Soto bill could prevent arbitrary school closings

Don Moore from Designs for Change tells us that Rep. Cynthia Soto's House Bill 363, mandating clear criteria for any more school closings in Chicago, comes up for a vote tomorrow, April 3rd.

According to Don:

Speaker Madigan insisted that if the bill is to be called for a vote (a process which he controls), three important provisions must be removed from the bill. We have considered the options and strongly believe that the critical portions of HB 363 that are still in place will make a major improvement in the way that facilities are built, repaired, and closed in Chicago, even though the portions removed are harmful, especially to schools that hoped that the recent school closings would be reversed.

We urgently need you to call your own House representative and House leaders. Even though the bill will come up for a vote, the school board is lobbying furiously against it. Without a barrage of phone calls to legislators, there is no guarantee it will pass the House.

Public schools, private money

I don't think so

The Wonkster at Gotham Gazette, "Public Schools, Private Money," tells us how the game is played by Bloomberg/Klein.

All this may well have brought needed funds to city classrooms, but it also has created a tangled web and led to concerns about conflicts of interest and where the private roles stops and the public one begins.

Wonkster shows how companies like Alvarez & Marsal looted the city with the help of B/K and used the non-profit Fund for Public Schools to nail down no-compete contracts. Of course the latest hustle was the one to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars from the hedgefunders at Plainfield Asset Management Co. into the pockets of Rev. Al Sharpton to seal his political alliance with the mayor.

The money reportedly did not go directly to Sharpton but was channeled through Education Reform Now, a group Gonzalez said is headed by former Daily News reporter and charter school advocate Joe Williams, who also heads Democrats for Education Reform. Williams (another busy guy), who is president and treasurer of the Education Equity project, would not tell Gonzalez how the donation was handled or what it was used for.

Also see:

New York Public School Parents: "Al Sharpton's get out of jail card"
Fred Klonsky's blog: "What's the smell over at the Education Equality Project?"
Clay Burell: A $500k Donation the Same Day Sharpton Joins Klein? Mere Coincidence

Goodbye academic freedom

Banning Ayers

The banning of Bill Ayers has become a symbol of the collapse of academic freedom, residue from eight years of neocon power and the use of the politics of fear to push a conservative agenda in the schools.

Debra Pickett has a pretty good piece on Ayers in Chicago Magazine this month. It's good because it focuses on Bill Ayers the educator, not Ayers the cartoonish radical monster created by the Palin/McCain gang and then ratified in the media and even by many liberal educators and academics.

Writes Pickett:

Many of his tenets are hardly revolutionary—that parents and communities should control their own schools, that students learn better in “small learning communities,” that teachers are most effective when they ask questions and facilitate projects and discussions, rather than simply lecture or drill. These ideas in particular have become components in most major school reform efforts across the country, influencing not only educators but also private philanthropists and public policymakers.

But even though the elections are over, Ayers the caricature, is being banned from speaking at schools and public meetings across the country. Ironically, those doing the banning aren't mainly the right-wing Palin types any more. All too often they are liberals who are quick to abandon academic freedom and 1st Amendment rights out of fear. Shades of the '50s.

The most recent cases: the principal of Naperville (IL) High School where Ayers was invited and then dis-invited to address only those students who had signed parent permission slips. And then at Boston College, where Ayers' invitation was yanked and where even his virtual speech via satellite was virtually (I guess) banned.

A sign of the times

Just to show where the country is at right now, there was even serious talk about banning Pres. Obama from speaking at Notre Dame because his position on abortion and stem cell research upset the church hierarchy. Somewhere, the late senator from the state of Wisconsin is resting comfortably in his grave.

One voice that leaves me with some hope, is that of UMass Professor David Lisak who was scheduled to give a lecture at Boston College later this month. In the wake of the College’s decision to ban Ayers from campus, I received a copy of an email Lisak sent to the individual who had invited him to campus:

Dear Dr. Marchetti,

I am very sad to have to cancel my colloquium at Boston College, “The Undetected Rapist: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of Interpersonal Violence,” scheduled for April 27^th. I do so because I cannot, in good conscience, provide a lecture to the Boston College community in the immediate wake of the College’s decision to block Mr. William Ayers from speaking on campus, and to further prevent him from being heard by the campus community. Freedom of speech is a critical component of vibrant public discourse and a pillar of our democracy. When it is attacked – and I view Boston College’s decision as such an attack – it is incumbent on each of us to take whatever steps we can to challenge such actions. Unfortunately, the step that I can take creates an inconvenience for individuals who likely had no part in the College’s decision, and who may strongly disagree with that decision. For that I am truly sorry, and I ask you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

David Lisak

A 'novel alliance'

How the hedge-fund "reformers" bought Sharpton

Thanks to Juan Gonzalez at the Daily News ("Rev. Al Sharpton's $500G link to education reform") for blowing the lid off the EEP, Klein/Sharpton "school reform" charade. Hedge-funders (as if we already didn't know) secretly paid for Sharpton's allegiance by funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to his National Action Network, improperly using a non-profit, Education Reform Now, as the back-door for the money. Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) also got a cut. Even former NY Chancellor Levy was involved in the scandal. He acted as the pass-through. What else do you need to know about these sleazeballs?

The money came at a critical moment for the National Action Network. Sharpton was then settling a long-running IRS investigation of his organization. As part of that settlement, he agreed in July to pay $1 million in back taxes and penalties both he personally and his organization owed the government.

"The collaboration between Rev. Sharpton and Chancellor Klein is a novel alliance that we thought might help raise the visibility of the issue." The odd pairing will be on display this week at the annual convention of the National Action Network, where Mayor Bloomberg, Klein, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and several mayors are expected to speak.

'Re-branding'

In honor of Eli Broad calling me "Blonsky," (I know, I just can't let it go) Sec. of State Hilary Clinton has decided to rebrand the War on Terror, and Arne Duncan isn't going to call it No Child Left Behind any more.

Criteria for success
Arne Duncan tells the U.S. Conference of Mayors that if there aren't many more mayoral takeovers. He will have "failed as secretary."

Scrambling for seats
This must be the team of managers that Ron Huberman brought over from the CTA to run the schools:

More than two dozen kids have won last-minute seats in Chicago’s coveted magnet schools or programs after officials discovered their applications were mistakenly deleted from the computer system, Chicago Public Schools officials said Monday.“It was just a computer glitch,’’ CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond said. “Fortunately we were able to rectify it.’’Earlier this month, the applications of 56 students were accidentally deleted from the computer system during a “scrub’’ of inactive student identification numbers, CPS attorney Patrick Rocks said.

Taking a hard line on Obama/Duncan

Chicago Democratic political strategist Don Rose takes a tough line on Obama/Duncan ed policies. His column appeared in the Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily Observer:

Small schools work and should be proliferated within the system. Charter schools too often are valued mainly for circumventing unions... Another fact completely omitted by Obama and Duncan, is that poverty is the fundamental issue that makes the major difference between the way schools perform. Poor education is an economic issue; failure to acknowledge that is the single most egregious omission in their statements.

Rhee wants 'lifelong' test takers

H/t to skoolboy for finding this great quote from D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee (how the hell did I miss this one?). Rhee says that her Saturday Scholars Program (more drill and kill/time-on-task, on the weekends for all those kids "on the cusp of proficiency") will instill "lifelong testing competence." Says Aaron Pallas at Gotham Schools: "This is a quote from Chancellor Rhee right from the press release—you can’t make this stuff up."

Gates $$$ dragging S.C. vouchers back from the grave

Just when you thought the school vouchers issue was put to bed when the neocons were given the boot last November 4th, here comes the world's richest man ready to do CPR. In South Carolina, the Gates Foundation has rushed in where even Republican presidential candidates feared to tread. Democratic State Sen. Robert Ford's (not the guy who shot Billy the Kid) so-called Education Opportunity Act, a voucher bill, has found an angel in Bill Gates. Ford's other big piece of legislation is a bill aimed at outlawing profanity.

Huberman hearts Daley...

but can't get his facts straight

In the last 10 minutes of this interview, Chicago's new schools CEO Ron Huberman, comes off as a thoughtful guy with a sense of the social conditions outside of school that impact student learning. The problem is, that for the first 20 minutes, he's responding to John Callaway's softball questions with the most fawning homage to Mayor Daley I've ever heard. Sounding very much like he's reading from a script prepared by one of the mayor's PR firms, he tells Callaway how much he likes Daley's top-down, outside-manager model of running public schools. The he names New York, Denver, and Miami as models. But Huberman hasn't done his homework. Miami/Dade Public Schools continue to have a career educator at the top of the system--Alberto Carvalho. Before Carvalho, there was educator Rudy Crew.

No transparency

Following in Arne Duncan's footsteps and with the same lack of transparency that marked his management style at the CTA, Huberman continues to ignore FOI requests and won't give up (or maybe he just doesn't know) info about school closings.

If they're going to continue to close down schools in the name of progress, they should be able to demonstrate what progress is or isn't being made. (Angela Caputo at Progress Illinois and Fred Klonsky)

Quotables

16,000 charters?

Philanthro-capitalist, short-seller, and former AIG boss, Eli Broad, is interviewed in Forbes Magazine:

In the last 10 years, we've [The Eli Broad Foundation] done a lot in training superintendents. Bill Clinton told me when he was governor 16 years ago there was one charter school. Now there are 16,000. Now we have districts offering teachers bonus pay for improved student achievement. Things are improving.

Eli, do your homework before you speak. There are approximately 4,500 charter schools in the U.S.--not 16,000. Better redo your business plan.

Mike Petrilli vs. the Klonsky brothers ("I'm no Limbaugh")

I want to like the education stimulus package. I really do. Regardless of what the Klonsky brothers might tell you, I’m no Rush Limbaugh, hoping for President Obama’s policies to fail. I’d love to see the cause of education reform accelerated as a result of the influx of federal funds. But I’m increasingly convinced that this entire exercise is going to end in a quagmire, or worse. (Fred Klonsky's blog)

Fred, did you say Petrilli was a Limbaugh?

The Gates, Duncan, Rhee troika

Bad news for public schools and teachers

It appears that the DOE is now operating on the Bill Gates Doctrine. A troika of Gates, Arne Duncan, and Michelle Rhee announce themselves in today's Fred Hiatt/Washington post column (Melinda Gates sits on the Post's board). Nearly all of Duncan's appointees at the DOE are current or former Gates people. Their philosophy: 1) teachers unions are the enemy, 2) teaching experience, certification, knowledge of the field don't count, 3) KIPP charter schools are the model, 4) and more focus on standardized testing.

Pitting teacher interest against kids' and families' seems to be the Gates/Duncan/Rhee mantra.
"The pendulum in the country has swung too far to adults," Duncan tells the post.

This pendulum theory of history shows how in-the-dark Duncan is. It hides the reality that politics, not gravity, drive educational policy and for the past eight years, this same top-down version of reform has been in play. It's been a dud in Chicago, Philly, D.C. and most everywhere else it's been tried. Can "reform" succeed without adults? Can it be done TO schools, teachers, and communities and not WITH them? We'll see.

Inside Chicago’s Renaissance 2010

The students get it

Students at one of Chicago's elite selective-enrollment high schools, Walter Payton College Prep, are asking tough questions about the new expensive school's isolation from its Cabrini-Green public housing neighbors. They are also shining a light on the disparity between Payton and neighborhood schools like Schiller Elementary.

“The people and the culture of Cabrini-Green are slowly being phased out,” write Julian Antos and Danielle Bennon, “leaving the few thousand remaining residents struggling to make do with what’s left of their homes. . . . The poster child of the transition from a ghetto to a Gold Coast neighborhood is inarguably Walter Payton College Prep, a school filled with good intentions . . . but a school that Edna Morris, a security guard at Schiller [Elementary], thinks of as an outfit that sits in the community but doesn’t make an effort to be a part of it.” (Mike Miner, Chicago Reader)

Charters are 'free public schools'

But you couldn't prove it by by most Chicagoans, including parents. A survey done by the Joyce and Gates Foundations found that only about 40% of city and suburban residents knew that Chicago charter schools are free and open to the public. This is 12 years after charter schools began in the city. It's no wonder then, that charter schools are often accused of de facto selective enrollment.

Tough debate, Chicago vs. New Orleans

It's hard to say which state or city is more corrupt, Louisiana or Illinois--New Orleans or Chicago. Howard Witt at the Tribune says that Louisiana and N.O. have us beat. But how should we judge? By the number of politicians in jail or by mayors and others who should be, but aren't? Check out John Kass on gangstered-up Daleys, for example.

Ramblings...

McDonough School #6

Legacy of slavery

If you follow developments in post-Katrina New Orleans, as I do, you will come upon reports from schools with names like McDonough 15 or McDonough 32. Why do all these public schools carry the name, McDonough? Because they were built with funds from the estate of slave owner John McDonough and 38 bore his name. McDonough was a wealthy commission merchant, planter, and real estate speculator who died in 1850 and left most of his estate to the cities of New Orleans and Baltimore for education purposes. New Orleans administrators established the first McDonogh School in the antebellum period and McDonough Schools two through six during Reconstruction. Several have had their names changed under pressure from the black community.

Chicago's Freedom School

The Chicago Freedom School (CFS) is not a school in the traditional sense, but a summer program designed to equip participating Chicago high school students – also known as Freedom Fellows – with the tools needed to implement change in their communities. (Chi-Town Daily News)

Daley's Potemkin Village

The mayor is in Denver armed with impressive power-points and videos, plugging Chi-Town as the best home for the 2016 Olympic Games. But I'll bet none of his fly-over videos show the 800 parents and community folks packed into Wednesday's board meeting, protesting Renaissance 2010 school closings. Luckily, he also doesn't have to show existing indoor running tracks in CPS schools. There are none. And I'm sure his power-point doesn't mention the 29th CPS student killed by gun violence so far, this school year. He claims he can raise $5 billion from private sources to pay for the games. But he doesn't say how or how much will come from the "rainy day fund" of guaranteed public dollars. However, he is promising that Olympians will never have to risk any parts of the city except a newly constructed enclave in Daley's own backyard lakefront compound.

One of the videos offered a "flyover" of the city and the Olympic Games sites. The animated version of the city was idyllic: no graffiti on buildings and no traffic jams...As part of their presentation, Chicago officials stressed that while Chicago is a big city, the Olympic Games and housing would be contained, for the most part, to a small village along the lakefront. (Sun-Times)

Duncan the pragmatist

Mark Bergin at World Magazine ("The Schools that Arne Built") gives us the two sides of Arne Duncan. There's Duncan the pragmatist, taught by his parents to adopt a "whatever works" philosophy. Bergin notes that Duncan, whose mother was a community-oriented teacher, helped start one of Chicago's first small (non-charter) schools, Ariel Community Academy. Bergin also helps spread the myth of Duncan's Chicago miracle ("a legacy of innovation, choice, and accountability") which helped propel the mayor's education chief into the Sec. of Education job.

Then there's Duncan the top-down reformer, operating without telling us exactly what "works" means or works-for-whom. That's left open to interpretation from the right and left. Conservatives like Bergin and George Will, like Duncan's drift towards privatization and his concessions to D.C.'s discredited voucher program. But does he go far enough? Many on the left see Duncan's pragmatism as simply a continuation of the Bush years.

Duncan's also portrayed as a school closer like D.C.'s ruthless school boss, Michelle Rhee, committed to shutting down neighborhood schools and turning them over to private companies like Chicago's AUSL, and purging teachers arbitrarily, en masse. Writes Bergin:

What if the worst schools in Chicago could be gutted of every last vestige of their former selves? What if every teacher, staff member, and administrator could be fired and replaced in the course of one summer vacation? What if the same students who left in the summer could return in the fall to new paint, new teachers, new culture? Duncan embraced the idea.

800 pack Chicago board meeting

I missed Wednesday's board meeting wish I had been in town for it. 800 people packed the meeting as the protests continue to mount against Mayor Daley's disastrous Renaissance 2010 school-closings.

According to Sun-Times ed reporter Roz Rossi:

School Board members Wednesday unanimously approved plans to place 12 mostly new schools into 11 half-occupied or closed buildings — a proposal that drew an even larger crowd than last month’s vote on school closings. Once again, spectators blasted the board’s public hearing process.

Board members continued to thumb their nose at the crowd by reportedly not letting any community members ask questions and then by voting to double their own monthly receipt-free expense allowances, to $24,000 a year for board members and $36,000 a year for the board president. Why the need for such an enlarged slush fund, especially in the midst of this crisis and budget cuts? Here's Daley's hand-picked board members. You figure it out:

• Roxanne Ward is Vice President and Corporate Liaison of Ariel Investments.
• Norman R. Bobins is Chairman Emeritus of LaSalle Bank Corporation.
• Tariq Butt, a wealthy doctor.
• Peggy Davis, V.P. at Exelon Corp.
• Alberto A. Carrero, Jr. Senior Vice President at Banco Popular.
  
• Clair Munana, international consultant
• Board President Michael Scott, a west-side real estate developer
  

What's to like in Murray's racist theories?

Racist ideologue, Charles "Bell Curve" Murray wants to replace the "equality premise" with his "human nature" theory. You know the one--some races are just biologically unsuited to intellectual work, child raising and the pursuit of higher learning and that those stuck in "menial" low-paying jobs and poor should be happy and greatful and not look to the government to restrict discrimination.

Murray takes obvious human genetic differences to the level of social theory--social Darwinism squared. But Murray's Bell Curve theories are no longer laughable. They are regaining respect in ownership society circles like the American Enterprise Institute, which just gave Murray the Irving Kristol Award (yuck!) Fordham Institute"school reformer", Mike Petrilli, says he used to be hostile to Murray's master race ideas, now finds "plenty to like."

In his AEI speech, Murray claims that differences in income and educational achievement are preordained by one's race and gender and refers to the 20th-century civil rights movement as "a nutty idea":

But groups of people will turn out to be different from each other, on average, and those differences will also produce group differences in outcomes in life, on average, that everyone knows are not the product of discrimination and inadequate government regulation.

Not "everyone" Mr. Murray. As we learned in November, there are still plenty of us who don't find "plenty to like" here.

Broad, the man with the plan

I'm still reeling from Eli Broad's letter of "correction" to Small Talk. I'm worried that he may actually own the blogosphere.

Here, billionaires Forbes and Broad chat about AIG and public education. They both think AIG was a great company and want to use their business model to "reform" public schools.

Forbes is upset about all the rules in schools. I mean, you can't even whack a kid anymore.

By the rules; can't touch a student; hard to discipline them because everyone knows that if you do anything, you're going to get a lawsuit.

Broad agrees. He likes his version of smaller schools (privately manged charters) with more top-down authority for principals (not teachers of course) ala Joel Klein in N.Y., and lots of school closings ala Michelle Rhee in D.C. You know, the business model.

And of course, everyone complains when she, you close a school. Those 70 parents aren't happy. But for the good of the entire district and all the kids, you've got to do that.

As for his old company AIG (Broad is still very influential), he blames everything on the current management and on former N.Y. attorney general, Eliot Spitzer (he charged AIG with corruption long before their collapse and forced Broad's pal Hank Greenberg to resign) and tries his best, with Forbes' help, to cover his own butt.

This is the man with the plan for our public school system.

Inside Chicago’s school reform "Renaissance"

Chicago's education 'miracle'

Chicago's Renaissance 2010 education "miracle" paved Arne Duncan's road to the DOE. It included mythic tales of new teacher recruitment under Renaissance 2010. But the numbers tell a different story. It's called the continued whitening of the state's teaching force.

Within that paltry 9% of the total teaching population that is male, only 7% of it is black, that comes out to 1% of all American teachers. Hispanic males are severely under-represented as well; they come in at 6%. Both Hispanic and African American boys combine to form the core of Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) most perplexing academic and disciplinary challenges... In real terms, only 37% of the 102,185 black males in Chicago that should have graduated, did so. That left 64,377 large, unemployable, semi-literate black teen-agers without much to do for the rest of their lives. (Edward Hayes)

Going downstate

Playing hoops and winning championships is supposed to help kids learn teamwork, discipline, and sportsmanship. Arne Duncan tells New Orleans students that b-ball is the main thing that kept him focused and on a path to Harvard. Barack Obama tells similar stories. But for these Chicago west-side kids, the joys of winning downstate were mixed with police raids on student hotel rooms, losing games in part, because the stripe on their jerseys was an inch too wide, and having a college-bound student/athlete in a charter school being accused of cheating on a standardized algebra test.

School closings

Chicago Public Radio's City Room shows the effect of Ren10 school closings:

All this moving around can have a negative impact on pupils, according to University of Chicago research. Other studies say smaller classrooms foster better leaning, so that 14-1 ratio in Michael’s class should be a good thing. Still, the district is closing Abbott for low enrollment. So Michael will now be sent to Hendricks Elementary, an underperforming school several blocks away.

I received an apology

Remember my little tiff with Eli Broad's communications secretary, Karen Denne? Remember how she couldn't even get my name right? Well now I have to give her some props. Here's what I found in my mailbox:

From: Karen Denne
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 10:48:58 AM
Subject: RE: Correction

Apologies for misspelling your name!

Sincerely,
Karen Denne
Communications Officer
The Broad Foundation

Thanks Ms. Denne. You're OK in my book. Sorry if I bit back too hard. It was your boss I was after.

Clay Burrell has a nice review of the whole dust-up.

Duncan watching

Like many of us these days, I spend way too much time and energy in the non-participatory sport of Arne Duncan-watching. Like most progressive educators, I cringe at all the salutes to top-down control, standardization, exaggerated charter claims, and pay-for-performance pandering to the right, all the while wondering if anyone who doesn't have a direct connection to the Gates Foundation will ever have a seat at the table.

But ever the optimist, even in this--to use the words of Frank Rich--Obama's "Katrina moment," and knowing full well the difference between this regime and Bush's, I keep looking for something hopeful and forward thinking coming from Duncan. I didn't hear anything of that sort coming out of his visit Friday, to New Orleans. He called Paul Vallas' disaster-driven, two-tier, union-busted experiment in privatization, a "phenomenal innovation" offering a chilling prospect of things to come in the still hurricane-ravaged city.

On the positive side (I think), were Duncan's pronouncements Saturday about science education.

"You need to make inquiry-based science relevant to kids—stimulate their curiosity—connect it with their lives. Together we need to change the national dialogue about science—to prepare our kids to be honestly critical and technically competent. "Science is all about questioning assumptions, testing theories, and analyzing facts. These are basic skills that prepare kids not just for the lab—but also for life. We’re doing kids a disservice if we don’t teach them how to ask tough and challenging questions."

After 8 dark years of anti-science (remember Rod Paige's push for mandated intelligent-design curriculum?) there may be some hope yet for the new regime, for teachers who believe in the spirit of inquiry, encouraging curiosity and imagination and for students and parents demanding equity in access to science education. We'll all have to wait and see what happens with NCLB re-authorization and whether Duncan's version of science is just another set of testing metrics.

Another day, another study on charters

Results are the same

I suppose, as long as Bill & Melinda Gates keep fronting the money, Rand will keep doing studies comparing charter schools to traditional public schools. This latest one compares charters to TPS in eight states and guess what? The results come out essentially the same as all their previous studies: charters don't outperform the very neighborhood schools they are supposed to replace. Why not? That's a matter of opinion. Here's mine:

1. There's really not much different taking place inside charter school classrooms.
2. Comparisons mainly focus on standardized test scores, the same scores used to condemn urban public schools where non-school factors like poverty and social inequities, play a major role in driving these scores.
3. Charter schools aren't all one thing, any more than TPS. Some are great and some are horrible. But they are all lumped together for the purposes of these studies as well as for political and ideological reasons by self-interested charter school associations and conservative think tanks.
   
4. The things that make charters unique, ie. no collective bargaining rights for teachers, weak accountability and oversight, are not things that improve student performance.
5. In these kinds of statistical studies of large groups of schools across states, everything reverts to the mean (average). In other words, if you eliminate the small, high-performing group of innovative and teacher/student-friendly charters in the study, you're left with hundreds of charters, usually in chains managed by cookie-cutter minded operators that are doing much worse than regular public schools. In fact, the study doesn't even take into account the hundreds of charters which have been closed for low performance or mismanagement.
   
6. Chains like KIPP, which do produce slightly higher scores, often do so by means of attrition--pushing out low-scoring or special-needs students. This factor wasn't even taken into account in the Rand study.
   

I hope Obama and Duncan pay attention to this latest study and start tempering their platitudes about charters and seeing them instead the way they were originally intended--as a small, potentially innovative and critical force within the PUBLIC school system.