WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 Already there have been more global cases in 2021 than in all of 2020, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Dr. Anthony Fauci 

“We don’t want to declare victory prematurely because we still have a ways to go." -- Guardian

Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Chicago school board member

"Turnaound is a relic..." -- Chalkbeat Chicago 

Rebecca Solnit

Stop glorifying ‘centrism’. It is an insidious bias favoring an unjust status quo. -- Guardian

Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, the bill's sponsor

“For years, folks were showing up to Chicago Police Board meetings for their civic duty and every citizen who showed up experienced a background check. That’s a violation of so many people’s rights.” -- -- Capitol Fax

Fred Klonsky

We live in a country where the state legislature must mandate play but congress doesn't need to approve a war. -- Tweet

15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'.

Piccolo parents protest the takeover of their school by AUSL in 2012. (Katie Osgood pic) 

"Yet for all the public attention, AUSL's results have been mixed; many students have made considerable progress, but as a group they still lag well behind district averages ... with many ending up on par or even below comparable neighborhood schools." -- Chicago Tribune, 2/6/2012

Yesterday, CPS announced that it was reclaiming the so-called "turnaround schools" which were handed over to the private management and teacher training company, the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) in 2006. 

All I can say about this break from Arne Duncan's privatization "reforms" carried out under the banner of Renaissance 2010 and then rebranded as Race to the Top during his term as Sec. of Education, is -- it's about time. 

Lacking any research base and built on the false premise that private companies, hedge funders, and power philanthropists could best operate public institutions, AUSL's school takeover turned out to be an expensive and dismal flop.

AUSL was founded and run by Chicago venture capitalist Martin Koldyke, who used his connections and big campaign donations to become a powerhouse in the school turnaround business. Koldyke, a golf buddy of then-Mayor Daley, decided he could save the public school system by running it like a business. Koldyke's company, Frontenac, had been a big investor in for-profit colleges like DeVry and Rasmussen College.

Despite AUSL schools ranking at or near the bottom of the system, the company benefited from backing from Daley, and then from Rahm Emanuel. Rahm even selected a former AUSL top executive to oversee CPS' finances and named AUSL's previous board chairman, David Vitale, as president of the CPS Board of Education. With virtual control of the board and the central office, Koldyke was assured of a stable funding pipeline to his then 19 turnaround schools, even in the midst of a budget crisis when neighborhood schools were being starved of operating cash.

But as I pointed out here in 2012, 

 Chicago's turnarounds failed to meet even their own criteria of success and they paled in comparison to a large group of neighborhood schools being run more democratically with popularly-elected Local School Councils. More than 60 elementary-level high-poverty schools that have made school-based democracy a reality, out-achieved the top Turnaround School.

I still remember Duncan speaking to Dodge Elementary parents who were angry over his handing their school over to AUSL, without any input from the community, and promising them that they would be thrilled with his new Renaissance alternatives. 

WBEZ's Becky Vevea wrote at the time:

In 2008, Dodge was where then president-elect Barack Obama announced Duncan as his pick for Secretary of Education.

“He’s shut down failing schools and replaced their entire staffs, even when it was unpopular,” Obama said at the time. “This school right here, Dodge Renaissance Academy, is a perfect example. Since this school was revamped and reopened in 2003, the number of students meeting state standards has more than tripled.”

But fast forward another five years, turnarounds Dodge and Williams were closing their doors after being labeled as low-performing schools. And by 2013, CPS  had closed many of the schools Duncan had created.

Four years after it was opened CPS pulled the plug on “turnaround” school, Bethune Elementary. The Bethune staff had all been fired when AUSL took over. Duncan claimed that a "clean slate" would lead to better schools. He would go on to push that same baseless claim at the D.O.E., withholding federal funds from school districts unless they closed schools and fired teachers in mass.

Good move, CPS and Mayor Lightfoot in bringing these 31 schools back home to CPS and in taking steps to put the public back in public schooling. There's still a long way to go on that one.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

BIG WIN -- Philly schools activist Helen Gym elected to City Council.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Education activist Helen Gym's victory in particular promises to bring energy and independence to an often monolithic and backward body. -- Editorial

Jal Mehta, Salon

Across this history, we see some recurring themes. The first is the outsized faith that Americans have placed in the tools of scientific management as a mechanism for improving schools. -- Education reformers have it all wrong

Chicago teacher

The working conditions I experienced at Urban Prep were the worst of my career, which has been spent entirely in the inner city. -- Edushyster

Chicago Tribune 

 The people hired to take on corporate salvation projects have to have "Mussolini-like powers to execute and implement," turnaround expert Bill Brandt of Development Specialists Inc. tells us. -- Editorial: Why Chicago schools need a turnaround expert at the top

Howard Zinn (1976)

 Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren… The Becoming Radical

Chicago or #Chirac? The #Democratic Machine has ruled here for most of a century. Corruption, stupidity, violence http://t.co/hQRM72AQoj

— John Kass (@John_Kass) May 24, 2015

Last night at the sit-in at Gresham Elementary

Ollie Clements

Jitu Brown (Center)

Principal Diedrus Brown supports her parents

CTU ON TODAY'S 'TURNAROUND' DECISION

Gresham Students

Despite strong community opposition, the Board of Education prepared to wipe clean teachers and staff at three schools designated for "turnaround" at its monthly meeting Wednesday. -- DNAInfo


Here's a statement by the Chicago Teachers Union on today's CPS decision to "turnaround" three elementary schools:
 
CHICAGO—The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) released the following statement upon news that the Chicago Board of Education voted to “turn around” three elementary schools on the city's South and West sides. The move will transfer the schools’ authority to a politically connected business organization with ties to city hall:

“Today’s hostile takeover of three of our neighborhood school communities by the mayor’s handpicked Board of Education makes it quite clear that there is a war on older, African-American teachers and administrators, as well as the school communities in which they serve,” said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union.

“After being starved of resources for many consecutive years, Dvorak, Gresham and McNair, three promising elementary schools, were set up for failure by our school district. While we are proud of the members we have working in 'turnaround schools' operated by the Academy of Urban School Leadership (AUSL), our issue is that this dubious, corporate reform model has proven to do little but take over schools discredited by CPS and then, after receiving millions of dollars in support, take credit for the sudden but short-lived academic success among students.

“Nearly a year ago we witnessed thousands of parents, community leaders, clergy, educators and students begging to be heard as the Board destroyed nearly 50 schools. Today parents, administrators and teachers were forced to beg the Board of Ed for the right to a future, only to be slapped down and have their cries fall on deaf ears. Where are the leaders in our school district who are protecting the interests of these students and their constituents? This is why we stand strong in our call for a democratically elected, representative school board.”

Sun-Times editors know exactly what's wrong with 'turnaround' strategy

The Sun-Times editorial board has things all figured out. They know exactly why Byrd-Bennett's "radical" plan to turn more schools over to the private turnaround operators at AUSL will be a disaster. They say so themselves:

Radical, indeed. This treatment rips a community apart, including many teachers who sought out the toughest assignments only then to be unfairly blamed for the conditions they sought to improve.

They even have some clues as to why at least one of those schools, Gresham Elementary, is struggling and that it's little fault of their own.

[Gresham Principal] Brown deserves to be heard loud and clear in one area. She claims that CPS policies destabilized Gresham, contributing to its decline — and it’s hard to argue with her. For months last year, Gresham was on a closure list because of low enrollment. It was spared, but that undoubtedly hurt the school climate, and test scores dropped last spring. And this year, after a deal to share its building with a charter school fell through in August, Gresham’s budget was cut. Brown lost six positions, including three teachers and two adults who worked on social and emotional development with parents and students.

CPS acknowledges these destabilizing forces — and here’s the worst part — but said other candidates for a turnaround had undergone even greater recent changes.

So the S-T board knows exactly what's going on here. They know that the cause of the problem is not the school's nor the teachers' but rather, CPS neglect and mis-leadership. And they know that turnaround is the wrong answer for the the challenges facing neighborhood schools. They also know that the turnaround plan will further destabilize neighborhoods and demoralize hard working and committed teachers.

So naturally, being who they are, they come out WHOLEHEARTEDLY IN SUPPORT of the turnaround plan. Why? Because they saw an early study of turnaround schools by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, which they say, showed that while AUSL controlled schools remained low-achieving, their test scores went up slightly.

And to the education experts on the S-T editorial board, that's all that matters.

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.

Hang tough Gresham!

“At least give us one school in the community where AUSL don’t have to take over,” Candace Stigler shouted in the school’s gym. -- WBEZ


A SmallTalk Salute goes out to Principal Diedrus Brown, Ald. Brookins and the Walter Gresham Elementary School community for having the courage to resist Byrd-Bennett's move to hand their school over to the private management company,  AUSL.

They're standing on solid ground when they say the resource-starved schools has been making steady progress. In 2004, when Brown became principal,  34.7 percent of Gresham students met or exceeded state standards, according to the Illinois School Report Card. By 2011, that number had almost doubled to 64.4 percent and Gresham was up to good standing status. But in 2012, the number of students meeting standards dropped to 58.3 percent and the school's good standing status was removed and now BBB is threatening to fire the entire faculty and staff.

Network Chief Elizabeth Kirby told the 200 parents and community members at a Wednesday meeting that Gresham was being proposed for a turnaround because of a "steady decline" in academic performance. -- DNAinfo

Gresham is a small school of 350 students. In schools of that size year-to-year dips and bumps in test scores are common, as 3 or 4 high or low-scoring kids graduate or enter the school. It's one reason why even the test makers don't want schools to use short-term score swings as measurements of school success or failure.

Gresham parents & community members pack meeting.

The problem faced by Gresham and many other neighborhood schools in the south and west sides, is not test scores, but a lack of resources. Even though it's a small school, CPS spent millions of dollars renovating Gresham last summer, a lot of it was spent on installing two elevators, which Brown said the school did not have the disabled population to support. "I don't know any school that has two elevators," says Brown.

Meanwhile, the school has no librarian and, like so many neighborhood schools, is in bad need of a music and art teacher.

Ald. Howard Brookins (21st), whose ward includes Gresham Elementary, is also against the proposal.

"I am going to try and stop it. I am against the school turnaround," Brookins said Thursday. "And I have concerns about [the Academy of Urban School Leadership] taking over the school and cutting out the Local School Council in the process."

Time to get rid of the IL State Charter Commission

On March 20th, HB 3754 that would dissolve the ALEC-created Illinois State Charter School Commission passed the House by a vote of (78-33).  Today the bill is being heard in the Illinois Senate Education Committee. You can tell members of the Senate Education Committee that you support the senate version of this bill, SB2627, by filling out a witness slip.

Reminiscent of Central Falls

TURNAROUNDS...Byrd-Bennett's loot, pillage and burn approach to Chicago school reform is just "school closings under another name", says the CTU. "Turnaround" has become reform-speak for fire everyone -- teachers, staff, janitors, lunchroom ladies. The mass firings at McNair Elementary and Dvorak Technology Academy on the West Side and  Gresham Elementary on the South Side represents the scorched-earth approach reminiscent of Arne Duncan's assault on Central Falls High School in 2010 and has little to do with school improvement. Rather, it's more payback against the teachers union with Rahm/Byrd-Bennett flexing their muscles because they can. Important to note that turnarounds are exclusively in Chicago black and Latino communities and those mostly people of color. 

They've dropped all pretense of using so-called data-driven reform or even their own distorted version of teacher evaluation based on student test scores. Now it's simply naked aggression on a public school system they never have supported -- fire 'em all, let God sort 'em out --- and handing public schools over to private school operators. 

Racial lines of Chicago

CHICAGO 4TH MOST SEGREGATED CITY...If the mayor's school "reform" and  two-tier education strategy is aimed at supporting and promoting gentrification and isolation of the city's black neighborhoods, it's working. Atlanta Black Star reports that Chicago remains in 4th place among the nation's most segregated cities. 

In Chicago, north side neighborhoods like Edgewater and the Gold Coast are nearly exclusively white, Black people lodge on the South and West Sides. Hispanics dwell in southwest and northwest areas of the city.

WHITENIZING CHICAGO...What the report doesn't mention is that the blue areas of the map, signifying the city's segregated black communities, are dramatically shrinking in size. Chicago has lost somewhere around 200,000 African-Americans in the past decade. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Courageous Saucedo student speaks out against ISAT.  

Sun-Times editorial

...CPS damaged its credibility with parents, and undermined the trust that is so essential to good schooling, by choosing, foolishly, to interview small children on such a sensitive matter without even informing their parents — the ones who made the final decision on skipping the test. CPS had the law on its side, but wisdom was nowhere to be found. -- Terrible idea to interrogate kids 

Drummond Teacher Juan Gonzalez

 Drummond teachers have said they are afraid of losing their jobs, but felt obligated to take a stand. “I stand strong  in my decision. I feel I’m on the side of right,” Gonzalez says. “This boycott of the ISAT is not about the ISAT alone,” he says. “It's about the incredible amount of testing that we give our kids.” -- WBEZ

Liberal Teacher

Then I blew my stack and asked who is really paying you to say this. How can your daughter’s charter school be closed when it never opened in the first place? Mayor DiBlasio did not close any schools. How can one close a school that was never even opened? By the way, with all the money being paid for your fake grass roots campaign, jingoistic ads and commercials, your pal Eva could build ten more charters. Of course, she hung up in the middle of my rant. -- The Public Educator

CTU Vice-President Jesse Sharkey 

 “What we see are schools that are in the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. We see schools that are as a group 97 percent African-American. These policies will hurt the students they are meant to help and it will punish the dedicated educators that have made a point in their life to dedicate their lives to working with the student population.” -- Sun-Times, CPS CEO recommends turnarounds for three schools

Veteran teacher, Gerald J. Conti

With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that  “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. -- WaPo, Teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession … no longer exists’

Katie Hogan, Founding Teacher at Social Justice HS, speaks at Town Hall in Chicago

"...I'm standing before you unafraid...people who have lost everything, such as ourselves, and have nothing to lose, are really dangerous..." -- Katie Hogan

Clemente follow up

Driving past Clemente last night, we couldn't help but notice the big heart sign on the wall saying, WE LOVE OUR GREAT TEACHERS. But after Rahm's Monday massacre, where about 20 of those great teachers were given pink slips, we have our doubts. Now we learn that the school is being used by CPS as model for youth development. I'm sure teachers like Kevin Hough had nothing to do with that.

Next up for the fired teachers  --  Attending today's board meeting, a hoped-for meeting with Ald. Joe Moreno, and a sit-down with Principal Sorensen, the union and board lawyers on Tuesday.

Cracks in the pavement

"This is Little Rock, 1957," Jackson told the board. "This is apartheid."

The mayor had no trouble getting his hand-picked gaggle of billionaires and their toadies on the school board to unanimously vote for more school closings and turnarounds. But it's become clear that mounting protests have begun to create some space for dissent among the minions. Media coverage of the protests seems to have moved somewhat out of the hands of Rahm's army of highly-paid spinners at CPS.

Latest to join the struggle to stop the closings were two important black, religious community leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Paul Jakes. Both showed up at yesterday's packed school board meeting and each had a lot to say. Jaclson  blasted inequities in the school system and a lack of resources. After a string of speakers predicted spikes in violence as students make their way to new schools across gang lines, Jakes said:  "The Board of Education needs to work and help pay for some of these funerals that the families will have to go through.

Even the slick-talking J.C. Brizard couldn't escape the ire of the crowd.

Edweek reports:  

Schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard told the crowd that school closings were challenging but necessary, but his remarks that CPS' process was "the most respectful of the community that I've ever seen" brought jeers from the audience.

Chicago school board tells parents: We don't need no stinkin' research

A day after they were handed the latest study showing the poor results of their turnaround reforms, the mayor's hand-picked school board voted to turn 10 more neighborhood public schools over to a private turnaround company. This despite day-long protests outside their offices by hundreds of angry parents, students and community supporters (none of the mayor's paid counter-protesters even bothered to show up).

The board decided to ignore the research and a week of protests (including a march on Monday to the mayor's house) and voted to close five elementary schools, phase out one high school and "turn around" 10 schools by firing all the teachers and making them reapply for jobs.

Debunking turnaround claims of "unimaginable success"

As hundred of protesters gather outside of CPS headquarters this morning to try and prevent the handing over of 10 more schools to AUSL, a private turnaround company, a new study is released which debunks claims made by the mayor and his CPS spin squad about the supposed overwhelming success of turnarounds.

Turnaround schools have become a central piece of Arne Duncan's Race To The Top strategy imposed on states and local school districts in exchange for federal funds. While billions are currently being invested by the federal government in turnaround schools nationally, little research has been carried out about their effectiveness. CPS officials, led by former AUSL execs like School Board Pres. David Vitale and CPS CAO Tim Cawley, claim that the company provides "an opportunity for academic achievement that would otherwise be unimaginable for students.”

At a press conference yesterday, Dr. Donald Moore of Designs for Change, released his major new research study comparing the impact of: elementary-level "Turnaround Schools," run by private contractors like AUSL, to those in which parents, teachers, the principal, the community and students work together to strengthen to quality of education and achievement.

A key purpose of the study is to gauge the potential of School-Based Democracy and School Turnarounds to be carried out in a way that will have wider impact on hundreds of extremely low-income low-achieving elementary schools (primarily serving African American and Latino students) — both in Chicago and in the 50 largest U.S. cities, based on this evidence.

The study found that Chicago's turnarounds have failed to meet even their own criteria of success and that their pale in comparison to a large group of neighborhood schools being run more democratically with popularly-elected Local School Councils. More than 60 elementary-level high-poverty schools that have made school-based democracy a reality, out-achieved the top Turnaround School.

Parents, teachers and students occupying Piccolo

Saying no to privatization

Photos by A. Klonsky

The halls and classrooms of Brian Piccolo Elementary School on North Keeler are now home to dozens of parents, students and activists armed with a message.

"We want to hear from the mayor," said Latoya Walls, Piccolo parent. "Hear us. We are taxpayers. We have a right. We have a say so. These are our kids." -- ABC Channel 7

Protesters are occupying the school in protest of the Board of Education’s plans to fire all the teachers and turn the school over to a private company. The Board plans to vote on Wednesday to turnaround Piccolo and hand over management of the school to AUSL, Academy for Urban School Leadership, a privately connected firm with ties to City Hall.

To support the parents of Piccolo, go to Piccolo School, 1040 N. Keeler. Bring friends, food, blankets, and water. Support Our Schools, Don’t Close Them!

Who will turnaround the turnarounds?

"We note with continued dismay that Chicago's unelected school board members continue (to) drain millions of public dollars from regular neighborhood schools while they instead invest in charters, private-sector school models which have been shown to educate students no better." -- Chicago Teachers Union

Last summer, we learned that L.A.'s mayor-run and privately-operated turnaround/charter schools were a miserable failure,  even when compared to struggling regular district-operated public schools. Similar results are now being reported in other urban districts where contract-hungry corporate reformers are imposing top-down turnaround solutions to complex problems.

Now the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research reports that, after four years, “turned around" high schools in Chicago have failed to outperform the city's similar struggling high schools. The report studied 36 schools that adopted one of four models required for federal funding under Race To The Top  — replacing principals, replacing staff through either district-led or AUSL-managed turnarounds and replacing under-performing neighborhood schools with charters, and then compared them to the worst schools in the district that underwent no change, seeing how far they deviated from district averages.

Elementary schools being run by politically-connected AUSL, showed some statistical gains. But only with greater resources. Even with those resources there is no evidence that these initial bumps can be sustained. the pattern has been for those test-score gains to flatten out over time. But at the high school level, the report concluded that CPS' efforts — overhauling school staff or closing schools and then opening charters in their place — "had little effect."

The Sun-Times reports that CPS bureaucrats were quick to seize on the small bump in elementary scores to tout AUSL, which ran 12 of 36 schools studied and, if approved, will oversee six more.

“I would say the report shows there’s promising and encouraging data about our turnaround models in particular and about AUSL as an example,’’ said CPS Chief Education Officer Noemi Donoso.

Of course Donoso, like other CPS officials who now serve only at the pleasure of the mayor and spin things accordingly, can say what she wants. But the spin is politically, not educationally driven. Clout-heavy AUSL has from the start, benefited from backing from the Civic Committee, former mayor Daley, current mayor Rahm Emanuel and Sec. of Ed Arne Duncan. Emanuel even selected a former AUSL top executive to oversee CPS' finances and named AUSL's previous board chairman, David Vitale, as president of CPS' Board of Education.

Donoso should at least mention that in elementary schools, the AUSL model comes with $300,000 in one time start-up costs and $141,000 for an assistant principal. One can only imagine what comparative outcomes might have looked like if struggling neighborhood schools got that kind of support.

Actually, for all the public attention and extra political and financial support, AUSL's results have been mixed; some students have made  progress, but as a group they still lag well behind district averages ... with many ending up on par or even below comparable neighborhood schools. According to the Tribune, AUSL has also been accused of "kicking out lower-performing students in the turnaround process to enhance academic gains."

Yesterday, the Chicago Teachers Union responded by announcing it planned to file a lawsuit seeking an injunction to prevent the Feb. 22 school board vote to give AUSL even more schools to operate.

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

Like Freddy Kreuger, he's baaack!  

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

According to Catalyst,  

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

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

Turnaround cronyism at Collins High

Be sure and read Matt Farmer's excellent Huffington post on Chicago turnarounds. He lays bare the crony relationship between venture capitalist Mike Koldyke's Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) and the mayor. It ends up with AUSL being handed Collins High for their very own. 

That's when the money started to roll in. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation quickly ponied up $1 million to the heavy-hitters at AUSL for the Collins turnaround effort. That same foundation kicked in an additional $10.3 million for AUSL in 2008, and a chunk of that cash was used for teacher training at Collins...

The results can hardly be called a success.

...No one with press credentials thought to say: "Mr. Mayor, if one-third of that September 2007 freshman class failed to walk across the Collins stage with a diploma in June 2011, can you really say Collins is a successful turnaround?"

Questions for Jean-Claude Brizard

“We have to take immediate action this year. . . . Too many of our students are in what I call an educational emergency room.’’ -- J.C. Brizard

With today's announcement by Brizard, that 10 more Chicago schools were being "turned around," complete with mass firings of faculty and staff and the contracting of new management groups to take them over, a few questions come to mind.

1. In your telephone interview with reporters you say: “We can no longer defend a Chicago Public School system that fails our students year after year.’’ If that's true, exactly how many years-after-years has the system been failing its students? Is that an assessment of the Daley/Duncan years? Does it include Arne Duncan's "Chicago Miracle" tenure? Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 reform years? The more recent Huberman period marked by previous turn-arounds, teacher firings and mass school closings? The entire Daley era of mayoral control and top-down reform? Has it all been a bust?

2. Why do you think that more of the same, more turn-arounds, more teacher firings and more school closings  will produce different results? Any evidence in the research or from your previous experience in Rochester that firing entire school faculties improves student learning outcomes? Where can we find it?

3. Why are you and the mayor going it alone again on top-down reform? Doing it to teachers and communities rather than with them? Any evidence in the research or from your previous experience with your bungled longer-school-day initiative that the war on teachers and their union is an effective reform strategy?

4. Where are all these great replacement teachers going to come from? Do you have a thousand of them stashed away someplace we don't know about? Or is this just a ploy to get rid of veteran teachers and bring in TFA 5-week wonders who will be more compliant and take home smaller pay checks?

You have my number. I await your answers.