Taking back Chicago

I'm looking forward to next Tuesday, October 15th when a coalition of union and community groups will come together to "Take Back Chicago." Several thousand people are expected to take part in this community meeting at the UIC Forum. Things will start with a 5 p.m. march and rally and continue on with a forum.

With local elections on the horizon, the goal of TBC will be to forge a common vision for the city's future and then to hold candidates accountable to that vision. High on the agenda are school closings, the continued destruction of families, public housing, social services and employment opportunities.

The convening Grassroots Collaborative includes:

Action Now • AFSCME Council 31 • Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation • Brighton Park Neighborhood Organization• Chicago Coalition for the Homeless • Chicago Teachers Union • Enlace Chicago • Illinois Hunger Coalition • Kenwood Oakland Community Organization • ONE Northside • Pilsen Alliance • SEIU Healthcare • Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation • SouthsideTogether Organizing for Power • Southwest Organizing Project

You can sign up to take part in Take Back Chicago on Facebook.  I did.

Buying an Election

There's nothing grassroots about the coalition Rahm is building. It's focused solely on buying the next mayoral election.

Today's Sun-Times reports:

In the face of a rancorous year at the city’s helm, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has hauled in nearly $1.4 million in larger campaign donations in the last three months — and with nearly a year and half before his re-election, he already has $5 million cash on hand.

Griffin

Nearly $120,000 of the donations in the last period came from employees at investment giant Citadel or from the hedge fund manager Ken Griffin himself. Griffin is reportedly Chicago's second richest man (behind Sam Zell) and a major player in Chicago's corporate-style school reform. He's a big backer of anti-teacher-union groups like Stand For Children, one of the sponsors of the notorious Senate Bill 7. Stand for Children also dropped $10,000 into Rahm's war chest.

The law firm of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP that employs former Mayor Richard M. Daley and Daley’s best friend Terry Newman was a big contributor. So was the law firm of Kirkland Ellis and the financial firms CTC, and Grosvenor Capital Management LP, whose CEO and chairman Michael Sacks is vice-chairman of World Business Chicago and Emanuel’s close friend and business adviser.

The message is on the meter

I'm starting to see these stickers on parking meters around the city. They are to remind us of the need to tell our Aldermen to support the Privatization Transparency and Accountability Ordinance. Check it out on Twitter #PTAO. 

Closings

Chicago school closings have crippled parent participation in their children's education, writes Catalyst editor Lorraine Forte on Huffington. She says that parents interviewed for the latest issue of Catalyst

"...expressed dissatisfaction and dismay about the rocky transition to new schools. They cited bus schedules that don't accommodate after-school activities, crowded classrooms, students feeling anxious and unwelcome. The problems are magnified because many parents were already notoriously distrustful of the district and fought against the closings." 

Two Chicagos
To best understand the context for the mayor's school closings, in nearly all in the city's poorest, isolated African-American communities, you need only glance at Nickolay Lamm's two animated GIFs on Chicago Wealth Inequality Project, which show -- surprise! -- "the city's Near North Side is where the rainbow ends and the city's South and West Sides are mere anthills when compared to the lakeshore communities from the South Loop north and the suburbs." 

He's back
I had the honor of being red-baited yesterday on Twitter by none other than right-wing think-tanker Michael Petrilli from the Fordham Institute. Petrilli's McCarthyite slime came in response to my summary of the latest debate at Bridging Differences between Petrilli and Deb Meier. Here's my tweet which I think summed up the debate quite nicely:

@michaelpetrilli wants us to rely on "faith" in Social Mobility. @DebMeier says faith not enough http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2013/10/dear_mike_wow_youve_raised.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW … EDWEEK

Here's pathetic response from Petrilli:

 .@mikeklonsky @DebMeier I'll take my faith in America over your faith in Chairman Mao. http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_4_diane-ravitch.html …

I'm beholden to those like @katieosgood and others who joined in the TweetFest that followed.

@MichaelPetrilli @mikeklonsky @DebMeier Actually, I KNOW the Klonskys personally. Staunch advocates of kids, public ed, & heroes in my eyes.

Petrilli responded this way:

.@KatieOsgood_ @mikeklonsky @DebMeier OK. Also avowed Maoists, at least at one time, no? If I'm wrong, tell me.

They did.

Putting Petrilli's McCarthyite tactics behind us for a while, Deb Meier's response to his call to end poverty by stopping poor people from having children is worth reading. She ends with this strong statement:

There's no guarantee that the odds favor the survival of America, much less America as a beacon of democracy and equity.  So we both have a stake in seeking solutions that don't rest on fantasies about being saved by the chastity of poor young women.

New report shows how school closings, charters lead to more racial segregation

Chicago school closings and the district’s expansion of “school choice” further aggravate the city’s problems with neighborhood and school racial segregation. This according to a new report from The Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance. According to the report:

Catalyst Chicago, an independent education research group, found that 40% of closed CPS schools are now privately run. However, charters have not been shown to produce the results many supporters purport. Research has failed to show that students benefit more from charter schools as opposed to a quality neighborhood schools; and despite being funded by public money , charter schools are less accountable and more selective than public schools. 

The report makes the case that the mayor's policy of mass school closings, nearly all in low-income, African-American neighborhoods, and their replacement with privately-run charter schools, has "exacerbated segregation."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports:

 An increasing number of charter schools that serve mostly white student bodies are opening in racially diverse areas of the Twin Cities, according to a study by Institute of Metropolitan Opportunity, based at the University of Minnesota Law School.

The number of predominantly white charters in the suburbs grew by 40 percent from 2008 to 2013, the study’s authors say. As a consequence, they added, those schools are aiding “white flight” from diverse suburban schools in cities such as Bloomington, Apple Valley and Eden Prairie.

Another report cited by CAFHA, from the Equity and Excellence Commission notes:

“While some young Americans — most of them white and affluent — are getting a truly world-class education, those who attend schools in high poverty neighborhoods are getting an education that more closely approximates school in developing nations.”

You can't get much clearer than that.

Using Burke's Law to rip-off city schools

While Rahm Emanuel continues to blame school budget cuts on retirees' pensions, his machine partner Eddie Burke is getting fat ripping off the schools by helping corporate pals avoid paying property taxes. In doing so, Burke has the full cooperation of Rahm and his City Hall legal department which rarely challenges tax appeals from Burke's clients.

14th Ward Alderman Burke, the man we used to call "Slow Eddie", when he and "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak organized their racist clique against the city's first black mayor, Harold Washington, isn't so slow after all. While the feds finally caught up with Vrdolyak in 2007 and sent him to prison for mail and wire fraud, Burke remained free by figuring out how to rip off the city and public school system, legally.

And while the idea of a powerful City Council member counseling clients against paying taxes that help keep the very government he works for running may seem to be, well, a bit unseemly, that’s not the worst of it. Burke and his firm has won $10.6 million of those cases by working the court system, where he wields great clout in who gets to serve in the judiciary as chairman of the judicial slating committee of the Cook County Democratic Party. He also knows full well the city’s Law Department is understaffed and can’t keep up with the pace of tax cases involving Burke’s clients.

And yet, that’s not the end of it. The Sun-Times found 59 of his clients—including big names such as AT&T, Commonwealth Edison and Walgreens—do business with City Hall or other Chicago governmental agencies, such as the Chicago Board of Education. As chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee, he has direct access to all matters pertaining to who the city does business with, along with anything relating to bond, tax and revenue issues. -- The Ward Room 

This morning's Sun-Times reports that the mayor is once again resorting to damage control, trying to duck the latest City Hall scandal by putting distance between himself and Burke.

 “I can speak for the law department of the city of Chicago. We’re going to pursue every case to make sure that the taxpayers’ interests are protected. . . ." says Rahm.

The mayor’s claim to pursue all property tax appeals is contradicted by the facts. The law department rarely challenges the lawsuits that Burke files, with just one court challenge in the past three years, records show. And City Hall is legally barred from contesting the majority of Burke’s appeals to the state — those seeking less than a $1 million cut in property assessment — under a 2002 measure Burke helped to pass in the City Council. The Chicago Sun-Times reported this week that Burke’s boutique law firm has won more than $18.1 million in property tax refunds for Chicago property owners since 2003 and that those refunds have cost the cash-strapped city $3.6 million.

And so it goes.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Matt Damon and Diane Ravitch speaking at my alma mater, Cal-State Northridge.

Matt Damon

“I’m very honored to have the opportunity to introduce Diane tonight. She’s somebody that I have admired for a very long time. She’s an amazing person. She’s America’s foremost historian in the areas of education policy, she’s a champion of public education, she’s a courageous speaker and she’s a truth-teller.” -- Daily Sundial

Diane Ravitch

Do we have problems in American education? Of course we do! Our single biggest problem is that our policymakers have ignored the toxic effects of poverty and segregation. Our inner-city kids have low academic performance because they are poor, and worse, their schools are being stripped bare by budget cuts. -- Conversation with WaPo's Valerie Strauss

Tom Hayden

The logic of voter turnout data all but guarantees right-wing Republican congressional victories in 2014 and a sealing of the divide of America into two countries for the foreseeable future. -- The Rag Blog

Ta-Nehisi Coates

As I noted, the problem is not that I dwell too long and too angrily on America's systemic racism, but that America's systemic racism has tended to dwell too long and too angrily on me. -- The Atlantic

 Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

"I have friends that I know, or very much suspect, are homosexual. Everybody does." -- TPM, Scalia Has Friends He 'Very Much Suspects' Are Homosexual 

Stern crawls out from under his rock to attack Ravitch

I haven't heard much from ’60s ultra-radical turned far-right think-tanker Sol Stern since 2008 when he tried to paint Barack Obama as a commie symp and make Bill Ayers the focus of the presidential election debate. He used to write me letters, trying to befriend me. He says he went to the same summer camp as me as a kid but I can't believe that Kinderland would ever turn out a creep like Stern. He even offered to take me to a Yankee game (yuck, I was born with Brooklyn Dodger blue in my veins)  if I would only give him some inside dope about Ayers for a book he was working on.

Last I heard, he had fled the country and was living in Israel. Now I see he's crawled out from under his rock once again, to attack think-tank apostate Diane Ravitch whose new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools, has his and other former fellows' shorts in a twist.

Back in '08, Stern worked for the right-wing Manhattan Institute (he obviously still does) and raged against progressive and social-justice education, calling it akin to "Stalinism." Stern's job at the Institute included hunting down and “exposing” social-justice teachers, whom he accused of “trashing the American system.” In another post Stern, responding to the UFT's Leo Casey, called the teachers union "a shill for Obama" and referred to me as a "good friend of the UFT" (which I think I am).

As for Ravitch, Stern attacks her as a "crude" turncoat, accusing her of "surrendering abjectly to [Deborah] Meier, champion of social-justice teaching and other progressive fads."

He calls her blog "a propaganda hub for the national anti–corporate reform coalition."

This past Labor Day, for example, Ravitch posted the words of militant union songs like “Joe Hill” and “Which Side Are You On?” and lamented that teacher unions don’t have enough power or influence in America.

Stern adds to his list of charges:

Ravitch uses her blog to publicize and organize support for antireform school board candidates from Rochester to Los Angeles. She recently wrote an impassioned endorsement of Bill de Blasio, the most radical of the Democrats running in the New York mayoral primary and the eventual winner. 

Sol Stern

He even accuses Ravitch of apparently agreeing with the progressive-ed icon [his tongue burns and he sputters as he says his name] Jean Piaget.

But as you might expect, Stern's coup de grace is exposing Ravitch's friendship with Ayers and the Klonsky's.

Thus, she has praised the former Weather Underground terrorist and radical educator William Ayers for his contributions to the anticorporate insurgency. (She concedes that Ayers made some political “mistakes” in the sixties.) Ravitch has also had kind words for leftist education activist and onetime Ayers ally Mike Klonsky. On her blog, she recounted visiting two universities in Chicago in 2010, with Klonsky as her host. “For me, the fallen-away conservative, it was a trip getting to know Mike, because he had long ago been a leader of the SDS, which was a radical group in the 1960s that I did not admire. So meeting him and discovering that he and his wife Susan were thoughtful, caring, and kind people was an experience in itself.” 

According to Stern, I "spent several years in China during the horrific Cultural Revolution, attending state dinners with the Great Helmsman." Pure bullshit. He made that part up. That's okay. The legend grows.

All I can really say in response to Stern's diatribe is, thanks for everything you do, Diane. The very things that make you big, make them small.

Rahm's 'Fog Machine'

“Their decision to modify their promise of a five-year moratorium on school closings is a smack in the face to the parents, teachers and students who are working so hard to secure vital resources for their neighborhood schools.” -- CTU's Stephanie Gadlin

If her lips are moving, Byrd-Bennett is lying.  Becky Carroll is lying even when her lips aren't moving. Crain's Greg Hinz calls it Emanuel's "fog machine."

There is no transparency at CPS or anywhere around City Hall. Everything said in Rahmville -- and make no mistake, CPS is square in the middle of Rahmville --has to be interpreted through the haze. 

Usually, it's CPS Liar-In-Chief Carroll framing the message. But this time around, it was Rahm's toadie BBB who was made to go in front of the cameras and assure an outraged community and teachers' union that there would be a 5-year moratorium on Chicago school closings once she was allowed to close 50. This despite the fact that 20,000 parents and community members came out to series of citywide hearings, demanding a stop to the closings. Or that even BBB's own hand-picked panel of VIPs advised against the closings.

Now as fractured and demoralized neighborhoods try and pick themselves up from the rubble, and some 30,000 children cautiously navigate their way through so-called Safe Passage zones just to get to school each morning, BBB is dragged out again. This time to tell us, "Remember what I said about a 5-year moratorium?..." 

Dizzy with success, they've come out with new "guidelines" which open the door to the hundreds more school closings they always wanted. 

Union V.P. Sharkey tells DNAinfo: 

"The intent of their message was if you put up with all this big instability you can appreciate a period of stability for the next five years. And now it turns out they're saying, well, no, we thought of some exemptions." 

Can they pull it off? We'll see. 

But Rahm's pulling-it-off track record is pretty dismal, says Hinz. He and a sector of the business community appear to have grown dissatisfied with the mayor's big talk accompanied by little do. Take the much vaunted Investment Trust for example:

 "...the one that was unveiled here in the presence of no less a personage than former President Bill Clinton [and AFT Prez Randi Weingarten -- m.k.]. A year and a half later, it's produced nada..."

As for Rahm's running of the schools, Hinz writes:

Remember all the promises about making teachers work more and extending the school day? Well, the school day was extended — and the Board of Education had to pay for it, despite a $500 million budget hole. And all of that promised "enrichment" in the form of more time for foreign language instruction and the arts and so forth? When the board ended up laying off hundreds of teachers, many schools lost that very same enrichment.

All politicians like to brag and strut their accomplishments, write Hinz. Mr. Emanuel is pretty good at it.

The problem is that none of that real-world reality ever seems to affect Mayor Rahm Emanuel's patented public relations fog machine, which works overtime to sell stuff that, in the end, far too often fails to deliver on the promise.

Hinz's column could easily serve as campaign talking points for a mayoral opposition candidate.

Duncan's diatribe

pun·dit
noun

1. an expert in a particular subject or field who is frequently called on to give opinions about it to the public. 2. a learned man : teacher

Ed Sec. Arne Duncan has lashed out at his critics, referring to them (us) as "armchair pundits." His attempt at silencing is particularly directed at those who point to poverty and the resulting inequality of opportunity as a primary source of supposed "school failure." This problem seems way beyond Harvard grad Duncan's grasp. Duncan sees the country divided between his critics, "inhabitants of this alternative universe," and the "many people in the real world, outside the beltway and blogosphere, have tuned out this debate."

While using his own Twitter account to try and vanquish his "alternative-world" critics, Duncan mis-characterizes them (us) as people "arguing in 140 characters or less about whether we need to fix poverty before we can fix education." Especially for those of us who've been involved for decades in efforts to accomplish both--attempting to transform education as well as trying to end poverty and inequality--that was a supreme insult.

WaPo's Valerie Strauss writes:

The speech revealed Duncan as being thin-skinned, but more striking was what else it showed: that the education secretary still doesn’t seem to understand what many of his critics are saying.

Anthony Cody responds on his Living in Dialogue blog:

The insulting way that Secretary Duncan chooses to characterize those who disagree with his policies really speaks for itself.  He divides the world into those who he sees "doing the work," who may have concerns - which he, of course, shares, and those who disagree. Once we actively disagree, we become part of some "blogosphere," or "bubble," which, by his definition, is engaging in idle carping that undermines those in the "real world."

Diane Ravitch, whose latest book has many more than 140 characters, has been among the sharpest critics of Duncan's Race To The Top policies. Duncan's people at the DOE have been "monitoring" her for years and using their power and embedded media to try and discredit her.

She responds to Duncan's diatribe here.

Breaking -- Oh heavens! Somebody may have overpaid for school desks

Forget about the great UNO charter school rip-off. That was small potatoes.

Forget Rahm's great $150 million basketball arena scam. Puny by comparison.

Forget about Rahm's hiring of convicted crook Amer Ahmad as his comptroller. Mistakes happen.

Forget about Arne Duncan hiring a child molester/pornographer to help him run the schools. The guy had a guy. 

You can even forget about the current RTA scandal and Mike Madigan's son-in-law who he placed as an RTA top exec and who is now under investigation over allegations involving sexual and racial harassment of RTA staff. (Anyway, he's not actually a blood relative).

 Yes, you can forget about all these petty mini-scandals because Chuck Goudie and his ABC7's derring-do I-Team have torn the cover off the biggest scandal of them all. That's right, it's "Operation Desk Job."

"The Desk Job" found evidence that the Chicago Public Schools overpaid for desks and other classroom furniture that was less quality than ordered.  

Egad! Say it isn't so, Chuck.

As a result of the I-Team's amazing revelations, CPS has announced that it is centralizing all future furniture purchases. Yes, that'll do it.

Furniture orders can only be initiated by the CPS Operations Department. This allows for oversight of contract compliance. Previously, individual departments, including schools, were allowed to purchase directly from the furniture vendor.

Kevin Cooney

But wait.

The Frank Cooney Company was the approved vendor (and will be again after a voluntary 18-month hiatus) for CPS furniture. In other words, the well-connected company wasn't hired by the local schools but rather by the CPS bureaucrats themselves.

Headquartered in Elk Grove Village, the company has been run by Kevin Cooney for more than 20 years. During that time, he managed many of CPS' construction projects as well as some for suburban districts. You can bet, Cooney is connected. He has a guy.

After first telling ABC News that this was nothing more than a squabble between "rival" contractors, cps has done a 180 and begun a full audit of all furniture contracts. And now, an unnamed "top CPS administrator" who signed off on contract changes has stepped down (Fired? Or just moved to another department?).

Actually, Goudie's I-Team was covering old ground. The Cook County State's Attorney had long ago subpoenaed contract records of CPS furniture deals, looking into whether the Frank Cooney Company met minority contract requirements. In 1999, Kevin Cooney was found not guilty on charges he used a phony minority front to obtain Chicago school district furniture contracts. I don't know why they needed a trial. You can tell from just a quick look at Cooney's team that it's minority-owned and operated.

It has taken nearly a quarter of a century under mayoral control, but the central office bureaucracy's counterrevolution is now nearly complete. Now, about those few remaining functional Local School Councils... Quick call the I-Team.

It's come to this...

Beggar schools
Chicago school children may be able to wipe themselves at school again, thanks to toilet paper donations from Proctor and Gamble. Rahm's budget cuts have left many schools going without. Parents' thanks go out to Ald. Nick Sposato who organized the TP drive after CPS cut about $3 million from budgets for six schools in his ward. The Daily Caller reports that schools in Venezuela are also facing a TP shortage.

Cruz, T-Party victory
800,000 govt. workers go without pay. Food programs for poor kids threatened. Student loans in trouble. But drones keep flying. NSA keeps spying. Deportations continue.

Testing Madness
Good guest post in Monday's Seattle Times by Trish Millines Dziko, "The endless rounds of standardized testing for Washington students". (h/t Paul T.)

With all those standard and assessment changes, new curriculum gets developed, teachers get retrained, new teacher-evaluation systems are proposed and new digital tools are developed. Before you know it, a whole cottage industry emerges.

Loot, Pillage & Burn 

Don't miss Matt Taibbi's new Rolling Stone feature: "Looting Public Pensions: A New Think-Tank Study" .

Today, the same Wall Street crowd that caused the crash is not merely rolling in money again but aggressively counterattacking on the public-relations front. The battle increasingly centers around public funds like state and municipal pensions. This war isn't just about money. Crucially, in ways invisible to most Americans, it's also about blame. In state after state, politicians are following the Rhode Island playbook, using scare tactics and lavishly funded PR campaigns to cast teachers, firefighters and cops – not bankers – as the budget-devouring boogeymen responsible for the mounting fiscal problems of America's states and cities.

Brit teachers walk
Thousands of teachers are taking part in a one-day strike in a row over pay, pensions and working conditions. The industrial action – the latest in a wave of regional strikes – has been organised by two of England's biggest teaching unions, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the NASUWT. -- The Guardian

Don't miss

Lessons from the 1963 Boycott:

The Struggle for Quality Education in Chicago Then and Now

Tuesday, October 22, 6-8p.m., Free, open to the public

The DuSable Musuem of African American History- 740 East 56th Place

Register at 63boycott.eventbrite.com

Lessons from the '63 Boycott

 Rachel Dickson
Tim Horsburgh
Kartemquin Films
63boycott@kartemquin.com
773-472-4366/ 773-656-8939 (cell)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
On the 50th anniversary of the 1963 school boycott, activists from then and now will talk about one of Chicago's largest civil rights marches at a screening of in-progress documentary '63 Boycott.

Lessons from the 1963 Boycott:
The Struggle for Quality Education in Chicago Then and Now
Tuesday, October 22, 6-8p.m., Free, open to the public
The DuSable Musuem of African American History- 740 East 56th Place
Register at 63boycott.eventbrite.com


Join us on October 22nd, the 50th anniversary of the 1963 Boycott of Chicago Public Schools, when an estimated 250,000 Chicagoans – mostly CPS students – protested segregation and inequality. The evening features a screening of in-progress documentary '63 Boycott from Kartemquin Films (The Interrupters), a panel discussion with education activists from then and now, and a spoken word performance by Malcolm London of Young Chicago Authors. The panel includes Rosie Simpson and Fannie Rushing, organizers of the 1963 Boycott; Elizabeth Todd, an historian at University of Illinois in Chicago; Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union; and a student from the Chicago Student Union.

There will also be an interactive teach-in organized by the Chicago Teachers Union Black Caucus and Education for Liberation Network with a screening of a short clip from the film and a chance to talk with boycott organizers and participants in a series of small group discussions on Sunday, October 20th, at Lawndale Community Church, 3827 W. Ogden Ave. Childcare and Spanish interpretation will be provided at the teach-in.

Directed by Gordon Quinn of Chicago nonprofit Kartemquin Films – the makers of Hoop Dreams  – ’63 Boycott explores the legacy of racism and inequality in Chicago's public schools. The film chronicles the demonstration when 250,000 Chicago Public Schools students boycotted school to protest segregationist policies of CPS Superintendent Benjamin Willis, who placed trailers on school playgrounds and parking lots as a permanent solution to overcrowding in black schools. The documentary features original 16mm footage of the 1963 boycott and past and present-day interviews with students and parents.  According to Bob Lucas, a 1963 boycott participant interviewed for the film in 2012, “The education in Chicago today in the black community is as bad now as it was then.” ‘63 Boycott will air on local PBS in Spring 2014.

Boycotters are being located through the film's interactive website www.63boycott.com, where they can identify and tag themselves in over 500 stills pulled from the film, as well as upload their own images and stories. Kartemquin invites those that participated in the 1963 Chicago Public School boycott to contact us through the website, by sending an email to 63boycott@kartemquin.com, or calling 773-413-9263.

“Lessons from the 1963 Boycott” is sponsored by Kartemquin Films, Chicago Teachers Union, Education for Liberation Network, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture at the University of Chicago, and Culture, Crossroads Fund, Young Chicago Authors, Chicago Grassroots Curriculum Taskforce, the Human Rights Program at University of Chicago, Chicago Freedom School, and the Chicago Area Women’s History Council.

Light refreshments will be served. For more information about the film and event, visit www.63boycott.com or call 773-472-3797. Please register at 63boycott.eventbrite.com. For more about the film and filmmakers, visit   http://63boycott.kartemquin.com/about-the-project/. For photos, visit http://63boycott.kartemquin.com/gallery/. The film’s director as well as education activists from then and now are available for interviews.

###

Three reasons to stop drinking...

So let me get this straight.

Ted Cruz is a "Leninist."

Tea Party Republican are "anarchists."

And Eric Cantor "gushes effusively about Paulo Freire."

I've really got to stop drinking.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Charter backer Cong. Polis calls Ravitch "evil woman"

Diane Ravitch responds to Cong. Polis 

Even though he is a billionaire, I will pick up the check for breakfast, lunch, or dinner on one condition: read my book. If you don’t like it, Jared, I will give you your money back. -- Blog

 Bill Gates

“It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” -- Washington Post

 Harry Reid

“The American people will not be extorted by tea party anarchists.” -- House Republicans vote to delay Obamacare for one year

Chris Hewitt, Local School Council member

"CPS has to realize that schools are more than scores. If there's a more qualitative approach, with district officials coming in and seeing how teachers and students interact, they'll see there's a lot of learning that happens informally." -- Chicago Tribune

How did this guy get hired by Arne Duncan? He had a guy.

Jesus Alanis sentenced to 20 years in Stateville. 

How did this child molester/pornographer land a high-paying job working for Arne Duncan at the top of the Chicago Public Schools system? That's an easy one.

The same way Arne Duncan got his own job. He had a guy. In his case it was venture capitalist power broker John Rogers who made a phone call and had golf buddy Mayor Daley tell schools CEO Paul Vallas to bring the unqualified Duncan on board as his assistant. Of course,Vallas obliged and the rest as they say, is history.

The same way billionaire pal of Rahm Emanuel and Republican candidate for governor, Bruce Rauner, got his kid into Walter Payton High School. He had a guy. All it took was phone call to Duncan.

The same way that convicted fraud and bribe-taker Amer Ahmad was hired by Rahm to fill one of the city's top financial positions, five months after he had been under federal investigation. He also had a guy.

In the same fashion, machine Ald. Danny Solis made a phone call to Duncan and said, "I got this guy, Alanis..."

What were Jesus Alanis' qualifications? None. Had he ever been a teacher? No. Did he have any experience at all in public education? No. Then, what in his background might make the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools want to put him in a high-paying job at the top of the city's school system?

He had worked since 2008 for the city’s Human Resources Department, where he made $80,904 a year in a post that, as a political appointment, was exempt from anti-patronage restrictions. 

Alanis says on his online profile that he previously worked for Ald. Danny Solis (25th) and for the United Neighborhood Organization, a community group that operates the largest charter-school network in Illinois. Alanis was a 2005 graduate of UNO’s Metropolitan Leadership Institute, a training program for young Hispanic professionals. According to profile information he provided to that program, he worked on immigration issues for UNO. His sister Veronica Alanis is a high-ranking Chicago Transit Authority official who, until recently, was a longtime member of UNO’s board. Jesus Alanis went to work for City Hall when longtime UNO lawyer Homero Tristan was commissioner of the Human Resources Department, city records show. -- Sun-Times

A couple of weeks ago, the city's Inspector General, Joe Ferguson, was reappointed for another four-year term — with the unwritten understanding that he’s likely to step down after next summer — in spite of his contentious relationship with the mayor. By mutual agreement with the mayor, Ferguson's job will be limited to, "end[ing] four decades of federal hiring oversight." 

Ferguson thanked the mayor for “agreeing to allow me to continue to work on wrapping up some unfinished projects, most notably achieving Shakman compliance and fully implementing the administration’s ethics reform bill.” 

If you ever needed a good reason to keep the Shakman Decree in effect, just think about Jesus Alanis.

Good news, rich people

There are still openings for your extra-special child at the new, 9-story, Oman-based Gem Academy (and a gem it is) downtown on S. Water St. And if you apply now, tuition is only about $30K. Caviar lunch is extra.

Rahm Emanuel is at it again. His game plan is to blame every school budget cut, every teacher he fires and school he closes -- and now his latest proposed property tax increase -- on those elderly and infirm who are resisting cuts to their pensions and health care. Trib reporters, Hal Dardick and Rick Pearson say that along with taxing home owners, Rahm wants to once again postpone city pension payments until 2022, "three years into what would be Emanuel's third term, if he decided to serve that long and was able to win re-election." But you can bet those greedy pensioners won't put a crimp into Rahm's $92M South Loop South Loop project at Cermak and Michigan that will feature a DePaul basketball arena and a Marriott Hotel.

CTU's Martin Ritter says that after a brief hiatus, the union is stepping up its voter registrar training. The next training session is planned for 5pm on Tuesday October 1st, at CTU Headquarters on the 4th floor at the Merchandise Mart. Public transportation is encouraged. If you're interested in participating, please RSVP directly to Marty at martinritter@ctulocal1.com.

Crain's Greg Hinz says a Springfield fight is resuming over whether to require publicly traded corporations to disclose how much they pay in state income taxes, and "it could be a doozy". Indeed. A similar bill was defeated in the same committee last year after clearing the Senate, where business groups have less influence. "The long-held benchmark of our tax system has been confidentiality," said Mark Denzler, vice president and chief operating officer of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association.

Mayor one-term?

The Ward Room's Mark Anderson (Chicago Needs a Mayoral Challenger. Or Five) offers up a rather gloomy picture of democratic possibilities for Chicago.

The next election for mayor in Chicago little more than 18 months away, and it’s time to face a hard fact: When it comes to mayoral politics in Chicago, democracy could be dead. 

I'm a little more hopeful. From my view, Rahm Emanuel's once-powerful political base appears to be coming apart at the seams. Polls I have seen, show Rahm faring poorly in head-to-head races against a number of potential candidates. His support in the black community is eroding. His disastrous school budget cuts, school closings, and mass teacher firings have brought the entire public school system to its knees. Throw in his attacks on the pension funds and Rahm has created a potential army of public employees, including cops, fireman, school teachers, parents and staff who could be the foot soldiers working against him in the next campaign.

School closings, primarily in the city's African-American neighborhoods on the south and west sides, threaten to further blight many of those communities, lead to more unemployment, neighborhood instability and more violence. Rahm can't go many places in the community these days, without being greeted with a chorous of boos.

Which brings up Rahm's biggest problem, the image of Chicago as an uncontrollable, corrupt and violent city -- bad for business. Sneed reports that a CNN national security adviser just called Chicago “the Mogadishu of the United States.” (BTW Sneed, Mogadishu is in Somalia, not Iraq). 

“All of these things that happen in Chicago go viral. People hear about it all over the world and we need to limit that because tourism plays such a big part in our economy, says Ald. Walter Burnett.

The images of thousands of school kids having to navigate "safe passage" routes and police and security cordons just to get to school and back each day, have shocked the world. The recent Cornell Park shootings  may have been a back-breaker for Rahm and Chief McCarthy's spin on the city's supposed drop in crime.

On top of all this, you have a widening rift with with the old Daley machine and an emerging split in the state Democratic Party as seen by the withdrawal from the governor's race by Lisa Madigan and Bill Daley and sub rosa support for Republican billionaire candidate Bruce Rauner coming from Rahm, Daley and even Hillary Clinton.

I could go on. There's Rahm's costly blown attempt to privatize Midway. There's the seemingly never-ending press accounts of major corruption scandals most recently involving UNO's Martin Cabrera and the hiring of comptroller Amer Ahmad. There's the shady DePaul basketball arena deal. And on and on it goes.

Despite his seemingly overwhelming advantage against any potential candidate in terms of money-raising ability, the possibility of a low voter turnout, and his (tepid?) support from Obama's camp, there are lots of reasons to believe that Rahm's political machine is a paper tiger, and that the mayor can be had in 2015 -- provided that there is a viable and willing opponent. And that's a big if.

My sense is that the deep dislike of the Mayor, the erosion of his base, especially among his typical north-side neighborhood supporters, plus an emerging movement of mainly young, urban voters (not just in Chicago) could shift the balance and run Rahm out of office. But there's a lot at stake and as we learned back in the Harold Washington days, the machine won't fall unless we hit it.

The 'culture' of CPS

Byrd-Bennett ponders the “social-cultural aspects of children coming to school.” 

CPS' new per-pupil budgeting system punishes schools for being small. It's more of the same theory of "under-utilization" that led to the closure of 48 neighborhood schools. Rahm is also pouring millions into elite, small, selective enrollment schools like Walter Payton College Prep (you remember, the school where billionaire Bruce Rauner, with help from Arne Duncan, clouted his kid's admission), to make them bigger.

Dozens of CPS schools were facing the loss of $20 million in additional funding because they did not enroll as many students as the district had projected they would. But faced with mounting parent protests and opposition from the CTU, CEO Byrd-Bennett (where has she been?) announced Monday that she will give schools a one-year reprieve before she slits their throats. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? Where do all these millions come from in a system that's supposed to be broke?

“Those schools that did not meet their enrollment projections, we’re going to hold those schools harmless. They will receive the dollars that we assigned them based on the projected enrollment numbers,” said Byrd-Bennett. Schools that surpassed their enrollment projections will get their per-pupil increase. -- WBEZ

BBB says that CPS enrollment numbers are down and her instincts are to punish the schools. But as RYH has pointed out, CPS numbers are questionable. To the degree that enrollments have shrunk, it could be due in large part to the huge decrease in the city's African-American population as thousands of black and poor residents are pushed out of public housing and out of the city altogether. I also think that many students were lost in the school-closing debacle.

WBEZ seems to agree and refers to designated “welcoming schools” that got millions of dollars in capital and technology upgrades but actually took in far fewer children from closing schools than the district had said they would.

But BBB has her own theory. She says that there are “social-cultural aspects of children coming to school” that mean some students don’t show up until well after the first day. She also said the district had a group of “lost children” who left eighth grade and have not entered high school.

While she never says what she means by "social-cultural aspects" and apparently was never asked by reporters, the racial implications are clear. And as for "lost children", they're not lost. They've been abandoned or at least, "lost" in the shuffle. It's not about their culture, but the culture of CPS.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Emanuel cut short East Coast fundraising trip and flew back to Chicago after 13 people were shot at a South Side park.

Columnist John Kass

He was absolutely rolled by the Chicago Teachers Union in the strike, and his capitulation cost him credibility with business leaders. His closing of some four dozen schools cost him with African-American voters. Emanuel still found $17 million last week in extra funds for an elite Near North magnet school, while out in the Northwest Side bungalow belt, Ald. Nicholas Sposato, 36th, ran a "toilet paper" drive to help his neighborhood schools provide basic necessities to the children of taxpayers. 

And that $1 billion school deficit? -- Sun-Times

Melissa Harris-Perry 

 “Folks, if you want to do a re-enactment of slavery in your school, how about Nat Turner’s rebellion?” -- MSNBC

Diane Ravitch

"I Will Not Be Part of Education Nation." -- Blog

Barbara Ferguson, former New Orleans Supt.

“Whether the difficult-to-teach high school students are expelled by charter schools or whether they attended schools closed by the RSD, they are an outcast group, thrown into an abyss ..." -- Daily Beast

Chicago Republicrats

There are no real Democrats or Republicans in Chicago. The only symbol saluted here is neither the donkey nor the elephant, but the dollar sign. They've even abandoned the two-party system, for electing the mayor. And statewide, now you have two former Obama chiefs of staff and his former Secretary of State, seemingly cutting a deal to help a Republican venture capitalist candidate for governor defeat an incumbent Democrat.

Sneed reports that Bill Daley, the man from J.P. Morgan and former White House Chief of Staff, upon pulling out of the gubernatorial race — called incumbent Quinn "a loser" and pumped Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner as "the strongest contender". Rauner is also a long-time pal and patron of the mayor -- himself a former Obama COS -- who has been telling insiders he wants Quinn out. Then into the fray jumps Hillary Clinton, to fire a barb at Quinn ("He's the luckiest politician...").

Daley drops out of race.

I haven't seen anything like this since 1983 when the entire Democratic Party machine turned Republican overnight, following the primary election victory of Harold Washington, who would become the city's first African-American mayor. Their slogan was "Bernard Epton before it's too late."

Funny thing is, there's hardly a dime's worth of difference between Rauner, Quinn, Daley or Rahm on the main issues of the day, which include raiding retirees' pension funds and protecting the corporations from having to pay their fair share of taxes to support public education and solve the budget crisis. This is a falling out among thieves.

******

After trying like hell to get rid of his Inspector General Joe Ferguson, Rahm retreated under public pressure and allowed IG Joe to stay on. But only on the condition that Ferguson abandon his 4-year contract after one year and limit his "investigative work" to helping Rahm get out from under Shakman constraints on political patronage.

I don't know why Ferguson agreed to such a deal, but if there was ever a good reason to keep Shakman intact, it's Rahm Emanuel. Greg Hinz at Crain's gives us the most recent example.

The successor to indicted Chicago comptroller Amer Ahmad has jumped to a private company that he may have helped extend and expand a lucrative city contract... Earlier in the week, I reported that acting Comptroller Andy Sheils is moving to Florida to take a job at a Fort Lauderdale medical-services provider. What I didn't know then was that the company, via a subsidiary, is a major vendor for Chicago, netting nearly $19 million since 2007 on a controversial contract that Mr. Sheils administered and worked on extending.

Says the BGA's Andy Shaw, “Since this is indirectly connected to the alleged criminal activity in Ohio of Chicago's former city comptroller, the BGA hopes that federal investigators here in Chicago are watching these new local developments with their usual microscopic vision."

I hope so too. Where are you, feds? You don't need a microscope.

Ravitch a Texas-bred Paul Revere

When it comes to schooling, Diane Ravitch is a traditionalist in most senses of the word. But a defender of traditional democratic education at a time when corporate-style reformers and her former conservative think-tank friends have all donned the label of r-r-r-revolutionaries and fancy themselves as educational "change agents", is not bad. They "monitor" her and target her as "an agent of the status quo." But nothing could be further from the truth.

In her latest book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools,  Diane plays the role of a Texas-bred Paul Revere warning the populace that the privatizers are coming -- and coming they are, tearing away at all public space and with it, public decision making. Diane lays it out, chapter by chapter.

Genuine school reform must be built on hope, not fear; on encouragement, not threats; on inspiration, not compulsion; on trust, not carrots and sticks; on belief in the dignity of the human person, not a slavish devotion to data; on support and mutual respect, not a regime of punishment and blame. To be lasting, school reform must rely on collaboration and teamwork among students, parents, teachers, principals, administrators and local communities.“ (p. 325)

What I love and admire about Diane is that she's not just writing (she's prolific) but she's always out on the stump, uniting body and brain to get the message out. I don't know how she does it. I need a nap just thinking about it. Her book tour is turning out thousands for whom the message resonates. And it's been a pro-teacher message, resonating with the nation's teachers as no other. Her book provides all the ammunition they (we) need as we go into battle (and it is a battle, make no mistake) to save and transform public education.

In a smart marketing move, Diane and blogger/supporter Jonathan Pelto have mobilized a band of blogger/Tweeter allies (including me) to promote and review Reign of Error. I can't recall a book in recent times that's been reviewed by so many, from the complaintive mainstream press ("she's too loud") to her laudatory and grateful social media-based followers.

Ravitch shows solidarity with the Chicago Teachers Union.

This review by my friend Deb Meier is one of the best I have read so far. Remember, it was largely through dialogue with Deb that Diane rediscovered her roots in democratic education and broke with her former allies in the right-wing think tanks.

I re-post Deb's review here in full:
 
Dear readers,

Definitely go out and buy Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to Americas Public Schools by Diane Ravitch, which just been launched with proper publicity. She is a phenomenal woman—sending out a half-dozen e-mails a day, two books in the last decade, and traveling to speak throughout the USA. And….while she’s younger than me, she’s old enough to have rested on her laurels. Maybe it helps to change your mind, because my exhaustion comes (in part) from feeling it’s all been said before (including by me).

Reign of Error lays out step by step the relentless thirty year drive to either centralize the education of the young—on one hand—or divest it entirely into privatized hands on the other. Finally, the two sides have joined forces on a strategy that simultaneously does both. While this coalition has many old roots, in its current form it began with the fanfare around the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983). Ravitch was, at that time, a supporter of this bold statement that more or less accused America’s teachers and school boards of a plot to undermine American health and welfare of the international scene. We were, said the signers, at risk of becoming a second rate nation if we didn’t take this crisis seriously. I asked my colleague on the NBPTS, AFT leader Al Shanker, why he had signed on. He said it was a good strategy because only in a crisis is the nation willing to put the money into schooling needed to make it really first-rate. He said—as I recall (paraphrased), ‘It’s true our schools are not as bad as the report suggests, but we are entering a new period and they either have to change dramatically or what the report accuses them of will become true. We need a smarter citizenry.’

The trouble is that crying “wolf” has never been a great way to make sensible policy. Sometimes there is no choice (like Pearl Harbor). But the continuous claims that our public education system is destroying our nation has almost entirely led to bad policy.

And in the past few years Diane’s change of mind has been a particular blessing. She hasn’t, as her preset opponents claim, done a complete switch at all—she was always pro-union, pro-public education and always for standards. Fairly traditional ones. (In fact, her criticism of Progressive educators was that so many had abandoned all standards, she believed.)

Then lo and behold: no one has pulled it all together better than Diane—over and over again in the past few years she has led the challenge to the corporate reformers—right , center and left.. Her last two books Reign of Error and The Death and Life of the Great American School System (2010) pull it altogether.

In Reign of Error she spends the first 20 chapters laying out the case, and the last 13 offering some obvious and do-able responses to the oft-heard, “but what else can we do?” She’s more supportive of the “way things were” than many other educators (like me) have been, relying subliminally perhaps on the fact that if we eliminate the scores of children in poverty on international tests, the USA does quite well. Yes, Massachusetts scores put it number one in the world, or close, if it were a nation (like Singapore?) rather than a mere state of the union. But I think neither of us is truly satisfied with what has passed for a good education in its highly regarded school districts, much less the districts that served the least advantaged schools. She also overestimates, in my view, the degree to which Americans ever attended “common schools” That’s another story which all this crisis talk leaves untouched—or actually exacerbates as she ably documents, and where the promising fledgling progressive reforms of the 60s through 80s had focused attention on. As my mentor, and author of a study of American high schools, Ted Sizer said, “using one’s mind well” is the essential unexplored task facing the high schools for democracy. We have barely skimmed the surface of making either our schools or our democracy “belong” to everyone.

Thanks, Diane. We all need to keep this book handy so we can whip out the citations to make our case for the kind of reform America really needs, in your own words: “to prepare citizens with the minds, hearts and character to sustain our democracy into the future.”

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