"It's for the kids"

I'm trying to stay away from writing about charter school scams & scandals. There's just too many of 'em, enough to fill all the open space on SmallTalk for years, and then some. But the latest, coming out of Chicago, really got to me.

It's about a veteran Chicago school principal I've known for years, Helen Hawkins. She made quite a name for herself in the world of Chicago school reform and served as a mentor for many reform-minded young teacher leaders. But she was also one of many who gave up on public school reform, after working against the CPS bureaucracy for so many years. When she got an opportunity to start her own charter school, she jumped at the chance. Whenever I would see Helen, she would point a finger and remind me, education has to be "all about the kids. It's not about the grown-ups (teachers)", she would say.

Lately, whenever anyone tells me, "it's all about the kids," I tell the kids to duck. Something awful is about to be done to them.

This morning I came upon this Sun-Times story, "School's money spent on Coach bags, diet pills." Helen Hawkins is now facing a prison term for embezzling at least a quarter-million dollars from Triumphant Charter School to supply herself with Louis Vuitton and Coach bags, Elan Furs, Tommy Hilfiger and diet pills.

Ravitch on the case

Okay, so Diane Ravitch & I don't agree on some things--like the power of community organizing against the school closings. I can understand the basis for her gloomy outlook. But I have to give her credit for speaking out against them. I'm sure that hasn't endeared her to Bloomberg/Klein and the powers that be. Neither will her latest post at Bridging Differences.

Ravitch is on the case following Millot's censored expose of conflicts of interest surrounding the disbursal of Race-To-The-Top funds.

It turns out that Millot asked questions that someone didn't want to be heard. The blog was removed, and his contract cancelled. The good news is that the Internet is making it very difficult to censor anyone. You can be certain that the censors will fail, because the original is almost certain to appear uncut on the Internet within days or hours.

Thanks to Diane for not letting this thing drop from view.

BTW, here's Part III of Millot's response (Parts I & II here) to his being censored and then dropped Russo/Scholastic as a TWIE blogger after pressure was applied by Andrew Rotherham.

Now, my view is that “every bully is a coward in disguise”. But that’s for readers to decide.

Tweeting with Ravitch

Ravitch tweets Klonsky:

Hey, Klonsky, community protests never stop school closings in NYC. Even when 3,000 parents/teachers turn out. That's mayoral control."

Klonsky tweets back to Ravitch:

Hey Ravitch! It's the only thing that can stop them. Next time bigger & louder with you up front.

QUOTABLES

Who needs to educate who?

Funniest quote of the day comes from CPS bureaucrat Bob Runcie after the board was forced to back off some of its planned school closings in the face of widespread community opposition.

[Chief administrative officer Bob] Runcie says CPS wants to educate parents on what a high quality education looks like...“And raise their level of expectations in terms of what they should be demanding in the quality of education in their schools.” (Catalyst & WBEZ)

Problem for Runcie, Huberman, and Daley is that parents have already raised their level of expectations in terms of what they demand from the leadership of their public school system.

Replacing Smith Career & Tech H.S. with...what???

Bloomberg/Klein continue their loot/pillage/burn approach to school reform with the planned closing of the city's oldest and well-established trade and technical school. According to today's NYT, the DOE will close Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School, a 78-year-old vocational school in the South Bronx and replace it with another charter school with no record of success, this one run by indicted embezzler Richard Izquierdo Arroyo.

But the school the Department of Education plans to put in place of the program, the 18-month-old New York City Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries, has had its own issues. Its founder is facing federal charges that he embezzled from a nonprofit company. Thirty percent of the students left after the first year, as did most of the teachers. And despite its name, it has no experience running hands-on vocational programs.

This is almost too good

Palin & Gen. Tata hawking their books

I mean, first you've got Arne Duncan backer and DFER's patron hedge-funder, Whitney Tilson calling for more rich, white folks to "take reform to the next level, both politically and operationally." Can we call them Duncan's White School Reform Army?

Then you've got WaPo ed writer Bill Turque, back, I assume, from his censorship exile in WaPo's rubber room, telling us about Rhee's Tata. That's Brigadier General Anthony J. Tata, recently appointed by D.C. Supt. Michelle Rhee as her second in command after a stint in Eli Broad's Superintendent's Academy..

Gen. Tata is no one to fool with, writes Turque. He's:

...a distinctive, alpha-male presence at a school headquarters filled with 20- and 30-somethings transfixed by their BlackBerry devices -- and where five of Rhee's top aides, including her chief of staff, are women. No one else is likely to talk about how to take an issue and "shoot it between the eyes."

And you were worried about Rhee and her broom.

Tata is definitely not into Obama's hopey, changey thingy either, writes the rehabilitated Turque.

In December, he wrote a glowing review of Sarah Palin's book, "Going Rogue," on the "Big Hollywood" site operated by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart. He said that Palin "is far more qualified to be president of the United States than the current occupant of the White House" and that the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate is "precisely the kind of leader America needs."

It all adds up if you think (really) long and hard about it.

You see, Tilson loves Duncan. Duncan loves Tilson and Rhee. Rhee loves Tata. Tata loves Palin--hates Obama. Turque writes critically about Rhee. Turque is censored by Rhee/WaPo. Turque comes back with a softer piece on Rhee & Tata. Whew!

There's much more tangled up in this web of deception, publishing, censorship (right Russo?) and the ownership society. But for now, I need to take a nap.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Michigan state Supt. Mike Flanagan

Let's move these kids out that don't get it. ... Let's keep the kids who are fun to keep and move the rest to alternative schools! (Detroit Free Press)

Marc Dean Millot

He explains why his expose of Race To The Top conflicts-of-interest was censored by Alexander Russo via Andrew Rotherham, and why he was fired.

Why did Russo pull the post? The short answer, at least the short answer Russo offered over the phone Saturday, lies in his contract with Scholastic. TWIE is not editorially independent. Scholastic decides what will remain on his blog. (EdNotesOnline)

Deborah Meier

Narratives are easier to remember, and so we invent them. And, we always insist that at this moment we cannot move with caution because—it's a crisis in need of an immediate fix. (Bridging Differences)

What passes for "school reform" in Detroit

Testing madness

Under a new order, so-called social promotion would be prohibited for those pre-K through third-grade students now taking the assessment tests, says Detroit Public Schools emergency financial manager Robert Bobb.

"I would classify myself as a hater when it comes to social promotion," Bobb said. "And that's just why my academic team is conducting these assessments ... so we know where these children are deficient." (Detroit Free Press)

Michigan state Supt. Mike Flanagan then strips the strategy bare:

"It's shameful," an obviously frustrated Flanagan said of the practice. " 'Let's move these kids out that don't get it. ... Let's keep the kids who are fun to keep and move the rest to alternative schools!' "

Move the kids out. Where have we heard that before? Must have been New Orleans.

Oh, and while we're on the topic of Detroit's new reform strategy, don't forget the district's exciting new business partnership.

The mayor feigns neutrality on LSCs

The Meeks bill would gut Local School Councils (LSCs) and promote vouchers. Mayor Daley has been trying to get rid of the LSCs since 1995. Rev. Meeks, whose southside Salem Baptist Church has about 25,000 members, led a failed, but valiant community-based effort for adequate public school funding two years ago, without any support from the mayor. Now that Sen. Meeks is doing the heavy lifting in the legislature, Daley claims neutrality and can stay above the fray. He says school reform in Chicago started the day he took over the schools.

“If you want to go back to prior to 1995, then go back. I will never go back. This school system has changed and is getting better. I don’t care what anyone says.

And therein lies the problem.

Daley's people over at CPS are quietly supporting Meeks' initiative, even though his push for vouchers implies a devastating failure on their part and on the part of the mayor.

CPS officials Wednesday seemed intrigued by the bill. CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond called Meeks "a champion of school reform'' and said "we look forward to reviewing the legislation.'' (Sun-Times)

But in 2008, Meeks led a school boycott on opening day which was attacked by both Daley and schools chief Arne Duncan. Daley was also sharply critical Meeks for a schools funding protest he led at a Cubs game. But their interests now find common ground over the issue of getting rid of LSCs. Meeks' push for vouchers is also being hailed by the Catholic Archdiocese.

Can somebody tell me?

Why has Arne Duncan made Newt Gingrich his front man on school reform and put him on a national speaking tour?

Newt Gingrich tried on Wednesday to brush off the glaring gaffe he made this week on "The Daily Show" when he insisted that the Bush administration was right to read shoe bomber Richard Reid his Miranda rights because he was an American citizen.(Huffington)

QUOTABLES

A plan to fail our kids

Closing N.Y. City schools is a plan for failure, write NAACP leaders Benjamin Todd Jealous and Hazel Dukes in a DaillyNews commentary. The NAACP has filed suit to stop the closings.

We are suing because, in the New York City case, democracy was overlooked and citizens' voices - the concerns of those most affected - were left out. In our view, the city blatantly disregarded the state-mandated analysis of how the closings would affect the more than 13,000 students who attend the schools, particularly special education and other special needs students, and how the closings would impact the often overcrowded schools they are sent to.

Gutting Local School Councils

A new bill is being pushed by State Sen. James Meeks that would strip Chicago's LSCs of their power to hire principals and to control discretionary spending. Don Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, says he does not understand Meeks’ motives.

“It seems ironic that an elected official from the South Side would propose a bill that would basically gut the powers of LSC’s, which have a majority of African American members,” Moore says. (Catalyst Notebook)

Sisyphus

Inspired by a blogger looking to become a teacher because "teaching...sounds...interesting...," Mei Flower came up with the quick, sure-fire method for getting ready to become a teacher. Think myth of Sisyphus but with people criticizing you. (Teacher Magazine, Blogboard)

Visitors

At Social Justice High School

Deb Meier paid a visit to the Small Schools Workshop yesterday before moving on to the High School for Social Justice, for a meeting with teachers and staff. She's in Chicago in preparation for this weekend's meeting of the North Dakota Study Group.

Broad money comes "not just with strings, but ropes"

Eli Broad's influence over public education comes, not from the power of his ideas, but from the power of his money. Broad typifies the new class of ownership society power philanthropists who view democracy as an inefficient impediment to exercising their will.

The story was much the same at a public arts high school that Mr. Broad helped to start, then turned away from when the infamously sclerotic school system here failed to attract the leadership he thought would best serve the city. (NY Times)

'Do more than fix a bad NCLB law'

George Wood & Pedro Noguera, two of the convenors of the Forum on Education and Democracy, offer up their perspective on ESEA reauthorization. They call on the Administration and Congress to do more than fix a bad law--"We want them to invest in public schools in ways that prepare every young person to use his or her mind well."

Their main points:

• Invest in teaching, rather than trying to "micro-manage schools through curriculum and testing mandates."

• Invest in the Research and Development of Assessments of Student Achievement that Focus on Higher Order Thinking Skills rather than Rote Memory:

• Rethink the current approach to educational policy—"with the federal government attempting to do what it is uniquely unsuited to do as in mandating teaching practices and curricular approaches, while leaving the heavy lifting of teacher supply, research, and equity to the states."

Making the case against school closings

Who briefs Joel Klein over at DOE? asks Maisie McAdoo at Edwize.

Because what he told NY1 TV’s Mike Scotto on “Inside City Hall” Monday about the 19 closing schools was, “Nobody could make a good case why these schools shouldn’t be closed.”

Has he been away? His deputy chancellors, John White, Santi Taveras and Kathleen Grimm, chaired 20 public hearings over the last two months where parents, teachers and support staff, CEC leaders, Council members, Assembly representatives, grandmothers, local business leaders, students, graduates, principals and advocates testified on why most of the schools on the list should not close. Did the deputies not report back?

'Culture of Calm'

Community resistance to Chicago school closings continues to build as CEO Ron Huberman holds more hearings. Last night, the Mollison and Wells Prep parents were expected to show up in force for a public hearing at district headquarters to question the plans. Last week, about 80 parents and teachers came out for the Marconi-Tilton hearing. (Catalyst)

Faced with increased incidents of school violence in the wake of his massive school closing initiatives, Huberman is advertising for a Culture of Calm coordinator. Interested? The job pays $90k.

But there's nothing calming about massive cuts in CTA service, a year after huge fare increases went into affect. Longer waits for buses, before and after school, have students at Clemente worried about their safety.

The Chicago Police were visible presence outside and around the perimeter of the school. Two squad cars were stationed directly in the front of the school. While a paddy wagon and squad cars were on Division street, several yards away from the main intersection. (Vocalo.org).

Remember, Huberman ran the CTA before Mayor Daley brought him over to run the schools.

Shooting the messenger

Tom VanderArk, Kevin Carey, Lisa Graham-Keegan and other charter cheerleaders are circling the wagons in response to a study released last week by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA that called charter schools "a political success," but a "civil rights failure." The report found that charter schools are more racially segregated than traditional public schools and asserted that those in the western United States are havens for white re-segregation.

I think it was Shakespeare who first wrote: "Don't shoot the messenger."

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Palin to T-baggers: 'No to courts, no to profs'

Palin told conventioneers, she's not a big fan of the court system or academics.

"It scares me for my children, for your children, to treat this like a mere law enforcement matter," she said. "It puts our country at great risk... To win that war we need a commander-in-chief not a professor of law standing at the lectern."

As for health care, education reform, racial equality...to Palin and her fans, it's that "hopey, changey thing."

Gov. Mark Sanford

After first refusing to allow stimulus $$ into S. Carolina, Gov. Sanford has decided he likes Race To The Top after all. He flew up to D.C. on Thursday, to talk school reform with Arne Duncan.

Sanford met with Duncan to learn more about a charter school program Duncan started in Chicago, said Ben Fox, the governor's spokesman. Sanford also took the trip to urge Duncan to support more charter school grants, Fox said. (The State)

Gee, I've been in Chicago all this time and never even heard of such a charter school. Maybe Duncan will tell us which one he started.

"Enough is enough"--Researchers unionize

“We’ve taken this step so we can protect our rights on the job, and make sure post-docs working on different campuses and in different labs are treated fairly and receive comparable pay and benefits,’’ Simona Maccarrone, a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Amherst, said in a written statement. (Boston Globe)

The "New Philanthropy"

In our book, Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society, Susan Klonsky and I document the role of the giant power philanthropists like Gates, Broad and Walton, showing how the rise of the Ownership Society altered the face and function of American Philanthropy, nowhere more so than in the field of education and school reform.

Now, Georgia Levenson Keohane, guest-blogging at the CEP (Center for Effective Philanthropy) Blog, reveals that the era of the new philanthropy, big, strategic, tactical giving – was also one of historic inequality.

In the U.S. the last quarter century proved a gilded age for some – the rich did get much richer – but was a period of stagnation for the middle class and lost ground for those with the lowest incomes... Even in the best of times, less than one-third of American philanthropic dollars goes to help the poor.

The South Loop "Turnaround"

This morning's Chicago Tribune ran a big story on South Loop Elementary ("South Loop School at crossroads"). South Loop was touted by Arne Duncan as one of his models of a successful "turnaround school."

The Trib says test scores have gone up over the last 10 years and I don't doubt it. I mean, half the 640-student school in this gentrified neighborhood, is now a "gifted program" [code word] in order to attract middle class parents. If that doesn't give your school a test-score bump, nothing will.

I remember when South Loop was built, neither white nor black, middle-class parents--some living right across the street from this brand new, well-equipped school--would send their kids to sit in desks next to "those kids" from the Hilliard Homes. They even protested the school's marquee because they didn't want potential property buyers to know that kids from the projects were coming into "their" neighborhood.

Our Small Schools Workshop spent some time at the school back in 1999 at the request of teachers and former principal Shirley Woodard. Our goal then was to help support teacher-led structural and curricular changes that would improve the school for the children WHO WERE THERE, as well as building a bridge between the Dearborn Park and Hilliard Homes communities. But when pressure groups in Dearborn Park demanded that the school be turned exclusively over to them, the mayor listened. The plan was dropped, Woodard was removed by Paul Vallas (she later won a battle in federal court over her firing) and the whole approach to reform changed to population shifting.

Ironically, now the school is overcrowded and the Board wants to send 6-8th graders over to National Teachers Academy in the Prairie District neighborhood a little farther south. But the parents in this Dearborn Park community are once again pressuring against the move and these are parents with some political clout. The Board backed off and Dearborn Park residents will instead, most likely get a brand new, selective enrollment high school for their kids built right in the neighborhood.

Too bad for the parents at Carver, whose kids were shipped over to Fenger. Too bad for the hundreds of other parents in communities across the city whose schools are being closed and whose children are being shipped all over at great risk. They don't have the same clout.

###

For background on the South Loop story see Ben Joravsky's 1999 account in The Reader and this Education Week story from 1987.

Small Schools Talk

Bidding wars

30 L.A. public schools have been put up for bid. School elections will decide whether educators or outside management companies will run the schools. The fate of 40,000 students hangs in the balance.

One of the most complex ballots is the one for the soon-to-open Esteban Torres High School complex, where five small schools will operate. There are 10 bids for the site -- five from groups of teachers and five from charter schools. (L.A. Now)

Berkeley High

Rick Ayers sorts through the issues involving small schools and science labs at Berkeley High.

While the development of a handful of committed, integrated small schools are the one reform that has occurred and thus they are a target, being perceived as a threat to privilege.

"Ultimately," writes Ayers, "we have to take a deep look at what we think education is for. Why do we have schools? What are they about? In the broadest sense, they are to develop the adults who will lead our society in the next generation." (Oakland Tribune)

Why Isn't the 'Mother of Small Schools' Feeling Smug?

Yes, I am still a sort-of supporter of small schools—within the right context, blogs Deb Meier. I'm frequently introduced as "the mother/grandmother of small schools." So, why aren't I feeling smug and successful? There are more urban small schools than ever before—even though small often now means 600, not 300.

When and how might "small schools" and "choice" become a favorite of teachers and parents and kids rather than, as in NYC these days, a heavy-handed intruder? (Bridging Differences)