WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Pat Deutschman

Pat Deutschman

When the Florida commissioner of education, who is appointed, not elected, tells a room full of hundreds of elected school board members to basically stop questioning the testing regime and to do as we are told, something is terribly wrong with the balance of power and I honestly feel is a significant challenge to democracy. -- Citrus Cty. Chronicle. Pat is a member of the Citrus County School Board. She can be reached at: deutschmanp@citrus.k12.fl.us.

Florida T-Party Gov. Rick Scott

"Parents and taxpayers expect measurement. We've got to measure, we've got to find out who the best schools are. We have to have a good measurement system, but we have to make sure we don't have too much of it." -- Tampa Bay Times

Gail Collins

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie today called for the privatization of the Higgs boson. “Binding the earth together is something that could be handled much more efficiently by the for-profit sector,” the Republican governor and deeply available vice-presidential prospect said. “Auctioning off the rights to the Higgs boson will create American jobs and balance American budgets.” --NYT,  Our Political Black Hole

Valerie Strauss

Yes, you read that right. The [Texas GOP] party opposes the teaching of “higher order thinking skills” because it believes the purpose is to challenge a student’s “fixed beliefs” and undermine “parental authority.” -- WaPo Answer Sheet

A big push for unity at the NEA meeting

(F. Klonsky pic)

I'm back at it after a nice getaway to blazing hot Lake Geneva (109 degrees). That's Wisconsin, not Switzerland for those who don't know me.  Got a chance to spend time in the cool lake waters and to catch up a bit on my reading. 

Brother Fred is also back from an equally hot D.C. and the NEA Representative Assembly, a great exercise in union democracy -- and we all know how messy that can be. You can read Fred's blog to get a great first hand account of the RA goings on. His last few posts are especially important.

Overall, this year's RA was significant in many ways. Set against the backdrop of the continued assault by the one-percenters, on teachers, their unions and public education in general, the assembly of more than 9,000 teachers was able to find consensus around some important resolutions. Not so much around others -- not surprisingly.  I thought NEA prez Dennis Van Roekel gave a good appraisal of current conditions in his opening speech:

We all know, there are plenty of people who are eager to offer advice … or worse, try to impose their ideas on our profession. Bloggers, columnists, elected officials and self-proclaimed “reformers” – they are constantly weighing in about public education. I mean, they have an opinion on everything – the WHO, the WHAT, the WHEN, the WHERE and the HOW – about public education. The “WHO” they love to talk about and blame are teachers – as if this disjointed and underfunded system is the fault of those who teach. But the real problem is the profiteers and mega-rich Wall Street folks who created an economic crises that has our country and the world reeling.

As expected, there is anticipation of the imminent death of the NEA and all public sector unions coming from extreme right-wing groups like EAG. More surprising has been similar  calls for the "NEA’s eventual eradication" with "bittersweet jubilation" coming from some lefties.

High points at this year's RA included a unanimous and resounding voice vote in support of the Chicago Teachers Union, an AFT affiliate. This takes on great significance, not only for being a rare (these days) statement of union solidarity, but considering who it is who the CTU is unfortunately up against  -- Obama's campaign boss and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the campaign's chief fund raiser, Penny Pritzker, and the president's chief adviser, David Axelrod, whose former company is writing all the anti-CTU radio sound bites.

The RA also passed more anti-testing resolutions including support for teachers and parents who opt out of standardized testing. Resolutions condemning Arne Duncan and Race To The Top failed to get a majority vote from many of the same delegates who voted the other way last year. The reason according to Fred:

This year the elections suck all the nuance out of these issues. It all becomes about Obama or Romney. NEA delegates are by-and-large center-left Democratic liberals. No matter how unhappy they are with Obama, and they are unhappy with Obama, they’re not going to desert the national Democrats five months before the election. And they’re not going to engage in specific policy disputes now that might threaten Obama’s chances. Anyone who had expectations of anything else is living in a dream world.

Several people have asked me about a failed proposal calling on the delegates to endorse our upcoming SOS conference. The resolution (not put forward by the SOS National Steering Committee) was taken as an opportunity for a small group of sectarians to jump up and attack SOS for supposedly being "supporters of Michelle Rhee." These idiots then announced that folks like Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody had withdrawn support for SOS. Of course these were all lies. This whole incident made me flash back to the ''60s and the divisive tactics that were used to divide the civil rights movement and other progressive movements at that time.  Just a thought.

Here what Diane had to say:

Apparently some delegate got up and said I had disassociated myself from the group. I replied that this was untrue. I was invited to speak this summer, and I declined but that was no indication of a lack of support, just a wish to minimize travel during the summer. I participated as the lead respondent in an SOS webinar on June 19. I think that is a show of support. I support SOS.

What motivated this divisive move is beyond me. But here's how I responded to a question in the comments section of Diane Ravitch's blog:

Just to clarify, first of all, SOS is having its convention national education conference in D.C. August 3-5 — not a march like last year. Everyone and anyone who supports the goals of the SOS movement is welcome to attend. SOS doesn’t need any group’s “endorsement” to hold such a meeting, nor did we ask for it from our brothers and sisters in the NEA. 

Obviously, some individual, on their own put forth a resolution asking for the NEA’s “endorsement.” Another individual jumped up and used the opportunity to spread lies and gossip about Diane, Anthony Cody and other SOS supporters, as Diane notes above. Whether or not any NEA leaders “should have known better” is not the issue here since the leaders don’t make the decisions at the RA. If you need any more information about the RA, my brother Fred, who was delegate gives a good first-hand account on his blog. Be sure and read it. http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/interview-with-myself-about-the-nea-ra-now-that-i-am-home/

 All in all, the NEA meeting sounded great. Hopefully, the forces of unity will prevail and the teachers unions will remain strong in the face of these attacks from corporate "reformers" and others.

Rahm lied about Clemente's new IB program

The joke is on us. While all of us were focused on the firing of at least 22 Clemente teachers last week, over at the Clark St. wing of City Hall, J.C. Brizard and the mayor were figuring out how to pull another fast one on the Humboldt Park community.

Rahm's announced plan to turn Clemente High School into a wall-to-wall IB academy turns out to be a hoax. Emanuel had told parents and community leaders that the wall-to-wall schools were an expansion of the city’s International Baccalaureate diploma programs, which operate inside 13 neighborhood high schools and offer students a curriculum originally designed in Switzerland for the children of diplomats. Emanuel and school officials have said the wall-to-wall IB schools would put every student through the rigorous program, not just a select group.

But, according to WBEZ' Linda Lutton: ,

...what the mayor and schools CEO have not said is that a good percentage of students in Chicago’s new wall-to-wall IB schools could actually end up in a new and untested International Baccalaureate technical education track—not in the IB Diploma Programme researchers have lauded for its success at getting low-income minority kids into selective colleges.

Asked directly by WBEZ about the possible vocational track in the new schools, Emanuel said Thursday there would be “gradations” in the IB offerings at the wall-to-wall IB schools. “But it’s built towards college, that’s what it’s really built for.”

Or not.

NEA STANDS WITH CHICAGO TEACHERS UNION

With all eyes on Chicago as Rahm continues to push the teachers and their union to the wall, the NEA Representative Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support the CTU. The resolution came out of the Illinois Delegation. Here's brother Fred making the pitch.



 Unanimous! Solidarity!

Cleveland's corporate reform bill signed by Kasich

Ohio Tea-Party Gov. John Kasich and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson hug after Jackson talked about the agreement that was reached on the Cleveland reform plan. (Plain Dealer)

Privatizers' dream, union goes along

Two things are predictable when states pass school reform laws that only apply to one city. First, that city has a largely poor, black and brown school population and second, the reform is more about privatization, charter schools and "turnaronds" than it is about anything affecting teaching and learning.

Such is the case in Ohio where T-Party Gov. Kasich just signed the Cleveland Plan For Transforming Schools into law. "Cleveland is now leading the way in school reform," Kasich said to cheers from reform supporters and groups that helped create the plan.

After much lobbying and negotiation, the plan -- which applies only to Cleveland as the state's sole district under mayoral control -- was approved by the state legislature last month. -- Plain Dealer

The new law overrides the union's contract and discards previous board-union agreements governing teacher pay and layoffs, does away with tenure, lengthens the school day and year without accompanying compensation, evaluates and pays teachers based largely on student test scores, and pushes the biggest move yet towards privately managed charter schools along the lines of the Philadelphia model. The new law is also an affront to parents, requiring them to attend meetings under penalty of law. It will take badly-needed funds away from neighborhood public schools and line the pockets of politically connected consultants.

 Calling the shots will be corporate reformers based at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Cleveland and George Gund foundations, Breakthrough Charter Schools and others.

The worst part of this mess is that it was supported by the Democrats and by the AFT and the Cleveland Teacher Union --not only supported, but hailed as "a model of collaboration" for the entire nation. The last time we heard that kind of talk from state union bureaucrats was here in Illinois after the passage of the anti-union SB-7 bill.

Rahm says he's the "new sheriff in town"

“It is a contract. What do we have, 72 years left on it? That’s a long time for me to talk about. I’m not gonna be here that long." -- Rahm Emanuel

Rahm claims that when it comes to Chicago's great multi-billion-dollar parking meeting swindle, he's "the new sheriff in town." That's laughable.  Mayor Daley's 75-year give-away to Wall Street and Abu Dhabi bankers landed him with a job in the law office that swung the deal. Taxpayers now have to shell out millions extra, not just for daily parking in their own neighborhoods, but even for NOT PARKING. Hell, I would let folks not park in my driveway for half that amount.

While the mayor continues his non-negotiations with the CTU -- teachers are now working without a contract -- his fight with city corporate plunderers is a phony one. After his stalling, prancing, and pouting in front of the TV cameras. Rahm will deliver whatever his patrons at Chicago Parking Meters LLC or the Ricketts Family, or the Pritzkers or Rauners expect of him. When they come calling, he takes off his sheriff's hat and dons his ballerino tutu for them.

But Rahm's hardball tactics with the CTU could spell bad news for the Obama campaign. Rahm's failed policies and screwed-up priorities have the president keeping his distance. The campaign announced that Obama will be a no-show at the south-side's Bud Billiken Parade. It's the nation’s oldest and largest African-American parade and picnic and will draw close to a million revelers on Aug. 11. It's theme will be all about education and urging youths back to school with the theme, “Education, Built to Last: A Tribute to Barack Obama.”

Washington

 Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington explains the reasons for Obama's absence:

Since his 2008 campaign, the president has avoided policy positions, imagery or utterances that would make it appear he is embracing his black base. Chicago conjures up grim images that might beg questions about Obama’s “priorities.” In the last school year, 24 Chicago Public School students were shot to death on our streets. There were 319 shootings of our children from September to June, according to the Chicago Police Department... By mid-August, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Teachers Union may be embroiled in high-stakes negotiations over a new teachers’ contract.

The ugliest outcome, a strike, means no one goes back to school.

The black unemployment rate in Chicago neighborhoods such as Washington Park is way out of the box.

In 2012, summer fun is in short supply. Parade watchers along the Bud Billiken route might wonder, “What has the first black president done for black America?” That’s a good question.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Chicago teachers now working without a contract

CTU President Karen Lewis

“It is our responsibility to work toward a contract that is fair and equitable to our members and one that will help us give our students the high-quality, first-class education they deserve. While there has been progress in some areas, we remain far apart on many others.” -- NBC News Chicago, CTU Contract to Expire Over Weekend

Michelle Chen

After Katrina, the city became an incubator for non-unionized charter schools and “experimental” restructuring plans. But rather than “saving” New Orleans schools from failure, the overhaul has aggravated divides between black and white, wealthy and poor, by pushing schools to operate more like corporations.  -- In These Times

Fred Klonsky

"I'm starting a new union. Send me your dues." -- Fred Klonsky Blog 

Michelle Obama

"Democracy is also an everyday activity. And being an engaged citizen should once again be a daily part of our lives." The first lady said such engagement involved "the tireless, the thankless, relentless work of making change, you know, the phone-calling, letter-writing, door-knocking, meeting-planning kind of work." -- ABC News

John Jeremiah Sullivan

This is a strange time to be alive in America, in that regard. Close one eye, and we can seem to be moving toward a one-race society; close the other and we seem as racially conflicted and stratified as ever. Racism is still our madness. -- "How William Faulkner Tackled Race — and Freed the South From Itself."

"Thank God Obama didn't listen to me!" --Rahm

While kids in Chicago continue to die at two-to-three times the rate of troops in Afghanistan, the mayor and his corporate patrons are worried that the nearly 40% rise in killings this year is grabbing headlines and that  the body count may be bad for business.

 We need the mayor, who is the city's best spokesperson, to be public in an aggressive way. He should be prepared to call convention groups and reassure them of everything that is going on. The mayor needs to be public in saying we don't have a crime problem. The real danger isn't to tourists. The real danger is a convention group that gets panicked and we lose millions. -- Laurence Geller, president and CEO of Chicago-based Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc.

Rahm jumped on his assignment and used the shooting death of 7-year-old Heaven Sutton as a his chance proclaim that there is no crime problem here.

"This is not about crime. This is about values," shouted the mayor as if talking to an imagined attentive group of gang-bangers. He urged them to, "take your gang conflict away from a 7-year-old. Who raised you?"

Good job Rahm. No, this is not a "crime problem." It's about "culture." Yeah, that's the ticket. Not a word of course, about school closings, easy access to guns and drugs, issues of poverty and youth joblessness, all of which are major contributing factors to the alarming jump in youth violence.

But that's not Rahm's quote of the day. This is: 

“Thank God for the rest of the country he didn’t listen to me.”

He was referring of course to Supreme Court decision which rule Obama's healthcare bill constitutional. White House Chief of Staff Emanuel was the main one trying to kill the initiative, calling it a political loser. A better quote might have been: "Too bad he listened to me on other stuff -- like, Guantanamo trials, the Dream Act and the drone war in Afghanistan."

While dozens of more Chicago teachers at Clemente High School continue to get pink slips, Rahm is dishing out millions in taxpayer money to his friends who own the Cubs and Bulls. His patrons include Democrats and Republicans and even far-right-wing Obama haters like the Ricketts family and school privatizers like Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel Investment GroupHis Infrastructure Trust scheme will also fill their coffers. To keep schools afloat, Rahm is taxing property owners to the max for the second year in a row making schools even more reliant on this inequitable form of school funding.

Finally, speaking of culture, it may well be that a new prison may have to be built exclusively to hold convicted local machine politicians.  I'm thinking, maybe they can use the closed Tamms super-max prison.

More on Clemente firings

Thanks to some of the many anonymous commentators on the Clemente story for the factual corrections; i.e., the number of principals at Clemente since Irene Damota's departure.  The best accounting I have been able to come up with is this, starting with Kenebrew in June 2010: Kenebrew, Gilligan, Dr. Heiu, Soli, Rodriguez, Soli, Sorensen. While open to further corrections on this, I think the point I made about instability and lack of community cohesiveness stands.

I have stopped posting any anonymous comments allegedly coming from some Clemente teachers debasing their fellow teachers. I find this a self-demeaning, unprofessional practice, which says more about the current culture and leadership of the school than it does about any of its teaching and career staff.

I have been an active supporter of Clemente High School since it was opened in 1975 and have worked with hundreds of teachers and several principals there over the years to try to help solve some of the school's many problems. I found that most of these problems were caused by forces outside the control of either the many school principals or teachers. These include the very size and physical design of the school itself, the poverty and violence in the surrounding community, and the instability caused by thoughtless bureaucratic interventions on the part of CPS leaders. To blame teachers for these problems and to engage in mass staff firings is horribly unfair but characteristic of the times.

One of the most horrific of these interventions came from Arne Duncan with his Renaissance 2010 closure of Austin High School in 2007 and the shipping of hundreds of kids from the west side over to Clemente and Wells. This led directly to an explosion of violence and disruption inside the massive 7-story complex.

Here's a quote from the AP wire story at the time.

In the largely African-American Austin neighborhood, about half of the 7,000 high school-aged students were forced to travel outside the community to other schools after Austin High School was shuttered in 2007. Some ended up at the mostly Latino Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School, where school officials weren't given "any kind of a warning," said Idida Perez, a community organizer with West Town Leadership United. The result was near daily fights between the newcomers and the neighborhood kids, she said.

"You have a trail of blood and tears ever since they launched (Renaissance 2010)," said Tio Hardiman, director of the anti-violence organization CeaseFire Illinois. "There's a history of violence associated with moving kids from one area to another." 

 Only Herculean efforts by the principal and a solid group of teachers, plus Clemente’s small-schools plan, kept the situation from deteriorating further into all-out war. Ren10 school closings also caused a spike in school violence across the city, at schools like CVS and Gage Park.

CPS has tried moving principals around (even sending in "super principals"), fired hundreds of teachers (including many with experience and high ratings). They have  pushed one magic bullet after another on schools like Clemente, only to dump them a year or two later as the guard changed. One of the silliest that comes to mind was the so-called Culture of Calm during CEO Huberman's short-lived regime. Huberman claimed he could statistically identify specific students who were most likely to be killed in gun violence and then use interventions to move those students out of the line of fire.

At the time I wrote:

Resembling a kind of obscene game of Russian Roulette research, Huberman is spending $30 million to guess which of the city's 400,000 public school students will most likely be killed this year, notify their parents and get them to "change their life styles."

And this from the Wall Street Journal.

The 200 students assessed as being in the "ultra high risk" category were deemed to have greater than a 20% chance of being shot over the next two years. An additional 1,000 students had between a 7.5% and 20% chance of being shot, and an additional 8,500 had a 1% to 7.5% chance of being shot.

So now there's a new sheriff in town with a new hired hand, new games of Russian Roulette and more magic bullets in his gun. No one dares mention the words Renaissance or Culture of Calm any more. Now it's longer school day,  turnarounds and transformations. It's pretty much the same half-baked, top-down ideas hatched in board rooms of the Civic Committee. Only now it's all about privatization of public space and union busting.

I have no beef with the new wall-to-wall IB curriculum at Clemente. It's as good as any other they've had there in the past and seems to be supported by the local community. But what I abhor is the way this was consciously used as a scheme to fire up to 20 teachers, including many with excellent records of service. I hate the way it was cynically used to pit teacher against teacher and to add one more brick in the wall of the current union contract negotiations. None of this has anything to do with IB itself.

It's more about the hidden curriculum of schooling, that is, lessons which are being learned by Clemente students but not openly intended -- like when they come to school one day and find that once again their favorite teacher is gone. It's all about the culture of sorting and tracking, winners and losers in a race to the top. It's the kind of practices you will mainly find in inner-city schools with large numbers of Latino and African-American students.

'Parents will walk picket lines...'

“There’s a huge disconnect between what the board thinks kids deserve and what parents think kids deserve. Good teaching conditions are good learning conditions. If teachers go on strike, many, many hundreds of parents will be on the picket line with them.” -- Erica Clark,  Parents 4 Teachers 

Clemente follow up

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

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

Rahm/Brizard try and shift blame to Daley/Duncan

"We in many ways were lying to parents and to kids about proficiency." -- J.C. Brizard

This morning, hundreds of union teachers and their community supporters are packing the CPS board meeting to protest the board's failed reform policies. With a teachers' strike looming and public opinion continuing to turn against the mayor, Chicago schools CEO J.C. Brizard is trying to shift blame for current failures onto the previous regime.

Here he tells ABC7 political reporter Charles Thomas that "he spent much of his first year in Chicago looking at test scores," before he reached a disturbing conclusion about the school district he had signed on to lead. Then he turns on his predecessors, calling Arne Duncan's reform plan "incoherent." 

"What I found was a reform effort that was somewhat fragmented," said Brizard. 

Recall that at the time, the Daley/Duncan reform was hailed as a Chicago schools "renaissance" and a "turnaround miracle," which led to Duncan's elevation to become Obama's education chief.

In another startling unsolicited confession, Brizard admits"lying to parents and to kids about proficiency." 

"We have kids that are graduating out of elementary school going to high school being told they're proficient and they're not."

As Rahm forces his longer school day on a resistant school community, Brizard says he replaced over a third of the district's 675 principals, with more to come. But Brizard's reform-through-firing and school closing/turnaround approach is no different from that of  Duncan's.

Thomas goes on to report that Brizard "denied being the puppet of Mayor Emanuel." But, Thomas recalls, Mayor Emanuel did not allow the newly appointed CEO of the Chicago Public Schools to speak at his introductory news conference.

Of course that's exactly what Brizard is -- the mayor's hand picked front man, who along with a hand-picked, corporate and billionaire-loaded board, which votes unanimously at Rahm's signal on every issue, have turned CPS into a wing of City Hall.

But all the spinning and blaming has only led to growing disenchantment in the community and growing support for the teachers and the CTU. And now that anger is being expressed in the form of a parent/community-based petition drive to end mayoral control and replace it with an elected school board.

******

Those interested in taking part can join the Teachers 4 Parents petitioning drive today at 6 p.m. at the monument in Logan Square.

Strange reform???

Of course it's possible that Rossi got the story wrong, but does anyone else think this is a strange reform of CPS anti-bullying policy?

Other elements of the new CPS Student Code of Conduct include allowing in-school suspensions to be used as an alternative, or in combination with, out-of-school suspensions, and lowering the automatic minimum penalty for the most serious offenses, including murder and arson, from 10 days out of school to five days in or out of school.  -- Chicago Sun-Times

I mean I support the idea of alternatives to out-of-school suspension and am totally against so-called Zero Tolerance policies. But I think 10-day suspension isn't too harsh a penalty for MURDER!

Rahm's Monday Massacre at Clemente

When the board announced that Roberto Clemente High School was to be the city's third public high school, (along with Senn and the new Back of the Yards H.S.) converted into a wall-to-wall International Baccalaureate (IB) school, many Clemente teachers were thrilled by the news. Teacher teams began preparing to implement the new plan and think about how they could make a contribution to the new Clemente.

Unlike most early CPS school restructuring efforts, the new IB school at Clemente was being planned to accept all interested neighborhood students and "not look to filter students out,” schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard told reporters earlier this year.

In March, the mayor signed a deal with IB to double the size of the city’s international baccalaureate program and devote five neighborhood schools exclusively to that program to supposedly prepare 3,500 more students for college.

Clemente, in the predominantly Latino Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago has been kept in a state of instability by the board for the past few years. Last year alone, the school had 7 principals including the current one, Marcey Sorensen who was brought over from reconstituted Tilden High.

It was Sorensen who dropped the bomb on about 20 Clemente teachers Monday, telling them that their positions had been closed out and "redefined." Redefinition has been a favorite tactic used by Rahm Emanuel and CEO J.C. Brizard to fire tenured teachers without due process.

One of those teachers, Kevin Hough told me that the firings came without notice. "Many of us had superior ratings," said Kevin. He has been teaching in Chicago for the past 11 years and is currently the lead trainer for the Model U.N. program for all of CPS. Kevin is also a service-learning coach and a union delegate.  

"We were working on planning a new course for seniors called Global Citizenship and Personal Finance when I got the call telling me my position had been closed. I heard that some of the teachers, mostly veteran teachers, had been called on Friday." 

He said that Sorensen has been steadily bringing over her favorite teachers from Tilden and replacing Clemente teachers since the beginning of the year. She actually started the E-3 removal process with no remediation plan, against several teachers who had received superior ratings until that point. She was obviously given the green light to "clean house" by Brizard, who is using the shift to the new IB program as an opportunity to fire tenured teachers.

I asked Kevin what he was going to do now. He said that he and fellow teachers were having an emergency meeting with the union on Tuesday to plan a course of action. As for his personal plans, Kevin said that his is so disgusted with the way CPS treats teachers that he is seriously considering leaving CPS. 

"I love teaching but I have a family to support and we can't live with all this instability. Why be part of a system that constantly devalues you?" 

I had no good answer for him.

Weekend Quotables

"Privatopia"

David Segal

With public employee unions under attack in states like Wisconsin, and with cities across the country looking to trim budgets, behold a town built almost entirely on a series of public-private partnerships — a system that leaders around here refer to, simply, as “the model.” -- "A Georgia Town Takes the People’s Business Private."

Natalie Hopkinson

Today, as the quality of life improves, there is a subtext to change, that in order to make progress, black people must be pushed out of the way. They had it for 50 years! -- "Farewell to Chocolate City."

Charles Blow

The Republican-Democratic divide is increasingly becoming an all-white/multicultural divide, a male/female divide, and a more religious/less religious divide — the formers the traditional power classes, and the latters the emerging ones. -- "Bullies on the Bus"

Jay Mathews

I have been a reporter for 45 years. I have seen many cover-ups. This looks like one to me, and to many educators I have spoken to. D.C. officials have never investigated in any depth the wrong-to-right erasures that the District’s testing company began reporting in 2008. -- "D.C. keeps ignoring its test erasure scandal"

Trib writers shine another light on Rahm's anti-union attack ads

AKPD's John Kupper

Thanks to  reporters Jeff Coen and Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah for their excellent piece in Today's Trib, "Emanuel allies press attack in teachers union battle." It confirms everything I wrote Monday about David Axelrod's old firm AKPD being the architect of the lying anti-union ad campaign now being played on local radio in Chicago.

According to the Trib report, the big money behind the attacks on Chicago teachers and their union is the group Democrats For Education Reform (DFER), run by NewYork hedge-funders Whitney Tilson and Ravenel Boykin Curry IV. The group continues to be a big player in the Obama election campaign and is the main force for school privatization, vouchers and privately-run charter schools, within the Democratic Party. They are also major supporters of Rahm's longer-school-day-with-no-pay-for-teachers initiative

More importantly, the Trib report shows that despite denials and evasions, the mayor has knowingly and unabashedly supported the anti-union campaign which is being run by his own political operatives like AKPD's John Kupper. Kupper admits his firm is on retainer with Emanuel's political organization, and state records show The Chicago Committee, one of Emanuel's campaign fundraising organizations, paid Axelrod's old firm more than $21,000 in the first quarter of 2012 for "professional services/consulting."

As for DFER:  

Officials at Democrats for Education Reform said the group's Illinois state director, Rebeca Nieves Huffman, also has not talked to Emanuel about the ads and "doesn't coordinate with him." In May the mayor was photographed with Huffman at a school reform summit in California, but Huffman spokeswoman Megan Jacobs characterized that as a chance encounter.

The two Trib reporters also shine a light on Emanuel political operative Greg Goldner (behind Rahm's use of paid protesters) and billionaire backers Penny Pritzker and Bruce Rauner.

Emanuel's emphasis on schools fits with the long-held agenda of a number of his wealthiest political supporters. They include Penny Pritzker, now a member of the Board of Education, and venture capitalist Bruce Rauner, whose wife, Diana, an early education expert, served on Emanuel's transition team.

Rauner was instrumental in bringing the reform group Stand for Children to Illinois. That organization helped pass the law setting a higher bar for a teachers' strike and also has criticized the teachers union for taking the strike authorization vote.

Good going Jeff and Noreen.

The 'civil rights issue of our generation' -- Taking those words seriously

Jitu Brown of Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (back, left) and Helen Moore, Co-Chair of Keep the Vote/ No Takeover Coalition of Detroit demanded a meeting within two weeks with US Education Secretary Arne Duncan. They are filing USDOE civil rights complaints alleging that African American students are unfairly and disproportionately impacted by school closings, turnarounds and phaseouts. | Rich Hein~Sun-Times

Every opportunist politician from Mitt Romney to Arne Duncan has lately been calling ed reform, "the civil rights issue of our generation" turning the words civil rights into an empty, meaningless cliche. But now it looks like students, and school activists are taking the words seriously.

Yesterday, parents and students from seven cities joined those in Chicago in filing civil rights complaints against school closings, phase-outs and other “rampantly horrible” corporate-style school reforms, they contend have disproportionately victimized minority communities.

(From left) ShaQ Carbon, 18, Tone Elliott, 18, and Tre Murphy, 16, were part of a group demanding a meeting within two weeks with US Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The group is calling  for a “national moratorium’’ on the kind of school reform shakeups that they say began in Chicago under former Schools CEO Paul Vallas; ramped up under his successor, Arne Duncan, and have spread nationwide during Duncan’s tenure as U.S. Education Secretary. 

The Sun-Times' Ros Rossi reports: 

Among those gathered outside the U.S. Department of Ed’s Chicago office Thursday was Helen Moore, a Detroit school activist for 45 years.

Ten years ago, Moore said, the Detroit school system had 300 schools; now it has 86. The system has been shattered into a crazy quilt of neighborhood schools, charter schools, “site-based” schools overseen by a selected school board and schools run by an outside agency. An “emergency manager” runs the place like a “dictator,” she said.

Brizard the 'great unifier', runs for cover

I've been working in and around schools for many years. In all that time I've rarely seen 90 percent agreement among teachers on anything. The one man who seems to unite every district teacher (against him) wherever he goes, is J.C. Brizard. His charm and education background seems to get him through his first year. But once teachers and the public see past the smiling face and figure out what he's there for, it's just a matter of time before the consensus builds.

Brizard arrived as superintendent in Rochester in January 2008 and was received warmly by the community and even by union president Adam Urbanski. But it didn't take long for Urbansky to realize, “Brizard’s definition of shared decision-making was to make a decision and then share it with others.’’ By 2010, with graduation rates falling and Brizard pushing school closings and "merit" pay, 94.5 percent of the city's teachers gave their superintendent a  vote of No Confidence.  Brizard went to Chicago leaving in his wake, a largely broken school district with dismal test scores, shaky finances and a fractured relationship with teachers..." (Chicago Tribune)

After serving just one year as the mayor's hand-picked schools CEO, Brizard seems to have done it again. The 90-percent strike authorization vote by CPS teachers is but one reflection of the unanimity Brizard and Rahm are forging within Chicago's school community.
 

 ***** 

Brizard's latest fiasco involves his cancellation of a supposed "informational meeting" about the contract negotiations. The Sun-Times' Roz Rossi reports:

Thousands of Chicago parents who answered the phone, only to hear the voice of city Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard personally invite them to an “informational’’ meeting about teacher contract talks will have to wait at least a month to get their information

Faced with growing opposition to their handling of the negotiations and an impending teachers strike, Rahm and Brizard are running for cover. Brizard claims that the meeting is being cancelled due to lack of information coming from a "fact-finder." The more likely explanation is that he was told to cancel the meeting because of the angry response Brizard is likely to get from angry parents with lots of media present. I mean, he didn't just put the meeting off a week or two to get more facts -- he put it off until AUGUST!

This means, that between now and August, the CTU's voice will be the only credible one heard. Anything coming from the board should be challenged by any reporter worth their salt -- "I thought you said you won't have any reliable information from the fact-finder until August..."

Now the question is, whose gambit is this? Exactly who told Brizard to duck and cover on this one? Was it Rahm himself? Or was it Axelrod Strategies?

There's little doubt in my mind that if a vote of No Confidence were to be taken today, not only among teachers but across the whole city, it would pass overwhelmingly and Brizard would once again emerge as the great unifier.

In the Mailbox

From Jennifer Johnson

Dear Public Education and Teacher Supporters,

Yesterday, we got some good news. Thanks largely to your thousands of signatures and comments Change.org has dropped both Jonah Edleman’s Stand for Children and Michelle Rhee’s Students First as clients.

You can read Huffington Post's coverage here: huff.to/M5j0bh 

Though this is good news, we still need to be very realistic about Change.org and their willingness to repeatedly dupe signers into supporting petitions that appear to be progressive but are really backed by corporate and anti-labor organizations. While this is a great step, we still don't have a clear indication from Change.org on where they draw the line on anti-worker organizations and groups that advocate against collective bargaining or promote legislation written by ALEC, an extreme organization that you may recognize as the author of the 'Stand Your Ground' law in Florida and anti-worker legislation across the country. We should be heartened that our voices were heard in this instance, but warned about those that would call us allies in the struggle to support public education and those who educate our children. What is to stop Change.org from doing this again? What other media are acting like they are friends to teachers and workers, but they are really not? 

Because, as you know, us Chicago teachers are in contract negotiations and fighting for better schools for our students, I want to encourage you to stay engaged. We, and other educators, need the support that you demonstrated by signing our Signon.org petition. These kinds of attacks on teachers as the nurturers of kids and as members of labor organizations won’t stop today. 

Please keep reading articles to stay informed, write a letter to the editor or make an online comment if you see teacher bashing, tell your friends and family while in line at the grocery store about how teachers are fighting for quality public education. Research whose lobbying and supporting your local representatives, because in many cases, they are connected and funded by the leaders of organizations like Stand for Children and Students First. Please continue to be a voice against the corporate influence of astroturf, neoliberal organizations that are trying to destroy public education as we know it and bust unions that fight back. 

One way to keep informed and involved is to follow the work of the unions that I’m in. As an active member of the Chicago Teachers Union, I’m proud to say that we are a more united and fighting union than ever. President Karen Lewis (Signon.org petition signer #262) and our members are pushing for research-supported education reform. To read the Chicago Teachers Union study called “The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve” go to: http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/the-schools-chicagos-students-deserve You can download the whole thing, read and share widely! Have you ever seen a teachers union lead like this before? 

As a Chicago Teachers Union is Local 1 member, I am also a member of the American Federation of Teachers, who are stepping up nationally to fight well-funded, corporate attacks by groups like Stand for Children. President Randi Weingarten (Signon.org petition signer #520) wrote “Tell change.org to stop union busting” on our petition. To get news and information from the AFT, go to: http://www.aft.org/getinvolved/enews.cfm 

We remain committed to publicly funded public education and making sure that the voices of teachers, students and parents dominate the discussions and policies to make our schools better! 

Thanks again for your signature! Let’s keep up the great work!

Jen

We're number worst!

Illinois gets a solid F grade and is rated number one worst of all 50 states when it comes to inequitable funding. This according to the Second Edition of the National Report Card on public school funding, Is School Funding Fair?

The report lists the six states with the most regressive school funding systems in the nation. That is, where districts with higher poverty rates actually receive less funding than more well-off districts. The most regressive state is Illinois, followed by North Carolina, Alabama, Michigan, Texas and Colorado.

Valerie Strauss at the Answer Sheet, sums it all up:

Legislators can extend the school day, force new tests on students and link the scores to a teacher’s job, but a new analysis about disparities in school funding raises the uncomfortable question of just how effective any reforms can really be when issues of equity are ignored.