Forget Teacher Appreciation Week. Rahm offers teachers a 7% pay cut.

F#*k Teacher Appreciation Week. -- Rahm Emanuel

Grez Hinz got it wrong. On May Day, the Crain's political columnist offered us a somewhat rosy picture of the Board/CTU contract negotiations.

In fact, after talking to sources on both sides of the bargaining table, I'm convinced that there is reason for a little quiet optimism.

But whatever openings for a reasonable contract agreement Hinz saw after his interview with union VP Jesse Sharkey, have all apparently been exorcised by Rahm's insulting offer of a 7% pay cut. A bargaining non-starter.

Forget that his schools chief is on the lam, hiding out in the face of the federal SUPES/Synesi investigation. The Little Emperor is back on the offensive, lashing out again at the CTU. Another possible teachers strike be damned.

He's determined to show Karen Lewis who's boss. How dare she/they endorse his opponent, Chuy Garcia in the mayor's race?

As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Rahm holding forth in the City Council, where Gov. Rauner is about to make an appearance. Rahm claims that he disagrees with drinking buddy Rauner on the so-called right-to-work. He claims he is against any plan for city development based on union busting and driving down the wages of city workers. And yet, here he is pushing pension theft and teacher union give-backs.

Karen Lewis responds:

"Once again, the board has created a fiscal crisis in order to justify its continued attack on our classrooms and communities. CPS is broke on purpose. By citing its so-called $1.5 billion deficit, the mayor is proposing a reduction in teaching staff which will result in larger class sizes and the loss of teaching positions."

"How do you reject having librarians do their job as opposed to serving as subs most of the day? How do you reject proposals to strengthen special education instruction or strengthen the implementation of restorative justice programs to reduce conflict in our schools?" 

CBS 2’s Brad Edwards talked with some worried parents.

“I’m concerned that they will strike and my kids missing school,” said parent Robert Thornton.

“If we don’t have good teachers … we don’t have anything … thank you,” said CPS grandmother Patricia Guilford.

“You’re gonna have a brain drain,” said CPS teacher Michael Bruesch. “No one is going to want to go into teaching.”

“Who hurts? Not Rahm,” Bruesch said. “Who hurts? The kids…the kids, the parents, the teachers…that’s whose getting hurt.”

Charter School Love

Have you heard? It's National Charter School Week. It's a time to "spread charter school love" and enter the Charter School Week Essay Contest. I think you get one of these ties if you win. Here's my entry. 

It's the time of year I start getting emails from Riya V. Anandwala from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, complaining that the cities aren't building charters fast enough to meet all the pent up demand. She may be right. Charter school ad-men, using public funds and with massive help from Arne Duncan's Dept. of Ed, have created a vibrant market.

Of course, creating a market and serving the public good are not the same thing. Take Apple Corp. for example. They have created quite a market for the Apple Watch, an $84, defective plastic bauble that they're selling to a willing public for up to $17,000 (Sport Edition) and can't make them fast enough.

It's hard to argue against choice. Right? In our wonderful country, everyone has the choice to buy the Sport Edition (or not), chunky/smooth, or to stay at the Drake on Boul Mich or sleep on a bench in the park across the street.

The problem is, that when the bill comes due, supposedly "public" charter schools can be taken away, repossessed if you will, and the occupants thrown out in the street, if the "owners" don't get their check in the mail. That's exactly what owner UNO, the largest charter operator in Chicago, is threatening if THEIR charters don't come across with more than $3 million in "management fees" to the parent company. They say they will evict thousands of Latino students and parents for non-payment. I suppose that will create an even greater market.

Chicago is not alone. The same kind of thing is going on in D.C. where privatization and unbridled charter expansion became a thing under former Supt. Michelle Rhee.

Here's the latest:

Charter school founder Kent Amos and his management company have agreed to pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged he used the company to divert taxpayer funds from the school for his personal gain.

Last summer, the D.C. attorney general alleged that millions of dollars had been diverted from the school for personal gain, contrary to the school’s nonprofit status. Amos and his attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

Since 2004, the school paid more than $14 million to the company, according to court records. Management fees rose while costs declined, because the company employed fewer people and duties were shifting to school employees, records show.

Chicago still #1... Along with Riya's missives, comes news that Chicago -- a charter school Mecca under Mayors Daley and Emanuel -- has once again been awarded the title of the nation's most segregated city. Congratulations Rahm! But he would probably admit, he couldn't have achieved all that without the massive closing of neighborhood schools and his market-driven expansion of privately-run charters.

It may be hard to believe, but Chicago charter schools are even more racially segregated than the neighborhood schools they were intended to replace.

The Sun-Times reports:

Charter schools have worsened school segregation in Chicago and overall have not made the city’s school system stronger  — but might have weakened it, according to a new report by urban planners.

Looking at school data for 2012-13, the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota Law School said that when it considered student demographics and admission criteria, it found that charters lagged behind traditional public schools in such major factors as reading and math scores, reading and math growth and graduation rates.

I wonder why Riya failed to mention that?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Kevin Moore captured arrest of Freddie Gray on video.

"He was folded up like a piece of origami." -- PostTV

Derick Ebert, 19-year-old Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore

We had hopes in Baltimore as youth that it would be different than Ferguson. We were hoping that it wouldn't have to come to this. That we would find an answer. That the police department wouldn't withhold information like they did. As soon as we saw that we weren't getting information is when we realized that we needed to take action. -- Youth Radio

Nicolas Kristof

 It turns out that the Wall Street bonus pool in 2014 was roughly twice the total annual earnings of all Americans working full time at the federal minimum wage. -- N.Y. Times

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

"It doesn’t matter if you live in Searchlight or Las Vegas, in Baltimore or rural Maryland: When there is no hope, anger and despair move in. Let’s not pretend the system is fair. Let’s not pretend everything is okay." -- Huffington

 N.Y. Principal Carol Burris

Assuming that Duncan is not planning to call in the National Guard to haul off opt-outing 8 year olds, the only possible “sanction” would be withholding funds. -- Washington Post

UNO charter debacle hurts parents. Shows charters aren't 'public' after all.

A single picture tells the story

The latest UNO scandal represents a potential disaster for the thousands of mainly Latino students and parents enrolled in Chicago charter schools. It should also put an end to claims that privately-run charters are truly "public schools"

For those who haven't been following, there's been a split between the scandal-plagued United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) and the charter school chain it founded. Now UNO is threatening to force closure of six of those charters, potentially leaving parents and teachers scrambling to find a new school for thousands of children come next fall.

UNO claims that the separately incorporated UNO Charter School Network owes them $3 million in management fees. The schools are said to be withholding payments to UNO because of lack of transparency about how the millions are being spent and also because UNO is currently the target of ongoing federal investigations.

Mike Madigan

UNO is threatening to sell all four school buildings it owns-- buildings that are home to six schools-- unless the charter network pays up. UNO CEO Rick Cerda says that conflicts between his group and the charter chain “raise a question as to whether the UCSN schools will continue to operate as they do today.”

It's hard to know how much of this is bluff or what UNO would be able to do with those empty buildings. But CPS has plenty of space to house those six schools now that it is sitting on dozens of empty school buildings of its own.

Imagine the power this clout-heavy, private group has over neighborhood parents, teachers, and children through its virtual ownership of their supposedly "public" schools.

Cerda never mentions that his  group only owns those schools because of a $98 million construction grant for the projects which was greased by Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, Alderman Eddie Burke, former Gov. Quinn and Mayor Emanuel. The huge state grant was blocked temporarily by Quinn when the feds came in, and then released again by Quinn under pressure from Madigan. This despite flagrant nepotism, conflicts of interest, and a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation that has already led to a few cosmetic changes at the top and the fall of UNO big-dog Juan Rangel (the co-chair of Rahm Emanuel's first campaign for mayor in 2011). In 2011, UNO received $37.5 million in state-backed loans.

Meanwhile, the school network was handing out its own contracts to more familiar names. Monterrey Security, a firm that was previously co-owned by Alderman Danny Solis’s brother Santiago, won a $75,000 security contract.

Among other charges against UNO was its failure  to make pension contributions for more than 90 certified teachers in its charter schools. So far the federal investigators have failed to produce any indictments although they did help pull the city's bond rating down close to minus. Not that it needed any help in that area.

CPS oversees UNO's charter and provides funding support. It's the largest charter school operator in the state. But UNO has carried a BBB-minus rating from Standard & Poor's, the lowest investment grade level.

It's hard for most to even imagine the power this private group has over neighborhood parents, teachers and children through its virtual ownership of their supposedly "public" schools. But this is exactly what corporate school reformers envisioned when they promoted unrestricted expansion of privately-run charters through mayoral control of the schools and closing schools as accountability and cost-saving strategies.

Sanctity of property

If this is all about sanctity of property... Did you know that Wells Fargo Bank first pushed sub-prime mortgages on thousands of working-class black families in Baltimore (referred to as "Mud People" by loan officers), then foreclosed on their homes. These "ghetto loans" or “affinity group marketing” as it was called by Wells Fargo bankers, tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure, blighted black neighborhoods, crushed local schools, and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in taxes and city services. Wells Fargo is the largest residential home mortgage originator in the United States. No bankers were ever arrested.

 Mayor Rawlings-Blake walks back her "thug" language:

“There are no thugs in Baltimore,” the mayor, who is African-American, said at a church, where she met with members of the clergy. “Sometimes, my own little anger translator gets the best of me.”

Baltimore teacher 

Liam, a Baltimore student writes:

“I watched the mayor Monday night. It seemed like she wasn’t from Baltimore, had no connection to the people. She just didn’t care. She was talking about the rioters when she said, “These thugs…” That’s when I thought to myself, these people aren’t thugs. These are people I know, my age, people I grew up with, my friends.”

NYT reports ...When schools were closed on Tuesday, some teachers came to churches to help feed children who rely on meals they get at school. At Bethel A.M.E. Church on Tuesday, teachers from both public and private schools served sandwiches and cookies to kids who had missed lunch at school. Amber Johnson, a teacher at Patterson Park Public Charter School, talked to children aged seven to 15 about Mr. Gray’s death, the rioting and how they felt about it all.

At New York solidarity protest... Anthony Rosado, a 24-year-old teacher, said he came out so he could have something to discuss in his high school global history class in the morning.

“This is happening all the time,” said Rosado, who was born and raised in Brooklyn. “This is systemic. And it goes beyond police. It’s about power structures.”

Rosado said the agenda for his next class would be dictated less by a lesson plan than by his students. “We’ll talk about the protest in the morning,” he said, adding that he’s not going to force any issues on his pupils. “I’m just going to tell them I was here—but let them speak their mind.”

Chuy was right. Open the books!

Remember when mayoral candidate Chuy Garcia was mocked by Rahm and by the media when he said he wanted the mayor to "open the books" before he made budget recommendations. Well, with the Feds in town looking at secret no-bid deals and CPS 'crats making $20 million addition/subtraction errors, who's mocking now?

Today's Sun-Times:

-- Fred Klonsky

Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley sold the $260 million Aramark deal to the Board of Education and the public by saying it would free up principals’ time, result in cleaner schools and save the cash-strapped district millions of dollars. Some of the savings was to come from layoffs of hundreds of custodians.

But the district was on the hook for some $20 million more to Aramark than it promised, essentially wiping out the $18 million Cawley said the district would save in its first of three years, as first reported by WBEZ.

That’s partly due to CPS miscounting some administrative offices, school branches and district stadiums, McCaffrey said. And then someone forgot to count entire schools, he added, but he was unable to say how many.

Oops! He forgot to count... Yes, that $20 million, with an M.

Baltimore 1968

Oh, Baltimore Man, it's hard just to live, just to live -- Randy Newman

This isn't the first time Baltimore has been burning or occupied by the military. I'm not old enough to remember the white racist Pratt Street riots of 1861. 

But I do remember, almost 47 years ago to the day, when Baltimore and 125 other cities, including my home town of Chicago, exploded in rage in direct response to the murder of another black man -- Dr. Martin Luther King.

Spiro T. Agnew, then Republican Governor of Maryland, called out thousands of National Guard troops and 500 Maryland State Police to occupy the inner-city. When it was determined that his mainly-white military force could not control the rebellion, even after leaving six dead, 700 injured, and 5,800 black people arrested, the governor requested Federal troops from President Johnson. 

Agnew, riding the wave of racist white reaction that followed, went on the be elected Richard Nixon's vice-president as part of Nixon's 1968 "Southern Strategy". He would later be forced to resign in disgrace and was convicted in a bribery scandal.

Baltimore 1968 -- Guess who's coming to dinner.

Between World War II and 1968, Baltimore had changed demographically, mainly due to white flight. The total population remained constant, but the black population had grown and the white population shrunk (both by about 200,000). Whites abandoned the city in favor of segregated suburban Baltimore County. Black communities were left with a collapsed tax base, segregated sub-par housing and schooling, high rates of infant mortality, and more crime and brutal policing. They also suffered disproportionately from job loss due to the collapse of Baltimore's manufacturing sector. Black unemployment was more than double the national rate, and even higher in especially poor communities and for black youth. Those who did have jobs were paid less and worked in unsafe conditions. A lot of this is documented in the TV show The Wire and in the book, "Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City".

Four decades later, when I visit the city's schools and neighborhoods, I find conditions in the poorest black communities basically unchanged and in many ways worse than they were in '68. While the inner Harbor area has been redeveloped as a base for expanding gentrification and tourism and the Orioles given Camden Yards baseball stadium, the economic, political and social chasm between black and white, rich and poor Baltimore has only widened. 

The death of Freddy Gray while in police custody two weeks ago, like the murder of Dr. King 47 years ago, was simply the inevitable ignition point for a tinder box that was bound to explode sooner of later. I'm surprised it took so long. I doubt it will be the last time. 

Weingarten at Pearson Stockholders' Meeting

In a scene right out of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, AFT President Randi Weingarten goes to London, hat-in-hand, to plead (more sir) for Pearson's Board of Directors to stop spying on students who may have been chatting on social media about the PARCC exam.

Now there's nothing wrong with union leaders (even belatedly) joining with the thousands of their own members, parents and students, who have been demanding that Pearson end this vile practice. In fact, they should have been out front of the national revolt against Common Core standards and imposed testing madness in the first place. Yes, we need to turn up the heat, not just on Pearson, but on our own politicians who take campaign money from Pearson, and on those school district leaders who throw multi-million-dollar, no-bid contracts Pearson's way to impose their own mis-education policies on our teachers and public schools.

"Please sir..."

But there was something in RW's pathetic appeal to these global education profiteers -- recognizing their sovereign right to profit, while at the same time, asking them politely to temper their spying activities and to "mediate the contract language" that allows such practices -- that shamed me as an educator and a public school parent.

Weingarten's plea:

While I recognize the Pearson has a duty to its shareholders to be profitable, my question centers on another obligation. That is to conduct business in a way that befits the world's leading education organization.

This while the AFT and its own state affiliates have signed on to the very legislation that allows or mandates these practices. This while half-a-million parents back in her home state of New York are actively and courageously opting-out of Common Core testing. This also after her wishy-washy and bewildering response to a question posed to her by Diane Ravitch at the Chicago NPE meeting:

Ravitch: "Where do you stand on the Opt-Out Movement?
R.W.:  “Every parent should have the right to opt out or not to opt out.”

As if parents were being forced to opt out... by who? How?



I wish RW a speedy return to the U.S. so she can explain this gobbledygook to those parents.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Standing up for Freddie Gray in Baltimore

Twelve-year-old Charles Sheppard 

...leaned against the barricade, holding a sign with a quote attributed to James Baldwin: “Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy of justice.” -- Sun

Bruce Rauner

 Rauner dismissed questions about his own potential conflicts of interest: his acceptance of campaign contributions from executives at financial firms that manage state pension money. “They are just taxpayers. They don’t do business [with the state].” -- International Business Times

Chuy was right.

Ben Joravsky

 I'll tell you this: Chuy Garcia's idea for a systematic, top-to-bottom review of the city's finances doesn't seem like such a bad idea right about now. It generally takes at least a year after an election before buyers' remorse sets in and Chicagoans realize they messed it up -- again! -- Reader

Arne Duncan

“We had some stability, like any organization needs stability, and CPS in six years I’ve been gone, I think they’re on their fifth superintendent now. And might shortly be on their sixth, and that kind of lack of continuity, that lack of stability it, it’s difficult on a child. It just makes me sad.” -- Chicago Tonight

 Rahm Emanuel to Roger Goodell

 “Just call me. I’ll take care of it for you … You don’t call anybody else....” -- Sun-Times

War metaphors

Forrest Claypool, "wartime consigliere".

Some friends are critical of my use of war and military metaphors to describe the post-election atmosphere hanging over public employee unions, over city schools and over City Hall. But I'm sticking to my guns slingshot. It's war out here, folks. OK, it's one-sided class war to be sure, being waged by Gen. Arne Duncan, Gov. Private Equity and Mayor 1%, but war nevertheless.

Need more evidence? Look no further than Rahm's newly-appointed Chief of Staff Forrest Claypool, brought over from the CTA (like former schools CEO Ron Huberman --remember him?) to manage pension theft, negotiate a teachers contract, find a replacement for Byrd-Bennett (she's gone AWOL) and to cool out the feds investigation of the $20 million, no-bid SUPES deal.

S-T's Fran Spielman writes:

To do all of that without losing momentum on the mayor’s second-term agenda will require a wartime consigliere, to borrow a term made famous in the movie classic, “The Godfather.” Claypool fits the bill.

See!

POWs I couldn't help comparing the long prison sentences handed down to black educators involved in the Atlanta cheating scandal (convicted of "racketeering") with...No jail time for former CIA Director Gen. David "Betray Us" Petraeus who leaked military secrets to his bed-mate Paula Broadwell. Petraeus currently is with private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Jon Stewart compared the “eerie” similarities between the Atlanta teacher cheating scandal with fraud on Wall Street, and discovered that the only difference between the two seems to be who was actually punished.

Want more? How about all the fuss over Spike Lee's naming of planned new film, "Chiraq"? Why not? Chicago streets have been turned into a war zone as a result of current policies of neglect, youth joblessness, school closings, easy access to guns, poor community policing strategies, etc...

It's war.

Deb Meier

Special thanks to my friend Deb Meier for spending time with our group of local educators Wednesday and my doc students last night. Discussion topics ranged from Habits of Mind, to misuse of testing, to early childhood play, to the small schools movement. Deb is in town for AERA and for the upcoming NPE Conference where she is participating in three panel discussions on Saturday. You can keep up with Deb at deborahmeier.com/

Will Duncan Send Troops to Crush the Opt-Out Revolt?

EWA meeting in Chicago

Duncan said he expected states to make sure districts get enough students take the tests. “We think most states will do that,” Duncan said during a discussion at the Education Writers Association conference in Chicago. “If states don’t do that, then we have an obligation to step in.” -- Interview with EWA writers

What a week! Edu-conferees are flowing in and out of O'Hare at a record pace. First their was AERA. Then EWA. And next comes NPE. Chicago is definitely the epicenter of corporate-style education reform and the revolt against it. The only one of these meetings where Arne Duncan would dare show his face was at the Education Writers Association (EWA) National Seminar. It was there that he threatened to take action against the growing opt-out movement.

Yes, Duncan is threatening federal intervention  if states fail to put an end to the massive testing boycotts. No one is sure what form that intervention may take. Some fear economic reprisals. But I worry about an Iraq-style invasion.

Arne's army is equipped with these military assault rifles. 

A lot of people may not know this, but the DOE Inspector General's Office has its own well-equipped military wing and Duncan has shown that he's not afraid to call out his troops against community residents. In 2011, his troops made an armed assault on at least one wrongfully-suspected student loan deadbeat.

Duncan has had to apologize for using his own particular racial theories to describe parents who are critical of over-testing as “white suburban moms” who were upset because their kids were doing poorly on new, more rigorous exams linked to Common Core.

“All of a sudden, their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought … and that’s pretty scary,” Duncan said.

Duncan claims that annual standardized exams beginning with 3rd-graders are essential for tracking student progress and monitoring the so-called "achievement gap". He pooh-poohs the idea that so many high-stakes tests are "too stressful" for young children or that current testing policies take too much time and resources away from teaching. He blames parents for exaggerating the traumatic effect that testing is having on their own children.

He says the tests are “just not a traumatic event” for his children, who attend public school in Virginia. “It’s just part of most kids’ education growing up,” he said. “Sometimes the adults make a big deal and that creates some trauma for the kids.”

Yes, I'll bet there's hardly any stressful testing at Arne's kids' progressive suburban school. It's the same at the Obama kids' private school in D.C.

You see, it's parents, not the testing, stressing out the children. So Duncan is preparing to take action" on his own. Maybe it's time to take to the hills and hide the children. Oh, I forgot. We have no hills in ChiTown.

Despite federal investigation, the battle rages on in post-election Chicago

KOCO Executive Director Jawanza Malone responds to latest attacks.  (Jeffrey Bishku-Ayku)

“Peace: A period of cheating between two periods of fighting.” -- Ambrose Bierce. 

Please excuse all the military metaphors, but it's war out here on the third coast folks.

Those of you who were hoping the post-election Little Emperor would turn back into sweater-wearing Mr. Rogers -- think again. Even while a full-scale federal investigation of pay-to-play at CPS is going on and with Barbara Byrd-Bennett on the lam, the spoils of war are being spread around to Rahm's loyalists with impunity, while the guillotine is being greased up for the progressive opposition.

First on Rahm's agenda is consolidating power in the City Council by handing out key committee positions to toadies like Will Burns. But that won't be so easy given the victories by all seven members of the Progressive Caucus who ran for re-election and the stunning upset victories by progressives over Rahm-back incumbents out in the wards.

Victorious Sue Garza & Chuy

We're all celebrating yesterday's announced victories of Sue Sadlowski Garza over Petcoke Pope in the 10th and Milly Santiago over Rahm's deputy mayor and yes-man Ray Suarez in the 31st.

S-T's Mark Brown calls Garza, "tough as steel rivets". He's right.

Pope will also have to be replaced on Rahm's Infrastructure Trust. I doubt that he will appoint Garza. Don't you? But the Progressive Caucus will be all the stronger for her presence.

Now comes word that the day after the election, the CPS Office of Innovation and Incubation received at least 50 charter school proposals. This despite BBB's promises not to allow any charter schools to open in school buildings shuttered in 2013.

KOCO leader Jitu Brown leading the fight for Dyett

As for the guillotine, they're hoping to use it on the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO)  the group leading much of the resistance to south-side school closings and taking it right to Ald. Burns in the battle to save and transform Dyett High School. The attack on KOCO is being led by Rep. Christian Mitchell, who despite being bankrolled by the machine and pro-privatization groups like Stand For Children and backed by powerhouse County Board Pres. Toni Preckwinkle, barely squeaked by KOCO leader and community activist Jay Travis. But taking on KOCO won't be so easy. Community support for the organization is strong and building.

Did I mention that Travis and newly-elected Ald. Carlos Rosa will be on our panel at Saturday's NPE Conference? And KOCO leader Jitu Brown is among the keynote speakers. Should be exciting.

Some good news on the charter front. The House just passed a bill by a 60-40 vote, that would strip away power from the State Charter School Commission. That's especially good news for those inner-ring, mostly-black and Latino suburban districts who have become the target of charter school expansionism. Charter profiteers are banking on the Commission to overrule local districts who vote against them.

Of course the bill must first get through the Senate and then be signed by Rauner. Not likely. So enough votes must be garnered to override his veto. But it's something.

Our Panel Saturday at NPE

I hope to see you at this weekend's NPE 2015 Conference at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. Featured speakers, include Yong Zhao, Diane Ravitch, Lily Eskelson Garcia, Randi Weingarten and Chicago’s own Karen Lewis and Jitu Brown.

Don't miss our panel, Saturday afternoon from 2:45-4:00: Educating Our Kids While We Fight Back.

Carlos Rosa, Jay Travis, Larry Miller and Fred Klonsky

I will be moderating a great group of education activists which includes: Ed Blogger and union activist Fred Klonsky; newly-elected, progressive Chicago Alderman, Carlos Rosa; community activist, Jay Travis, and Milwaukee School Board member and Rethinking Schools editor, Larry Miller.

You can register for the NPE Conference here.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mercer Hall & Gina Sipley

No self-respecting educator can condone dishonesty under any circumstances, but the proliferation of cheating practices is happening concurrently with the augmented emphasis on high stakes testing. Public education is in crisis, and now is the time for parents, educators and concerned citizens to urge the repeal of legislative mandates that have created a desperate system in which deviance has become the new normal. -- AlJazeera

Judge Baxter

Scott Lemieux

During a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter announced that the crime under consideration was "the sickest thing that's ever happened in this town." Given that Atlanta, the town in question, has seen crimes including racist and anti-semitic lynchings, the serial murder of children, and a terrorist bombing at the Olympics, the bar is rather high. -- America's broken justice system

Wendy Katten

“We brought this to the current board’s attention over and over at multiple meetings over the past two years,” said Wendy Katten, who heads the parent group Raise Your Hand. “We don’t want to wait for the feds to have to get involved for CPS to do the right thing, to act ethically.” -- Sun-Times

Vitale & Ruiz complicit in SUPES scandal

New schools CEO Jesse Ruiz

 “Many of us . . . engage with organizations which we no longer have a relationship with, which may still provide quality services to Chicago Public Schools." Ruiz added after the press conference, that he voted for SUPES because “I thought it would be a prudent action to make.” -- Sun-Times

Rahm: "Look, when I took office for my second term, I inherited a mess."
— Beachwood Reporter (@BeachwoodReport) April 18, 2015

Is Rahm just 'lucky' or what?

Could BBB have made the $20.5M no-bid deal with SUPES without nod from Rahm & Vitale?

Answer: Or what...

S-T's Fran Spielman says:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is lucky the FBI investigation targeting his hand-picked schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett came to light one week after the election instead of one week before it.

C'mon Fran. You know better than that. Luck is when your meter ran out a half-hour ago and you return to the car and find no ticket on the window. We all know what "getting lucky" means and it has nothing to do with the feds holding off their announcement of an investigation until after an election.

I also believe that Spielman is wrong in thinking that current contract negotiations revolve around the "girlfriend" relationship between Barbara Byrd-Bennett and Karen Lewis. BBB came into the 2012 negotiations the same way she is leaving them in 2015 -- in hiding. She played Rahm Emanuel's pawn then and she's taking the fall for him now. Does anyone really believe that BBB could have handed out $20.5M no-bid contracts to Paul Vallas' partners, on her own? With no nod from Rahm or David Vitale?

No, the reason she will take her (paid) leave before her contract expires in June (spend more time with her family?) is to avoid lengthy criminal-trial blood spilling where the public sees how the sausage is really made at CPS as well as on the 5th floor of City Hall. It's in open court where the name of the buyers as well as the sellers of a deal-gone-bad usually comes to light.

In the mean time, it's getting pretty crowded with former top, black, CPS administrators down here, under the bus. Right, J.C.?  Right, Eason-Watkins? Lesson for potential successor.

These contract negotiations, like the last ones, won't be settled over breakfast at Meli's.

'A startling act of mass civil disobedience' -- Tens of thousands opt out

He'd rather be learning: Derek Rudley, 10, a student in Ossining Union Free School District, stayed home and read Tuesday. Mom had him opt out of New York state standardized tests. (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News)

999 is the magic number. No, I'm not referring to crazy Republican pizza guy, Herman Cain's campaign slogan in 2012. I mean 999 the computer code signifying a student who has opted out of N.Y. state testing. If Tuesday's protests are any indication, the 9-key on district computers will soon be worn out.

According to Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News:

The entire structure of high-stakes testing in New York crumbled Tuesday, as tens of thousands of fed-up public school parents rebelled against Albany’s fixation with standardized tests and refused to allow their children to take the annual English Language Arts state exam.

Still, officials in both the state and city departments of education claim they don’t know yet how many of the 1.1 million pupils scheduled for testing in grades 3 to 8 joined the boycott. Protest organizers said Thursday that at least 155,000 pupils did — with only half of school districts tallied so far. At some Long Island and upstate school districts, abstention levels reached 80%.

Gonzalez called it, "a startling act of mass civil disobedience, given that each parent had to write a letter to the local school demanding an opt out for their child".

Among the many reasons behind parent and teacher anger are the inappropriate use of test scores in teacher evaluation and the time taken away from teaching/learning to administer the latest tests. Then there's the lack of validity and reliability in the whole testing process. For example, back in 2009, the old state tests showed 77% of students statewide were proficient in English. The next year, the pass level was raised and the proficiency percentage dropped to 57%. A few years later, Albany introduced Common Core and the level plummeted even more — to 31% statewide.

Same teachers, same students, same schools. But the reformers' conclusion -- the kids are getting dumber and teachers have gotten worse. No wonder parents are pissed.

Tisch is blaming it all on the unions. From editorial in the Journal News:

Already, defenders of "reform" have produced an excuse for the test-refusal movement: teachers unions are behind it. Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the state Board of Regents and chief architect of New York's foundering education program, said on MSNBC Tuesday evening that more kids would be taking the tests if the tests did not affect teacher evaluations. "Our kids got caught in a labor dispute," she said.

There's obviously something wrong with Tisch's hearing. She needs to go and so does Common Core, PARCC and Pearson along with her.

Feds back in Chicago. Rahm, Vitale suddenly gag up

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.[A casino worker gives Renault a wad of money.]Casino Worker: Your winnings, sir. -- Casablanca

Catalyst deserves award for breaking Supes/BBB story back in July, 2013. We bloggers have been writing about this for two years. But feds didn't announce their move until a week after the election. Why not? And where have you been all this time, Sun-Times, Trib, Crain's, Chicago Tonight...? 

Back in August of that year, I asked: "Why is media burying the $20 million, no-bid Supes contract story?"

Why the blackout by the Sun-Times on the Supes contract? The Tribune barely mentioned it. It's buried at the end of a school budget story this morning.  Sarah Karp at Catalyst has given reporters everything they need to begin asking the right questions and should win an award for her reporting. -- Klonsky Blog

Rahm, Vitale and the gang deserve acting awards for gagging up and feigning surprise after news of the federal investigation broke. 

“As part of that investigation by the federal authorities, they asked us not to give a lot of information out, even though we don’t have a lot of information, and we’re going to honor that.” -- Rahm Emanuel

"Yesterday the Board of Education was made aware that federal authorities are investigating a matter at CPS and have requested interviews with several employees. We take any allegation of misconduct seriously, and we are fully cooperating with investigators who requested that we not discuss any specifics regarding the ongoing investigation.” -- School Board Pres. David Vitale

Vitale and Rahm?

Yesterday, made aware? Who are you crappin', Captain Renault? CPS signed its initial contract with SUPES for leadership training not long after Byrd-Bennett took office. You both knew that she had worked for the company before joining CPS as a consultant in April 2012.

And we know that you know that we know, you've been meeting about how to stonewall this for weeks, even discussing the possibility of appointing an interim CEO before the story broke. You've sent BBB into hiding even though you are in the middle of contract negotiations with the CTU.

Your own inspector general's office began an investigation into the contract with SUPES Academy and Byrd-Bennett's relationship to the company in 2013. The U.S. attorney's office started its own probe, and a grand jury has been reviewing evidence for at least a year.

Even your usually silent and compliant principals raised holy hell last year, about the deadly $20M SUPES workshops, after they were forced to take time away from their own schools. At one point, they even revolted, ran out Gary Solomon's facilitator, and took over the trainings themselves.

There can be only one explanation. This is only the tip of the iceberg. It goes way beyond BBB who will likely be dumped unceremoniously and soon, like her predecessors Brizard and Huberman, with only her golden parachute to land her softly. If she's indicted, you can bet it won't be on RICO racketeering charges like the teachers down in Atlanta or carry a 20-year-sentence. She may even decide to pull an Amer Ahmad and flee the country. More likely, a deal is already in the works.

But this thing goes even higher up the ladder and the A.G. knows it. After all, this is a system of mayoral control of the schools and a no-bid contract to one of Paul Vallas' Synesi consulting partners would never have been handed out without a nod from Rahm and Vitale.

Also, this goes way beyond Chicago. Solomon, Vallas and Synesi have been running this scam since Vallas left Chicago on his way to Philly, New Orleans, Haiti and points north and south. It should make us take a fresh look at how and why Vallas was made Pat Quinn's running mate for the second highest office in the state?

More, much more, to come on this.

Rhee sentenced to 20 years for erasing grades -- Just a dream.

They're whistling Dixie in Atlanta this morning. 

I had a strange dream last night. Michelle Rhee was standing in front of a crazed, media-hungry judge who sentenced her to 20 years in the penitentiary under RICO statutes for "racketeering" stemming from her leadership role in the D.C. cheating scandal. He also confiscated her Mercedes. Alas, it was just a dream. When I woke up, Arne Duncan (who had promised to visit her in prison) hadn't even taken back the Blue Ribbon he awarded Rhee and the district for the amazing, but temporary bump in test scores.

This was not a dream -- Today's Daily News reports:

The entire structure of high-stakes testing in New York crumbled Tuesday, as tens of thousands of fed-up public school parents rebelled against Albany’s fixation with standardized tests and refused to allow their children to take the annual English Language Arts state exam.

FRONT PAGE NEWS: Albany unable to read petitions + polls but now have chance to do math following enormous protest pic.twitter.com/iv2w3wWbTk
— NY BATs (@NYBATs) April 15, 2015

Pay attention, Hillary Clinton.

Darling-Hammond has some smart things to say about testing

Linda Darling-Hammond thinks that passage of a new bipartisan ESEA bill is "really possible". I doubt it. But I don't run in those circles.

Writing this week in Huffington Post, she says any new federal legislation has to represent a break from the old No Child Left Behind, especially on testing and assessment. She correctly points out that despite NCLB's focus on more and more standardized testing, "achievement gains have slowed in the NCLB era, and achievement gaps have remained stubbornly large". Many of her criticisms of current testing approaches also apply to the new PARCC exams.

You might remember that Darling-Hammond was unceremoniously dumped and exiled back to Palo Alto by an Obama administration that had bought uncritically into the worst aspects of corporate-style reform. Fearful that she was too teacher/union friendly, they handed the D.O.E. over to Arne Duncan instead. The consequences have been disastrous for public education.

I still think Darling-Hammond is too accepting of Common Core standards and of testing as a driver of curriculum. But, I think she offers some smart ideas about how and why we test. They include:

• Assessment results should be reported and used for information and improvement, rather than for labeling schools or administering sanctions, a purpose for which they were never intended. 

• Federal law should no longer prescribe technical features of tests - how they are designed and administered -- in ways that prevent innovation and change. 

• States should be invited to create integrated systems of state- and locally-administered assessments that provide information for the multiple purposes they need to serve, combining rich assessments to describe annual student learning and progress in ways that can inform teaching. 

• ESEA should encourage accountability systems based on multiple measures of student success, as well as students' opportunities to learn.

She gives examples from other countries like Singapore, New Zealand and Australia (What? No Finland?), where externally-administered tests are less frequent (usually once or twice before high school, plus examinations at the end of high school to inform college and career decisions), but much deeper than in the U.S.

These open-ended exams, which feature essay questions and complex problems, often include project-based components completed during the school year and scored by teachers who are trained to ensure consistency. Rather than treating tests as black boxes to use as hammers for sanctions, these countries understand that assessments of, as, and for learning should be integrated into instruction and support better teaching. 

Good ideas, Linda. Good luck in getting any of them through this congress.