevelt students succeeded. Students at Schurz and Foreman were blocked by cops and CPS security. There's no prison-break manuals in Common Core.

A SmallTalk salute goes out to Roosevelt teacher Tim Meegan for supporting and inspiring his students. 40th Dist. Rep. candidate Harishi Patel (running in Deb Mell's former district) was also out there with the students.

Monday's Black Caucus presser calling on the mayor to dump Supt. Garry McCarthy, sent tremors up to the 5th floor of City Hall. It even included several formerly docile alders joining with the progressives in open revolt. The catalyst may have been the The Tribune's gross Oct. 1 editorial, Aldermen, own Chicago violence, which sounded to me like a McCarthy plant.

Rahm hit back at the Caucus in a show of white solidarity, with a statement of all-out support for his top-cop. He went so far as to second (first) McCarthy's pick of Dean Andrews as his chief of detectives. Andrews is currently under investigation for engineering the cover-up in the killing of David Koschman by Mayor Daley's nephew R.J.” Vanecko and has been named 114 times in Special Prosecutor Dan Webb's 162-page report on the case. None of that mattered when it came to circling the wagons around McCarthy in the face of the Black Caucus threat.

The Trib brazenly doubled-down on its racist diatribe in today's editorial, leaving no doubt that their accusations and venom were directed only at black aldermen and not all 50 as they previously claimed. Today, the Trib boasts that their "suggestions really got under the skin of aldermen, particularly those who live in the city's most violent wards" (more code language).

Black Caucus Chairman Ald. Rod Sawyer (6th), responds.

This charge that we blame the police is a fiction, nothing more.

It is true that many in our communities have experienced difficult or unjust treatment at the hands of some police officers. Our city is paying huge settlements to victims of such treatment. The relationship can be an uneasy one. This is not some fantasy we made up. From disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge to "black sites" to stop-and-frisk tactics, it is understandable that there is a breach of trust between the police and people of color and the poor in some of Chicago's most distressed neighborhoods.

I respectfully suggest that your editorial board stop sowing division and casting blame, and instead offer constructive support for our efforts to build a better city for all Chicagoans.

Bearing witness: A project on memory, community and the 2013 Chicago School Closings.

Overton Elementary

"This is a building that could be put to good use, putting our students back in the building, Putting them back in there and giving them the things that they need to learn -- to get an education."

My friend, photographer Riza Falk and her collaborators Lara Leigh Kelland, and Oriana Erskine working with student interns at Erie Neighborhood House developed this project. The So Close to Ghost Project is sponsored by the Visionaries program in the Youth Options Unlimited (YOU) department at Erie Neighborhood House, the History Department at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Students looked at their closed neighborhood schools through the camera lens and created portraits and a video of student, parent and community voices to tell their story.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Kevin Moore captured arrest of Freddie Gray on video.

"He was folded up like a piece of origami." -- PostTV

Derick Ebert, 19-year-old Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore

We had hopes in Baltimore as youth that it would be different than Ferguson. We were hoping that it wouldn't have to come to this. That we would find an answer. That the police department wouldn't withhold information like they did. As soon as we saw that we weren't getting information is when we realized that we needed to take action. -- Youth Radio

Nicolas Kristof

 It turns out that the Wall Street bonus pool in 2014 was roughly twice the total annual earnings of all Americans working full time at the federal minimum wage. -- N.Y. Times

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

"It doesn’t matter if you live in Searchlight or Las Vegas, in Baltimore or rural Maryland: When there is no hope, anger and despair move in. Let’s not pretend the system is fair. Let’s not pretend everything is okay." -- Huffington

 N.Y. Principal Carol Burris

Assuming that Duncan is not planning to call in the National Guard to haul off opt-outing 8 year olds, the only possible “sanction” would be withholding funds. -- Washington Post

Students finding their voice, acting powerfully

Four days after 19-year old Tony Robinson was shot dead by a police officer in Wisconsin, protests have continued. Hundreds of high school and university students, some visibly grieving the loss of their friend, left classrooms and occupied the state capitol building yesterday.

The struggle continues -- I was impressed by the response of the Madison, WI school district leaders as hundreds of high school students joined their big brothers and sisters from UW in protesting the killing of Tony Robinson.

This from the Wisconsin State Journal:

Madison School District officials embraced the students’ rally by asking community leaders to come to the Capitol to ensure the students remained safe. They also provided seven buses for transportation back to school after the rally.

Students were not disciplined for attending, and could be excused by their parents, said district spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson. Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham and other district officials were at the rally.

“In general, we thought it was important that if students chose to demonstrate, that we ensure they are safe and provide positive adult presence to support our students as they express their concerns, grief and questions,” said Strauch-Nelson.

O-O-O-Oklahoma... The immediate and massive student response to the racist OU frat-boy ravings caught on video, has forced action on the part of the university president. Good lesson to be drawn here about the power of direct action. Fancy speeches are fine, as far as they go.

But the question remains, did they just discover the racist, white-only fraternities and sororities that dominate university social life at OU? Where have you been Pres. Boren?

For old-timers, the OU events might have sparked memories of the The Tulsa white race riot of 1921 which is rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. With the number of survivors declining, in 1996, the state legislature commissioned a report to establish the historical record of the events, and acknowledge the victims and damages to the black community. Released in 2001, the report included the commission's recommendations for some compensatory actions, most of which were not implemented by the state and city governments. The state passed legislation to establish some scholarships for descendants of survivors, economic development of Greenwood, which was known as Black Wall Street at the time, and a memorial park to the victims in Tulsa.

Philly students walkout in support of their teachers

Our thoughts this morning are with our dear friend and sister in the struggle, Karen Lewis, who underwent emergency surgery last night at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago. The CTU has announced a press conference for 4 P.M. today to give us an update on Karen's condition.

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Pearson has done it again. Another wrong "correct" answer on their high-stakes math exam. Sarah Blaine, the mom of a N.J. 4th-grader, tells us why this even matters in a post on the Answer Sheet.

I wrote about Pearson's mind-boggling and dangerous mistakes before, including this one, where they claimed in one of their text books that blood was blue. It took the work of a Chicago teacher and his students to debunk Pearson's text.

A SMALLTALK SALUTE goes out to hundreds of Philly students who are holding student strikes and protests in support of their teachers. The city's so-called School Reform Commission (SRC), set up under the state's takeover of the city's school system, has unilaterally tossed out its collective-bargaining agreement with the PFT.

Philly students walkout

Dozens of students from Science Leadership Academy in Center City and as many as 175 from the High School for Creative and Performing Arts in South Philadelphia boycotted classes. They held peaceful, upbeat demonstrations outside the two magnet schools. Twenty-five students from the Franklin Learning Center in Spring Garden demonstrated outside district headquarters at 440 N. Broad St.

University of Pennsylvania history professor Thomas Sugrue made a detour on his way to work from Mount Airy to support daughter Anna, a junior at Science Leadership. "Their voices are the ones who have been less heard in the debate about school reform," he said before tweeting a photo of his daughter.

We're still waiting to see what the union's response is going to be.

'When you close a school you open a prison'

THE PIPELINE... Hundreds marched Monday night from Lawndale to the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center to call for an end to what they call the “school to prison pipeline.” Activists began their march with a rally at Paderewski Elementary, a school that was among the more than 50 closed in 2013, down Ogden Avenue to the detention center.

Padlocks

Members of nearly 30 different community activist groups said they wanted to see more investment in education alternative programs for youth, rather than in prisons.

“Somebody once told me when you close a school you open a prison,” said Malcolm London, a member of the group Black Youth Project 100, as demonstrators placed and tied small padlocks to the fence in front of the school. “We’re placing these padlocks to symbolize being locked out of our systems,” said another demonstrator. -- Chicagoist

SPEAKING OF PADLOCKS... Byrd-Bennett changed the locks on the door at Gresham Elementary and won't give principal Diedrus Brown the keys. Silly, petty BBB. Doesn't she know that if parents want to stage another sit-in, Brown can just open the door from the inside and let them in?

WANNA BUY CPS? It's for sale. And here I thought the hedge-funders and corporate reformers already bought it.

FROM SEIU Adriana Alvarez has worked at McDonald’s for four years and makes just $8.75 an hour. She’s fighting for $15 an hour to win a better life for herself and her two year-old son Manny. This afternoon, Adriana was arrested outside of McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, where hundreds of workers refused to be silenced before the company's shareholder meeting.

Call McDonald’s and tell them you stand with Adriana and the other workers who were arrested right now: 888-979-7395.

AMARA ENYIA is running for mayor of Chicago. That's who, writes Joravsky in the Reader.

"There's not one, single thing that Rahm did that made me want to run," she says. "It was an aggregation of things that he'd done. Closing the schools. Closing the mental health clinics. The cuts. The firings.

SAVING GRESHAM

Tuesday's protest to save Gresham        (Sun-Times)

DIEDRUS BROWN...the principal of embattled Gresham Elementary on Chicago's south side, continued her very vocal fight Tuesday to save her school from undergoing a so-called “turnaround” — but this time with about 40 teachers, parents and students marching with her.

SUSPENSIONS...Dozens of students marched from Chicago Public Schools headquarters to the Thompson Center Wednesday in support of state legislation that would set new limits on suspensions and expulsions. The march, organized by Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, protested alleged bias in school disciplinary practices and backed state Senate Bill 3004 setting stricter standards for offenses that can result in suspension or expulsion.

"We're not asking for no discipline," said Mariama Bangura, a junior at Roosevelt High School and a youth leader for VOYCE and the Albany Park Neighborhood Council. "We're asking for common-sense discipline." -- DNAinfo

KAREN LEWIS is on the case. The CTU prez has an op-ed in yesterday's S-T, making no bones about where the union stands on school closings and on Rahm's wild expansion of this city's privately-run charter schools.

CTU believes instead that there should be a moratorium on charter school expansion because the 20-year experiment has proven to be too costly, too disruptive, and it did not deliver on its promises. 

Lewis' piece comes in response to an April 11th op-ed by DFER's Rebeca Nieves-Huffman, which cynically called on the CTU to join them in closing even more "under-performing" Chicago schools.

DON'T FORGET to Bop For Democracy Monday, April 21 from 6-9 p.m. at the Velvet Lounge.