Yesterday I had coffee (well, more on that later) with a top organizer for Chicago’s astroturf branch of Stand for Children. He had asked to meet in response to my blog about SFC’s recent telephone blitz in Chicago’s West and South sides (using an Oregon phone number, by the way). My post questioned the stated purpose of the calls, which they claimed were to “listen to and help parents.”

I wasn’t sure what his agenda would be. Maybe he would try to spread some rich SFC public relations fertilizer. Maybe he was on a fishing expedition to see if he could get me to talk about our anti-corporate reform strategies.

I was pretty sure, though, that he would start out with an attempt at the classic organizer “one-on-one” in which the organizer tries to build a relationship with a potential group member by asking personal questions.

That wasn’t going to go anywhere.

I cut to the chase and asked what his agenda was. I was pretty surprised at what he said.

He said it was to find out what happened to PURE and what were the “lessons learned.” He stated that he had “heard all about PURE” from a reporter, and he had looked at our filed reports on line and knew all about our finances. “Oh, yes, I know that PURE used to have hundreds of thousands of dollars and that has all gone away.”

I was completely dumbfounded. Seriously? He thought I would share information about PURE with an organization whose agenda PURE was so opposed to?

Not to mention the fact that we have been very upfront about our organizational struggles, from the lovely story Ben Joravsky wrote in 2008 when Chicago foundations first began to slam their doors in our face due to our opposition to Mayor Daley’s school actions, to our recent fundraising appeal letter. It’s no secret that we are operating on a shoestring.

It’s also no secret that PURE is still powerful. In fact, when I later talked to the reporter that he named as his source for this “inside info” about PURE, I learned that he was complaining about the media regularly turning to PURE for parents’ perspectives on education.

Anyway, back to the coffee.

He said, “So, you refuse to share information?”

I said that there was no way I would give any information about PURE to someone I considered a sell-out who worked for such a sleazy organization.

He responded that this was a personal attack. I said, yeah, I know.

He tried to wield another organizer schtick, that there are “no permanent friends or permanent enemies.”

That’s about the point at which I decided that there was no point in continuing the conversation and I left. Please know that I paid for my own coffee – didn’t want anything bought with dirty SFC money, yucchhh.

Unfortunately, I must report that my grand gesture fell a little short when I realized half a block away that I had left my coat with my car keys in the pocket on my chair! I’ve never mastered the grand gesture….

It’s refreshing to hear that at least one powerful Chicago family is willing to come out publicly against Mayor Emanuel’s relentless attack on neighborhood schools.

According to the Chicago Journal, the McCaskey family, owners of the Chicago Bears and heirs of Bears founder George Halas, recently donated a plaque and $20,000 in honor of “Papa Bear” to Crane High School, Halas’ alma mater.

But Crane is in the Mayor’s school closing crosshairs this year, and the McCaskeys aren’t too happy about that.

Patrick McCaskey — Halas’ grandson — wrote this in a letter to J. C. Brizard:

“We lend our support to the principal, Richard Smith, the staff, students and community to keep Crane High School a neighborhood school, just as it was when my grandfather attended Crane. The children of the neighborhood need a neighborhood school to attend that sits in close proximity to where they live. Please let the tradition continue on just as the tradition of the Chicago Bears continues on.”

In sharp contrast to so many of Chicago’s power elite, the McCaskeys understand and honor the important place public schools hold at the heart of the community.

In its continuing effort to prove that it is completely tone-deaf, CPS through its spokesman Frank Shuftan confirmed to the Journal “that they had received the letter, but sent back a generic response identical to one the schools have been giving out throughout public hearings on Crane.”

The $20,000 will go a long way towards upgrading a football program that has been sorely lacking. The Journal reports that “Last year, the school couldn’t finish the football season because it didn’t have enough players, partially because of the program’s older equipment and lack of appeal, according to Crane Athletic Director Bennie Horton.”

And who will benefit from the new equipment? That’s what Athletic Director Clarence Smith of Dyett High School is wondering about the brand-new gym built at his school as a result of his award-winning entry in an ESPN contest. Here’s the story from News In Black’s J. Coyden Palmer:

Who gets the prize of a refurbished athletic facility at a South Side high school, which is on the verge of becoming a casualty in the war for Chicago public schools, is causing a major uproar in the African-American community.

Dyett High School was featured nationally in October on the ESPN network after winning a contest to have its athletic facilities renovated. But the school is now in jeopardy of losing it all after the Board of Education voted in November to phase out Dyett by 2015. The decision has angered students, staff and parents of the Washington Park community school, but especially those associated with the athletic program who view what CPS is doing as nothing more than larceny.

“Having been here so long and being through what all we’ve been through to be considered a legitimate high school, it hurts, what the board is doing,” said Dyett Athletic Director Clarence Smith. “I fought hard here trying to do what’s right by kids and our student athletes, and to see it all go to waste would be something I’d never forget.”

Last year, through a contact at the Illinois High School Association, Smith learned about a contest being sponsored by RISE UP, in which schools from across the country could apply to have their athletic facilities renovated for free. He wrote an impassioned letter detailing the severe disadvantages and obstacles Dyett students faced on a daily basis. The old gymnasium at Dyett had an old, warped wooden floor, dim lighting and the dreary colors made for an aesthetic nightmare.

Current girls basketball Head Coach Joe Crumb said the gym was an embarrassment for the kids. He said things were so bad, his team preferred to play away games. But after it was announced in June that Dyett had won the contest and would be featured on ESPN, he saw an immediate a change in the students.

“Their whole demeanor was uplifted,” Crumb said. “You could tell they were proud to say they went to Dyett.”

In partnership with the Chicago Bulls’ community outreach program, a Chicago-area construction company and New Orleans architectural firm, RISE UP installed a brand new basketball court, updated the weight room with state-of-the-art equipment, added new padding along the walls adorned in the school colors and logo, updated the lighting and bleachers and provided all of the sports teams with new uniforms and equipment.

The renovations would have costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to taxpayers, according to Smith. But he is most upset that those who should be benefiting from the new upgrades the most will not be able to do so in the future.

“I’m glad the kids that are here now are getting a chance to enjoy it while it’s here,” Smith said. “But if in fact they close the school down the stuff will still be in good shape and where does it go from there? Who’s the recipient of it? A charter school? A private school? Maybe even a Catholic school?

I’m sharing, with permission, the report from a parent meeting at Mt. Greenwood school last week with CPS representatives pushing the 7.5 hour day. The notes indicate CPS’s position that there will be no extra money to implement the extended day. The parents also expose several CPS statements as pure baloney, including the CEO Chief of Staff’s claim that Mt. Greenwood students needed a 7.5 hour day to be able to go to college, and the Network Chief’s assertion that a 7.5 hour day is the norm across the US.

The parents’ group meets again tonight at Mt. Greenwood Library at 110th and Kedzie Avenue from 6 pm to 7:30 pm.

***

Parent Feedback Regarding CPS Meeting Held at Mt. Greenwood School
Jan. 25, 2012

At the January 25th meeting, parents felt patronized and insulted when Todd Connor, Chief of Staff to CEO J.C. Brizard, insisted that without a 7.5 hour school day our children would not attend college. Parents wondered how Todd could ignore Mt. Greenwood’s high ISAT scores.

Parent Michelle Bever challenged Todd’s assertion that other school districts have a 7.5 hour school day. “Come on, give us one – you can do that – give us a name.” He said, “New Trier.” Michelle promised she would check and found that New Trier Township does not mandate a 7.5 hour school day for any of its schools.

Dr. Karen Saffold, Chief of Elementary Schools, Rock Island Network, repeated the same talking point — that CPS only wanted to bring its school day up to the national average. A parent expressed surprise at her statement, and replied that no state has an average school day as long as 7.5 hours. The average school day in Illinois is 6.5 hours. Dr. Saffold had no reply to that.

Alex Fralin, Deputy Chief of Staff to the CEO, reiterated what Jennifer Cheathem, Chief Instructional Officer, had said at the November 30 community meeting; there is no money for the long day, long year initiative, and schools will have to rely on the “efficiency of their principals.” Parents felt this indicates CPS is throwing principals, teachers and parents under the bus.

Todd Connor went on to say that Mt. Greenwood “school is not performing as well as you think.” Mt. Greenwood needs the 7.5 hour day, he said, because the 8th graders didn’t score very well on the EXPLORE test.

According to SchoolDigger.com database, Mt. Greenwood’s 6th grade ISAT Math score was 97, and Reading was 97.4 in 2010-11. That puts it ahead of schools like Palos South Middle School, Deer Path Middle School East in Lake Forest, and Maple School in Northbrook.

We did more research. We learned Todd should not use one score on one test for one grade to make this kind of decision. “I do know it is unwise policy to base major decisions solely on test scores. If I read you right, it was a one-time low score on one test in one grade that has led to this action by CPS,” wrote Monty Neill of Fair Test.

Next Julie Woestehoff, executive director of PURE, explained that the Explore test is a practice test to the PLAN test. The PLAN test is a practice test to the ACT. (CPS administers the Explore test to students in both 8th and 9th grades. It administers the PLAN in 10^th grade and the ACT in 11th grade.)

Then we asked Diane Ravitch, noted Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education, what she thought of Todd’s reasoning for adding 105 minutes to the school day. On January 28 she replied in an email:

“I don’t know anything about Explore other than that it is a practice test for the real test.”
“All of this is nuts.”
“There is no evidence that longer school days produce better education, unless children are engaged in wonderful after school activities that give them a chance to sing, dance, inquire, play, and just be children.”

(Last October, the Sun Times found that for the top 10 suburban neighborhood elementary schools, the school day was one hour less than CPS’ proposed 7.5 hours. The school year was 5 days less a year than the 180 days CPS has put forward.)

At the end of the Mt. Greenwood School meeting, parents expressed frustration that CPS hadn’t offered solid answers to their questions. They decided to reach out to Jesse Sharkey v.p. of the Chicago Teachers Union. He will speak at Mt. Greenwood Library at 110th and Kedzie Avenue from 6 pm to 7:30 pm on Thursday, February 2.

Otherwise the January 25th meeting was a huge success. In two hours in the middle of the afternoon parents collected 500 signatures in favor of either no increase in the day or a maximum increase of 6.5 hours. Only 13 signatures were collected from parents who supported the 7.5 hour day.

Thank you,
19th Ward Parents

The Sun-Times reports today that Chicago schools CEO J. C. Brizard taught a class for students in several CPS classrooms via iPad in celebration of national Digital Learning Day.

For many kids at Chicago’s Spencer Technology and 10 other Chicago public schools, the lesson was special because Brizard was teaching it.

“I thought it was exciting that the CEO came to our school … and taught a science lesson,’’ said Lucretia Woods, 13, one of the Spencer seventh-graders who got to see Brizard teach live Wednesday. “My principal said it was historic.”

Historic, indeed. It has been 26 years since the top “educator” running the Chicago Public Schools had a teaching credential, outside of Terry Mazany brief interim stint.

It’s no secret that the education advocacy community is not happy with the direction of President Obama’s education policies, though he seems oblivious himself to the depth and strength of anger he and his corporate reform front man, Arne Duncan, have inspired (for more on the President’s seeming lack of awareness, read this great post by Diane Ravitch.)

I tweeted during the State of the Union address, and saw that many of my PAA and other school reform friends were busy, too. Turns out we were an army that night. Despite the briefness of President Obama’s remarks on education, there were more education-related tweets than tweets on any other topic.

Here’s a report from Broadband:

From PAA’s Leonie Haimson on NYC Public School Parents blog: 

Parents Across America releases a proposal

for real parent empowerment in schools

 An antidote to phony “parental choice”

Chicago, IL and other cities across the US – Today, Parents Across America (PAA), a non-partisan, non-profit national network of public school parent activists, released a proposal for true parent empowerment that authentically involves parents in collaborative school decision making and has a strong research base in improving student achievement.

You can read our full position paper, “The Empowerment Parents Want: A Real, Effective Voice in our Children’s Education,” here.

PAA proposes its “LSC model,” a form of elected parent-majority school governance, as an antidote to recent efforts of corporate school reformers to brand parent triggers, school choice, vouchers and other attacks on public education as “parental empowerment.”

We know that these strategies do not reflect what most parents actually want, or what works for children and schools. A 2010 Phi Delta Kappa poll found that 54 percent of Americans think the best thing to do about low-performing schools is to keep the school open with the same staff and give it more support. Only 17 percent wanted to close the school and reopen it with a new principal, and just 13 percent wanted to replace it with a charter school.

Even strong charter school proponent Ben Austin, of the Parent Revolution, recently said that parents at most of the schools his organization is working with are not interested in turning their school into a charter school, but rather want to focus on improving their existing schools (EdSource Extra, 1/12/12).

According to parent Lorie Barzano of the Coalition to Strengthen Austin (TX) Urban Schools, PAA’s newest affiliate, “At every meeting I have attended in the past year, at least one parent speaks out that ‘we want to fix our public schools, not bring in outside contractors or untested experiments.’ “ 

It’s not that parents aren’t concerned about bad schools. We are. But, as explained in a recent report by Public Agenda, “What’s Trust Got to do with it?,” parents and community members give tremendous value to their local public schools. Closing their schools feels like a body blow – as though the community itself is being written off.

Parents also doubt the ability of elected officials and district leaders to make the right intervention and policy decisions; in fact, Public Agenda found that a strong majority of the public trusts the judgment of parents and teachers far more.

This lack of trust is reinforced when public officials cozy up to wealthy hedge fund operators, venture philanthropists, and school privatizers, take their marching orders from astroturf advocacy groups, or “rent” supporters, as recently happened during school closing hearings in Chicago.

“Parents in New York City and elsewhere are furious about the way in which their children’s public schools are being forced to close, or share space with charter schools,” said Leonie Haimson, a co-founder of PAA and the head of Class Size Matters. “School choice does not really exist when the priorities of thousands of parents to strengthen their local public schools, rather than write them off, are completely dismissed by policy makers.”

In New Orleans, parents’ efforts to have a voice in charter schools have been blocked. “(Louisiana State School Superintendent) John White wants us to believe that we can give input to those charters and they will run the schools based on our input. There is nothing in law that requires them to hear us. In fact, the time to engage the community should have been before the charter was written, not after. This is fake community engagement; input after you write a charter is not authentic community engagement,” said New Orleans parent Karran Harper Royal, a founding member of PAA.

Rather than requiring parents to “trigger” a restrictive, damaging set of reforms or shop around among wildly divergent charter schools, PAA supports the kind of empowerment which involves parents authentically at the ground level and in district-, state-, and nationwide policy discussions about how to improve schools.

To provide the opportunity for such authentic parent involvement at the local school level, PAA recommends adoption of a school governance model based on Chicago’s Local School Councils. 
LSCs are duly-elected, parent-majority bodies at nearly every Chicago public school. They have real power – including hiring, evaluating and firing a school’s principal. LSCs oversee a school wide process of program and budget evaluation, planning, and monitoring that offers the kind of collaborative effort researchers say is needed to make local reform succeed.

Chicago’s LSCs have proven to be a positive
 element of effective school reform for nearly two decades (for details, please see our fact sheet, “Research Shows that Local School Councils Help Improve Schools!”). 



“Anyone interested in learning about and advancing democratic, participatory models of parent representation and governance needs to understand the operational history of Local School Council (LSCs) in Chicago, Illinois. As a teacher, organizer, and parent advocate, I highly recommend those interested in improving conditions in public education investigate the LSC model as an archetype for change,” said Mark Friedman, a PAA member from Rochester, NY.

PAA understands that parent involvement and the LSC model are not magic bullets.
 Chicago’s schools, for example. continue to struggle for a variety of reasons — despite 
the best efforts of LSCs. 


However, the LSC model is a vastly superior “choice” for 
involving parents when included in a comprehensive set of research-based 
reforms including equitable and sufficient funding, pre-K programs, full-day Kindergarten, small classes,
 strong, experienced teachers, a well-rounded 
curriculum and evaluation systems that go beyond test scores.*

We believe that
 parents will be truly empowered, and children better educated, only when parents
 are full partners in education policy making.

LSC FAQ.

*Please see
 PAA’s position statement, PAA on Reforming NCLB.

For more information on Parents Across America, check out our website at

www.parentsacrossamerica.org or email us at

info@parentsacrossamerica.org