'Ald. Burns likes to negotiate behind closed doors.'

Ald. Will Burns fronts for the mayor.

I've posted previously about David Axelrod's old firms, ASKG and AKPD (A as in Axelrod) and their role in attacking the Chicago Teachers Union and in managing the campaigns of anti-CTU candidates. Hanna Hayes writes here about these companies' connections to 4th Ward Alderman Will Burns who has been fighting against community activists trying to save Dyett High School. Burns is running for re-election with big support from the mayor's machine, against progressive Norm Bolden. I wish Norm the best of luck.

Dear Mike,

I thought you might be interested in this information from the 4th Ward. I remember you wrote about Rahm's conflict of interest with David Axelrod's firm during the teacher's strike. However, Alderman Burns still lists himself as a managing director for ASKG on the most recent city council disclosure statements filed in May 2014. And guess who is one of ASKG's clients? The University of Chicago Medical Center. People in the 4th ward constantly scream that he pushes the University's agenda, yet no one has brought up this relationship. (Incidentally, AKPD also ran Will's campaign in 2011.)

Burns repeatedly says that he likes to negotiate behind closed doors - he says this in forums and in a recent Chicago magazine interview. So how can his constituents be assured that he is not giving payback by servicing requests from the University of Chicago for the company where he still lists himself as a managing director? The Washington Park giveaway is just the most recent example.

Here are some relevant links:
http://webapps1.cityofchicago.org/efis/view_statement.html?statementId=185922&searchFlag=Y
Client list for AKPD http://akpdmedia.com/clients/

Client list for ASGK http://www.asgk.com/clients-campaigns

I'd be interested to hear if you have any thoughts on this. Keep up the good work!

All the best,
Hannah

Hannah Hayes
Communications Coordinator
hannah@electnormanbolden.org

Citizens to Elect Norman Bolden
1013 E. 43rd St
Chicago, IL 60653
773-285-9225

Beating Rahm's SuperPAC

Progressives Scott Waguespack (left) and John Arena, targeted by Rahm's $2 million super Pack

I braved the cold yesterday and went over to the library to cast my early vote against Rahm and for Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd). I don't mean to sound gloomy about the weather, but if I should somehow freeze to death between now and the 24th, at least my vote will be counted.

Waguespack is a member of the City Council's Progressive Caucus and Rahm's $2 million super PAC specifically targets him and Caucus member John Arena over in the 45th Ward, for defeat. We won't let that happen.

I also got to vote YES on the Elected School Board referendum and I'm sure it will carry.

I had to laugh when a voter in a nearby booth asked the judge, "How can this person, Doody-Jones,  be on the ballot when she doesn't even live in our ward?" He is referring to Waguespack's opponent -- Rahm's puppy dog, Elise Doody-Jones.

The confused but responsive judge gets on the phone and calls the Board of Elections. She actually connects with a live human being (nice going, David Orr) and asks for clarification on "Dooty-Bones" ballot position.  Turns out, it's legal. But it's a damn good question anyway.

Dooty-bones, indeed. She may not live in the 32nd, but she will pick up a nice chunk of change from the SuperPAC. She promises that she will move over here if elected. Another great reason to vote for Scott.

You have to love Chicago ward politics.

Class War...Mark Brown has a good column in today's S-T about Rauner's escalation of class warfare (thus far one-sided) against organized labor. Brown has good instincts for this kind of stuff and comes by them honestly. He writes:

My first thought upon learning of Rauner’s move was of Fort Sumter and the cannon shot that signaled the beginning of the Civil War, not to suggest anything so momentous.

My second thought was of my grandfather, a railroad worker who was shot and wounded by company thugs who fired on a group of union pickets in the central Illinois railroad wars 69 years ago this month. Yes, I have a visceral reaction to this stuff.

Me too.

Doomsday Clock Ticking...Over the next decade, the U.S. expects to spend $355 billion on modernizing its nuclear weapons. This according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Why? Remember when Obama was running for president and pledged to "set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it"?

Questions: 1) What does "modernizing" nukes have to do with eliminating them? 2) Who are we planning to target with such weapons? 3) Isn't there a better way to spend $335 billion? Ie. in a public education fund where the interest alone would fund the nation's largest school districts for 100 years. 4) Where's the hue and cry from the right on this big gov't spending?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 “Given the ongoing inspector general investigation, I am unable to comment.” -- Sun-Times

John Kass

The Tribune reported on Rahm's golden circle of campaign contributors — with about 100 of them ponying up almost half of the $30 million political war chest he's built since 2010. These aren't neighborhood guys. These are the oligarchs that run things. -- Tribune

Ta-Nehisi Coates

If you are truly appalled by the brutality of ISIS, then a wise and essential step is understanding the lure of brutality, and recalling how easily your own society can be, and how often it has been, pulled over the brink. -- Atlantic

Carmen Fariña 

Norm Fruchter 

“I think that her appointment had a very reassuring effect on the line educators who actually are at the core of the system. I think they feel like she knows who they are, she understands what their job is, she understands what the challenges are and she’s got their back.” -- NYT

Alice Hu

The current resistance to college-in-prison is founded upon political rhetoric rather than any factual evidence. -- Harvard Political Review

'Right to Work'

First a clarification. The phrase “right to work” is a misnomer that has little to do with the right of a person to seek and accept gainful employment.  -- Robert Bruno, Sun-Times

More on 'Dare the School Create a New Social Order?'

I had no idea that my reference to George Counts' little book would arouse such passionate arguments (see comments section) against the notion of the school as a force for social reconstruction. I hope others will join in on this important conversation.

Of course neither schools -- nor any other single institution or social force -- can transform society, provide jobs, housing or end poverty and racism by itself. But thanks to my friends Diane Ravitch and Deb Meier for pointing that out once again. Of course, I was raising much broader issues, like the growing threat of nuclear annihilation and environmental catastrophe in my post.

Deb calls it a "Utopian" idea that will only "set teachers up" for failure. But I think there's power in Utopian ideas. I'm reminded here of  John Dewey's imagined visit to Utopia written up in a 1933 New York Times article, which influenced many involved in 60's youth revolt, which was built on the imagination of a better world in which to grow up. Or for that matter, the 1990's small schools movement.

Dewey wrote:

The most Utopian thing in Utopia is that there are no schools at all. Education is carried on without anything of the nature of schools, or, if this idea is so extreme that we cannot conceive of it as educational at all, then we may say nothing of the sort at present we know as schools.

Children, however, are gathered together in association with older and more mature people who direct their activity.  The assembly places all have large grounds, gardens, orchards, greenhouses, and none of the buildings in which children and older people gather will hold much more than 200 people, this having been found to be about the limits of close, intimate personal acquaintance on the part of people who associate together.

Yes, we have to separate (and connect) visions and dreams from/with daily classroom practical problem solving. But the question remains: What can must schools do?

Counts and Dewey's critique of fellow progressive educators is as relevant today as it was 80 years ago. Despite wishes that child-centered education could take place free from political and ideological struggle, schools remain contested territory. And why not? They are the places where future generations should be being prepared to become citizens in a participatory democracy rather than merely centers of social-reproduction (structures and activities that transmit social inequality from one generation to the next).

The best examples of democratic education I can come up with are the Freedom Schools and Citizen Schools that were a critical part of the 60's-era Civil Rights Movement. It's worth reading Charles Payne's book, I've Got The Light of Freedom on this, along with his chapter, Education for Activism: Mississippi's Freedom Schools in the 1960s" in Ayers, Klonsky & Lyon, A Simple Justice.

Yes, there is always the risk that schools and teachers will try to, or be asked to carry too much of the social change burden or substitute indoctrination for the development of reflective and critical thinking skills. But the greater risk, it seems to me, is the acceptance of school in its traditional form, bound by a common core curriculum, prescribed blocks of subject matter and standardized testing.

As for jobs and housing, it's worth noting that unlike 1932, those things are profoundly influenced by schools in a society where education has become the second largest sector of the GNP, trailing only healthcare. That's much too large a share, in the minds of corporate school reformers, to be left in the hands of democratic decision makers. Education is rapidly becoming a $1 trillion industry, representing 10% of America's GNP. Federal and State expenditures on education exceed $750 billion and education companies, with over $80 billion in annual revenues, already constitute a large sector in the education arena.

There are more than 4 million teachers and many more non-teaching workers and teacher unions remain the largest in the country and may be our last bastion of organized labor.

Yes, the schools remain a battle ground. So I guess I would argue that schools, students, and educators can, should and must "dare to create a new social order". The very survival of the planet may depend on it.

'REVOLUTION' IN THE AIR

YOU SAY YOU WANT A R-R-REVOLUTION... Reading my campus email this evening. The list is topped off with this subject line: Revolutionary Case Takes The iPad To A Whole New Level. I feel certain that the masters of information-age metaphors who sent out this piece of "disruptive" drivel must have come out of the Kennedy School at Harvard.

And they say there's not jobs out there for these grads. Nonsense!

“Teacher turnover really destabilizes a learning environment,” said Hannah Nguyen, a University of Southern California junior who aspires to be a teacher but has helped organize protests against Teach for America. “So having a model that perpetuates that inequity in and of itself was also very confusing for me.”

But as ever, there's a real youth revolt brewing and it's impact is being felt right in the belly of the beast. Yesterday's NYT reports that lots of the best-and-brightest, who were flocking to TFA a decade ago, as our generation flocked to the Peace Corps or VISTA, are now opting out.

For the second year in a row, applicants for the elite program have dropped, breaking a 15-year growth trend. Applications are down by about 10 percent from a year earlier on college campuses around the country as of the end of last month.

The group, which has sought to transform education in close alignment with the charter school movement, has advised schools that the size of its teacher corps this fall could be down by as much as a quarter and has closed two of its eight national summer training sites, in New York City and Los Angeles.

My take on all this is that, given the ongoing exposés of TFA's horrific 5-week-wonder training regimen, its connection with privatization of public schools, the teacher attrition rates of its graduates, not to mention the organization's odious collection of reactionary, billionaire funders, it's become an embarrassment for many socially-conscious students to say they're joining TFA. 

According to the Times' Mokoto Rich, 

...as Teach for America grew, it became a magnet for criticism from teachers unions, education schools and some policy makers, who argued that sending enthusiastic but untested graduates to classrooms in some of the nation’s poorest communities with just five weeks of training would not produce great teachers. They also said the program’s two-year teaching stints brought instability.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Bob Marley. He would have turned 70 today.

Sun-Times backs Rahm toadies in 4th, 35th & 37th

toad·y

noun --  a person who behaves obsequiously to someone important.
synonyms: sycophant, brown-noser, lickspittle, flatterer, flunky, lackey, trained seal, doormat, stooge, cringer; informalbootlicker, suck-up, yes-man; vulgar slang: kiss-ass, ass-kisser

Ald. Rey Colon, busted for DUI

Brother Fred can't help but chuckle over the Sun-Times endorsement of Rahm's toady Alderman Rey Colon over progressive, Carlos Rosa in the 35th. Neither can I. He says:

 I read this as the Sun-Times saying, sure, Rey Colon is unresponsive tool of developers and a serial drunk driver, but Carlos Rosa will defend our pensions and oppose the city adding additional tax burdens on the working people in our neighborhood. And he has a history of fighting for immigrant rights. So we endorse Colon.

Our guy, Carlos Rosa in the 35th

Seems like a pattern here. Just look at their endorsement of Rahm's toady in the 4th Ward, Will Burns:

Burns has two opponents, the most impressive of whom is Norman Bolden. They remind voters what Burns needs to work on: He can be arrogant, not listen closely enough to community concerns and is often tightly aligned with the mayor.

Hmm, says the S-T Board. Arrogant? Doesn't listen to the community? Sounds like our kind of guy.

Or how about in the 37th where S-T endorses Emma Mitts, the incumbent who backed the building of a new Noble St. Charter School right across the street from Prosser Career Academy. S-T editors say Mitts is, "a generally passive alderman, inclined to follow the leader". Just what we need, right?

And besides, her opponent, progressive community activist, Tara Stamps, "has high ideals and real fire." So naturally, we'll go with Mitts.

Rauner's dream: A state with no unions and more charters

Gov. Rauner used yesterday's State of the State speech to officially declare war on the state's working people and on public schools. His first order of business was calling for Illinois to join states like Mississippi and Alabama as union-free zones and for the banning of political contributions from teachers and other public employee unions. He then promised to cut workers' comp, unemployment benefits and to push for more privately run charter schools.

The Tribune reports:

The rookie chief executive and venture capitalist put his official stamp on proposals to let communities vote on right-to-work zones where jobs are scarce, scale back workers' compensation, rein in lawsuit damage awards and lower unemployment insurance rates.

 Gregory Baise, the president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association, said the business community is upbeat for the first time in a long time. Now, he said, lawmakers must give the governor's pro-business bills consideration.

Rauner, Madigan & Cullerton

No surprise there. But what may have stunned some union leaders was how easily the gov's anti-labor mantra was gulped down by the state's Democratic Party leadership.

 House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, did not summarily dismiss the Rauner proposals. "I wouldn't characterize anything as a non-starter," he said. "I agree with the governor that the state of Illinois needs a lot of work, a lot of attention."

The New York Times noted that:

 The reaction from Democrats, who control the state legislature, was remarkably muted, not dismissing the governor’s ideas out of hand.

Remember, Rauner can't get anything through the legislature without Democrat support. And if recent pension-theft legislation pushed by Madigan, Cullerton and Quinn is any indication, this won't be as difficult as some might have guessed.

Pushing so-called right-work-legislation is now the favorite tactic of right-wing politicians and their Koch Bros. patrons.

Let's see how Dems and public employee unions respond.

If you want to get down to the essentials of Rauner's agenda, look no further than his shutting down 30 social-service and youth-training organizations this week, along with a proposal to hire more prison guards. 

Get it?

More than 80 years ago, Counts asked, "Dare the school build a new social order?"

“The urgency is real. We are not saying that it is too late to take actions, but the window for action is closing rapidly. The choice is ours, and the clock is ticking.” -- Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Executive Director Kennette Benedict

Back in 1932, George S. Counts asked his colleagues in the Progressive Education Association, "Dare the School Build a New Social Order?" Counts, who was influenced by progressives like John Dewey and Francis Parker, favored the progressive education model of child-centered learning. But he and other social-reconstructionists feared that school curriculum, even in progressive schools, was being sanitized and separated from the real social conditions like the Great Depression and the global crisis caused by the rise of fascism in Europe and the threat of a new world war. He called for a "critical pedagogy" that might produce a new generation of social justice activists, capable of "reconstituting the democratic tradition and of thus working positively toward a new society".

I'm thinking about Counts' challenge to the educators of his time this morning, as I'm reading that the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) has decided to move the minute hand on its symbolic Doomsday Clock 2 minutes closer to disaster. The clock now shows 3 minutes before midnight because the “probability of global catastrophe is very high” as a result of continuing climate change and efforts to modernize nuclear weapons stockpiles. The BAS board includes more than 20 scientists, 17 of whom are Nobel laureates.

It's stunning that the clock should move this far, even after six years of a liberal and self-proclaimed progressive, Democratic Obama administration which pledged to "set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it." Sad to say that the pace of dismantling our massive stockpile of nuclear weapons has slowed nearly to a stand still and the development of new weapons of mass destruction and modernized delivery systems is rapidly moving forward. And now the threat of a new Cold War with Russia is growing stronger.

Global greenhouse gas emission rates are now 50% higher than they were in 1990. Emission rates have risen since 2000 by more than in the previous three decades combined. Investments have continued to pour into fossil fuel infrastructure at a rate that exceeds $1 trillion per year, with additional hundreds of billions of dollars in continued fossil fuel subsidies.

Faced with this global crisis and rising poverty and racial oppression (the new Jim Crow) here at home, the question of the role of teachers and schools is back on the table as is the question posed to progressive educators by Counts more than 80 years ago.

Taking names. Calling them out.

"We will not apologize for standing up for what's right for children. We will never keep silent in the face of austerity." -- Karen Lewis

It's only appropriate that the announcement of Tom Gradel and Dick Simpson's new book, "Corrupt Illinois", should parallel today's Sun-Times story of Rahm Emanuel's $2 million super PAC coming to the rescue of his gaggle of ass-kissing council candidates.

If you're taking names, here's the list:

Deborah Graham (29th), Will Burns (4th), Natashia Holmes (7th), Anthony Beale (9th), John Pope (10th), Joann Thompson (16th), Lona Lane (18th), Howard Brookins (21st), Mike Zalewski (23rd), Danny Solis (25th), Roberto Maldonado (26th),  Deb Mell (33rd), Emma Mitts (37th), Marge Laurino (39th), Pat O’Connor (40th), James Cappleman (46th) and Debra Silverstein (50th).

I'm feeling pretty confident that we can beat Rahm's bought-off candidates in wards where the community is organized. Out here in Logan Square for example, I'm predicting victories for young activist Carlos Rosa (35th) and Progressive Caucus leader Scott Waguespack (32nd).

We are are hosting a house meeting and fund-raiser for Carlos on Sunday to help him over the hump as the election draws near.  

Speaking of naming names, CTU Pres. Karen Lewis called out Rahm's "crazy hedge fund homies" in the audience, in her address to the City Club of Chicago. You gotta watch it. Also called out was board member Jess Ruiz, who's been Rahm's main water carrier on school closings. He was so shaken, he had to run out of the room at the end of Karen's speech. 

She also did a great job of unpacking Rahm's demagogy on the longer school day, testing madness, privatization of public space ("the public/private partnership means private") and pension theft. 

Gov. Rauner, received particular attention from Lewis, who said the governor was "busy trying to make the term 'collective bargaining' into dirty words." Rauner, she said, "thinks that only certain people are worthy of a high-quality education."

More Lewis:

Rauner ran on a platform about nothing, He's wasted no time attacking the wages of working-class people, attacking their labor unions and threatening massive cuts to social service programs, which help the most vulnerable people in our state. That is the real Bruce Rauner. He's not some easygoing, blue-jeans-wearing, $20-dollar-watch-having good guy who's coming to save the day. He is (Wisconsin Gov.) Scott Walker on steroids.

With three weeks to go before the primary (I'm counting on a run-off), I hope Karen's spunk and speak-truth-to-power fortitude will be contagious.

How do you know Rahm's lying? Lips are moving.

S-T's Al Podgorski fact-checks Rahm's claim that under his rule, newcomers are flocking to Chicago. Turns out, it's total BS.

After the debate, I asked the mayor's campaign spokesperson, Steve Mayberry, for a source for Rahm's assertion. He sent me a link to a press release about a "study" last year by the eminent demographic researcher, United Van Lines.

As you might expect, there's no mention of the city's loss of more than 200,000 African-Americans over the past decade. Loss of manufacturing jobs, cuts in neighborhood city services, demolition of public housing, rising gun violence, and massive school closings, have all contributed to the exodus.

Podgorski is dead-on when he concludes:

Does Friday's stretcher by Emanuel mean you should be skeptical about other claims he makes about his administration's triumphs? Yes.

And in the remaining debates, a suggestion for the mayor's challengers: when Rahm boasts of some particular achievement, ask him, "Is that another of your United Van lines?"

DODGE CITY...Even Rahm's $11 million election propaganda machine couldn't cover up last month's 40% jump in the city's murder rate from a year ago. And that's if you believe Supt. McCarthy's numbers. I don't.

As long as the city's gun violence pandemic is seen by this mayor primarily as a policing/jailing matter, as opposed to one of improving conditions of life in the city's bleeding neighborhoods, there's little hope in sight.

I haven't forgotten how Rahm blocked Obama's gun-control initiatives when he worked in the White House. Remember:

Holder had told reporters that the administration would push to reinstate the assault-weapons ban, which had expired in 2004. The comments roused the powerful gun lobby and its water carriers on Capitol Hill. ‘Senators to Attorney General: Stay Away from Our Guns’ read a press release issued by Senator Max Baucus of Montana-a Democrat, no less.

“Emanuel was furious. He slammed his desk and cursed the attorney general. Holder was only repeating a position Obama had expressed during the campaign, but that was before the White House needed the backing of pro-gun Democrats from red states for their domestic agenda. The chief of staff sent word to Justice that Holder needed to ‘shut the fuck up’ on guns…”

Now chickens have come home to roost in Rahmville.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Rahm Emanuel attends a 2011 fundraiser at the Chicago home of Rajiv Fernando, the CEO of Chopper Trading, a firm that has donated to Emanuel and ultimately benefited. (Nuccio DiNuzzo, Chicago Tribune)

Rahm is vulnerable

 "It's easy to see he's vulnerable by the amount he's raising that is absolutely obscene by any standard," said two-term Alderman Bob Fioretti, a frequent voice of dissent on a City Council that often backs the mayor's ideas. -- AP

CTU Pres. Karen Lewis

“We've had 25 years of this mayoral control and it's not working,” CTU President Karen Lewis says, noting that a union poll last year said 65 percent of Chicagoans favor an elected school board. -- Crain's

Meeks: Test or else

PARCC or else

“Therefore, we are directing you to administer the PARCC assessment to all students. If any district does not test, ISBE will withhold its Title I funds. We will also seek to recoup the state funds spent on any test booklets unused by the district, as well as any restocking fees charged to ISBE by our testing vendor.” -- ISBE Chairman Rev. Meeks and State Supt. Koch,  Sun-Times

Sugata Mitra

"We need a pedagogy free from fear..." -- TED

School closings were great, 'thoughtful', 'coordinated', 'strategic' says BBB.

DATA-DRIVEN... EdWeek's headline reads: Chicago's Closures Drove Most Students to Better-Rated Schools. But dig down in into the story and you learn that Univ. of Chicago researchers found "a higher-than-expected percentage of students enrolled in schools that were rated as Level 3, the district's designation for the lowest-performing schools" and that "only 21% attended Level 1 schools."

They found that the majority of students who enrolled in schools other than their assigned replacement wound up in lower-performing schools. The U. of C. study also found that the district's criteria for what constitutes a good school were often different from those of families considering where to enroll and that for most parents, higher test scores weren't their top consideration when deciding which school their children would attend. Safety was.

The study also indicated there simply weren't enough available seats for displaced students in higher-rated schools.

"I think the main takeaway for us, or for me at least, is nearly all the displaced students attended schools that were higher performing than the closed ones. But those schools were not substantially better than the ones that closed," said Marisa de la Torre, one of the study's authors.

 "The things that keep coming back again and again are these issues of safety and transportation and not enough good options near where the families live."

Then there's schools chief Byrd-Bennett's take-away:

...the report "demonstrates that we kept our promises and upheld our commitments to our students and school communities... These results are based on the strategic, thoughtful, coordinated approach we took to managing the transition process."

Are we looking at the same study?

Duncan goes to war with Chicago over PARCC testing delay

Arne Duncan gives his more-testing announcement at Seaton Elementary School in Washington, D.C.

Sometimes the news is so bizarre that I can't believe what I'm reading. Case in point -- the latest on Chicago testing madness. First Arne Duncan gives his more-and-earlier testing speech to the nation. The speech is an attempt to pacify the testing industry and its backers and somehow push a new version of No Child Left Behind through a Republican controlled congress.

Then, just as Duncan is trying to work something out with Republican Lamar Alexander, the new head of the Senate Education Committee, Chicago school chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett announces a one-year moratorium on administering the PARCC test because of a "lack of computers" (hold your laughter, please). BBB says the test will only be given this year to about 10% of CPS' 600 schools. The decision to postpone the test is made of course, not by BBB, but by Rahm Emanuel's hand-picked board and comes in the face of growing parent and teacher protest against Common Core over-testing and a burgeoning opt-out movement. It also comes weeks before the mayoral election.

POLITICO's Stephanie Simon sez:

Chicago’s stance could well inspire copycat insurrections in other districts, analysts said — and that could undermine not just the Common Core, but more than a decade of public policy that relies on standardized tests to hold schools and teachers accountable for helping kids learn.

BBB might have pulled it off if she hadn't joined a growing chorus of IL district superintendents openly attacking PARCC testing. She calls the test “unproven” and complains that adding such a long exam to a year already crammed with standardized tests would be overwhelming to students, teachers and principals. The PARCC test takes nine to 11 hours, depending on a student’s grade level.
Here comes the topper. Just as Pres. Obama is recording his endorsement ads supporting Rahm's re-election campaign, Duncan goes off on Rahm/Byrd Bennett and threatens to cut off potentially $1.2 billion in state aid unless CPS backs off and gives the test. The threat comes in a previously unpublicized letter to Illinois Schools Superintendent Christopher Koch from Duncan's deputy, Deborah Delisle.

Meeks freaks

Meeks freaks over possible billion-dollar loss of federal funds.  "We are greatly concerned about it," the Rev. James Meeks, Gov. Rauner's new chairman of the state school board, tells Greg Hinz at Crain's.

Hinz writes:

Her [BBB's] defiance was striking in a district that has long been viewed as a national leader in test-based accountability. It was also rich in symbolism because Chicago public schools were once run by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a huge cheerleader for both the Common Core and the new exams, developed with $370 million in federal funds.

Politically, the problem is that, given national wrangling over school standards, Duncan cannot be seen as being easy on Chicago, said one source close to the center of the flap. That doesn't mean Illinois would lose all of the money, but a sizable hit is likely.

So, the question is: Is all this just a show? Or is Obama's Dept. of Education really going to war with Rahm Emanuel over testing on the eve of Chicago's mayoral election?

MORE PUSH-BACK ON PARCC COMMON CORE TESTING

Supt. Trish Kocanda

This time it comes from the leader of one of the nation's wealthiest and most progressive districts. Supt. Trish Kocanda of Winnetka Public Schools has written a "warning letter" to parents,  community members, and staff about the PARCC Common Core exam scheduled for March and May.

Kocanda's letter is published in today's Washington Post:

As we learn more about the assessment, we grow wary. We are concerned about the amount of instructional time it will displace, the impact this will have on students, and the usefulness of the results.

The Post's Valerie Strauss writes:

Winnetka, just north of Chicago, is one of the most affluent communities in the country. The Winnetka Public Schools district Web site says that the system has “led the nation in progressive education and served as model for educators who value the development of the whole child.” There are about 2,000 students in the system’s schools, all of whom leave the eighth grade and attend nationally recognized New Trier Township High School.

Kocanda's letter comes on the heels of Ed Sec. Arne Duncan's call for even more and earlier high stakes standardized testing.

Back in November, the superintendent of neighboring Evanston Township launched a blistering attack on PARCC testing.

“Students taking both PARCC mathematics and reading language arts tests will spend more time taking PARCC tests than aspiring lawyers will spend sitting for the Bar Exam with no payoff,” said Pete Bavis, District 202 assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

Last week Chicago Public Schools delayed most PARCC testing for a year, with Supt. Byrd-Bennett claiming that that not enough computers were in place to administer the tests to more than 10% of CPS students. She made no critique of Common Core testing but was obviously worried about possible results and fallout from the tests.

But you can bet Winnetka's blast at Duncan's testing madness won't be the last.

Florida Blues?

F. Klonsky pic

I can think of worse things than being stuck down here in Sarasota while the east coast is buried in snow. I'm flying back to Chicago and trying to get there before my class starts on Wednesday evening. I'm  wondering if the chain reaction from backed-up N.Y. flights will affect airports here. But not panicked either way. Although the sun's glare on the windshield makes driving down the coast difficult and the price of sunscreen hasn't gone down with the fall in oil prices.

In the meantime, I'm getting a close-up view of ed "reform"Florida-style where Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott wants to take $100 million from the state's public schools and hand it over to private-run charters and their operating companies. That's a $25 million increase from the current year.

According to the Bradenton Herald, "charter schools and traditional public schools have been battling over facilities funding since the economic downturn, when the state's school construction fund began drying up".

Gov. Scott & Michelle Rhee

Scott is privatization crazed and even tried to privatize FL's health-care system as well as the state's prisons.  According to the Center for Media and Democracy, prison privatization has resulted in a record number of inmate deaths.

Before becoming governor, he made millions in the privatized health care industry. In 1987, at age 34, he co-founded Columbia Hospital Corporation with two business partners; this merged with Hospital Corporation of America in 1989 to form Columbia/HCA and eventually became the largest private for-profit health care company in the U.S.

He resigned as Chief Executive of Columbia/HCA in 1997 amid a controversy over the company's business and Medicare billing practices; the company ultimately admitted to fourteen felonies and agreed to pay the federal government over $600 million, which was the largest fraud settlement in US history.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention Scott's right-hand education adviser -- Michelle Rhee.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

Rahm Emanuel

...said Saturday that nonbinding referendums calling for an elected school board on next month's mayoral ballot are a politically inspired effort to "trick" voters at the polls because the concept is going nowhere in Springfield

"You know, the governor said he's not for it. The legislature said that they're not for it and I don't think we should actually convince (or) trick people by having a political campaign issue as a way to fixing our schools." -- Tribune 

Bob Fioretti
... said conflict of interest issues were "running amok" within the current school board and that "we all ought to be embarrassed by what we see at CPS at this point."

He said an elected school board should represent "the diversity of our city so that we have the people that matter most in making those decisions — teachers, our parents, our students." -- Tribune  

Chuy Garcia

"Putting it into the hands of voters and the people as the rest of the state does is a good practice," he told the forum. "We need to try something else." --Tribune 

Linda Darling-Hammond

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. middle school teachers work in schools where more than 30 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. This is by far the highest rate in the world… The next countries in line after the United States are Malaysia and Chile. -- Want to Close the Achievement Gap?

More LDH

Now we have international evidence about something that has a greater effect on learning than testing: teaching. 

Tom Loveless, at the Brookings Institution on NY test scores

“If New York schools are in a state of crisis, they’ve been in a state of crisis for 20 years.” -- New York Times

Col. Tyrrell jumps ship, goes over the hill…

Tyrrell

If timing is everything, Col. Tyrrell's sucks. Today is his last day as CPS school-closings chief.

Just as the latest study of disastrous CPS school closings hits the streets, the military man Rahm brought in to engineer the assault on the city's black community,  jumps ship and goes over the hill (sorry, those are the only military metaphors I can come up with this early in the morning), leaving the mayor, a month before the election, to deal with the fallout from the report.

The colonel, who became the district's chief operating officer, was hired in 2012, with no background in education, to run the school closings operation. He had already been through the wars, but nothing like this. He cut his teeth on the prisoner exchange operation after the war in Kosovo -- talk about bad metaphors for "welcoming schools" and "safe passage". He then went on to work as Chief Operating Officer for the Intrepid Sea*Air*Space Museum in New York City, "helping instill in young people some of the virtues" of the military.

Tyrrell explained his Kosovo-style battle plan to the Sun-Times in 2013:

“I’m not saying it looks similar to now, but there was great distrust to the process on both sides but there was a lot of chaos and stress,” Tyrrell said at the time, laying out plans with Byrd-Bennett to transition children into new schools. What was similar, he continued: “It requires you to plow through the noise and get the planning done and get it done in detail, and then be flexible enough to adapt as the plan unfolds.”

Then he told WBEZ,

There are obvious differences between closing 50 schools and starting a new country or fighting terrorism. But there are also similarities. "Surge teams are available." 

Bloody but not bowed after 40,000 angry parents and community members turned out at neighborhood meetings to protest the closings, sending his boss's ratings in the black community into the dumper, Col. Tyrrell, courageously took on his next big assignments -- moving furniture from Clark Street over to CPS' new headquarters and then trying to sell-off Rahm's abandoned, shuttered school buildings. Neither project has won him any medals.

Tyrell walks

The Tribune reports that conclusions in the Consortium report, "echo the most stinging rebukes from school closing opponents — many of which are being aired frequently in the runup to next month's city election."

For example, Only 21% of displaced students attended schools that had a top rating under a now-retired CPS assessment model, the study said, slightly lower than what would have resulted if all students enrolled in their designated school in fall 2013.

But the report doesn't even scratch the surface of the damage the closings have done to suffering families living in further blighted and poverty-stricken communities. 80% of the children and parents impacted by the closings were black.

So Col. Tyrrell is toast but the CPS battle-wagons (caissons?) keep rolling along.

Injecting a 'little democracy' (but not too much) into schools

Monday's King Day rally at PUSH for an elected school board.

Our schools teach kids about the wonders of democracy. If it’s good enough for the classroom, it’s good enough for the school board. -- Sun-Times

Pathetic... A S-T editorial calls for "injecting a little democracy" into Chicago schools -- a little, but not too much lest they piss-off the Little Emperor.

Chicago remains the only district in the state without an elected school board. There's a growing resistance movement across the city, calling for an elected school board. There's also a non-binding but likely to pass referendum in 37 wards on the Feb. 24 ballot, and support from a majority of aldermanic candidates.

So the S-T board gives up a little to hide a lot.

Recent boards have tilted heavily toward the affluent and the powerful and have not included teachers and few or no current parents. It is a rare day when the board rejects or even tempers the mayor’s recommended policies.

Then they try their best to give Rahm a way to cover his left cheek by calling for the election of a few school board members while leaving the majority to be appointed by the mayor, including the schools C.E.O.

When I was back in high school, they used to call this, "sandbox politics" or pretend democracy.

Chuy says, 'Enough charter mania'!

Today at the City Club, in response to a question from the UNO charter hustlers, Chuy Garcia called for a "pause" in charter expansion. NBC reporter Mary Ann Ahern Tweets:

Chuy Garcia: "there's been a charter mania in Chicago for sometime" #Mayor15 pic.twitter.com/wRALzcCDbI
— Mary Ann Ahern (@MaryAnnAhernNBC) January 20, 2015

Chuy also says he's willing to use TIF money if necessary, pending the court's decision, and "scour the earth" for new revenue to help solve the pension crisis. Finally, a politician who sees the pension problem as a revenue issue rather than a how-to-rob-the-elderly issue.

Nobody came.

WHAT IF NOBODY CAME?... Rahm promised a big showing of community groups at today's major policy address on Public Safety. Uh oh. Less than 20 people showed up. I guess people are fed up with his bragging about crime numbers that nobody in the neighborhoods believe. Plus no Q & A allowed. Can't blame him. Once voters start asking hard questions...

CUBA... IL Sen. Dick Durbin is back from Cuba. Says the trip was "very productive."

"Re-establishing travel and trade relations will mean real benefits for people in Illinois and across the country, from farmers to small businesses to working families. But this policy change is about more than just travel and trade — it's about opening Cuba to new ideas, new values, and improved human rights that our 50-year-old policy of exclusion could not achieve."

He's right of course. But I hope that works both ways -- opening to new ideas, values and improved human rights, that is. After all, Michigan has a higher incarceration rate than Cuba. More educator exchanges, like the one I organized back in 2000 would benefit schools in both countries. Diane Ravitch went in 2013 and had this to say:

The old world is passing, dissolving, and a new world is beginning, shoots of grass breaking through the concrete. The embargo seems as antique as the now ancient slogans.The sooner the embargo is lifted, the sooner there will be normal relations between our countries.

TESTING MADNESS ... The AFT together with the liberal group Center for American Progress, are calling on Congress to end the use of annual tests for high-stakes consequences. And so am I.

The difference being, the teacher unions and some liberal groups, for reasons most educators can't fathom, still support Arne Duncan's call for even more standardized testing, beginning even earlier. To argue that you just want the mandated testing without the high-stakes consequences or arguing for Common Core without Pearson testing profiteers, is to deny reality. That's not leadership.

DR. KING WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Still whistling Dixie in AR

Dr. Martin Luther King

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. -- The Purpose Of Education

Andrew Wilkes on "Pentecostal piety"

 The civil rights movement saw black folks (and non-black folks) consecrate the American dream by way of the prophetic Baptist theology of Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, yes. But it also involved the anointed agnosticism of Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s founding executive director and the generative force of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating committee, Ella Baker. The radical Quaker vision of a Bayard Rustin next to the ethical humanism of an Asa Phillip Randolph were also blended in. And also in the mix was the subtle, yet significant tradition of faith-filled lay activists like Fannie Lou Hamer and Marian Wright Edelman. -- The Guardian

Detroit hip-hop artist Mic Write

What does it mean for our community for there to be this vacant space where there used to be a life? Where have those people gone? What is left for them?" -- Mother Jones

Morris Dees, Founder, Southern Poverty Law Center

We've seen the results: voter suppression, corporate hegemony in Washington, a shrinking social safety net, and mass incarceration. Our schools are increasingly segregated, and the headlines this past week tell us that the majority of our public school students now live in poverty. -- Huff Post

Prof. Charles Payne, author of "I've Got The Light of Freedom"

The movement managed to ameliorate the most blatant features of white supremacy; it didn’t end it. Given that the net wealth of white households is 13 times that of black ones, given that too many black children are coming to maturity in life-limiting ghettos — and the notion that the black ghetto and the ethnic ghettos of the past can be equated is simply a lie — given unprecedented levels of incarceration, given that James Baldwin’s comment about the police in black neighborhoods being regarded as an occupying army still has too much truth, given that blacks and other non-whites are treated superficially in the curricula of most schools, if they are present at all, the last thing we need is a new movement. We need to finish the old one. 
The struggle continues. -- New York Times