I'm not very used to being quoted as being more than just against someone or some policy - and that's OK since reporters generally give you one line, and they call me because few others will give the "com" sice on a Chicago-based story.

But it's kind of refreshing to read this article in "District Administrator" which looks at Ron Huberman's first year and reports that I don't like his lack of educational expertise or his continued and perhaps expanded use of data, but I like his attention to at-risk students. 

Overall, though, I would say that Huberman has not changed much, has been VERY quiet compared with his predecessors, and is probably not going to be around for all that long.  

I've just joined the Examiner group of "citizen reporters." 

Examiner.com is a media company based in Denver that operates a network of local news sites on which thousands of people report on local news.

My work on this site is different from PURE Thoughts in that it is not supposed to be opinion-driven (though I can't resist getting in my digs) or personal. It is even more focused on Chicago-based news than PURE Thoughts.  

The pay is infinitesimal (but more than I get for this blog!) but I do get compensated for your visits! So please consider subscribing! 

The Sun-Times is reporting that City Hall had summoned Michael Scott to a meeting just hours before his death.

Police reports obtained by the Sun-Times show that Mayor Daley's closest aide, press secretary Jacqueline Heard, called Scott at 11 am on Sunday, November 15th, to set up a meeting at City Hall the following day. The purpose of the meeting was apparently to question him/talk to him/call him on the carpet? about his alleged credit card use and other school-related problems.

Mayor Daley is noted for his vicious bouts of temper whenever things go wrong for him, as they had with the Olympic bid, which probably would not have beat out Rio's under any circumstances but which was under a significant cloud from the world-wide reporting of the violent death of CPS student Derrion Albert.

Opinion remains strong in the African-American community that Scott was murdered, that he was not likely to commit suicide, as police and the coroner concluded.

No one can know what's in a person's heart and mind at any particular time. What is clear, though, is that affable, generous, seemingly unflappable public servant Michael Scott was under mounting pressure from City Hall right before he died. 

Does he even listen to himself?

Fed Ed head Arne Duncan has already made his mark as the nation's Exaggerator-in-Chief. His rhetorical style, which includes referring to his track record in Chicago as a "dramatic success," seemed simply funny at first, but now folks are concerned that he has been misleading, if not outright lying to, the nation.

But it gets much, much worse when Duncan lectures African-American students on the legacy of Martin Luther King, and completely perverts that legacy.

According to this Ed. Department press release, on January 15, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 81st birthday, Secretary Duncan spoke to a full house of 1,000 students at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (where Dr. King and his father served as pastors). Duncan said this:

“If Dr. King were here today, he would call on a new generation of leaders to build upon his work by doing the most important thing each of you can do: get an education, learn to think, learn to compete, and learn to win.”

Compete? and win?

Which of Dr. King's letters, sermons, or speeches do you think Duncan got that quote from?

None, of course. 

Dr. King preached non-violence, which is an antithesis of competition. 

Holley Hewitt Ulbrich put it well: 

"Nonviolence is more than the absence of violence. It’s not passive. It’s a way of life, a conscious refusal to rise to the bait, an attitude toward the other person, the other party, the other country. It’s hard work. It’s going the second mile, not seeking revenge, not an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. Nonviolence begins in attitude. ... Nonviolence calls for an attitude of collaboration, of partnership, of acknowledgement of our shared humanity, shared interests, shared desires, rather than competition, right/wrong, win/lose, conquest/defeat.

Not that the author of Race to the Top would understand that. We know him enough not to expect that.

But please, don't let Duncan out on MLK Day again! 

We have a new judge and a new court date - please attend this session to support LSCs in ALL Chicago schools!

• Thursday, March 4th beginning at 2:00 p.m.
• Daley Plaza, Judge Palmer's courtroom 2305.  

Remember to check in with us shortly before this date -- either on the PURE News list or our voice mail (312-491-9101) -- to make sure the hearing has not been changed.

Here's a summary of the lawsuit's history.

PURE welcomes Mary Richardson-Lowry, newly-appointed by Mayor Daley to be a member of the Chicago Board of Education. We have welcomed every new Board president with a clean slate and a desire to work cooperatively. Of course, every president  since Gery Chico has simply done Mayor Daley's bidding. But this time -- maybe a little optimism?

You see, Ms. Richardson-Lowry's chief claim to fame is the ordinance she pushed through in 2000 as Chicago Buildings Commissioner which required more women's toilets than men's rooms in all new and rehabbed buildings.

If she can get that done for women, maybe there's hope for what she will do for children as Board president. 

I hate to have to say it, but the little that President Obama said about K-12 education in last night's State of the Union address was a sorry mess.

Obama's generally excellent and refreshingly feisty speech simply did not tell the truth about his administration's work in education.

Here's what he said. "Now, this year, we've broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools. And the idea here is simple: Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform...."

Let's parse that out. 

First of all, they have hardly broken through a left-right stalemate. The Race to the Top competition was not agreed to by anyone. It was an administrative fiat designed by Duncan for spending money allocated by Obama.

You know, kinda like declaring war without Congressional approval, but this time the attack is on our schools and teachers (remember, Fed Ed Head Rod Paige did compare the teachers union with a terrorist organization!).

Strong public opposition to all major aspects of RTTT was obvious in the comments submitted on the proposal, but only a few tweaks were made before Arne Duncan gave his final okey-dokey. 

Secondly, the declaration that RTTT is funding success, not failure is absurd and false. In fact, RTTT will be shoveling out multi-millions of dollars to charter schools, school turnarounds, and alternative teaching programs which have no track record of success, and which in fact have a track record of failure.

Third, there's that false rhetorical dichotomy between the "status quo" and "reform," used as though it has any real meaning.

If you are going to change things, you have to know exactly what it is about the status quo that isn't working. If you are going to fix things, you have to know what reforms actually work and why. If you don't know either of these things, then you are just doing reform for reform's sake, and you'll be back at the reform table in a decade or so, claiming that it's "a moral imperative" to "reform" the new status quo.

What Obama didn't say 

The education remarks in the President's prepared speech, which is currently posted on the White House web site, are completely different from those he gave last night.

The previously-prepared remarks on education are longer and much more specific, and place far less emphasis on RTTT: "But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources.  They need more reform.  That is why this budget creates new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success.  We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps." 

Comments that Obama dropped from his live speech included one about increasing support for charter schools, and his usual nod towards the importance of parental involvement.

He may have cut back his education comments to save time in an already long speech. But the empty and false rhetoric he did use makes me glad he didn't say more.

Yesterday I wrote about USDE (and former CPS) spokesperson Peter Cunningham coming out with the statement that tests were "corrupting education."

Now WBEZ reports that the University of Chicago's Tim Knowles has a concern about school closures: "This is about an institution being taken away that my child goes to, I went to, maybe my mother went to. Frankly, it’s about communities, it’s about neighborhoods, it’s about relationships. Data doesn’t tip those things."

Wonder how the communities of Wadsworth, Woodson South, and Donohue have felt seeing the University of Chicago, under Knowles' leadership, move their charter schools into the closed shells of their former neighborhood schools?  

What about walking the walk, Pete and Tim?

Under the Renaissance 2010 brand, CPS always insisted the program was NOT NOT NOT about closing schools. No more. Now it's ALL about school closings:  "School closing hearings," "School closing criteria," "School closings Student Bill of Rights."

How do schools get off the list?

Six schools did it last year. Here's how (according to CPS):

• Peabody (slated for closure for underenrollment)  provided evidence that they were not underutlized.
• Las Casas (closure/underenrollment) raised substantial concerns about whether CPS had made adequate plans for placing their population of special needs students in new programs  (Las Casas is back on the list this year).
• Yale (turnaround) showed that its achievement levels had been steadily growing.
• Hamilton (phase-out) showed high achievement levels; CPS agreed to help the school increase enrollment.
• Holmes (turnaround) made an impressive showing of teacher, parent, and community support. They made presentations about the initiatives that were happening at the school. Their test scores had been going up. The LSC agreed to discuss getting a new principal with CPS.
• Global Visions (closure - low enrollment) showed that its PSAE scores were the highest of the four small schools at Bowen.

The school closing hearings start tomorrow. Here's the schedule:

• 5:30 to 7:30 pm -- Curtis (closure)
• 8:00 to 10 pm -- Guggenheim (closure)

Friday, 1/29 @ CPS, 125 S. Clark Street, 5th floor

• 5:30 to 7:30 pm -- McCorkle (consolidation)
• 8:00 to 10 pm -- Las Casas (closure)

Saturday 1/30 @ Curtis, 32 E. 115th Street -- 10 am to noon -- Curtis (closure)

Monday 2/1 @ CPS, 125 S. Clark Street, 5th floor

• 5:30 to 7:30 pm -- Phillips (turnaround - AUSL)
• 8:00 to 10 pm -- Marshall (turnaround - CPS)

Wednesday, 2/3 @ CPS, 125 S. Clark Street, 5th floor

• 5:30 to 7:30 pm -- Marconi/Tilton (consolidation/relocation)
• 8:00 to 10 pm -- Prescott (closure)

Wednesday, 2/3 @ Guggenheim, 7141 S. Morgan St. -- 5:30 - 7:30 pm -- Guggenheim (closure)

Thursday 2/4 @CPS, 125 S. Clark Street, 5th floor -- 5:30 to 7:30 pm -- Gillespie (turnaround/AUSL)

Thursday, 2/4 @ Ninos Heroes, 8344 S. Commercial --  5:30 to 7:30 pm -- Las Casas (closure)

Friday, 2/5 @ CPS, 125 S. Clark Street, 5th floor -- 5:30 to 7:30 pm -- Paderewski (consolidation) 

Saturday, 2/6 @ Prescott, 1632 W. Wrightwood -- 10 am to noon -- Prescott (closure)

Monday, 2/8 @ CPS, 125 S. Clark Street, 5th floor

• 5:30 to 7:30 pm -- Deneen (turnaround)
• 8:00 to 10 pm -- Mollisaon/Wells Prep (consolidation/relocation)

Tuesday, 2/9 @ CPS, 125 S. Clark Street, 5th floor -- 5:30 to 7:30 pm -- Schneider (phase out)

Wednesday, 2/10 @ CPS, 125 S. Clark Street, 5th floor -- 5:30 to 7:30 pm -- Bradwell (turnaround)

I just sent the following letter to the Tribune in response to this letter from Renaissance Fund officials. Read it here, because you are unlikely to read it in the Tribune:

How ironic that promoters of Renaissance 2010 are asking for more time to prove the success of their strategy, barely one week after Illinois submitted its application to the federal Race to the Top promising more such “reform” – more charters, more high-stakes testing – and only days after the state legislature changed school law to conform with these promises.

In 1995, the legislature gave Mayor Daley control of the Chicago Public Schools because local school councils were not changing the schools fast enough. In hindsight, we have learned that more real progress was made during those first five years of LSC reform than in the next 15 years of mayoral control.

In another ironic twist, R2010 supporters claim that their schools “ushered in a new era of accountability” and then ask that they not be judged against all CPS schools but only against a self-defined subset of schools that their students “might” have attended.

We would agree to this limited accountability system only if R2010 schools agreed to:

• stop pushing out students that "aren't a good fit," and make public all data related to student transfers, etc.

• take into consideration R2010 and charters' built-in advantage of motivated parents who manage to negotiate often complicated application processes, and

• factor in the charters' ability to control their school and classroom enrollment. 

After all, everyone wants a level playing field.

Julie Woestehoff

Executive Director

Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE)

Chicago, IL

Just as Mayor Daley did last week, the promoters of R2010 are asking for more time to work their school magic.

Daley wanted "a chapter two [of Renaissance 2010], a chapter three, a chapter four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10."

Now the chairman and the president of the Renaissance Schools Fund respond to the Tribune's R2010 failure report with a letter "suggesting that you give [R2010 schools] more time before rendering judgment."

Well, that might be fair -although the business community didn't give LSC-style reform the same consideration in 1995 when they pushed for and won a mayoral takeover of the schools.

Eexcept that Arne Duncan and his billions of federal funds have already raced to the conclusion that R2010-style reform is a "dramatic" success and must be replicated across the nation.

In fact, Fed Ed Head Duncan has designed Race to the Top to deprive low-income children of federal education funds in states and school districts which disagree with his unproven brand of reform. So, judgments have been made both ways.

Lower standards for R2010

Although the writers claim that R2010 has "ushered in a new era of accountability," they don 't want their schools to be compared with all CPS schools, but only with a set of schools selected by CPS as "comparable," you know, those schools the students "might" have gone to "if" the charter school did not exist.

I say that we'll agree to those terms as soon as R2010 and charter folks agree to

• stop pushing out the  students that "aren't a good fit," and make public all data related to student transfers, etc.
• take into consideration R2010 and charters' built-in advantage of motivated parents who managed to negotiate application processes, and
• also factor in the charters' ability to control their school and classroom enrollment. 

Level playing fields are what it's all about, right?   

Just as Illinois and other states were finishing their mad dash to complete and submit their Race to the Top applications, Arne Duncan's spokesperson at the U. S. Department of Educaioin admitted that the major RTTT strategies have major flaws.

In a dialogue with education writer Richard Rothstein on L.A. internet radio station KCRW, which was reported on the EDDRA2 web site, Peter Cunningham was asked "Are standardized tests a good measure of teacher performance and ultimately of school performance?" 

"No, they're not," 

Cunningham admitted bluntly. "Education has been corrupted. In addition to narrowing the curriculum by abandoning other topics, what this kind of system does is create incentives to game the system. We're actually harming the education of students in this country."

Cunningham further stated that "We 100 percent agree with Mr. Rothstein that many (charter schools) are not good."

• Wednesday, January 27, 2010
• 1 to 3 pm
• James R. Thompson Center, 100 W. Randolph, Room 9-040

You might want to ask them why the state has recently raised the charter school cap despite all the evidence that African-American and Latino students are doing worse in Illinois charter schools.

You might want to ask why their Race to the Top (RTTT) proposal will tie teacher evaluations to state tests (and state tests alone in Chicago) when the tests are not designed to do that.

In fact, you might want to ask them why they were in such a hurry to accept and follow the requirements of Race to the Top when Arne Duncan's own spokesperson, Peter Cunningham,  recently publicly stated:  "Education has been corrupted (by tests). In addition to narrowing the curriculum by abandoning other topics, what this kind of system does is create incentives to game the system. We're actually harming the education of students in this country...."We 100 percent agree with Mr. Rothstein that many (charter schools) are not good."

You might want to ask them why they are willing to promote such flawed policies to "hold schools and teachers accountable" when they are not wiling to fund our schools adequately? Who is being held accountable?

Maybe we can start with the P-20 Council. 

Some of us might want to check out the CPS New Schools Expo this Saturday, January 30, 2010 from

9:30am - 2:00pm at Soldier Field, Gate 6. There will be free admission & free parking and a free shuttle bus running between the Roosevelt el stop and the Expo.

You might want to share some of these PURE fact sheets with the attendees:

Top 10 Reasons Renaissance 2010 is a faiure

Fact Sheet: African American and Latino Students do worse in Illinois charter schools

Lack of accountability and parent voice in R2010 schools 

Just so they get the whole story and know what they are getting themselves into. 

It's bad enough to read the Tribune's story about Chicago high schools that improperly turn away students with discipline issues. Unfortunately, this is not news to parent and student advocates.

What's even worse is the statistic in the side bar: "the per-pupil funding for youths in state facilities is roughly one-third the minimum spent on all other public school students."

Keep in mind that  Illinois already underfunds its regular education programs, so you can see what a crime we are committing against these children who need even more help.

Thanks to the Tribune, we now know how generous we taxpayers have been to such "charities" as Urban Prep charter school and the Chicago Olympic committee. And we also have a little better insight into how the city that works really works.

The Trib reports that a credit card issued to the Board of Education president was used to make  a $2500 donation to the Chicago Olympic Committee as well as pay for numerous dinners at pricey Chicago restaurants like Table 52 and Spiaggia.

The expenditure that really touched my heart, though, was the $1,000 donation to the Urban Prep charter school that Rufus Williams charged to the card in September 2008.

"Williams, in an interview, defended his charges, saying they all related to school business. 'My credit card use was fully proper,' he said. 'There is clearly reasonable and rational explanations for each charge. Each related to our children and to our schools.'

Right. As Rufus himself once said about LSCs, giving him literal carte blanche with taxpayer money was like letting the transients run the hotel. 

Corporations are not human. Despite their ad campaigns, they do not have hearts.

But they are considered people under law, and the "corporation people" have just been given carte blanche by the Supreme Court to finish drowning out our voices in any discussion of public policy or practice.

Today the Supreme Court ruled that because they are "people," corporations have first amendment right to free speech and, since political contributions are a form of expression which cannot be abridged, the government cannot limited corporations' campaign contributions.

The price of your average congressman just went WAYYYY up.

Yep - Daley still considers the schools he has destroyed his "greatest achievement." 

Read this scathing article by Prescott Carlson on the Chicagoist blog in response to an interview of the Mayor by Channel 2's Mike Flannery. Flannery asked if turning Northerly Island into a park was among his greatest achievements. No, said the Mayor. It's the schools.

Now, Daley has been giving that answer to that question every since his press secretary Jackie Heard told him to about 12 years ago. She has trained him well to spout out certain pat answers at certain times. Problem is, he forgets to look up once in a while to see if anything has changed. And apparently one thing that has changed is the extent of public skepticism about this particular accomplishment.

Here's a slice of Carlson's take: 

"That's right, Mayor Daley thinks the current state of the Chicago Public Schools is his greatest contribution to the city of Chicago. You know, the school system that...  misguidedly shuffles kids around creating gang tension in schools, which sometimes gets teens killed. That's quite an accomplishment, Mayor. But most damning of all, his overall master plan for the CPS, Renaissance 2010, has been found severely wanting as it enters what was supposed to be its pinnacle year. ...So parents across the country, when this major accomplishment spreads nationwide, you now know Mayor Daley is awaiting your thank yous."

This Huffington Post article takes the criticism up another notch with a giant headline above a big photo of a smiling, self-satisfied Daley. Don't miss it.

When the Academy for Urban School Leaders (AUSL) takes over a school, a creepy thing happens. Children go missing. The year after AUSL took over at Sherman, Howe, Harvard, National Teachers Academy, and Morton, a total of 493 children were missing from school rolls.   

Where are they? No one knows. But CPS is giving AUSL more schools (and more children) this year. 

Check out the data and share. Save the children.

We know that CPS began to use the same Iowa tests over and over again after Paul Vallas turned them into high stakes tests. 

We know that the state of Illinois changed the state tests to make them easier after No Child Left Behind turned them into high-stakes tests.

Now we know for sure that student grades are being changed by teachers, often under pressure from principals, after CPS turned grades into high-stakes measures for selective enrollment high school applications and for high school "on-track" accountability measures.  

Today the Sun-Times reports that Mayor Daley is shaking the finger of blame at teachers. " 'First of all, you have to find out who all the teachers are [who] would do that. That's No. 1' Daley said. 'Then, they're gonna go and get those teachers, investigate those teachers....I don't care how much pressure you have. Don't do it.' ''

No, YOU don't do it. Mayor. Playing these high stakes games is your idea. Just stop it. It's not working and it's ruining what's left of public education.

From the CPS web site:

AUSL would be designated to implement the turnaround strategy at four of the schools for which turnaround is being proposed:

• Bradwell Elementary School, 7736 South Burnham
• Frank L. Gillespie Elementary School, 9301 South State St.
• Charles S. Deneen Elementary School, 7257 South State St.
• Wendell Phillips High School, 244 East Pershing Road

The current John Marshall High School, 3250 W. Adams, is proposed to be turned around by the CEdO-CPS Office of School Turnarounds.

Huberman said one school is being proposed for phase-out because of low enrollment:        

• George Schneider Elementary School, 2957 North Hoyne Ave.

In a phase-out, existing students may stay at the school but the school will not enroll any new students and decrease by one grade level per year.

Huberman said four schools are being proposed for consolidation:

• McCorkle Elementary School, 4421 S. State St., because of the poor condition of its facility. Ludwig Beethoven Elementary School, 25 W. 47^th St. which has been designated as the receiving school for McCorkle students, will receive $8.5 million in capital improvements during the summer.
• Ignance Paderewski Elementary School, 2221 S. Lawndale Ave., because of low student enrollment. Roswell B. Mason Elementary School, 4217 West 18th St., is the designated receiving school.
• Guglielmo Marconi Elementary School, 230 N. Kolmar Ave., due to under enrollment will be consolidated with George W. Tilton Elementary School, 223 North Keeler Ave., to form Tilton-Marconi School. Other school options for Marconi students will include Ericson, Gregory and Calhoun North Elementary Schools.
• Irvin C. Mollison Elementary School, 4415 South King Drive, due to underperformance will be consolidated with Ida B. Wells Prep Elementary School, 244 East Pershing Road, in the Mollison building, as the Wells-Mollison School.

Huberman said four schools will be closed:

• George W. Curtis Elementary School, 32 E. 115^th St., because of poor academic performance. Designated receiving schools are Charles Haley, 11411 S. Eggleston, and George Pullman, 11311 S. Forrestville, Elementary Schools.
• Simon Guggenheim Elementary School, 7141 S. Morgan Ave., because of poor academic performance. Designated receiving schools are William A. Hinton, 644 W. 71^st St., and John P. Altgeld, 1340 W. 71^st St., Elementary Schools.
• William H. Prescott Elementary School, 1632 West Wrightwood Ave., because its student enrollment is far below operational efficiency. Designated receiving schools are Louis A. Agassiz, 2851 N. Seminary Ave., and Augustus H. Burley, 1630 W. Barry, Elementary Schools.
• Bartholome De Las Casas Occupational High School, 8401 S. Saginaw Ave, because of facilities-related and programmatic issues, along with low attendance. Students from this special needs school will be placed in either private schools that can meet their needs or Moses Montefiore School, 1310 S. Ashland Ave.

Take a minute to read this thoughtful story by Kelsey Duckett in today's Chicago Talks about the importance of LSCs, and how Renaissance 2010 has been an all-out effort by Mayor Daley to silence the voices of people in some of the city's most disadvantaged communities.

President Obama wants to throw another billion plus dollars at nationalizing the Chicago model in RTTT.

FairTest's Monty Neill wonders if this is instead of reauthorizing NCLB: 

"I wonder if by seeking this money now, Obama and Duncan are tacitly recognizing reauthorization is not likely to happen this year - tho the Dept will release something, there will be discussions in Congress, maybe hearings, etc. Of course they won over most states, and many school boards and unions are on board, tho in some states and many districts there is notable resistance. So they want to push ahead, solidify what they can, which they may calculate will also help ensure they can keep it in the next ESEA."

Back in 1994, when the School Reform Act of 1989 creating local school councils was barely five years old, the research was showing slow but steady progress in our schools.

But Mayor Daley and the business community decided that LSC-style reform wasn't moving fast enough, and that in order to SPEED UP improvements, the mayor had to take over the schools.

Fast-forward to 2010. The Mayor has had control for 15 years. Chicago remains near the bottom of all large urban school districts on national tests. Though state test scores have gone up, there's widespread agreement that the state test has been dummied down over the years -- even Arne Duncan says that we are "lying to our children" when it comes to our state scores..

And now Renaissance 2010 is 6 years old. All reports are negative. The reform that the Mayor was supposed to speed up is flatlining.

And he wants time to do more.  

It's not likely that PURE or anyone we know will tell us what schools are on the list, but a very good source tells us that it will be announced Monday and that Phillips HS is on the list, Dyett is not. 

What would possess CPS to make such an announcement on the observance of Dr. King's birthday?

That's all I know at this point, folks.  

The Tribune's look at the data on Renaissance 2010 is welcome but long overdue. After five years of cheerleading this expensive experiment, you now agree that the plan did not provide the "dramatically better" education promised by former CPS CEO Arne Duncan. Instead, you show that the new schools are barely keeping up with the neighborhood schools they were designed to fix.

In light of this overall failure, it is even more critical to learn from both the problems and any positives the program may have to offer.   

Unfortunately, your attempts to find the "bright spots" fall short. For example, you highlight Noble Street Charter High School and schools runs by the Academy of Urban School Leaders as places where positive lessons might be learned. 

Let's take that closer look that you propose.

With a nearly 70% Latino student body, Noble Street reports that only 5% (and only 1.1% in 2008) have limited English proficiency compared with district averages of 41% Latino and 14% LEP. The school has somehow managed not to admit some potentially more challenging students.

AUSL is a teacher training program, so its schools have additional adults in each classroom, a perk that regular schools would love to have but can't afford. 

We had better find more substantial benefits in school closures, turnarounds, and charterization, because Mr. Duncan's Race to the Top is about to unleash up to 5,000 more on a poorly-informed public. How ironic that your expose is printed after our state legislature passed new laws to improve our chances of joining the RTTT program, a move the Tribune strongly supported but now cautions us against.

Looks like tomorrow's Tribune headline will be bad news for Mayor Daley- the newspaper will report their findings (previewed on today's web edition) that after 6 years of R2010, the "dramatically better" schools score no better than regular neighborhood schools.   

School leaders suggest that this fresh evidence of the program's failure will not change their plans to close more schools -- data-driven decision making be damned, right?

Arne Duncan's response is equally unconcerned.  Full speed ahead with that R2010 clone, RTTT.

It's going to be up to us to drive the point home.

Last night the state Senate passed SB315, the bill that will tie test scores to teacher evaluations. We might have been able to stop it if we had resources to be in Springfield - this bill was called quickly and "negotiated" out of the eyes and ears of regular folks like us, as is the case in general with legislation in our state.   

We might have a better chance making our voices heard if we had more folks in Springfield who GET IT - who truly support public school parents, teachers, students and the community instead of blindly going along with the last person who whispered in their ear.

Take a look at veteran LSC member and school reform advocate Jonathan Goldman, who is running for state rep in the 10th district.

Another potential ally is Rudy Lozano, Jr., running in the 23rd district.

Check out this interview with Rudy in Substance, which includes this quote:

"I’m not anti-charter, but I have serious problems with the charter school approach. 1 – They don’t have boundaries and they cream the best students which is not fair to the neighborhood children. 2 – Charter school teachers are not unionized. All workers should have the right to organize. My father was a labor organizer. 3 – The last issue is they are disempowering to the communities because there are no Local School Councils which give the community control over the school."

Early voting is already underway. If you live in Jonathan's or Rudy's districts, you can do something positive today for our schools and our children.

The Illinois House just passed (and the Senate is expected to pass today) a new law that will raise the stakes even higher on high-stakes testing in Chicago.

SB 315 is the General Assembly's latest offering to the business community under the guise of "revenue enhancement" - that is, our state reps are selling our children's future for  200 bucks each, the amount Chicago might get if Illinois wins a federal Race to the Top award. 

It wasn't enough for our state reps to raise the charter cap, despite the data showing that African-American and Latino students are actually doing worse in Illinois charter schools.

They also had to join in the 46-state rush to national standards, despite the warning of educators that a nationalized curriculum "will not solve real educational problems, will continue to promote narrow testing approaches, is secretive, and strikes another blow to democratic governance of schools."

Now they're completing the RTTT boot-lick trifecta by forcing districts to use "student performance" (read: state test scores) as a "significant factor" (the law defines a model as a 50% weighting) in teacher evaluations.

Oh - BUT NOT IN CHICAGO:

"Notwithstanding any provision in this Section, rules shall not preclude a school district having 500,000 or more inhabitants from using an annual State assessment as the sole measure of student growth for purposes of teacher or principal evaluations."

Emphasis added. 

Despite the fact that the state assessment was NOT DESIGNED for this use. 

Thanks again, state legislature, for denying our children adequate educational resources but screwing them and their teachers for free.  

California, under "Governator" Arnold Schwartzenegger, has come up with another weird "school reform" strategy - the "parent trigger." Supposedly, parents can vote to take a school over, or, more accurately, take it down. 

Read my comments on National Journal online, then read on down for FairTest's Monty Neill's additional, always enlightening thougths, which includes this:

"In Los Angeles, a variation on this 'parent trigger' option has recently been put into place. Parent Revolution has launched campaigns against five public schools and currently tracks the progress on its website, listing two as successful.... word is that those organizers are paying for signatures on those petitions."

WBEZ reports on the "brand name" problems CPS has with Renaissance 2010, blaming (crediting??) me in part for tarnishing the program's hoped-for luster: "They chose to sell it like a product, and the product is failing."

The 2010 CORE/GEM Summit -- January 9, 2010 

Last year the CORE/GEM Summit was about solidarity, sharing our ideas and learning how to work together. This year's Summit was all about action.

CORE has a slate of officers ready to run for the Chicago Teachers Union leadership positions.

GEM has a strong platform and, now, committed groups of people to turn that platform into action.  

2010 - here we come!

Another example of the nonsense people talk when they promote standardized tests. The Sun-Times reports that the Chicago Police Department is thinking about dropping its entrance exam, which in the past has managed to screen out most of the African-American and Hispanic candidates.

"Experts" think this is a terrible idea. Charlie Roberts, former head of the police training program, told the S-T that, without a reading comprehension test,  "We were getting people with 60 hours of college credit who were reading at a third-grade level."

Huh?

You can get 60 hours of college credit with a 3rd grade reading level? But you can't be a policeman? 

Let's be clear. These entrance exams are just like other standardized tests. They are designed to sort people (and you know which people) out. They are biased and purposely tricky. They offer no real insight into the test-taker's ability or knowledge. 

Candidates for police positions have to pass tests on the law and municipal codes. If a candidate really can't read, he or she will not pass those tests. But many people will do better on a straightforward test on specific facts rather than a mind-bending norm-referenced standardized test.

And an entrance test that disproportionately eliminates minority candidates should indeed be scrapped.    

Yesterday, Mayor Daley suggested that R2010 should go on and on, sort of like "War and Peace": "I hope there's a chapter two [of Renaissance 2010], a chapter three, a chapter four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10."

The fact is, the Mayor's recent schemes are likely to end up in one of those very thin books - "The Wit, Wisdom, and Winning Strategies of Richard M. Daley."

More and more people are getting fed up. 

Parking meter rates are about to go up again, and with the predicted snowfall, who won't be cursing the mayor by name as they climb over slush and drifts to get to a pay box (and then climb back to get that expensive little slip of paper onto the dashboard)?

The mainstream media has finally picked up on Ben Joravsky's excellent work in the Reader and started to demand some TIF transparency.

Now two ticked-off commuters have filed a lawsuit against the CTA, claiming that  resources are unevenly distributed to serve white passengers better than Hispanics or African-Americans.

Yes, Mayor Daley -- the peons are finally catching on.

Come to the GEM/CORE Education Summit Saturday and get behind the movement to take back our schools - if not now, when? Details here.

As the only flamingo-oriented education blog in America, I am proud to share this "safe school" sign with you, which also gives you an idea of where I've been.

CORE and GEM are co-sponsoring a timely education summit a week from today, Saturday, January 9, from 10 am to 1 pm, at Malcolm X College. 

We expect CPS to announce the 2010 school closing hit list on Friday, January 8, so this summit will be the first and best opportunity for school advocates to come together to plan our activities to save schools, jobs, and, most important of all, our children's right to a high-quality community school.

There will also be food!

Details are on this flyer - please share with your networks!  

The Washington Post raises questions about Arne Duncan's success in Chicago, including this quote from me:

(At his confirmation hearing) "Duncan said he is careful not to exaggerate his record. Critics, however, say his legacy is routinely overblown.

" 'There's been this rhetoric about dramatic gains, dramatic success, that we have to replicate this model because of its dramatic success,' said Julie Woestehoff of the advocacy group Parents United for Responsible Education. 'And here in Chicago, we're looking at these schools and going, 'Uh . . . ' " 

I was disappointed with the rest of the article, given my understanding that the reporter was determined to get past CPS's usual media dog and pony show and look at what's really working in Chicago, like the Strategic Learning Initiatives programs. Instead, he wrote about violence being down and freshmen on track at Harper, the party line which ignores the 300 students pushed out of the school as part of the "turnaround."

Did anyone else find this item, reported in the Sun-Times from the Inspector General's annual report, kind of freaky?

"• A Kelly High School teacher was fired after a hearing officer did not buy her claims that she killed her estranged husband in self-defense in 2007. Although the teacher said she shot her husband three times in the chest during a heated altercation in which she feared for her life, Sullivan said his investigation determined the shooting was not in self-defense, and a hearing officer agreed. The teacher has not been criminally charged."

I'm picturing the IG, James Sullivan, in his office (about two blocks from the PURE office) using laser pointers to determine the trajectory of the bullets... 

Anyway, why not send your unsolved mysteries to this master of  detection. Let's make the world  a little safer, eh?

http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Departments/Pages/InspectorGeneral.aspx

This very thoughtful front page story in today's Tribune follows a mom trying to get help for her struggling son, and provides just one more example of Chicago Public Schools' foot-dragging.

The story focuses on second-grader Michael, who's having problems reading, Experts advise an IEP, but the school wants to wait a little longer to see how a behavior plan works out. 

The mother found an advocate in Dr. Michael Msall, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the University of Chicago (good job, mom!), who was concerned that the school was not doing enough for the student.

"A kid with an average IQ should be reading at a second-grade level. He's not," Msall said. "Difficulties in the first (grading period) are a marker that what we set out to do is not working; we have to do some different things."

Catching and addressing reading problems early is one of the many key best practices that CPS tends to ignore. They don't really get serious until the first ISAT year, third grade, when it's already too late for many children.

With a persistent mom, Michael might make it despite CPS. Let's hope so.

I was glad to see that the Board of Education decided yesterday to give up their $2,000 per month stipend, money they received --  no paper work or questions asked -- for showing up for a few hours one day per month to rubber stamping the Mayor's plans.

I still want them to give back the money that they have already pocketed.

In addition to their bad report cards, yesterday I handed each Board member a "Past Due" invoice for the money they've collected up until now.

Based on each member's years on the Board, here's what it came to: 

• Clare Munana: $99,600.00
• Norm Bobins: $133,200.00
• Dr. Tariq Butt: $133,200.00
• Alberto A. Carerro, Jr.: $74,400.00
• Peggy Davis: $32,400.00
• Roxane Ward: $49,200.00

Yesterday I gave out report cards to all the Board members and to Mayor Daley. I'm sorry to say that they all got "F"s, due to the failure of their group project, Renaissance 2010.

Here's some of the "data" that I used to evaluate them:

• "The Top Ten Reasons Why R2010 is a Failure"
• "Flunking R2010"

Despite the momentum of the media to cover the magnet school issue as the only event of the Board meeting yesterday, the GEM protest demanding a new neighborhood public high school in the Altgeld Gardens community managed to gain decent coverage.

The Sun-Times gave the GEM protest equal time, in a separate story.  

Fox News referred to me as a Fenger parent, but got the rest right in this lively report.

Catalyst mentioned our plans late Tuesday and Wednesday, and our actions in their day-of report on the Board meeting events and today's report.

The Chicago Current has this story. 

You can hear some of our testimony on WBEZ's live feed. 

We made Phil Jackson lose his cool.

(Correction: Earlier I had posted that Phil had used a bad word, but I am informed that it was not Phil but one of his group that shouted an obscenity to the Board while Phil was shouting.) 

The founder of the Black Star project, who had come to talk about magnet schools, became enraged 90 minutes into the Board's public participation segment which, with only 3 or 4 exceptions, was just one speaker after another from GEM or the Altgeld Gardens community promoting the proposal for the Hazel Johnson School of Environmental Justice as a "dual school" with Carver Military. Phil interrupted one of the GEM speakers, refused to sit down or stop yelling, and CPS security had to remove him from the chambers.

Phil had not gotten in line early enough (some of us were there at 6 am) and had to wait through all of our speakers before it was his turn.

Here's what we talked about.

If a tree falls in a forest...

...and all the press is there with cameras and microphones, will they report it? Not if their editors say that the real story is the leaf falling from the bush.

It's likely that you won't read or see much in the media about the GEM protest because the media had clearly decided ahead of time that the magnet school policy was going to be the news of the day.

But those of us who were in the room know that we blew the Board members' ears back and made a show of strength that, I believe, was even more impressive than the meeting after our famed camp out in August 2004. 

And we're just getting started.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Dec. 16, the GEM coalition will join with parents, students and community members from Altgeld Gardens to demand a new neighborhood school to share space in the former Carver High School.

GEM has worked with the Altgeld community to develop a vision for a high-quality high school in the community, which we believe is a civil right for every child. With R2010, CPS has taken away this right for thousands of Chicago children. We're about to turn that around and begin reclaiming our public schools.

LINE UP beginning early Wednesday morning to speak in support of the new local high school. SIGN UP to speak or to get a seating pass for the Board chambers - spaces go fast!

Read the full press alert here.

The Sun-Times gets it right on the danger of basing teacher evaluations on student test scores:  "Too heavy an emphasis will push schools already fixated on tests further in that direction....a simplistic evaluation that solely relies on student test scores...is worse than no evaluation system at all."

Using test scores to judge teachers is just one part of the craziness promoted by Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan and his cheerleaders at Advance Illinois, as I wrote last week. We need less emphasis on standardized tests, not more. It's time to end the test madness.   

Are you willing to risk your child's education for $200?

Advance Illinois and other maligners of public schools are dangling $400 million in our faces, hoping that we will ignore the consequences to children and rush into compliance with all aspects of Arne Duncan's Race to the Top program. With 2 million children in Illinois elementary and high schools, that works out to about $200 per child, at best.

Using the catch phrase, "Yes, We Can!" (yes, they really do) Advance Illinois has put out a "report" breathlessly urging Illinois to move quickly to pass a number of new laws to increase our chances of winning RTTT funds.   

If we do what Advance Illinois tells us, we will radically increase reliance on and use of standardized tests, which already have a stranglehold on education. Advance Illinois wants more tests and more testing, including kindergarten readiness tests, statewide end-of-course exams for all high school classes, on-line tests, and mandated interim practice tests for the annual state tests. They want us to use tests to help determine teachers' and principals' salaries. They want to use elementary and high school student test scores to evaluate college and university education programs.

If we do what Advance Illinois tells us, we will have hundreds more charter schools, despite the research showing that the charter schools now operating in Illinois are not serving students as well as traditional neighborhood schools. Advance Illinois thinks we should have more school turnarounds like those done under Chicago's Renaissance 2010, even though the research shows that those schools, too, are less successful than the neighborhood schools they are replacing.

Advance Illinois wants us to radically, fundamentally change the system of education in Illinois to comply with program requirements that have no track record of improving schools, and many if which have been shown to be harmful to students and their education, and to have undermined or destroyed neighborhood schools.

If we are just trying to raise some cash in a hurry, why not expand casinos, racing, and the lottery? Then anyone who feels the need to gamble can do so with their own lives and not those of our schoolchildren.

Here's an interesting story about a parent liaison working with the Great Lakes Naval Station to help transient Navy families work with local school systems. It's good that the Navy is supporting this kind of service -- the bottom line is that it's helping get students into school where they belong.

Families in Chicago feel "at sea" a lot of the time, too, and PURE has been a solid presence, helping with the same kinds of services. Given the lack of financial support for our work here, we're thinking about enlisting....

Donate now! Thanks!

Well, I'm learning that the USDE under Arne Duncan is no better than CPS under Arne Duncan (or, now, Ron Huberman) when it comes to responding to FOIA requests.

A couple of months ago I reported that sent in requests to CPS and the USDE for the data that Fed Ed Head Duncan used to dismiss the possibility that his policies might have had any impact on the violence at Fenger High School.

CPS "lost" my letter in moving their FOIA function from Communications to Law. I received a voice mail from the new FOIA person on November 11, saying she had just received the letter. That's the last I heard from her.

The USDE FOIA person sent me a lovely letter in on October 19th, waiving our fees and notifying me of the tracking number of my request. That was the last I heard from her.

I've just sent out second requests. I also notified the Illinois Attorney General of the CPS failure to respond. As of January 1, 2010, there may even be some teeth behind this quest.... 

It's always fun to know that we have allies all over the globe, and that our concerns are shared. Here's one we just received from Guam:

As a former Chicagoan, an LSC member (community rep), and a Education school dean, I think this recent article on Strategic Learning Initiatives' approach just highlights what many of us knew--a good principal is the key to a good school. So much is about attitude and shared values.

I really like reading your emails etc. Such solid and sensible thinking. I take counsel as my School of Education begins a growth spurt--and growth in size and quality.

Elizabeth M. Hawthorne

University of Guam 

"These findings are particularly timely as school districts nationwide launch a new round of efforts to turn around their most troubled schools." (Consortium publication announcement)

Unlike their expose of the shortcomings of R2010, which they delayed until after Arne Duncan's confirmation hearings and after the Board of Ed voted to close and intervene in 16 more schools, the Consortium is giving us a big heads-up on a new report that promotes comprehensive school reform based on five essential supports.

Perhaps they have become as concerned as we are about Fed Ed Head Duncan's Race to Waste Money on Stuff that Doesn't Work.

Here's the full announcement:

Coming this January-- Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago A new book by researchers from the Consortium on Chicago School Research, University of Chicago provides a detailed analysis of why 100 elementary schools showed extraordinary progress in attendance and test scores over a seven-year period and why 100 others did not. Using massive longitudinal evidence on the conditions within schools and the communities in which they are located, the study yields a comprehensive set of school practices and conditions that promote improvement, noting that the absence of these spells stagnation.

The five essential supports are: school leadership, professional capacity, parent-community ties, student-centered learning climate, and instructional guidance. In contrast to many current reform efforts that seek to spur progress through one or two of these elements, this book shows that substantial school improvement requires building the social organization within schools and orchestrating initiatives across multiple domains.  

Moving beyond the schoolhouse, the authors analyze community context to discover the ways internal practices of improving schools are inexorably entwined with the social resources of local neighborhoods. They raise troublesome questions about our society’s capacity to improve schooling in its most neglected communities.

These findings are particularly timely as school districts nationwide launch a new round of efforts to turn around their most troubled schools. This pioneering undertaking by authors Anthony S. Bryk, Penny Bender Sebring, Elaine Allensworth, Stuart Luppescu, and John Q. Easton provides invaluable knowledge to urban education professionals and policy makers alike. The University of Chicago Press will publish this book on January 15, 2010.

There's been a small uproar over "lost" high school juniors -- students who are "disappeared" from state reporting by schools that don't test them until they are seniors, ostensibly because they don't have enough credits to be juniors at the time of PSAE testing, but, some suspect, really because it's a way to keep potential low scores off the books. Only the PSAE scores of juniors count towards school and district Adequate Yearly Progress numbers under NCLB.

Well, I don't like cheating either, and I think people who manipulate student data just to make adults look better are rotten. 

But what I think is worse is a system that makes the schools' reasoning seem like a lame excuse: according to the Tribune story, school officials wanted students to be as well-prepared as possible for the test, regardless of their number of years in the school:

• "the added class time better prepares students for the rigorous test, which includes the ACT college entrance exam."
• Thornton High School increased credit hour requirements for junior status; they say that the higher standards "ensure students are better prepared to take the exam and graduate."
• A state testing review committee member "prefers that academic standing rather than years in the system determine when teens advance to junior status."

So, what's the exam for? Is it to help prepare students to succeed in school and graduate? Or is it to give the students and the school a label based on a factor of time that may have little to do with student progress? Is it to give a large metropolitan newspaper the ammunition to point the finger, say "Gotcha!" and then promote the firing of the school staff, the disruption of students, and the ultimate failure of public education? 

More reason to seriously consider non-graded classrooms, where students aren't punished (i.e. flunked) if they move at a different pace from their peers, and move to the next level only when they are ready.

Students should have a right to be in school somewhere on any given school day.

For many years PURE has been urging CPS to establish an "in school first" policy -- schools would have to put students in classrooms even if there are questions about enrollment status or other issues. In other words, children go to class, adults work out the details. 

If it turns out that the student should be in some other school, the worst that's happened is that the student has been in class in the wrong place, instead of at home or on the street getting shot in the head like Jeremy Gonzalez, who is now on life support at Children's Memorial Hospital.

Of course I have no idea why Jeremy Gonzalez was not immediately admitted to Ames Middle School yesterday morning. The Tribune quotes CPS spokesperson Monique Bond: "the school was making arrangements for re-entry, and the plans were all being worked out,. (His) mother decided to go home and fill out the packet and bring it back to school the next day." 

Of course, this is the same Monique Bond who explained how looooong it will take to transfer Altgeld Gardens students from Fenger to other schools.

Students in school while adults work out the details. How hard could that be?

UPDATE: Did your LSC get invited? I just heard from the LSC chair of one school that they never received anything about this from CPS.

***

10 years ago, a broad representation of the Chicago school reform community, including such groups as the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, Business and Professional People in the Public Interest, Chicago United, and PURE, got together to plan a 10th anniversary party for local school councils. We dedicated a small monument in front of  Washington Irving School, where the School Reform Act of 1989, which established LSCs, was signed. Scroll down to the bottom of Irving School's web site and you can see the stone.

We created a fancy booklet that told the story of LSCs and included a congratulatory letter from the mayor and (I think) the governor. We had a nice, modest party and celebrated how much had been done in ten years.

How times have changed. LSCs were under attack even in 1999, but there was still a cohesive set of groups and individuals who understood how critical it is to the LSC movement that we work together. Paul Vallas's administration at least made a show of being part of the team.

This week, CPS and Designs for Change are offering dueling celebrations of the 20th anniversary of LSCs.

I can't find anything on either groups' web sites about these parties. PURE never received anything directly about the CPS event, which takes place Thursday from 5 to 7 pm at Andrew Jackson School. Here's a copy of a draft letter forwarded to me by an LSC member about a week ago (don't let the November 17th date on the letter fool you - CPS practice is to back date all their correspondence to give the illusion of timeliness and preparation).

Here's the invitation for the DFC event, which is on Friday from 6 to 10 pm at Irving School. 

Those who see the glass as half full can think of this as two parties for the price of none.  

The 2009 comparison scores on the mathematics National Assessment of Educational Progress ()NAEP) are out and, as usual, only the CPS press office could love these results.

The Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) is a comparison of NAEP scores of large urban school districts with each other and the nation.

While CPS's press release touts an overall increase since 2003, this was true of all participating districts. Several districts also showed progress since 2007, but the report  states that there was no significant improvement in Chicago's results since the last testing either in student outcomes or in closing the achievement gap (see pp. 44-45 of the report).

Chicago has been placing near the bottom of district rankings. Addition of several new districts to the program since 2007 has allowed Chicago to move "up" from 10th out of 12 to 10th out of 18. Woo-hoo!!!

I came across some notes I made of a phone call from Arne Duncan back in the summer of 2003 (when he was still speaking to me). He had called about something else but I asked him about the then new Civic Committee report, Left Behind, which called for 100 new charter schools in Chicago.

He told me that he was against the idea (which later became the Mayor's slightly modified Renaissance 2010 idea) and that charter schools were no panacea.  

Well, after a few years of blind charter love, Arne's back to saying that they're no panacea (He likes to find a phrase and stick to it. It helps him remember what he thinks.). In fact, now he's saying that he only likes "good" charter schools. But RTTT and other new federal giveaways don't distinguish  between good and bad charters. In fact, these programs are all about quantity, not quality.

Talk is cheap, RTTT is expensive, and our children deserve more higher-order thinking and fewer glib cliches.

Sorry, not here in Chicago. Milwaukee is using $4 million in stimulus money to improve their engagement of parents in the public schools, according to the Journal-Sentinel.

The article includes this remarkably un-self-critical comment from LSC-buster Arne Duncan:  "I think often, historically, parents have been really discouraged from being engaged," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told the Journal Sentinel. "It's very easy to talk about the lack of parental involvement, and while there are a lot of issues there, I think it's important (for schools and teachers) to be self-critical first."

Education Week reports on the final version of RTTT, which is less restrictive than the draft version on allowing districts to turn schools around without total staff dismissal, school closure, or privatization via charter school. The draft had allowed that option only if it was not "feasible" to use the other three methods clearly preferred by Duncan.

However, even in the final version, the less radical model may be used in no more than 50% of targeted schools in districts like Chicago with more than 9 "failing" schools.

Ed Week points to a Chicago model, currently being implemented in 10 CPS schools  by Strategic Learning Initiatives (SLI), which suggests that schools can be improved without harming children or adults.   

SLI CEO and long-time PURE member John Simmons told Ed Week, “We really don’t see much in the research that says the people in the buildings are the problem. What we find is that it’s the systems that are the problem.”

"Strategic Learning uses a 'performance management' approach that emphasizes shared leadership, professional development, ongoing support for teachers to change instructional practices based on frequent assessments of student learning, and parent engagement. The program also organizes the schools into networks, so that teachers can collaborate and swap ideas for improvement with their colleagues at other campuses."

An independent review of the program, which is called Focused Instruction Process, concluded that "well before decisions are made to reconstitute schools under the mandates of NCLB, school districts would be wise to consider far less drastic, but clearly powerful, interventions such as the Focused Instruction Process."

Read SLI's report of their program's first two years here, and the independent validation study of the program's positive results here. 

A rhetorical question

So, why no attention to this good news from the local media? 

Please read this long message, "5 Axioms of Protest,"  from an activist in the recent protests over fee hikes at several University of California campuses. Like FairTest's Monty Neill, who forwarded this to his national lists, I don't know anything more about the writer, but I think we all need to take his/her comments to heart as we move into the next round of school closings and the realization of a destructive Race to the Top program.

Those of us who oppose these programs must ratchet up our strategies. We aren't going to make a difference just by showing up at Board meetings and following their rules, listening to their empty promises, and going home to plan for the next Board meeting.

It's time to make specific demands, set deadlines, and carry out consequences. It's also time to target the person behind the Chicago programs -- Mayor Daley -- rather than his interchangeable front men and women at the Board of Education. 

Please read the attached and share your thoughts.

From a blog report of Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan's recent meeting with Education Week reporters: 

"He also took issue with my colleague Debbie Viadero's question about whether there's enough scientifically based evidence to back up the administration's reform strategies (such as charters and teacher performance pay). 'I would challenge your assumption,' he told her. It's not just her assumption, though, as a lot of folks are wondering where the evidence is.

" 'I think there's a lot of scientific evidence that the status quo doesn't work,' he said."

Do we have to say it? The fact that the status quo doesn't work is no excuse for ignoring evidence that your pet programs don't work, or for lying about their supposed success. 

Anyway, he's improved a little over his response to a similar question from the Tribune last July:

"Q: You describe your policies as research-driven, but aren't most of the findings unreliable?

"A: I'm actually more optimistic than that."

How refreshing to read this skeptical, balanced L. A. Times editorial on charter schools. How shocking to realize that the L.A. Times is owned by the Tribune Company, whose flagship newspaper's editors continue to be in slack-jawed awe of charters based, from what we can gather, simply on the magnificence of their waiting lists.  

Where else have you read a major newspaper editorial that questions the ascension of a charter school guru (Green Dot's Steve Barr) to a national position based on less than one year of unimpressive results from his neighborhood-based program?

Or truth-telling like this: "Charter schools have a built-in advantage. In California, most charter schools fill their seats through lotteries, to give all students an equal chance and to prevent the schools from enrolling only the most promising students. It's a fair system, but it skews enrollment because the lotteries attract motivated, involved families. In addition, charter schools can require extra responsibilities for students and parents, such as volunteering time on campus, and can close enrollment when they are full. They also have more authority to expel students who do not meet their standards for behavior. Families that are unable or unwilling to invest that much in their children's education will end up at public schools, which have to accept all students within their boundaries."

How to fix charter laws

The editorial goes beyond critiquing charters to raise important policy questions. Their concerns echo those PURE raised 15 years ago in this position paper prepared for the debate over the 1995 "mayoral control" changes in the state school reform laws. I think we were pretty right on with these concerns back then, which still need to be addressed. 

The L.A. Times editorial puts it this way: "While seeking to boost charter schools throughout the nation, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has not addressed other key issues: modifying enrollment practices to level the playing field between charters and public schools; ensuring that students at public schools don't lose out when new charter schools open; and determining whether innovations can be usefully replicated elsewhere."

Governor Quinn has appointed a "P-20 Council," a panel designed to help the state comply with Race to the Top requirements. Among other things, it will oversee the development of a longitudinal student tracking system, which may lead to tying student test scores to teacher evaluations, a goal of Arne Duncan's under RTTT. 

The governor's press release states that, among others, "parents'" are included on the panel. Looking over (and googling the unfamiliar names on) the list, I see that, as usual, the Illinois PTA president is the only person who can be said to represent parents. Given the PTA's small footprint in Chicago, that leaves a lot of us without a voice in this important process. 

Only yesterday I submitted comments to the USDE on assessment which included the point that "special emphasis must be given to involving parents (not just one or two token parent representatives, or other stakeholders who claim to represent parents, too, because they also have children)."

I was thinking of Illinois and its disrespect of parents when I wrote that.

No, it probably couldn't happen today, but reading the Sun-Times' Mark Brown's recent columns about naked swim classes and naked "posture checks" back in the late 1960's reminds me how important it is for parents to know what's going on in the schools and not to be afraid to question things that don't sound right, no matter what the bureaucratic justification might be.

Back in October, Brown wrote a couple of columns about a tradition he'd been hearing about -- boys swimming naked in gym class. Apparently it was quite common in the 1960's in Chicago and some suburban high schools. 

His follow-up story today is a doozy. He writes, "For many years, it turns out, sophomore girls at Oak Park-River Forest were required to pose for (naked) photos, which were developed into silhouette prints called 'shadowgraphs,' as a means of checking for posture abnormalities."

Right. The gym teachers were skilled in analyzing silhouettes to determine if girls had "scoliosis and other spinal problems." Sounds like the gym teachers I had - you, too?

Why didn't parents challenge such a crazy idea?

Of course, that's just after the era when schools were directed to have us kids practice crouching under our desks to save us from atomic bombs.

More silly school ideas

When my sons were in school, the trend was to try to improve children's self-esteem. As an LSC member, I was all in favor of that idea, especially since the school was not generally a child-centered environment. The LSC was looking for a program of student incentives, training and support for teachers, fun programs for everyone, etc. But that's not how it rolled out.  

No, our school's not-so-sharp principal assigned his favorite not-so-sharp staffer the job of "self-esteem teacher." He actually had her teaching "self-esteem class." This came to our attention the day our son came home and told us that the teacher had forced them to stand with their arms in the air for ten minutes during self-esteem class because someone had acted up, 

While I usually love irony, I draw the line when it involves the corporal punishment of children. My husband and I filed a complaint and told the principal that we would be observing in the self-esteem classroom for a few days.

What we saw was a prime example of a reasonable idea gone disastrous as a result of poor leadership and clueless implementation.

We saw the teacher instruct the children to draw a picture of themselves and their families - then she walked from desk to desk criticizing the drawings: "Oh, Jimmy, you drew yourself too small. We'll have to fix that," etc.  

Well, I know education is hard. For every boneheaded bureaucrat there are hundreds of  hard-working, talented teachers doing the hardest job in the world every day. It's just too bad that the bureaucrats run things. 

And that's why parents need to be present and need to speak out when things seems wrong.   

You think your job is tough?

Imagine being a Board of Education bureaucrat in charge of transferring a handful of students from Fenger to other CPS high schools.

Well, let's let professional spokeswoman Monique Bond explain the process, as reported in the Tribune:

"Bond said the transfer of students who filed the lawsuit will be approved right away, but they might not be able to start at their new school until January or February. She said the district must first meet with parents, review individual student profiles and check enrollment and seat availability at the transfer schools.

" 'Transferring is not as easy as it sounds,' she said."

See, that's why we need to pay these folks $100,000-plus each. It's just not that easy coming up with new excuses all the time for why they can't do the right thing.  

Tomorrow is the last day for people to submit their comments on how assessment can be improved under NCLB.

PURE will post this position paper this afternoon.

Here's a summary of our comments:

PURE believes that a high-quality assessment and accountability system is

essential to a high-quality public education for all children. We support

assessment and accountability systems which are built on high-quality learning

standards, incorporate multiple measures of student progress over time, value

local assessment, are transparent to the public, and demonstrably support

improved teaching and learning.

Our specific recommendations for ways the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) can

support an improved system are as follows:

◙ Specify that state test scores may not to be used alone to make important

educational decisions about children.

◙ Require that other measures of student progress beyond standardized tests be

included in student and school assessment.

◙ Require publication of significant portions of any annual state standardized

tests.

◙ Require that states allow parents to opt their children out of any state or local

standardized test.

◙ Specify regular public review and revision of state learning standards and

related assessment.

◙ Locate the key elements of school evaluation at the local school community

level.

George Schmidt of Substance and CORE's budget committee are offering a two-hour workshop on the CPS budget this Saturday, Dec. 5, from 1 to 3 pm at Senn High School, 5900 N. Glenwood.

From the CORE flyer: 

"Bogus and inflated CPS budget deficits created by mathematical manipulation led to substantial teacher layoffs this year.  Students are the ones who ultimately suffer with crowded classrooms, slashing of course offerings, and instability in their education.    "Neighborhood schools literally crumble in disrepair while charters, selective enrollment, and military academies are showered with funds.   "In order to dismantle the two-tiered education system in CPS and fight for more money for our schools, we must learn how exactly CPS mismanages our money."

-----

Presenters will offer LSC training credit for lessons 7, 8, or 9. 

Please note: If you plan to attend, they are asking that you pick up a copy of CPS's 

Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)from CPS headquarters (125 S. Clark Street, no floor specificed).

For more information, please call 773-266-2095.

Thanks (I think) to Mike Klonsky at Small Talk for sharing the news that Paul Vallas is trying to win a contract to run 35 L.A. schools for Synesi, a consulting firm he is connected with.

According to Mike, Synesi is "run by several of Vallas' old cronies like Gary Solomon and former intervention chief Phil Hanson, from the Chicago district who market Vallas' management talents with first-time-free consults, while feathering a nest for him once he leaves New Orleans."

Yes, we all remember the stunning success of probation/intervention under Phil Hansen. 

It's quite likely that when Vallas's contract in New Orleans is up, he will be back in Chicago, as if things weren't bad enough here.  

Not so much a turkey, then, than a turkey vulture circling closer and closer. 

I want to take a moment to thank the many people who value and support PURE's work. It is very gratifying to hear how much parents appreciate having PURE to depend on when they are trying to make schools do right by their children. We love getting feedback from activist teachers and others who use our fact sheets to help them speak truth to power. It's also fun when Bloomberg News, Education Week, and the Associated Press want to know what PURE thinks about the big education issues of the day.

PURE's staff, Board and members have a lot to be thankful for, including 22 years of exciting, meaningful, effective work for public school children. We have changed the system and we have changed lives.

And we're not done yet. We are pushing CPS harder to reduce the negative effects of high-stakes testing on our children. Our website just logged its 2 millionth visitor, and we're getting over 100,000 hits per month. Last month was our biggest so far – www.pureparents.org logged even more visits than last January when we posted the school closing list to make sure that the schools got the news before CPS gave it to the media. PURE's Chicago Parents Union project is off to a solid start, and we are already sending our CPU manual to parent groups across the nation,

Despite results like these, PURE continues to be in a daily struggle to remain alive. We've proved that we can operate on a shoestring – but even shoestrings cost something!

For those of you who are still reading this message, I'm guessing that PURE has helped your child, made you laugh out loud, given you something to think about or to share with a friend, presented you with the facts that confirm your gut feeling, backed you up when you felt alone, or in some other way touched your life. If so, please consider making a generous donation today, either using the Donate Now feature on our web site or by sending a check or money order to PURE at 100 S. Morgan Street, Chicago 60607,

Thank you, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Wow - I'd barely posted my entry about hidden agendas when CPS Board member Peggy Davis offered this classic at today's Board meeting:

"I hope that starting today that we will put aside our personal agendas, and that we will, as Michael did, put the children first," said board member Peggy Davis.

Here's another idea. How about in honor of the enormous struggle that Michael Scott fought, and lost, to listen to the community and do the best thing for children while promoting Mayor Daley's plans, we all agree to tell the truth, no matter what that does to the Mayor and Renaissance 2010?

The AP reports on the 10th anniversary of the uproar over the two-year suspensions of four African-American students from a Decatur, IL, high school. Reporter John O'Connor offers evidence that the racial disparity in school discipline has widened, not closed, since 1999. 

"It's such a gaping hole that now more than half of all Illinois children suspended from public schools are black, even though they represent less than one-fifth of the enrollment."

The story quotes me on the "very serious problem with the school system and its ability to serve the needs of that population."

Folks, this is an Office for Civil Rights complaint waiting to be filed. If there are parents of African-American students who feel they have been unfairly targeted with disciplinary actions, please contact PURE to discuss a possible claim, or file it yourself by going here.

The Tribune's Sunday editorial featured a scorching attack on the National Education Association based on a You Tube video in which a retiring NEA lawyer states that the union's top priority is protecting its members.

Yes, that is what unions do, much to the dissatisfaction of the Tribune, whose editors went on to gleefully conclude that educating children is not the NEA's top priority, though the lawyer also says that "closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like...are the goals that guide the work we do."  

The Trib was clued into this "gotcha" video by the Rev. Sen. James Meeks, who recently stated at Operation PUSH that the Chicago Teachers Union is the worst gang in Chicago. So, following the old adage that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, the Trib now totally loves Meeks.

And their love is made even more perfect by the shared desire of the Trib editors and Meeks to punish and weaken teachers' unions by promoting unlimited charters and vouchers. 

"It's all for the children" 

As a veteran local school council member,  I have learned that when someone complains that "you never talk about children," they're usually trying to shut you up because you're getting too close to the truth, and when someone asserts that they are only doing something "for the children," there are usually other agendas at work.

Come on, folks -- we ALL want what's best for children. Get real. Now let's peel back the rest of the onion. 

In the case of the Tribune, their union-busting, privatization-hungry, corporate-model-worshipping preferences are well-known. Their defense of charters ignores the issue of academic progress (something that is truly good for children), and instead focuses on the marketplace value of charter "waiting lists."

The situation with Senator Meeks is a little more complicated. He's eccentric (some might say flaky).   He has gone to the mat for school funding in a state where no one else has the guts to stand up to the powers that be. Taking a page from PURE's 1990's playbook, he bused CPS students to the suburbs to "register" them for school.

But is he "genuinely looking out for kids," as the Tribune claims?

If he's genuinely looking out for kids, how can he promote more charter schools? A 2009 Stanford report clearly shows that African-American students enrolled in charter schools in Illinois do significantly worse in reading compared to their counterparts in traditional schools, and gain no benefit in math.

If he's genuinely looking out for kids, how can he promote vouchers when the research on that strategy is equally grim? The longest-running voucher program, in Milwaukee, has shown no advantage for students in the voucher program over the traditional schools. 

If he's genuinely looking out for kids, how can he advocate what is essentially more Renaissance 2010, a failed program that has caused increased student drop-outs, push-outs, and violence without actually improving schools.

Could there be another agenda behind Rev. Meeks' interest in vouchers? Of course. A voucher program in Illinois would directly benefit the private religious school run by Meeks' church, the Salem Christian Academy (S. C. A.), which Rev. Meeks serves as Pastor/CEO.

A bad joke?     

Well, maybe the Rev. Sen. can go on a national tour ala Duncan-Gingrich-Sharpton. Meeks can pair up with Rod Paige, George Bush's Secretary of Education, who called the NEA a terrorist organization.

At least Paige tried to apologize for his comment, calling his statement a "bad joke." Unfortunately, the joke will be on our children if we don't get hold of Senator Meeks before he pushes his proposals through the legislature in January 2010.   

I didn't notice this until Monday, but the state board of education cancelled their November meeting which was scheduled for this week in Chicago.This was the only meeting planned for Chicago (all others are in Springfield) since January and would have offered an opportunity for local folks to bring our concerns about Race to the Top direclty to state board members before ISBE takes action in January.  

Thanks to D299 for the heads up  - CPS has announced that the postponed Board meeting has been rescheduled for Monday, Nov. 23, at 10:30.

Michael Scott would love the irony of this part: the public participation segment of the meeting will begin with comments from those people who wish to express their condolences. Since it's to be expected that there will be a lot of speakers honoring the school board president, it's unlikely that there will be any time left for folks to raise any potentially controversial issues -- the tamest Board meeting ever.

Funeral arrangements

In case you haven't read this elsewhere, the funeral for family and close friends of Mr. Scott will be on Saturday. A larger public event will take place on Sunday, Nov. 22, at 4:30 pm at the University of Illinois-Chicago Forum, 725 Roosevelt Rd.

So, only the president can call for all American flags to be flown at half-staff as a sign of mourning for a significant death, but a governor can make a proclamation for American flags to be lowered statewide, and the mayor can decide to lower city flags.

Wouldn't now be a good time?

City Hall, 2pm on 11/19: 

CPS central office, 2pm on 11/19: 

 Jones HS, 2 pm on 11/19 

 Press statement  from Senator Russ Feingold regarding findings of a General Accounting Office study he requested:

GAO Study Shows Problematic Practices Like Teaching to the Test and Curriculum Narrowing Happening More Frequently in High-Poverty and High-Minority Schools

"The study found that problematic teaching practices like teaching to the test and spending more time on test preparation are happening more frequently in high-poverty and high-minority schools, many of which already have less access to high-quality teachers and resources than more affluent schools. While responsible testing is an important part of measuring achievement and holding schools accountable, it should not come at the expense of providing students a well-rounded education that prepares them for success later in life....

"Congress should also look seriously at the troubling findings in this report about the toll that high-stakes testing is taking on disadvantaged students.  That is why I am pushing two key reforms of the federal testing mandate - supporting the development of higher quality tests and ensuring students and schools are measured by more than test scores. These are objectives the Obama administration supports and ones I will work to include in whatever education reform legislation Congress passes."

Chicago's Fox News has posted a feature where you can find out the absence rates for teachers in individual CPS schools.

This is the first year that the CPS school "scorecards" have included data on teacher attendance. There was a placeholder for this data for the first two years. You can find a school's scorecard by searching for the school here on the CPS web site.

Fox's data is more detailed, including a breakdown of absences on Mondays and Fridays as well as overall percentages. 

While it's a stretch to draw any conclusions about data of this sort, I'm gonna draw a couple anyway!

First of all, overall teacher absence rates seem low, in the 2-4% range. This would seem to contradict persistent attacks on CPS teachers for being "lazy," etc. 

Second, I checked out and compared a few schools, looking at "desirable" magnet and other northside schools like LaSalle, Franklin and Farnsworth, where you might expect more "dedication" from teachers, i.e. you would not expect them to take Fridays off more often than teachers at more challenging schools like Juarez and Lewis, but in fact the Friday absence rate is significantly higher at some schools that might be considered more desirable places of employment.

Maybe teachers in those "better" schools are allowed to take Fridays off as a perk of their status as teachers at those desirable schools -- or there is a more indulgent administration eager to hold on to teachers who may be considered better?

Look at the numbers for yourself:

Northside and magnet schools: 

• LaSalle: Friday absences, 8.14%; overall absences, 4.4%
• Franklin: Friday, 7.41%; overall, 5.07%
• Oriole Park: Friday, 6.81%; overall 4.39%
• Farnsworth: Friday, 6.45%; overall 5.02%

• Lewis: Friday, 5.43%; overall 3.84%
• Melody: Friday, 5.28%; overall 3.88%
• Juarez HS: Friday, 5.2%, overall 3.59%
• Joplin: Friday, 0.1%; overall .09% (wow!)

Of course, there are lots of challenging schools with high and even very high absence rates, and selective or other magnets with low absences, but some differences are intriguing, It's always good to have more information about schools.

Jim Broadway's State School News Service is beginning to build an information center on the education-related positions of each gubernatorial candidate. You may want to bookmark this page and check in from time to time between now and the February 2 primary. He's also asking folks to add what you know about the candidates to the page's contents.

PURE opposes the proposed new selection procedures for the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) magnet and selective enrollment schools. The magnet school application process has always given an advantage to white students. Although they are only 8% of the school population, white students have been allowed to make up as much as 35% of the slots in the most sought-after magnet schools. It seems obvious that the changes CPS is proposing in light of the end of the consent decree are likely to make this disparity even worse, providing even less chance for African-American and Latino children to get into these desirable schools.

PURE's recommendations for a more balanced magnet/selective enrollment enrollment policy:

1. Include race as one of several factors (this has been done elsewhere without problems).

2. Use a family's actual income level, not that of their community.

3. Give preference to low income families using a point system that gives more weight to low-income criteria; this may help balance out the unequal results from test scores.

4. Significantly lower the proximity preference instead of raising it (currently 30%, not 25% as stated in the position paper).

Click here for the full position paper.

The terrible news of Chicago Board of Education President Michael Scott's death is just sinking in. We knew him to be a warm-hearted, friendly man who clearly knew the difference between politics and people. We extend our sincere condolences to his family.

UPDATE: The final RTTT guidelines are out, and I'm not terribly impressed with the result. Changes seem minimal, especially in the area of assessment and charter school and turnaround mandates which we have been especially concerned about.  

All of this makes it even more critical that the assessment aspect of RTTT be challenged and changed. Your opportunity to have input is detailed below.

****

We will see tomorrow whether Fed Ed Head Duncan listened to the hundreds of voices commenting on his Race to the Top plan - that's when we expect the revised, final RTTT guidelines to be made public.

Meanwhile, they are collecting more input from experts and the public on how to improve assessment. You can comment here until December 2.

In addition, the feds are holding three hearings to gather testimony on the subject. One somewhat positive sign is that, according to FairTest's Monty Neill, "the list of experts the Department invited to testify at the three hearings contains many people who support high-quality assessment properly used.... 

some were co-authors of the Forum on Educational Accountability's Expert Panel on Assessment report (Jim Pellegrino, Jamal Abedi, Brian Gong). Other prominent reformers include Linda Darling-Hammond."

Here's what Monty will say tomorrow at the Boston hearing.  

I met with Ron Huberman yesterday to discuss PURE's proposal to revise the elementary promotion policy.

It was a good first meeting. He acknowledged that the current promotion policy is a problem. He expressed interest in ideas for avoiding both retention and social promotion such as nongraded classrooms and bringing back some version of Chicago's highly successful Child Parent Centers.

He said that he supports LSCs and believes they are a good reform. 

He wants to increase effective parent involvement programs.

So, it's up to us to hold him to these statements, and do it quickly. Our children have been waiting too long for meaningful changes that work. 

CPS has announced the new criteria for selecting students for magnet schools, and it's even worse -- more convoluted, less transparent  - than the original process, if you can believe that.

For non-selective magnets, they are going to fill 50% of all seats first with siblings of current students, and then with "proximity" students (those living within 1.5 miles of the school).

The other 50% will be filled by dividing the rest of the application pool into four groups based on census information (mostly income level) of the student's neighborhood and select students equally from each of the four groups.

For selective enrollment schools, they will fill 50% of the seats on pure test score rank order and the other 50% by test score rank order equally from the four socioeconomic groups.

How will this play out? Who knows? Parents are likely to be even more frustrated and distrustful of the system. 

It says to me that we need to work even harder to fix and upgrade our neighborhood schools and find better, more creative ways to integrate our city and our children's experiences. 

UPDATE; I received a voice mail message from someone in the CPS Law Department  who told me that FOIA Officer Elizabeth Calhoun is no longer at CPS, and that FOIA requests now need to go to the Law Department. I found the linked information by searching for FOIA, but the Communications Department, where Calhoun worked, still lists responding to FOIA requests as one of its goals.  Not too helpful. Clearly my first FOIA request sent to Calhoun was not forwarded internally. 

*****   

Today I sent an appeal letter to CPS which has failed to respond to my October 19 FOIA request for any information supporting Arne Duncan's statement about Fenger High School's enrollment of Altgeld Gardens students.

Duncan used this "information" to back up his claim that it was absolutely ridiculous to suggest that Renaissance 2010 and the closing of Carver to its neighborhood had anything to do with increased violence at Fenger or the death of Derrion Albert.

It's been two weeks. Current Illinois law requires a response within 7 business days. (After January 1, 2010, they will only have 5 business days, and penalties will kick in. Can't wait!!!)

If we don't get a response soon, we will take it to the Attorney General. 

As I mentioned before, I did receive an initial, "we need more time" response to my FOIA from the Arne's new FOIA officer at the Dept. of Education. Federal law allows for 20 business days for a full response. That deadline is coming up pretty soon, too. 

If teaching to the test didn't already seem absurd, how about this approach to field trips by a New York City charter school?

"Leaving no possible test point unexplored, the educators at the Harlem Success Academy, a fast-growing chain of four charter schools known for a relentless emphasis on data, have invented a form of test preparation. The schools haul their students to a farm each year, hoping to expose them to the rural life and lift their scores."

The story rightly points out that, among other biases, standardized tests ask questions that are unfair because they fall outside of some students' frame of reference. A question on a New York state standardized test asked for a calculation based on the number of corn stalks in a row; another test asked students to calculate how long it takes to run around a city block. If you aren't familiar with the term "stalk" or don't know how big a city block is, you will be at a disadvantage, and your score may not reflect your real math knowledge.

It's just more evidence that standardized tests can never effectively measure student learning, and to pretend that they can is bad for students and bad for education.

Sometimes a cow should just be a cow.

There's a great opening line in CTU President Marilyn Stewart letter to the Tribune ("Don't blame teachers") in response to Rev. Sen. James Meeks' diatribe:

"Blaming teachers for violence that occurs outside the school is analogous to blaming preachers for the misdeeds of their congregation members."

I'm a pastor's wife and I still thought it was hilarious.

Long-time friend and colleague Jonathan Goldman is running for state representative in the 10th district. 

Jonathan worked closely with PURE as executive director of the Lead Elimination Action Drive and at the Citywide Coalition for School Reform (which is no longer around).

According to Jonathan's press release, "He is in his fifth term as an elected Local School Council member, and he is currently the LSC Chair at Drummond Montessori Magnet School. He also has served on the board of the Bucktown Community Organization. Goldman’s other leadership roles have included Executive Director of the Lead Elimination Action Drive and positions with the Citizens Utility Board, the CityWide Coalition for School Reform and the Center for Neighborhood Technology."

Jonathan will be a strong ally in Springfield at a time when LSCs are under increasing attack.

Listening to Arne Duncan talk about charters to a planeful of reporters on the way to Madison last week almost makes you feel sorry for the guy.

"On your second point, on charter caps, I've been really clear I'm not a fan of charter schools, I'm a fan of good charter schools. And what we need in this country is just more good schools. We need more good elementary, more good middle, more good high schools. No second grader knows whether they're going to a charter school, or a gifted school, or traditional school, or magnet school. They know, does my teacher care about me? Am I safe? Is there high expectations? Does the principal know who I am? We need more good schools. And where you have -- where you have good charters, we need to replicate them and to learn from them and to grow. Where you have bad charters, we need to close them down and hold them accountable. And so this is not let a thousand flowers bloom, this is trying to take what is being successful and grow. And what I would say is if something is working, if you reduce - - we talked about the graduation rate, if you're doing something to reduce the dropout rate and increase the graduation rate, would you put a cap on that strategy? Would you ever say that we're going to cap the number of students who can take AP classes this year? We're going to limit the number of kids who take -- we're going to limit the number of kids that graduate? We would never do that. So if something is working, if that innovation is helping us get better, why would you put an artificial cap on it?"

OK, breathe....

Yes, it sounds goofy -- and it is. He's just not making sense.

1) Arne's plans don't support the development and expansion of good schools. His list of indicators for a good school ("Does my teacher care about me?" etc.) is not what your plans measure.

2) "This is not let a thousand flowers bloom." No, that's exactly what it is. He is demanding that states let a thousand -- or more -- charters "bloom" -- or infest the ground -- by mandating the lifting of charter caps.

3) "So if something is working... why put an artificial cap on it?" But charters demonstrably are NOT working. That part is just a lie. But I guess at this point Arne can plead insanity.  

We were first introduced to the CPS Super Donut with this flyer brought home by one of our high school sons during IGAP (the old ISAT) testing week in 1997. Apparently Paul Vallas had heard that a sugary breakfast taken before testing could bump up student scores, and he was never one to miss an opportunity to enhance his legend. 

Today's Tribune report on the 3-doughnut breakfast CPS offers our children these days shows how little has changed. The Super Donut continues to be an apt symbol of the system's larger operations. 

According to the Tribune, the CPS breakfast menu and food service make it possible for a student to eat a breakfast that consists of a doughnut, a Pop-Tart, and Frosted Flakes, or -- as the reporter saw one student do --  three doughnuts. 

The reporter points out that the word doughnut is not actually used on the school's posted menu, but the brand name, "MVP Breakfast," so most parents don't realize what their children might be eating every morning.  

While CPS's breakfast menu is "within federal guidelines" (think No Child Left Behind), every nutrition and health expert interviewed was alarmed by the potential short- and long-term negative effects of such unhealthy fare.

Substitute "high-stakes testing," "flunking students," or "school closings" for doughnuts and you have CPS's education reform plan in a nutshell. Research is clear that these efforts are also bad for children, but CPS ignores the experts there, too.

The suggestion that an unhealthy breakfast is better than no breakfast at all is reminiscent of the "retention versus social promotion" debate, or the "we can't wait another moment to replace failing schools" argument --- as though the choice is between depriving children altogether or simply feeding them improperly.  

And then there's the inevitable district cover-up. Monica Eng's sidebar describes the efforts of CPS central office staff to stage a healthier cafeteria scene for the reporter, but the students expose the ruse. "They have this supervisor here today, and they don't let us have what we usually get," a girl complains.

Let's hope this healthy investigative cynicism spills over into the Tribune's reporting on other CPS policies and practices, some of which may have even worse consequences than doughnuts for breakfast. 

PURE has received the first  in what is likely to be a long series of letters from Linda Darby or others in the U. S. Department of Education's FOIA Liaison office.

As promised, I sent FOIA letters to USDE and CPS asking for any documents backing up Arne Duncan's claim that there were no "extra" Altgeld students at Fenger since the turnaround. He used that argument. to support his pronouncement that it was 'absolutely ridiculous' to connect violence at Fenger with changes at the school under R2010.

True to form, CPS has not responded at all, violating the current legal requirement that they respond within 7 business days. 

As long as Arne keeps lying, we'll keep following up, and we'll keep you posted. 

The Sun-Times published this letter by Liz Brown (it's the second one on the page), which highlights another effective school improvement practice that R2010 ignores...

One of the many promises CPS Board President Michael Scott made at the Board meeting last week was that he was going to meet with the parents of Fenger students from the Altgeld area. 

In fact, his staff called and set up a meeting for that Friday, Oct. 30. Ron Huberman was coming, too. They asked the parents to get them a number - how many did they expect to attend? so that they could bring enough refreshments for everyone. The parents made up 3000 flyers and distributed them. 

Friday morning, this flyer appeared on the door of the community center where the meeting was to take place. Sorry, meeting cancelled. It will be rescheduled "at a later date."

This tactic is common. Scott and others will do anything, promise everything, while the cameras are running. Their only real objective is to get through the Board meeting without a riot breaking out. But once the meeting is over, all bets (and promises) are off. 

That's the headline the Sun-Times wrote for my letter, published today.

Big news for CORE - their candidates for teacher pension board, Jay Rehak and Lois Ashford, win. Congratulations!

Also, HB363 veto override passes in the Senate, so HB363 is now law.  Congratulations to Designs for Change!

Mayor Daley has pronounced Fenger "a very good school."   

Fox News' report adds, "Daley said millions just went into the school for new computers and other state of the art equipment. But some of the students walking the halls everyday said the computers are nice, but where did the rest of the funds go? 'We spend 30 to 40 millions at the school and it's doing very well,' Daley said."

Why is it that CPS won't spend money on a school until they fire the staff and get rid of the LSC?

But, anyway, if all turnarounds cost that much, Arne's RTTT funds won't last long.

State School News Service reports that Rev. Sen. James Meeks has filed several bills that make good on his comments in yesterday's Sun-Times op-ed.

According to SSNS, the bills will:

1) Create a voucher program under which parents could receive state funding to cover the cost of their children's tuition to private schools. (SB 2494)

2) Remove the current limitation on the number of charter schools allowed in Illinois. (SB 2495)

3) Codify "public school choice," a system in which any child who is a resident of Illinois would be able to attend any public school in the state without any non-resident tuition being charged. (SB 2496)

SSNS's Jim Broadway adds, "his initiatives play into the hands of those who would profit from the "privatization" of public education. Meeks' voucher-charter-choice package cannot be advanced very soon. Today is the last scheduled legislative session day of 2009. Nothing can happen with the bills until the Senate returns to Springfield."

Thanks to NYC Class Size Matters' Leonie Haimson for passing along this version of "Monster Mash" starring Arne Duncan, D.C. Schools' Michelle Rhee, and Mayor Bloomberg as characters who are, amazingly, not quite as scary as these folks are in real life.

As a companion to its test score ranking nonsense, the Sun -Times offers the story of Kipling, a low-income CPS school that outranked many higher-income suburban schools, apparently by providing a well-rounded, challenging curriculum: "Kipling teachers are urged to move kids beyond the basics and into the kind of higher-ordered thinking tapped in the toughest Illinois Standards Achievement Test questions."

The Sun-Times reports this as though it's an anomaly, and, unfortunately, official CPS documents back them up. Remember, I pointed out recently how the CPS magnet school catalog differentiates their selective enrollment gifted and classical schools from other schools: "Both types of schools accelerate learning so that there is time for projects, term papers and group work that takes the learner deeper into the subject matter...Regional Gifted Centers place an emphasis on thinking, reasoning, problem solving and creativity.... Classical Schools place an emphasis on scholarship with a liberal arts focus."   

Research has shown that CPS students provided with intellectually challenging work can easily learn 50 percent more over the course of a year than students in the same building who are offered less challenging instruction. Sadly, rote teaching to the test -- the opposite of intellectually challenging work --  is not only encouraged in most CPS schools but demanded of them by the central office following a playbook written by politicians like Arne Duncan, corporate sponsors of school reform, and even the media, who continuously ratchet up the stakes on high-stakes standardized test scores. This dumbed-down approach has yielded little or no real progress in academic outcomes over the last few years.

It's time to abandon this no-win strategy and demand that our school leaders move the focus away from teaching to the test and toward authentic intellectual schoolwork. This requires true multiple measures including performance and classroom-based assessments. All children deserve that kind of education, not just those in gifted or wealthy schools.

The Sun-Times correctly notes, in its annual schools-ranked-by-test-scores report, "Not surprisingly, schools with more than 90 percent poverty rates dominated the bottom of the pack. Meanwhile, neighborhood schools in the top 10 had single-digit poverty rates....At the state’s best-scoring neighborhood middle school — No. 9 Daniel Wright Junior High in pricey Lincolnshire — not one low-income student was enrolled last school year."

I suggest this headline for next year, in the interests of accuracy and relevance:

"Poor people continue to live in poor neighborhoods, wealthy in high-income areas."

Our attorney, Elaine Siegel, has just informed us that Judge Sophia Hall has recused herself from our LSC case. Judge Hall did not provide a reason for her action.

According to the Illinois Code of Judicial Conduct, judges should recuse, or disqualify, themselves, if , for example, they believe they have a personal bias or prejudice against anyone involved in the case, if they have a recent, previous professional association with a lawyer in the case, or if they have an economic interest in the outcome of the case. 

In any case, a new judge will be assigned to the case and he or she will set a new date for the next hearing.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Always informative and articulate Rod Estvan adds some interesting observations on Rev. Meeks in a comment on the Catalyst blog. He points out that the private, Christian school run by Meeks own church does not accept students with special needs or any student who scores below the 50th percentile. 

Rod's theological analysis is a nice touch.

*****

As in loose cannon.

James Meeks is truly one of a kind. It's hard to read him. His standing up for fair school funding (often alone) has been kind of heroic. He hates CPS and has called on the Mayor to fire the CEO and school board. Well, he's not alone in his feelings there.

But then there's the interference with LSC operations, such as the notorious installation of a minimally-qualified member of Meeks' church as principal at Brooks College Prep.  

Then there were reports of Meeks castigating CPS teachers from his own pulpit and at Operation PUSH, where he called the CTU "the biggest gang problem in CPS." 

And now there's this goofy editorial by Rev. Meeks in today's Tribune in which he calls for "mandatory teacher evaluations" -- presumably based on test scores as Arne Duncan's Race to the Top demands --, claims he is leaning toward vouchers and charters, and takes this gratuitous swipe at LSCs: "What once worked before, such as the local school councils, may have run its course in today's competitive environment."

Huh?

Aside from the sort of weird file photo of Mayor Daley with some parents from somewhere, this story by Medill reporter Adam Wren gives a good overview of the Chicago Parents Union and even highlights our upcoming training and meeting dates.  District 299 picked up on the story, too.

Don't forget!

• Training for CPU union stewards, Thursday November 5th or Saturday, Nov. 7th, 9:30 am to 4 pm. 

               Please pre-register for training - call 312-491-9101 or e-mail us at pure@pureparents.org.

• Joint PURE/CPU meeting and birthday brunch,  Saturday, November 14, 10 am to noon- come one, come all!

While local Chicago media have tried to downplay the truly bad news about R2010 in the new Consortium report, Education Week got a little closer to the bone (with a little help from me":

"Julie Woestehoff, the executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, a Chicago advocacy group often critical of Mr. Duncan’s initiatives as district chief, said the study’s findings are more evidence that the district’s reform strategies are not working. The group has called for the end of Renaissance 2010, a district program that closes low-performing schools and replaces them with charter and charterlike schools run by private groups.

"'When Arne Duncan announced this program, he said it was going to lead to dramatically better education for the children. We were hoping that would be true,' Ms. Woestehoff said. 'There hasn’t really been any payoff from all the money that has been spent and all the disruption that has been caused to communities and especially to students.'

"Chicago’s school closings returned to the spotlight this fall after a high school student was brutally beaten and killed in a fight near a South Side high school. Local activists have contended that the school closings created a dangerous mixture of students from rival neighborhoods. Mr. Duncan said earlier this month that blaming school closings for the uptick in violence was “absolutely ridiculous.” ("Outcry Against Violence," Oct. 14, 2009.)

"Chicago school spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment about the study."

WLS-TV, WMAQ-TV, WGN-TV, CLTV, WBBM-AM radio, WBEZ, the Sun-Times, Medill News, Chicago Talks, and a number of other media were at the GEM press conference at CPS this morning, along with dozens of GEM allies and some great, articulate speakers from communities that have been affected by Renaissance 2010. You can read the press release here.

CPS and the Board of Education were also on the ropes for at least the first hour of public participation as GEM members (from CORE, TSJ, and PURE, with BT coming up) hammered away one after another at Renaissance 2010. Thanks also, to AFSC and others for being there in support. 

The issue of responsibility seems to be the crux of the problem. At one point, Michael Scott commented offhandedly that CPS has to take "some responsibility" for school violence. But he spent the rest of the two hours defending R2010 and attempting to deflect criticism in the name of protecting Chicago's reputation in the world. He claimed that we have "heard enough" about violence and it's time to "bring some solutions." Of course, GEM, PURE and others have been suggesting solutions for years, but apparently our solutions are not destructive enough of the African-American and Latino communities to suit the Mayor and the Commercial Club. 

WGN-TV's story, which ran this morning, includes a sound bite from "Parents for School Choice" spokeperson Adrienne Leonard, who excused CPS by saying that "we all have to take responsibility." What Ms. Leonard failed to mention is that her organization is funded by the Renaissance 2010 Fund.

GEM held a press conference today to speak out about the impact of the Chicago Public Schools' Renaissance 2010 program on school violence. 

Here's the press release.

Speakers complained that the community has been warning CPS that school closings, turnarounds and other school changes would increase violence, but Arne Duncan and Mayor Daley ignored us. They were sure they knew better than the community. Turns out Arne and the Mayor were wrong.

Here's some of the evidence of the R2010-violence connection. 

Our message was even more urgent in light of the new Consortium report showing that Renaissance 2010 has not improved academic outcomes for affected students.

Remind me why CPS is doing this???

Maybe CPS will try something really cutting-edge, "outside the box" and "dramatic" -- by listening to the community for a change. Here are some GEM ideas:

GEM supports a moratorium on school closings and other R2010 school changes, more parent involvement and support, a student-centered curriculum, consistent staffing of certified, union professionals who know the students and the community, equitable resources for all schools, an elected school board, and an LSC- and community-based process of school improvement.

UPDATE: Here's the Consortium press release and link to the report.

Details are leaking out from an embargoed report by the Consortium on Chicago School Research due out tomorrow saying students affected by school closures and other Renaissance 2010 changes through 2006 experienced no academic benefit.

The report focuses only on Iowa test scores, and does not look into other potential negative effects such as increased drop out rates, emotional impact, or violence. 

The report should just add fuel to the fire of R2010 opponents. What was touted as "dramatically better" education is turning out to be a dramatic failure.  

Press alert

GEM press conference

For immediate release – October 27, 2009

Fenger parents, LSC members, will join with the Grass Roots Education Movement (GEM) coalition representing groups from across the city to demand that CPS “Stop Renaissance 2010 – stop endangering student lives, disrupting communities, and wasting public dollars

Who: The Grass Roots Education Movement (GEM), parents, teachers, students and LSC members from Fenger and other schools and communities disrupted by Renaissance 2010

What: Opponents of Renaissance 2010 will speak prior to the Board of Education meeting where they will demand an end to turnarounds and other failed R2010 strategies

Where: Chicago Board of Education headquarters, 125 S. Clark Street, lobby

When: Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 9:30 am

Why: For five years, the Chicago Public Schools, under Mayor Richard M. Daley's leadership, have ignored consistent community warnings that closing schools, changing boundaries, firing staff, disbanding Local School Councils, and replacing neighborhood schools with charter, contract, military and other restrictive enrollment schools would lead to increased violence. It has taken the videotaped murder of one student to bring attention to a more widespread crisis- the disintegration of neighborhood schools, the erosion of educational opportunity for thousands of our children, and increasing, sometimes fatal, student violence all across Chicago.

Contact: Julie Woestehoff, PURE and GEM 312-491-9101

CORE co-founder Jackson Potter has a great letter to the editor in today's Sun-Times. He talks about the effects of R2010's closure of Englewood High School. More connections will be made tomorrow at the GEM press conference.

This is getting deep, folks. The Sun-Times is reporting that Rev. Al Sharpton is out with the Fenger parents who have called a two-day boycott of the school to protest the ongoing violence. 

Hmmm. Rev. Sharpton and Newt Gingrich famously went "on tour" with Arne last summer to promote the Chicago "reform" model. Will Rev. Sharpton rethink his support in light of the evidence of Renaissance 2010's negative impact on schools and students?      

Maybe I missed reports of this change in the selective high school enrollment application process, but CPS is no longer using student attendance as a factor. It was always one of the more unfair criteria, since it punished any student who got sick and gave extra points to some whose parents sent them to school sick (thanks, folks). I guess we can thank swine flu for this common sense change.

Two-tiered education defined

But that's not the shocker. Again, I haven't read this before which doesn't mean it wasn't always in the Options application book. Anyway, here's how CPS describes the kind of education students will get at a gifted or classical school:

"Both types of schools accelerate learning so that there is time for projects, term papers and group work that takes the learner deeper into the subject matter...Regional Gifted Centers place an emphasis on thinking, reasoning, problem solving and creativity.... Classical Schools place an emphasis on scholarship with a liberal arts focus."  

The other schools? Test prep. Yep, that's all those students need.

Kind of makes it all come clear, doesn't it? 

Hang out with the cool kids at the 9th Annual Chicago Area Teaching for Social Justice Curriculum Fair:

• Building an Education Movement for Liberation
• Nov. 21, 10AM- 5PM
• Orozco School 1940 W. 18th St. Chicago
• Curriculum! Workshops! Resources! Culture! And More!
• Keynote presentation: Association of Raza Educators

As you know, privatization is not just a Renaissance 2010 thing. It's part of a larger crisis - an out-of-control national business and financial sector.

"Those disgusted by the bank bailouts, and the bankers who brought us this recession, will have a chance to make their views known when the American Bankers Association has its annual meeting in Chicago, October 25-27. A large coalition of labor, community, and consumer organizations are organizing a protest at the Showdown in Chicago" (Dean Baker in Huffington Post).

Local planning will be finalized tonight: Thursday, Oct 22nd @ 5:30pm – 810 N Milwaukee Ave, right off the Chicago blue line. 

The Showdown web site tells you how to join in.

There's going to be a meeting Saturday of Parents for School Choice, which bills itself as a "parent-driven" organization. 

Why am I suspicious of that? Hmmm. Maybe it's because these "parent" groups that support charter and other experimental schools tend to get a lot of money from the Bill Gateses and other meddlesome no-nothings.

And, look! Here's a clue. School Choice Illinois just gave an award to the head of Parents for School Choice, and look at how they billed her on their web site:   

"Adrienne Leonard, Parents for School Choice (Renaissance Schools Fund)"

Yeah, that's parent-driven, all right. 

But you still might want to check out their meeting Saturday:

"Parents for School Choice, a parent-driven organization that helps to inform families about Chicago's new school options, invites you to join us for our first general meeting of the year:  

Saturday, October 24th 9:30-11:00am TAMS, 501 W. 35th Street (near US Cellular Field) Free parking (first come, first serve)

This meeting will be a chance to learn about the application process to the city's new charter, performance and contract schools and how to become an advocate for new schools in your community.

If you would like to attend, please RSVP to: 1-888-7-MYCHOICE or parentsforschoolchoice@gmail.com

Parents have the power to demand a high quality school in their community.  Come and be part of this movement for change." 

The Tribune business pages report that Microsoft is losing market share in some key areas. 

Woo-hoo!! This totally vindicates my call for a boycott of Microsoft products to help stop Bill Gates from imposing his loony ideas on our schools. 

Apparently Microsoft is not keeping up with marketplace trends toward use of newer communications and information technology.

The Tribune notes, "in this period of growth, market share of Microsoft's operating systems for phones, Windows Mobile, fell 28.7 percent. Apple, with its popular iPhone, saw its share grow 627 percent."

"Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer, also has lost its share of users. In 2004, it had 90 percent of the browser market. That number has fallen to 65.7 percent with the growth of competitors, especially Mozilla's Firefox, according to research firm Net Applications."

I guess people are finding that other programs just work better than Microsoft products. Kind of like what we are seeing with other lame Gates products like mayoral control of schools, AUSL school takeovers, and astroturf organizers like PRISE.

Let the market speak.....

PURE is planning a couple of big events next month - so mark your calendars!

• Become a CPU union steward! New training sessions on November 5 and 7 (choose one). Details here!
• Come to PURE's annual meeting on Saturday, November 14, 10 am to noon at PURE! Celebrate 22 PURE years -- and the CPU's first year! Everyone is welcome at the birthday brunch. Details here.

I always get a kick out of reading about problems faced by suburban school boards, many of which LSCs also experience.

The double standard is less amusing - like when Mayor Daley uses such controversies as a pretext for attacking LSCs and calling for them to be disbanded.

That unfairness aside, today's Tribune story highlights the difficulty some school board members have getting documents and other information from their school districts. LSCs know all about this. It can be like pulling teeth to get copies of school budgets, staff lists, internal accounts reports, and other key data from school principals. In many cases, LSCs never receive these documents.

But help is on the way from the Illinois Attorney General and a new FOIA law. The new law, among other things:

• Creates a presumption that all records are public; if a public body claims an exemption, it has the burden of proving that the record is exempt by clear and convincing evidence.
• Shortens the initial time to respond to a FOIA request from 7 to 5 business days and the time allowed in an extension from 7 to 5 business days.
• Establishes the Public Access Counselor (PAC) as a permanent position with subpoena power and the authority to review FOIA and OMA complaints, issue advisory opinions to provide guidance or binding opinions to resolve disputes, and sue to enforce the binding opinions.
• Allows the PAC to assess civil fines of between $2,500 and $5,000 from a public body that intentionally violates FOIA.

It only took two days for city officials to send Eugene Bailey's mother an eviction notice, terminating her section 8 status, once they charged the Fenger student with the murder of Derrion Albert. It took three weeks for them to decide that Eugene was actually innocent and let him out of jail.

It's been reported that staff at Fenger helped identify Eugene as one of the killers on the videotape of Derrion's murder, but it was never pointed out that these Fenger staffers were brand new to the school. The staff who might have known Eugene well enough not to have fingered him (he was blocks away at the time, and his hair was different from and he did not own clothes like the person in the video) had been fired by CPS last June as part of the Duncan "turnaround" plan.

Shortly after Eugene's mother showed reporters her termination notice yesterday, the city reversed its decision and will allow the family to stay in their home. Don't you just love happy endings, Chicago style? 

PURE has sent CPS CEO Ron Huberman a revised proposal to change the system's elementary promotion policy.

The evidence is overwhelming that the current CPS promotion policy does not work. It disproportionately harms African-American and Latino students.

At a time when we are experiencing a national economic emergency, there can be no excuse for perpetuating a wasteful, costly program that research has shown offers no benefit to the children it purports to help.

The CPS promotion policy has also been shown to accelerate the drop out rate at a time of national commitment to address this crisis.

This proposal will not take CPS back to social promotion, which also did not work (but which was actually more effective than retention). We believe it's time to move forward, to learn from the mistakes of both social promotion and retention, and try to avoid them.

PURE is offering to help Mr. Huberman establish a policy that proactively addresses students' needs instead of retroactively punishing them.

Here's our proposal. We will keep you posted on Mr. Huberman's response.

So now CPS officials have decided that some Altgeld Gardens students can enroll in Carver Military (if they qualify and if they are interested in a military-style education), wait until they open up a new charter high school next fall in the old Carver Middle School building (and hope it beats the charter school odds and is actually successful -- and that they are able to navigate the enrollment process and avoid being pushed out), or get on the bus to yet another school (where they are likely to be as unwelcome as they are at Fenger).  

Unacceptable.

It's simply unacceptable for a school district to shut down a community's ONLY neighborhood high school. What kind of leaders do that? What kind of city does that create?

It's not the street gangs that did this. It is the gang at City Hall, which takes care of a small circle of adults at the expense of the safety, the education, and the very lives of our children. 

...to build you a school/addition/lunchroom/" etc. Sorry - you will have to go on a multi-track schedule/make do with 45 students in a classroom/have your children eat lunch at their desks/ etc.

How many times have LSCs and others been told THAT by a CPS Board president or CEO?

And yet they ALWAYS seem to find the money to build a Northside Prep, a new Skinner, a bait-and-switch school for Aspira Charter.

And apparently, even in a time of severe fiscal crisis, the state can also find $31 billion to pay for new buildings, and in at least one case, according to the Tribune, $750,000 for "costs associated with capital improvements" at private, religious schools.      

This is apparently illegal in Illinois. Here's the relevant section of the Illinois constitution (thanks, for the second time today, to State School News Service): 

"Neither the General Assembly nor any county, city, town, township, school district, or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation or pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money, or other personal property ever be made by the State, or any such public corporation, to any church, or for any sectarian purpose." (Article X, Section 3)

State School News Service reports that Rep. Cynthia Soto, sponsor of HB 363, managed a unanimous override vote on Governor Quinn's veto of the bill yesterday. The Senate must also act; that vote will likely take place the week of Oct. 26.

HB 363 was designed to bring some accountability to CPS's school closing and other facilities decisions. The original bill called for a moratorium on all such school changes, but that element of the bill was taken out early in the legislative process,

What was left was a task force to review the process and recommend better ways to make facilities decisions for CPS.

Gov. Quinn's veto changed the make up of the task force (to include appointees from Mayor Daley and to cut the representation by community groups). It also extended the time frame for the committee to report on its findings.

With the override, that time frame goes back to the original deadline - October 30. Since the Senate has yet to act, and we have to assume that the committee has not yet been named or officially appointed, it's very hard to see how anything helpful can be done by the end of the month.  Even if someone has already been writing the not-yet-existing committee's report, that tight timeline does not allow for any meaningful public input, which is a key element of the bill.

Too often children enter school full of bright hopes and a love of learning, only to have their excitement extinguished by overworked, sometimes insensitive teachers, schools with demotivating curricula and not enough resources, and a system designed to serve certain adults -- certainly not children.  

I think about this as the nation gets caught up in another media frenzy over President Obama. Last time, he sent the pundits spinning and spitting over his speech to schoolchildren on the first day of school. OH NO! He's trying to influence our children to work hard and succeed in school! GAAAH!

Now it's the Nobel Peace Prize. OH NO! Obama's been awarded the world's most prestigious honor! Let's kick the stuffing out of him!

What kind of values are these?

What all this says to me is that the President is on to something that these people are afraid of, and I hope he keeps right on doing it.

It may actually have a lot to do with the education of poor children of color, and with world peace. 

I hope he doesn't lose his motivation or his dreams despite the beat-downs. Our schoolchildren are depending on him, and their very future is at stake.

Steve Rhodes takes on the youth violence issue with an especially strong essay on how our leaders are perhaps deliberately missing the mark on the reason for youth violence.

"What we have here is poor-on-poor crime. It just so happens that in this country, for all of the historical reasons we are all familiar with, as well as some very present current reasons, the poor are disproportionately African American."

But, as we have seen with Arne's "absolutely ridiculous" comment, that's not what our "leaders" want to talk about. 

As Rhodes says, "This is not a discussion we are allowed to have. The discussion we are allowed to have is one about morals and character and personal responsibility - of the poor, not the wealthy, even though it's always the wealthy who plunge our nation into economic disaster."

"There's always enough money around for a new sports stadium, but not so much for crumbling schools. Unless it's a magnet school where we can skim the cream off the crop and scurry them away from danger - and clout in the rest of those we care to save."

"This isn't about socialism or communism or capitalism or liberalism. It's about decency. The notion that the wealthiest nation in the history of the world can't supply every citizen who wants an education and a job with an education and a job is the height of absurdity - at least next to failing to provide health care for all of our citizens."

Naturally, lots of press on Fenger today, and some even referencing the "absolutely ridiculous" connection between R2010 and the problems at Fenger and other troubled schools: the Sun-Times, the Tribune (though the related paragraphs at the end of the online story were edited out of my print edition), and this Fox News story about parents from Altgeld Gardens who marched at Fenger to demand that Carver be turned back into a neighborhood school.

Catalyst has a thorough roundup of Fenger stories including more on R2010.

USA Today reprinted the AP story. PBS's News Hour included this exchange between reporter Jeffrey Brown and Chicago's Carol Marin:

"JEFFREY BROWN: And, Carol, what about the questions that some raised about Arne Duncan's action when he was superintendent to change how the -- close some schools and change where some of the children go to school?

"CAROL MARIN: There is a very real and unresolved controversy about that, Jeff. When he closed down some poorly functioning schools and tried to consolidate resources, the question was whether his staff fully appreciated the movement of students across what are gang lines. They were crossing into neighborhoods that were represented by other gangs.

"And so the question is whether that has been a catalyst to the violence. Duncan today said, no, that the numbers are negligible, in terms of the change of alliances or the movement of kids, but I talked to some people inside the school system today who really believe that it has had a profound impact."

***

Here are some other stories, by former WBEZ-er David Schaper on NPR,  and Catherine Gewirtz on her Ed Week blog, where she wrote, 

"While (R2010's) aim is to close dysfunctional schools and replace them with better ones—delivering educational justice to some of the city's poorest kids—it has also been widely criticized for the disruptive effect the closures have on students and families. (The plan hasn't been able to make all of its turnarounds into successes, either.)" 

Some blog commenters are confusing the Fenger turnaround with the AUSL turnarounds. Easy to do, but AUSL is not running Fenger. If they were, they would have thrown all the disruptive kids out already and sent them to Robeson or some other of the few remaining regular neighborhood schools.

No, Fenger is a CPS turnaround run by Don Fraynd, who also runs Harper. Fraynd ran into a lot of flak last year for "relocating" up to 400 Harper students, so this year at Fenger he was apparently not allowed to do that.

I recently wrote about visiting Harper, where I learned that CPS, private funders, and the federal government are providing the school with additional resources, allowing it to hire extra social workers and after school program providers, open a culinary program, and provide other supportive services. No doubt Fenger is already getting the same help.

Now Arne is throwing another half-a-million bucks at Fenger to use as the school (not the LSC, of course, but Fraynd et al) decides.

So, is this $500,000 meant to protect and save the students or the architects R2010?     

The man in the mirror 

"It's easy to point fingers,'' Duncan said. "Let's get to the root of the problem.''

When Arne says EVERYONE is to blame, that's called "getting to the  root of the problem." When we suggest that one contributing problem might be his signature R2010 strategy -- which he is now foisting on the entire nation as Fed Ed Head -- that's "finger pointing."

Another Arne lie?

One last point. I'm going to send a FOIA today to CPS asking for the report Arne used to claim that  there are no extra Altgeld students at Fenger this year. Arne has lied before, so this claim definitely needs to be checked out. 

CORRECTION - WBEZ's Linda Lutton informs me that the reporter who asked Arne about turnarounds was Sarah Karp from Catalyst. See revised story below.

****

Thanks to Catalyst's Sarah Karp (here's her excellent story)  for asking Arne Duncan point blank about the connection between school turnarounds and the violence at Fenger at this morning's press conference. AP reporter Karen Hawkins also reported on Arne's response. Which was:

That's "absolutely ridiculous."

Oh, really? 

So the local alderman and Fenger's local school council members just don't understand what's going on in their own community? And you know better?

More phony Arne numbers

His "data-driven" proof was that there were 104 students from Altgeld Gardens at Fenger in 2004 and 119 in 2009, and that an increase of 15 students couldn't be to blame.

Who dug that "statistic" up for him? Can you picture someone going through the rolls for him and counting the "Altgeld Gardens" students over the years? Maybe it was the same person who always told him that attendance on the first day of school went up AGAIN this year??? Or the same data base where he got his information about how much better Dodge and Sherman students were doing after the turnarounds (though most of them were long gone). Or the place where he found out that North Lawndale College Prep had a 100% graduation rate??

The responsible thing 

Even if Arne still thinks his mess of an R2010 program is great, can't he consider for a minute that it might have some adverse impact on students, or consider for a minute that it might help just to slow things down (rather than take the same program nationwide) just in case it might save one child's life? 

The responsible response would be to say that "we are looking at anything and everything that might be affecting our schools and students. We will learn from our mistakes and work to fix anything that isn't working."   

What have you done

Arne spent a lot of his time at the press conference criticizing people for trying to place blame, and claiming that EVERYONE is to blame: "To those who want to point fingers, first ask yourself what you have done... we need to look into a collective mirror."

Well, what some of us have done is try to stop you from steamrolling a massive school destabilization program that has just about destroyed the Chicago school system. We've tried to place children's lives ahead of political stunts.

And what have you done, Arne?

Absolutely ridiculous. 

Chicago's media is shying away from linking school violence to R2010.

The Tribune's "in-depth" coverage has so far put the blame for increased violence on the students, the schools, the parents, the police, and violence reduction program evaluators, but never on Arne Duncan, the mayor, or R2010.

Aside from running Deborah Lynch's spot-on essay, the Sun-Times has limited itself to reprinting Mayor Daley's press releases.

You have to go to the Huffington Post or a small-town daily to read this insightful report from the Associated Press:

"Since 2005, dozens of Chicago's public schools have been closed and thousands of students reassigned to campuses outside their neighborhoods – and often across gang lines – as part of Renaissance 2010, a program launched by Mayor Richard Daley when Duncan was Chicago Public Schools chief.

"While the plan has resulted in replacing failing and low-enrollment schools with charter schools and smaller campuses, it has also led to a surge in violence that has increasingly turned deadly, many activists, parents and students say.

"Before the 2006 school year, an average of 10-15 public school students were fatally shot each year. That soared to 24 deadly shootings in the 2006-07 school year, 23 deaths and 211 shootings in the 2007-08 school year and 34 deaths and 290 shootings last school year."

The report quotes Cease Fire's Tio Hardiman ("You have a trail of blood and tears ever since they launched" Renaissance 2010), West Side Health Authority's Virgil Crawford, and West Town Leadership United's Idida Perez, all saying the same thing - R2010 has created massive discipline and safety problems for Chicago's neighborhood schools, students, and communities. 

Community voices struggling to be heard

CORE held a press conference yesterday offering stories from several teachers and students about the unnecessary disruptions CPS causes by staff reductions after the  "20th day," which was Monday.

WBEZ included the reference to school violence in its report on the CORE press event:  "CORE teachers say teacher cuts this late in the year disrupts students' lives, leading to violence and truancy." Comments made in the press conference about R2010 were not reported.

Last night's Chicago Tonight included Fenger LSC member Rev. Victor Grandberry in its panel on the Fenger/violence issue. Rev. Grandberry attributed the violence in part to the changeover of Carver from a neighborhood school to a selective enrollment military school under R2010. 

But these voices are being drowned out.

Duncan's "Who, Me?" road trip

Several press conference attendees urged reporters to ask Arne Duncan some tough questions during his visit here about his role in firing the entire Fenger staff and in other R2010 programs that have been linked to increased student violence. 

Let's see if any Chicago reporter does. 

Judge Hall decided today to decide the case later, on November 20.

Her concern today was that, on our last go around, CPS seemed to have dropped the Orr and South Shore parts of the case. CPS thought she had already decided against that part of the motion but Judge Hall wanted to "make the record complete" by having CPS respond to our last argument with respect to Orr and South Shore, too.  

We will also have one more shot at responding after CPS files whatever they are going to file.

The wheels of justice do grind slowly.

So, maybe for the last time in this courtroom, it will be November 20 at 11 am, Daley Center room 2301.

The Tribune claims to explain why the students at Fenger fight, yet they barely mention that CPS changed Carver, which was Altgeld Gardens' neighborhood school, to a selective enrollment military school. That forces Altgeld students to attend Fenger, "behind enemy lines."

The Sun-Times actually quoted Alderman Carrie Austin's complaint that "Altgeld Gardens kids wouldn't be coming to Fenger if they were allowed to go to Carver."

But neither paper said a word about the biggest jolt to Fenger, the R2010 "turnaround" proposed by Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan as one of his last acts as CEO. Duncan decided that the entire staff at Fenger should be fired and all new staff hired for the beginning of this school year.

How do you think that's working out so far, Arne?

Last night, in his best "aw shucks" turn on the Colbert Report, Duncan stated that it's time for EVERYONE to be held accountable -- parents, students, teachers, administrators. Notice he didn't list clueless CEOs who run school systems without having any idea about how schools run.     

But this afternoon a group of CPS teachers, students, LSC members, parents and community members will gather at Daley Plaza at 5:30 to talk about how CPS under Duncan has been sabotaging our neighborhood schools, from turnarounds to school closings to "20th day" staff reorganizations that create havoc at high schools every year at about this time.

Wonder what Arne will have to say about accountability when he's in town tomorrow?

Stanford economist and conservative Hoover Institute fellow Caroline Hoxby once again rides to the rescue of charter fans with her latest "research" on the relative success of charter schools over neighborhood schools.

Claiming that her efforts meet a research "gold standard" (a biomedical term which she applies to her own work), Hoxby reports that students who entered lotteries for New York City charter schools and didn't get in provide the best comparison group for those who did get in. She found that students who lost out on the lotteries and ended up in public schools have lower achievement than those that "won" the lottery and attended charters.   

However, "More Thoughtful" blogger CEOLAF makes mincemeat out of Hoxby's self-proclaimed golden work. He shows that her comparison fails to account, for example, for effects of not getting into a charter, of the various reasons charters may or may not have waiting lists, etc.

What's also apparently missing from the Hoxby study is an acknowledgment that, like Chicago charters, NYC charters serve fewer at-risk students such as special education and Limited English speaking students and how that impacts her findings.

She also fails to consider the dynamic that may be at work in a family's decision not to enroll their child in a charter. They may not agree with the discipline policy, want to pay extra fees, or be willing to sign contracts required by some charters.

Hoxby's positive reports on charters are pretty much the only ones out there. The weight of other, less controversial studies that find problems with charters and show their overall lack of improved achievement is far more substantial.

"We have lost the Olympics bid. Perhaps this is our opportunity to win Derrion Albert's bid. He was an honor student, not a gang member, not a drop out. He was murdered by a crowd of thugs. More generally, he was murdered by a system that is failing our neighborhoods, our schools, and our children." (Roger Ebert in 10/2/09 Sun-Times)

Ebert states his support for CTU President Marilyn Stewart's proposal for separate schools for disruptive students, and I agree, with Ebert's conditions that these be real schools with the resources to address the very real needs of these extra-challenging students. They are often not getting the help they need in their home schools where services are simply not available. 

R2010 isn't a monolithic evil, despite what you might read here. Here's the first of two stories. 

Story #1: R2010 hearing

Last Thursday, I attended my local neighborhood R2010 hearing - the Kenwood-Grand Boulevard Community Forum at the Little Black Pearl Workshop on 47th Street.

I went in order to challenge the destructive path R2010 has cut through Chicago's neighborhoods. What I heard was a plan for an arts high school for at-risk students set in the beautiful new building where the hearing took place.

Well, shoot! It would be like drowning a kitten to go after experienced service providers at Prologue, the chief sponsor of the school, and their efforts to offer a high-quality arts curriculum to a needy and underserved student population. No existing school would be closed to house the new program; no CPS staff fired or LSC dismantled as a precondition for the new school's opening.    

I did make a general statement about some of the problems with R2010, especially the lack of accountability and meaningful parent involvement in R2010 governance. The representatives from Prologue stated that they value and encourage parent involvement; their application for CPS charter status claimed that their Board of Directors consisted mostly of parents of Chicago Pubic Schools students. However, the board list attached to the proposal looked pretty much like every other charter board -- lawyers, business folks, and an educator or two. Their "credentials " as parents were not apparent. If charters had better governance and hiring practices, the program could be a welcome addition to the community.

Handouts misleading

R2010 staff provided forum attendees with a "Renaissance 2010 Myths and Facts" sheet which had several misleading statements, including "All Renaissance 2010 schools are required to have parent and community involvement in school oversight." While this may be technically true according to CPS policy, in practice it is simply not happening on any consistent or meaningful level, as our 2008 report revealed.     

Here's my favorite:

Myth: Renaissance 2010 is responsible for closing neighborhood schools.

Fact: Renaissance 2010 is responsible for opening new schools, NOT closing neighborhood schools.

Right. They just close themselves.

R2010 survey

The R2010 folks also handed out a survey, the kind designed to get only "wanted" feedback. You know, instead of asking if you think CPS needs to close schools and reopen them, it asks how much you like the proposal as presented, or if you have ideas to improve the proposal.

So, while they claim they are getting feedback, they never give you the chance to offer feedback on R2010 itself or what alternative ideas you might have for improving CPS.  

R2010 isn't a monolithic evil, despite what you might read here. Here's the second of two stories.

Story #2: Harper High School turnaround

About a month ago, I visited Harper High school at the invitation of CPS HS Turnaround director Don Fraynd. Harper was turned around in the fall of 2008.

Missing students

Perhaps the most well-known aspect of Harper's turnaround was the following report on WBEZ:

"Harper High School on the city’s south side is getting the most extreme fix Chicago has for schools: a 'turnaround.' Eighty percent of the staff is new. And the district has spent millions of extra dollars to improve Harper and raise academic performance. But if scores go up, it might be due to something else as well: 30 percent of Harper students are gone." 

The Harper principal explained to WBEZ that Harper simply sent some students over to Robeson, Hyde Park HS, and some alternative schools. WBEZ reported that, while Harper's enrollment was down about 400, Robeson's was up about 150, leaving that school short several teachers at the beginning of the 2008-09 school year.

Fraynd claims that  the WBEZ story was unfair and that projected enrollment numbers were incorrect due to poor record keeping of the previous administration.

Still, the story was apparently convincing enough for CPS to prevent 2009 turnaround Fenger from trying the same tactic, and some are pointing to that difference as a cause for the recent violence there.  

Firing teachers

Harper was quiet the day of my visit. It was the week before school started and I saw a few incoming freshmen who were in the building for registration and orientation. 

Clearly, the school had a lot of new programs. Fraynd spoke eloquently of the students' need for social services and mentoring, restorative discipline practices, and extra academic support. He has adequate staff to provide that individualized help. He showed me the beautiful, nearly-completed culinary arts facility on the fourth floor of the building. These are resources most parents would love to have at their children's school.  

I asked Fraynd why it was necessary to fire all the staff -- wouldn't any school improve with extra personnel and brand spanking-new programs? He replied that he did not believe that the original staff was, essentially, trainable in the short time frame he felt he had to train them, that it was important to get people who arrived with skills that matched the new requirements. For example, the school's social work staff comes from a different type of preparation program than the usual folks CPS assigns to those positions. 

I just don't buy it.

Maybe you gain certain skill sets with certain of your new hires. But you lose huge piles of human capital in the form of interpersonal relationships already in place, not just with students but with families and the community. And, of course, some of the fired staff were likely also very good.

And it's just impossible for me to believe that the mostly inexperienced new staff have that much more to offer, or that there's a chance that they will provide stability. The new staffers under R2010 are notoriously short-timers.

So, wouldn't it be a better investment to spend your gobs of R2010 money bringing your experienced staff up to speed with whatever improved strategies you want to implement? Then you get the best of both worlds, you don't have to ruin the lives of hundreds of dedicated professionals, and you offer a better. safer environment for students.

LSC list

Since even CPS agrees that CPS-run turnaround schools must have a real LSC, I asked for a list of Harper's LSC members and the LSC meeting schedule. Unlike many neighborhood schools, the Harper office provided this to me without any grumbling.  

Fresh from Chicago's NO-lympics tour of Copenhagen, Arne Duncan comes home, no doubt to do his best to avoid answering questions about one of his last acts as CPS CEO - calling for all the staff at Fenger High School to be fired. 

Where will Arne be?

Arne's the keynote speaker for the Grantmakers for Education conference at the Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago, 909 North Michigan Avenue.

Interesting sidenote: The conference's Wednesday afternoon panel on education organizing consists of KOCO's Jay Travis and PRISE/Target Area's Rev. Patricia Watkins.  

The Sun-Times published a thorough, thoughtful piece by former CTU president Deborah Lynch on the impact of R2010 on schools like Fenger:

"School turnarounds have turned out to be the deadliest reform of all. How could anyone expect that completely eliminating all the professionals and staff of a tough high-poverty high school could be a good thing?"

One might ask, too, how can the state of Illinois even consider bowing to Fed Ed head Duncan's dictate that "turnarounds" become a major reform strategy?  Something we might want to ask him when he visits Fenger next Wednesday.

UPDATE: The Tribune posted my comment online.

*****

So, the mayor's Olympic balloon is burst. The orgy of power and self-congratulation has come to an end.

Maybe Chicago can finally turn its attention to making the city livable for everyone, and our schools safe and effective for every child. We could even call it an "Olympian effort."

It's clear that Chicago needs new leadership. The time has come.

Sometimes getting in the last word means waiting for hours, sitting through endless pontificating, and ending up nearly alone in a room with Rev. Senator James Meeks, chair of the Senate Education Committee. At least that's what happened to me today at the committee hearings on Illinois' Race to the Top proposal.

The gist of the meeting was that Advance Illinois, the charter school people, and our senators want us to get on the fast track and do whatever it takes to win an RTTT award (maybe get Oprah to sign on?), while ISBE and the educators in the room want to take the time to prepare a proposal that has "integrity" and is based on strategies that actually work.

ISBE Superintendent Chris Koch told the committee that the Dept. of Education received over 2000 comments on the RTTT, and that they are still digesting those comments - a positive sign, since so many of them challenged the soundness of RTTT's requirements for more charter schools and turnarounds, linking student test scores to teacher and principal evaluations, national standards and tests, and other questionable strategies. Koch thinks the December deadline for the first round of RTTT proposals may be pushed back a bit as a result of USDE's review of and response to those comments. 

He said that ISBE does not plan to move any legislative changes in the October veto session.

This seemed to frustrate committee member Kimberley Lightford, who kept referring to a handout from Advance Illinois listing about 20 legislative changes that should be made before Illinois' application is truly "competitive."

Aside from some veiled comments by Supt Koch that research on some of the RTTT strategies is "thin," I was the only person who mentioned the evidence of the failures of Illinois charter schools and CPS's R2010. I was the only one who talked about what happens to at risk students when charters and contract schools refuse to accept them or push them out.

Here's my written testimony, which I submitted but did not present.

Sen. Meeks' response to my comments was that he guessed that's why ISBE says this will take a while - because they have to listen to all sides including people like me who bring "data" to the table.

Well, I hope that's the case. We'll see.

Ever since the Aeroballoon began its visitation over Navy Pier, I've thought of it as an apt symbol of Mayor Daley and his Olympic aspirations.

Next to the mayor, it's the biggest white thing in Chicago. (Ooops - did I mean to say "wet" thing?)

Of course, it's full of hot air. 

And, naturally, its price tag is out of the reach of the average Chicago family ($80 for a family of four).

But it's there -- it's not going away. That empty blue band around the balloon looks like it's just waiting to be imprinted with the five Olympic rings on one side and the Chicago flag's four stars on the other.

Commentators honing in on the heist behind the hype

During these last few days of media Olympics frenzy, it's been some consolation to read a few opinion pieces that get to the heart of the Chicago Olympics problem.

Mary Mitchell wrote eloquently about the tragedies that abound in Chicago, the deep-rooted problems that will never be resolved without enormous civic effort. She concludes, "I wish the Olympics 2016 Committee a victory in Copenhagen. I only wish the mayor and his team had the same level of commitment to stop the city's bloodshed as they do for bringing home the Games." 

As John Kass clearly stated, "grown-ups know that the Chicago Olympics are about keeping Daley in power. Period." Daley's interest in the Olympics happened after he hit a run of scandals and his slush funds began to dry up. "Daley privately began offering a choice to establishment Chicago: Get on the Olympic bus with the mayor or get left behind. No CEO could afford to be left behind. They jumped on, as did the rest of the power players. That was Daley's brilliance. The 2016 Olympics became the mortar keeping his brick house from collapsing. If he wins the Olympics, he'll stay boss for years."

This is not a new tactic for Daley. Millennium Park and Renaissance 2010 have been similar efforts to divert foundation and corporate funds away from any threat to Daley (like those pesky non-profit advocacy groups) and to programs that essentially enshrine him as Mayor-for-Life.  

Dennis Byrne hits some of the same points but has a wildly naive take on what might happen if Chicago does not get the Games. He sees the Chicago 2016 organizing and fundraising efforts as a civic treasure that could be refocused on strengthening non-profits: "Imagine if the same levels of skill and determination were put to use raising bushels of cash for the things that Chicago hasn't been able to afford. Money for cash-strapped civic and charitable institutions. Money for badly needed new ones. Not only would these institutions no longer have to worry about their own revenues from charitable contributions getting gobbled up by the Olympics, but also they would enjoy additional funds from the New Chicago 2016 effort."

Right. I'll bet that's what Daley has in mind if he doesn't win on Friday. We'll be waiting by the mailbox for our cut of the city's freed-up largesse. 

Or, maybe, just maybe, he'll do what he does best- think up new boondoggles like R2010 that  make the rich folks feel good about themselves, starve the non-profits, and distract the media from the human tragedies that unfold in this city every day.

Thanks to State School News Service for alerting us to a hearing here in Chicago on how Illinois should respond to the federal Race to the Top competition.

The Senate Education Committee will convene at 10:30 Thursday Oct. 1 in Room 16-503 in the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago.

This may be the only chance for Chicago-area supporters of public education to register concerns about the heavy reliance of RTTT on high-stakes testing, risky turnarounds (like the one done to Fenger) charter expansion, and other failed strategies of the Duncan administration. Changes in Illinois law to sweeten the state's chances to win RTTT funds could be made in the October veto session.

If you can't attend, this would be a good time to contact members of the Education Committee.

Here are the comments PURE filed with the Dept. of Education on RTTT.

Here are some related, thoughtful student and educator comments.

I just sent this letter to the Tribune: 

Responsibility for the tragic death of Fenger student Darrion Albert belongs first and foremost to the perpetrators. Their families must take a share of the blame, and all parents must step up, be visible in and around schools, and take more responsibility for their children's conduct. Police presence at Fenger was clearly inadequate given the imminent threat of violent retaliation for a shooting hours before the fatal riot.

But it is of critical importance to acknowledge that Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 program is a significant contributing factor to the increase in violence at Fenger and other affected schools. R2010 has radically destabilized already fragile communities by closing schools – often the only major community institution in some neighborhoods -- and by firing long-time teachers and staff and pushing students out and across gang territory to unfamiliar surroundings.

While the Tribune alluded to this reality by mentioning that CPS made nearby Carver High School into a closed-enrollment military school, you failed to add that Fenger also receives students from Englewood and Calumet High Schools, which are no longer regular neighborhood schools thanks to R2010, or that Fenger is in its first year of CPS-run turnaround under R2010, meaning that nearly all of its staff was fired and replaced this past summer.

Former CPS Chief Executive Officer, now Education Secretary Arne Duncan, wants to award federal Race to the Top grant money based on the extent to which states promote the "Chicago model" of school reform -- turnarounds, charters, and high-stakes standardized testing. These strategies have not worked in Chicago, and are hurting children. We must save our children from further expansion of these "reforms." We've got to tell the truth about what's been happening in Chicago and demand that Illinois and other states stand up for what is best for children.

**** 

More on the Fenger tragedy: 

As usual, Substance is the only Chicago newspaper that pointed out that violence-disrupted Fenger High School is in its first year of CPS-run turnaround under Renaissance 2010.

The Tribune alluded to R2010, reporting that some in the community "blamed the violence on the school district's decision two years ago to convert Carver High School to a military academy, forcing many Altgeld students to transfer to Fenger." 

Even murkier was the Sun-Times quote  from a Fenger mom, "They opened this school up and said everything has changed. Nothing has changed," she said.

The Sun-Times fails to explain that the "change" was the 2009 CPS turnaround.

Substance reports the full story -- that only nine of the more than 100 Fenger teachers were kept in the turnaround, and that "Part of the toxic mix at Fenger was created when the Board of Education closed and radically reorganized Carver High School, Englewood High School, and Calumet High School on the city's South Side...." so that neighborhood students were turned away from their local school.

CPS claims that the R2010 "hearings" are important, but clearly no one at CPS was listening.

UPDATE: The Sun-Times printed my letter on the Ebert review today.  

****

Roger Ebert has once again demonstrated that he is the best journalist in Chicago with his review of "The Providence Effect," a documentary about Chicago's private Providence-St. Mel's High school and the newer CPS Providence Englewood Charter School.   

Unlike most of his colleagues, Ebert cuts right to the heart of the issue: "This is a far from advantaged area where gangs and drugs are realities, and yet the school reports that for 29 straight years, it has placed 100 percent of its high-school graduates in colleges. Of course this figure benefits from the school's policy of expelling troublemakers...."

""The Providence Effect' is impressive, although not quite the film it could have been. It asks few hard questions. ...How do the students survive the toxic neighborhoods in their personal lives? What is the process by which a misbehaving or counterproductive child can be expelled? What is the selection process? How are non-Catholic students regarded? How do teacher salaries rank? Do gangs take a negative interest in the school or its children?"

"The film suggests that public schools spend too many resources on administration and bureaucracy, and not enough on education itself. Also, of course, they have to take all applicants -- those suited for school, and those already temperamentally not suited. "

That is the most coherent, fairest description of the difference between traditional neighborhood schools and Chicago's charter schools that I have ever read in either the Sun-Times or the Tribune.  The fact that it was written by a film critic speaks volumes about the state of journalism in Chicago.

WBEZ is reporting that a decision has been handed down by Federal Judge Charles Kocoras that the 29-year-old Desegregation Consent Decree is ended.

This means that the Chicago Public schools will no longer be monitored by the Justice Department to assure that the system does not segregate by race.

No, I'm not sure what universe Judge Kocoras lives, in either.

Here's some background on the issue. 

Eat your heart out, Rio!!!

Word is out that Chicago's "secret weapon" is being unleashed on Copenhagen.

No, not Oprah.

Obama? Please.

No, it's Arne Duncan, the Hyperbolic Hoopster. The former CPS CEO, now Fed Ed Head, will be off to Denmark to flatten the opposition with his verbiage. 

How could any of the other bidders stand a chance once Duncan declares that Chicago's bid is dramatically, tremendously extraordinary?

And I'll bet it's even more impressive in Danish.

After hearing oral arguments from both sides in the LSC lawsuit, Judge Sophia Hall announced that she will render her verdict in court on October 6th at 11 am.

Attorneys for LSCs and for CPS argued over whether CPS has the right to ban LSCs from any school labeled by CPS as a small or an alternative school.

CPS has changed their policies for school governance every year and relabeled schools in what simply looks to us like an illegal effort to get rid of LSCs. Their lawyers attempted to argue that “the community” wanted alternative, advisory LSCs. In fact, every small schools application we have seen, including the ones named in our case, specified that they wanted a real, not an advisory, LSC, to govern the school.

According to Elaine Siegel, attorney for the LSC side, even under CPS's own policy up until 2007, any small or alternative school could decide to have a real, elected LSC. CPS violated its own policy (which has the effect of law) by denying these schools the right to have a real LSC.

Here's just one example. CPS lawyers claimed that Pershing West, in its original application as Mid-South Scholastic School, "asked" to have an advisory council. Yet, the Board report states clearly that the school would have a transitional board and "thereafter a Local School Council will be established in a timely manner." 

Remember that PURE found a huge gap in accountability in Renaissance 2010 schools. Most schools had no governing body at all, and the ones that did had very few parents involved – less than 5% overall. Our schools need more, not less, community support and monitoring.

Besides the charter schools, which are exempt from LSCs under state charter law, there are between 40 – 50 schools which currently operate without real LSCs. We may have to bring all of them into the case before we're done!

Read more about the hearings on Substancenews.net -- Hearings to create 2010 CPS hit list?

Some folks printed and distributed PURE's fact sheets at their local hearings on the failures of Illinois charter schools and on the whoppers Arne Duncan and CPS tell about R2010.

Here is the schedule:

Edgewater: Tuesday, Sept. 22nd | 6:00pm to 7:00pm | St. Gregory's Gym | 1609 W. Gregory St.

Austin: Wednesday, Sept. 23rd | 6:00pm to 7:00pm | Plato Learning Academy | 5545 W. Harrison St.

Gage Park: Wednesday, Sept. 23rd | 6:00pm to 7:00pm | Rufino Tamayo School | 5135 S. California Ave.

South Chicago: Tuesday, Sept. 29th | 6:00pm to 8:00pm | Our Lady of Guadalupe Church | 3200 E. 91st St. | *Refreshments served at 5:30pm*

Roseland: Tuesday, Sept. 29th | 6:00pm to 8:00pm | Neighborhood Housing Service | 11001 S. Michigan Ave.

Avondale: Tuesday, Sept. 29th | 6:00pm to 7:00pm | Resurrection Church | 3043 N. Francisco Ave.

West Town: Wednesday, Sept. 30th | 6:00pm to 7:00pm | Prologue Early College High School | 1135 N. Cleaver Rd.

South Shore: Wednesday, Sept. 30th | 6:00pm to 7:00pm | South Shore Public Library | 2505 E. 73rd St.

Kenwood-Grand Blvd.: Thursday, Oct. 1 | 6:00pm to 7:00pm | Little Black Pearl Art Center | 1060 E. 47th St.

Englewood: Thursday, Oct. 1st | 6:00pm to 8:00pm | Rust Memorial Church | 6400 S. Stewart

West Ridge: Thursday, Oct. 1st | 6:00pm to 7:00pm | Budlong Woods Library | 5630 N. Lincoln Ave.

North Lawndale: Thursday, Oct. 1st | 6:00pm to 7:00pm | LEARN Elementary School | 1132 S. Homan Ave.

Riverdale: Saturday, Oct. 3rd | 10:00am to Noon | Altgeld-Murray CYC Building | 951 E. 132nd Pl.



Looks as though Ron Huberman responded to CORE demands for faster response to classrooms without teachers (the "20th day problem") by sending teams of substitutes to various high schools where the problem was most likely to arise, according to this report from WBEZ's Linda Lutton. While not an answer, it may serve as a stop gap until Huberman can come up with a better plan.

How about a web site like the one he created for the CTA, which tells you when your next bus is coming? There could be a CPS site where students and parents could find out when there would be an assigned teacher in the classroom....     

Judge Sophia Hall will hear oral arguments tomorrow (Wednesday, September 23) in our small/alternative schools LSC lawsuit. The hearing is scheduled for 10:30 am, in Daley Center room 2301.

Unfortunately, this is also a Board of Education meeting day, so those wishing to testify before the Board -- including some plaintiffs and many supporters of our case -- must be at CPS headquarters at that same time.

If you can make it, please join us in a show of support for LSCs. Here's some background on the case.

Our attorney, Elaine Siegel, will argue that CPS illegally denies certain Renaissance 2010 schools and their staff, parents, and community the right to representation by an empowered, elected LSC. The state legislature recently made a change in the "small schools exemption" to the LSC law which will have an impact on our case.  

CPS has been trying to get Judge Hall to throw out the case, which we filed in February, 2008. They succeeded once, but she allowed us to refile with expanded plaintiffs and arguments. CPS tried to get that  motion thrown out, and lost. This time we believe that Judge Hall will make a final decision to allow the case to go forward or not.. This may happen tomorrow, or she may come back with a decision at a later date.

If she dismisses the case, we plan to appeal to the next level. If she allows the case to move forward, then we go to trial and IT'S ON!

Here's our current argument.

CPS CEO Ron Huberman has fired Josh Edelman, who ran Renaissance 2010 under Duncan. This can only be a good thing, but it remains to be seen what next steps Huberman will take with this problematic department. We suggest saving millions by shutting it down.

We always thought it was the height of irony that the son of Marian Wright Edelman, who founded the Children's Defense Fund and coined the phrase "No Child Left Behind," was in charge of R2010 when department staff were encouraging at least one charter school to  "counsel out these kinds of kids” (see our report, Public Accountability and Renaissance 2010," p. 9.

North Lawndale College Prep Charter has got to get some sort of award for the best PR spins on its failures. Maybe we could call it the "Cloutie."

There were the initial plaudits, though clout was obvious early on: "ReChord credits the charter’s board for pushing CPS into renovating Howland (building North Lawndale took over), which needed work in the west wing, gym and auditorium. 'They’re an active group of people who believe in the mission. There is nothing that will stop them. … The push was unrelenting to provide a safe and clean space for these kids to learn,' ReChord says."

Then there was the tragic Wisconsin canoe accident, which, amazingly, garnered the school a laudatory Tribune story, the one that claimed that the school's graduation rate was "nearly 100%" and for which PURE forced the Tribune to print a correction. 

Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan then spread the false graduation data about North Lawndale all over the country as he tried to justify his Race to the Top plan to close 5000 schools.   

All of this as North Lawndale gained the dubious distinction of being one of the first CPS charter schools to land on the NCLB restructuring list (where it is now threatened with --gasp --being handed over to a charter school operator!!!).  

Most recent is a Defender sports story about the North Lawndale "Phoenix" and their 0-3 varsity football team. Not to worry! They're enthusiastic! "The reason for the optimism is based primarily on the team's belief that they are about to enter a new phase of their first varsity season that will bode well for them."

All you need, it seems, are high hopes and lots of outside money and power (in this case, the Steans family), and all that you touch turns to good PR.  

If you missed "The Principal's Story" on PBS this week, you can watch it online here.

And you really do want to watch it. For one thing, there's a great shot of vintage Wanda at the January 2008 Board meeting, just after footage of the Edison parents protesting in front of CPS (about 44 minutes into the program).

And there's this eloquent, touching quote from Nash principal Tresa Dunbar reflecting on the school's "walkthrough" by a team of adminstrators monitoring classroom instruction.

"I'd like a walkthrough of the classrooms to see how many kids have fathers, to see how many kids have parents who are incarcerated and who are angry -- how many children don't care about putting a word on the word wall because they haven't seen their mother in three days or three weeks. I'd like to do a walkthrough about why we don't have any social workers, why I have a part-time social worker, why I just have one counselor, one case manager. It's not that instruction isn't important -- it is....We have to start looking at what schools are being held accountable for."

UPDATE; WBEZ carries attendance story including quotes from me.

Praise be! It happened again! CPS sets new first-day attendance record!

Last year school leaders declared that an attendance miracle happened despite the new IMPACT system which couldn't count its own toes at that  point. The meaningless annual numbers game is even more absurd this year, since about  a third of CPS schools actually started school on August 10.

Maybe Daley could begin to care about something that really matters -- that a lot of those students who show up on time and ready to learn are met with chaos. School schedules  are a mess. There are not enough teachers. Students end up sitting in the auditorium or on the floor. Days and sometimes weeks of instruction are lost because CPS refuses to assign needed additional staff until after the "20th day," or the first month of school, is over.  

Ron Huberman promised CORE that he would monitor the schools and move before the 20th day where needed. It's time to see if he keeps his word.  

Check out this great story on Substance News online written by three public school students who attempted to respond to an e-mail invitation to the Illinois Network of Public Schools annual "Family Picnic" this weekend.

Donzell Chester, Antonio Jackson, and Jeremiah Ray went to the INCS picnic in Humboldt Park, only to be told that they were not welcome if they were not charter school students, and that in fact they would be trespassing in this "public" park if they stayed.

Although the INCS press release promised "hundreds of public charter schools supporters,"  the students also reported that there were not a lot of people at this event, with the paid employees nearly outnumbering the "guests".

Public schools?

INCS and other charter school cheerleaders think it's important to remind us that charter schools are PUBLIC schools. 

Actions speak louder than words, folks. Like the actions of many charters to restrict enrollment or push out unwanted students, this example of selective "public" participation shows us that INCS's idea of public is definitely not the same as ours..

Dishonorable mention list 

Before they were pushed out of the INCS event, the students took a number of photos which you can also see on Substance News. One photo is of a poster listing the event's sponsors. Wonder how these companies think a lot of the PUBLIC will feel knowing that they give money to support a movement that has had such an overall negative effect on our real public schools? For example, do WBEZ members know what they are doing with their membership dollars?

• American Girl
• Bouma Construction
• CG Communications
• Chicago Blackhawks
• Chicago Childrens' Museum
• Chicago Red Stars
• Chicago Wolves
• Circa 30
• Commonsense Media
• David Weinberg Gallery
• Econobility Network
• Goldberg Cohen
• IGo Cars
• Learning Springs
• Moira and Company
• Shimer College
• Steppenwolf Theater
• Silk Road Theater Project
• State Farm
• Vera and Associates
• WBEZ
• West Loop Athletic Club.

 c

FactCheck.org has a great article about the dust-up over President Obama's speech to students. 

Here's what they report: 

George H. W. Bush spoke to students at a D.C. public middle school in October of 1991. His address was broadcast nationwide. The speech was very similar in content to President Obama's. In fact, the administration sent letters to all public schools urging them to watch the speech, which ended with Bush encouraging students to "write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals."

That's pretty much the exact line that made conservatives froth at the mouth when it came from Obama's Department of Education. 

But no one seemed to have a problem with that. Rather, President Bush Sr. was criticized by Democrats for using the speech as a taxpayer-supported campaign event. In fact, Bush was beginning his primary run-up to the 1992 presidential election, which he lost to Bill Clinton.  

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, out-and-out preached the Republican party platform to a mix of public and private school students at the White House in 1988, and apparently that was OK since FactCheck.org can find no reports of any criticism of his speech, which included the following:  

"We also find that more countries than ever before are following America's revolutionary economic message of free enterprise, low taxes, and open world trade. These days, whenever I see foreign leaders, they tell me about their plans for reducing taxes and other economic reforms that they're using, copying what we have done here in our country.

"I would say that the most important thing you can do is to ground yourself in the ideas and values of the American Revolution. And that is a vision that goes beyond economics and politics. It's also a moral vision, grounded in the reverence and faith of those who believed that with God's help they could create a free and democratic nation. They designed a system of limited government that, in John Adams' words, was suited only to a religious people such as ours."

Monty Neill just sent around an Education Week blog post about the appointment of Tom Harkin as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee which suggests that Harkin might be skeptical of some of the ideas that RTTT promotes.

Senator Harkin needs to hear from us! Contact him here.

I just sent him this message:

Hi Senator Harkin-

I am the executive director of a small parent advocacy group in Chicago called Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE). We are so pleased to hear that you are the new chair of the HELP committee- because we need your help to slow down the irresponsible RTTT! Because we know what Secretary Duncan did here in Chicago as schools CEO, we are very concerned about his decisions as Education Secretary.   

PURE filed the following comments on RTTT:

http://pureparents.org/index.php?blog/show/Stop_reckless_Race_to_the_Top

We recommend the following:

The RTTT guidelines should

1. Assure that all planning for school improvement is done locally and that it meaningfully involves all stakeholders (not the limited list cited in these guidelines), including parents, students, teachers, and community members.   

2. Promote sound, research-based improvement practices based on the best information available from the USDE's own “What Works” files and other trustworthy sources.   

3. Support and fund wholistic improvement programs rather than those narrowly focused on teaching to the test and test preparation.  

4. Require true multiple measures of student and school progress such as those outlined by the Forum on Educational Accountability.   

5. Make your first priority assisting the schools that we currently have, by requiring a well-supported, careful, parent-, student-, teacher- and community-inclusive analysis of the school's strengths and weaknesses, including an evaluation of the success or failure of any prior improvement or intervention efforts. The subsequent school improvement planning and program implementation process must also be inclusive.

Thank you for listening!

Julie Woestehoff 

I recently received a few more sets of charter school minutes from Chicago ACTS, a project of the AFT that works to unionize and support charter school teachers.

As I found last year in the minutes PURE obtained using Freedom of Information Act requests (see our report, "Public Accountability and Renaissance 2010") the picture of charters that emerges from their own Board minutes is rather different from the polished image groups like Advance Illinois, the Civic Committee, and Illinois Network of Charter schools try to maintain.    

On discipline: "Currently the principals are involved in a lot of disciplinary actions with students although in the past students were being suspended for fights, now they are being suspended for swearing." (Perspectives, 3/28/07). "CICS Longwood administrators are suspending students too often with too little provocation." (CICS, 1/16/07)

On test prep: "ACT scores had gone up by two points. ...A tool called Prep Me was used which guarantees a two-point increase which cost $10 K and was well worth the money.... (Perspectives 5/30/07) although the ACT scores went up, scores for work keys went down because the emphasis on preparation was put into the ACT." (Perspectives 9/18/07). "The staff is trying to better understand the high percentage of students who fail and take summer school.  Wednesday is 'EPAS test prep day." (CICS 10/21/08)

On the famous "waiting lists":  "The Bucktown and Irving Park campus was underenrolled and  have had a significant number of transfers out with 30 transfers at Bucktown." (CICS 9/18/07) 

On facilities spending: Reporting on a meeting with then-CPS CEO Arne Duncan, "CPS is concerned that Charter schools are spending enormous amounts of money on facilities compared to what CPS intended charter schools to spend. Arne Duncan wants more of the money to go toward education instead of capital costs." (CICS 11/28/06)

On co-opting your detractors: "At the Chicago Public Schools board meeting there were two people who spoke out against the CICS Avondale campus. After the meeting, (CICS administrator) was able to meet with them to inform them that the goal of CICS is not to put good schools out of business but...to create more choice and to work collaboratively with CPS. Both have agreed to be part of the CICS launch team." (CICS 11/28/06) 

Rotten to the CORE? I can't find any other info on this on the internet, but here's what I read: "CORE is a new political action committee (PAC) with the mission to support Illinois Charter Schools. David Weinberg is both a board member for the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and CORE. CORE is a 501(c)(3) that has existed for three months. The primary goal of CORE is to pass a law for alternate authorizers in Illinois." (CICS, 8/19/2008) Congrats, charter schools CORE. You did it.

It's refreshing to hear Ron Huberman acknowledge in a WBEZ interview that most of the district's students attend regular neighborhood schools. Calling them the "frontline schools," he says he plans to focus most of his attention on them, while scrutinizing charter schools more closely. 

Wrong about tests

"Data-driven" Huberman does need to do his homework, though, on the issue of standardized tests. In this same interview, he claimed that "every university and college takes a look at standardized test scores." Not true, as FairTest has been pointing out. Their count so far is 815 colleges and universities that have dropped SAT I and ACT from their application criteria formost students. Among other things, these schools have found that dropping tests leads to greater diversity because the focus on test scores deters otherwise qualified minority, low-income, first-generation, female and other students from applying."

Once I found out that the interim director of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools was on last night's Chicago Tonight show with me, I worried that we'd spend too much time arguing about charters and not enough time on more important issues.

And when Ms. Ewing tried to say that charters are safer than regular schools, I just had to point out that charters tend to push the discipline problems out and back to the regular schools. So much for violence!

I'd hoped to have a chance to thank President Obama for his message to the nation's school children, and to mention that CORE is monitoring these first few days of school for teacher shortages. CORE has been working to eliminate the "20th day" rule, under which CPS won't count student enrollment for the purposes of adding teachers until after the end of the first four weeks of school, leaving thousands of students without teachers or classrooms and wasting more than 10% of their academic year. 

CORE has testified about this problem at Board meetings and gotten an assurance from CEO Huberman that he will move more quickly this year. It's time to see if he means what he says. You can email CORE with your "20th day" stories, coreteachers@gmail.com. 

But you never get to say everything you want to say on someone else's show -- that's why people love to blog....

President Obama delivered a typically excellent speech to the nation's school children earlier today.

As a parent, I found the speech personal, motivating, relevant, straightforward, kindly, not condescending, and exactly what responsible parents tell their children and expect their children to hear from the school.

But not all parents get their thoughts together quite so well, and not all schools send as clear a message.

So, thanks, Mr. President, for taking the time to share this important message with our children.  

It's important to recognize that groups like Advance Illinois ("Our children's future is in jeopardy!!! screams their web site) and rich folks like Bill Gates (Big Brother is gonna watch you teach!) have been on a mission lately to create a "Red Alert" scare in the U. S. over the state of public education by obsessing over standardized test scores and making bogus comparisons between our nation's public schools and those in other countries.

Debunking those claims is important. But it's also important to talk about what they DON'T talk about, that is, the real crisis in America.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based watchdog of industrialized nations, infant mortality in the U.S. is the fourth-worst in the OECD after Mexico, Turkey and Slovakia. Child poverty rates in the U.S. are nearly double the OECD average, at 21.6 percent compared to 12.4 percent. The rate of teen births in the U.S. is three times the OECD average, with only Mexico recording a higher rate among OECD countries, the report said.

If these folks care so much about children, why does this kind of information never appear in their "research base" or come up in their conversation?

Why is it that we "can't wait" to close and privatize schools and fire teachers and staff, but we need "incremental" health care reform and no new taxes?  

CPS CEO Ron Huberman is planning to increase school security staff, coordinate social services, and focus special help on students identified as most at risk of being impacted by violence.

This sounds great, but it sounds an awful lot like the proposal we made to him to improve academic programs. Maybe that will be CPS's next announcement.

As usual, State School News Service's Jim Broadway provides an astute analysis of Gov. Quinn's amendatory veto of HB 363, Rep Soto's CPS school facilities bill:

"Recent school closings and other related actions by the Chicago Public Schools board have created anxiety in neighborhoods near many of the city's 600 schools. Nothing scares folks more than the possibility that their kids' school will close. Lobbying led by advocates for Local School Councils pushed legislators to pass a bill to slow down the CPS. City legislators responded with HB 363, which would create a task force to conduct and in-depth study and recommend legislation.

"HB 363 is not something House Speaker Michael Madigan would have wanted. But he had to give his caucus members from Chicago some political cover. So he allowed the bill to pass, but with deadlines for action so short that it would have little effect, and with him appointing the task force chairman, which effectively would allow him to set the agenda. Quinn now apparently wants to take over the issue. By amendatory veto, he has changed the reporting deadline from October 30 - too soon for the task force to make much of a public stir - to March 30 of 2010, providing enough time to make a big stir.

"Quinn also changed the bill so that he would have the power to appoint the task force chairman. In that way, he could position himself as a hero of 'the people,' who are being disregarded by the city's social and political 'establishment.'   Without regard to the merits of the bill, it does in fact appear to pit 'the people' in the 600 schools' neighborhoods against the CPS 'bureaucracy' and the forces of gentrification. Quinn may be inept in his role as governor, as Hynes alleges, but there is no question as to Quinn's populist pandering skills."

Jim explains:  

Should be interesting....

UPDATE: President's address to schoolchildren angers suburban parent:

"I don't recall ever having a sitting president addressing schoolchildren," Palomo said. "For major events, maybe, but not the first day of school. The whole thing makes me angry as an American." 

Yeah. I mean, let's get back to the good old days when presidents and their VPs knew their role, that is, to get the photo op pretending to read to the cute little kiddies, maybe write out "potatoe" on the blackboard, and then get back to the important stuff like waging war and cutting taxes on the rich.  

****

President Obama will be delivering a special message to U. S. students this Tuesday, and the USDE is urging schools to have their students watch the video and engage in related activities created by the Teaching Ambassador Fellows (inciuding our own Xian from CORE).

In conjunction with this event, the Department of Education is launching the “I Am What I Learn” video contest for students.

"On September 8, we will invite students to respond to the president’s challenge by creating videos, up to two minutes in length, describing the steps they will take to improve their education and the role education will play in fulfilling their dreams.

"We invite all students age 13 and older to create and upload their videos to YouTube by October 8. Submissions can be in the form of video blogs, public service announcements (PSAs), music videos, or documentaries. Students are encouraged to have fun and be creative with this project! The general public will then vote on their favorites to determine the top 20 finalists. These 20 videos will be reviewed by a panel of judges including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The panel will choose three winners, each of whom will receive a $1,000 cash prize."

It sounds great, and I can't wait for some group of clever students to create a video, "I am Test Prep." That could be a REAL learning experience! 

Will ISBE? Because it's the RTTT proposal ISBE writes that will determine how this program affects Chicago schools. ISBE's upcoming meeting schedule is pasted in below.  

Here are some thoughtful comments about the four basic tenets of Race to the Top--  turnarounds, tying teacher evaluations and salaries to test scores, national standards, and expanding charter schools. 

Will they listen???

On turnarounds, from NewsTips, quoting Julian High School student Shantell Steve, who was featured in President Obama's speech to students:   

"School closings and staff changes are especially bad for the most vulnerable students. (Steve said)  'We have to change schools without getting rid of all the teachers, because they are our support system.' Steve invited Ron Huberman to Julian to see the turnaround that’s happening there without firing the teachers and having to shut the school and reopen it. She said there’s 'great progress' at Julian, adding, 'If we can change a school like Julian we can change any school.'

On using test scores to judge teachers, from an essay in the Sacramento Bee written by award-winning teachers:

"We urge Duncan and Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger to go back to school regarding the use of test scores for teacher evaluations. Currently, state education policy prohibits this practice; experts in education, testing and even economics have argued that state tests are not designed for teacher evaluation and will not yield reliable results. You are taking in us in a direction that will harm our schools and our students. The policy changes promoted through Race to the Top will undo California's thoughtful, research-based and consensus-driven state education policy in an attempt to qualify for federal grants.

On national standards, from ASCD: 

"We believe it is both premature and inappropriate for the Department of Education to require states to adopt a set of 'common core' (i.e., 'national') standards as a condition to be eligible to apply for and receive this federal grant."

On charter expansion, from the NEA:

"Despite growing evidence to the contrary, it appears that the administration has decided that charter schools are the only answer to what ails America's public schools -- urban, suburban, exurban and rural -- and all must comply with that silver bullet. We find this top-down approach disturbing; we have been down that road before with the failures of No Child Left Behind, and we cannot support yet another layer of federal mandates that have little or no research base of success and that usurp state and local government's responsibilities for public education."

===== 

ISBE upcoming meeting schedule

As your full-service 24-hour flamingo news service, we are pleased to report that  Madison, WI has named the pink plastic flamingo as their official city bird in honor of a classic 1979 prank orchestrated by leaders of the University of Wisconsin student government. According to the AP, the students organized the surprise placement of more than 1,000 pink plastic flamingos on Bascom Hill, just below the dean's office.

While flamingo tackiness would perhaps even more appropriately suit Chicago's civic reputation, there are days when we can easily think of a bird that better captures the essence of our city.  

Wisconsin has taken a strong, educationally-sound step towards a better education for their students. They are replacing the current state tests with a system that combines state, district and classroom assessments.

According to a state spokesperson, the new system, which was recommended by a task force that studied statewide tests, will be more responsive to students, teachers and parents. It will also meet state and federal accountability laws. The new tests likely will be computer-based with multiple opportunities to gauge student progress during the year.

Wow. In response to two different stories in the Tribune about CPS's failure to provide required services to special education services, CPS has vowed to launch an internal investigation. Yep, that should take care of it.

However, our advice to parents - don't drop the lawsuits just yet.

The cases reported in the Tribune are being handled by PURE member Sara Mauk O'Connor and her husband/law partner Michael O'Connor.  We highlighted the first story earlier; here's the second.

The Chicago Teachers Union and the Sun-Times surveyed teachers to find out if they are being pressured to change student grades.

A third of them said yes.

CTU spokesperson Rosemaria Genova told WBEZ that "the focus on test scores and numbers is behind the pressure to boost grades."

CPS's fake "multiple measures"

In fact, it's a natural consequence of CPS's horribly screwed up value system. Under a pretense of "multiple measures," the system has attached high stakes to test scores, grades, and attendance. Then, rather than provide the support and resources schools need to actually serve children well, CPS and its leader, Mayor Daley, continuously ratchet up the pressure to make the numbers look better every year.

It's no different from the way Bernie Madoff defrauded his investors with fake numbers that had no relationship to any real value. 

These numbers pervade every corner of every classroom in every CPS school. For example, seventh grade students' attendance and grades are used along with test scores to determine their "ranking" for selective enrollment high schools. Sick? Too bad. Better go to school anyway.

High schools are judged by the percentage of freshmen "on track," that is, those who have earned 5 credits and have not flunked a class. Grade inflation, anyone? 

Principal evaluation includes points for school attendance. No, not whether the principal showed up for work, but the percent of increase in student attendance.

We are, of course, about to be treated to another round of gleeful "highest first day attendance" pronouncements from Ron Huberman and Mayor Daley. The fact that about a third of CPS schools started class August 10th will not be mentioned.  

I can't think of a better tribute to Senator Kennedy than these words posted on the website for the National Indian Education Association where my nephew, Michael Woestehoff, serves as membership chairman and magazine editor. 

On Tuesday, Gov. Quinn signed an amendatory veto of HB 363 which will decrease the representation of community groups from four to 2 and give him and Mayor Daley each three picks for the panel.

The General Assembly has to agree to these changes before they take effect. 

It was just like old times at the Board meeting yesterday. I presented PURE's concerns about the failure of CPS's $100 million/year retention program, and my old buddy, Board member Norm Bobbins, sat himself up and demanded to know if we are suggesting a return to social promotion.

Norm likes to think he can take me on.  

Anyway, I said that, as a businessman, he surely knows that there can be more than one bad plan, and that both social promotion and retention are bad plans, although research has shown that social promotion actually worked a little better than retention.

Well, he huffed, as a businessman I know that you can't keep passing students along if they haven't learned. 

I agreed, and said that we had lots of good ideas that are better than flunking kids. I also reminded him that the Consortium told CPS five years ago that retention didn't work, and yet they still flunk 10,000 students every year at a cost of over $100 million a year. I said, "And I think that's the definition of insanity."

I just like to push Norm's buttons.

Clearly being near institutional death has made the Tribune throw caution to the wind and start to tell some of  the truth about what's really going on at CPS.

Today's front-page Tribune story highlights the struggles of  one parent to get CPS to follow court orders and provide needed special education services to her son. Her attorneys, long-time PURE member Sara Mauk O'Connor and her husband/law partner Michael, tell a story that we know is common to so many families. CPS does everything and nothing in their quest to delay and deny this child the education they are required by law to provide for him. Multiply that by thousands every year and you have a good picture of the state of special education in CPS.

Renaissance 2010 is just a three-ring circus, its clowns and elephants on display to distract the public from the real problems that CPS itself creates and then ignores.

Sara and Mike have long been our go-to attorneys for special ed cases. Their dedication to the students and their educational rights is truly heroic. We hope that this story makes a difference, not just for this child, but for the thousands also suffering under CPS's neglect. 

Fed Ed Head Duncan has sold his Hyde Park home for more than double what he paid for it ten years ago, according to the Tribune real estate section.

The caption on the picture of Duncan that accompanied the printed story stated that there is no record of Arne having purchased a home in the D.C. area. Has the strong, broadbased criticism of his Race To The Top proposal made him think twice about getting too settled in our nation's capital? 

I'm looking outside to see if pigs are flying. It's also pretty cool out for August, but I'm pretty sure hell hasn't frozen over.

Still, the fact remains that CPS actually disciplined a principal for not getting the local school council's permission to rent out a school.

Dushon Brown, principal of Gwendolyn Brooks High School, was suspended without pay for 20 days for doing just that. As the Tribune notes, "Renting out a high school is not against district policy, but documents show Brown did so without approval from the local school council or her school district area supervisor."

While we're pleased at the man-bites-dog story, we know that CPS has been after this goofy principal at least since the time the Brooks LSC selected her as the school's principal after her statement that her high school experience consisted of having attended high school. Brown's selection at Brooks was promoted by a notable reverend senator and a local alderman.    

Brown was formerly principal of Curtis Elementary, where she and PURE had notable run-ins over her disrespect for the LSC, so her punishment is satisfying.

The problem is that CPS exercises its "support" for LSC decision making only when it has a beef with the prinicpal, and not when it refuses to touch a favored principal (such as at Blaine).

We're  still looking for that truly independent, professional mediation process that could handle these problems without the biases and favoritism that define CPS's action (or lack of same). Unitl then, none of these decisons can be trusted, and no one in CPS is really safe.

There have been a couple of strong teacher criticisms of testing and President Obama's current education priorities.

The report you may have missed was in the Sun-Times Wednesday: a Golden Apple Foundation survey of their award-winning teachers showed that 72% think that high-stakes testing has harmed education, and the majority believe that NCLB has had a negative effect on teaching and learning.

" 'One thing remains constant with standardized testing. It is a way to categorize students. It is not about students learning. It is not about teachers teaching,' said one winner, Griselle Diaz Gemmati, a teacher at Norwood Park Elementary."

Yesterday, the National Education Association filed their comments on the Race to the Top guidelines, and were sharply critical of the administration's approach to "reform": "Despite growing evidence to the contrary, it appears that the administration has decided that charter schools are the only answer to what ails America's public schools -- urban, suburban, exurban and rural -- and all must comply with that silver bullet."

"We find this top-down approach disturbing; we have been down that road before with the failures of No Child Left Behind, and we cannot support yet another layer of federal mandates that have little or no research base of success and that usurp state and local government's responsibilities for public education."

Here's the Washington Post story, and here are PURE's criticisms and recommendations (which apppeared earlier on PURE Thoughts).

You can still comment on the guidelines unitl August 28. 

It was bad enough that CPS shrugged off the reports of a teacher molesting a student at Chicago Hope Academy, a Christian private school which recently gained CPS approval to become a "public school" under R2010 in the fall of 2010.

Now, according to the Tribune, a lawsuit claims that staff at the school knew about the abuse and ignored it. "The suit alleged that the school 'permitted a culture where teachers were physically affectionate with students' and students regularly socialized at the homes of teachers. It also charged that school staff acted in a 'coercive and retaliatory' manner toward the boy, forcing him to withdraw or face expulsion."

CPS officials said in January:  “Chicago Public Schools officials said the charges did not jeopardize the academy's efforts to contract with the district and become a public school in fall 2010.”

The Black Agenda Report has a right-on, devastating report on what's being widely referred to as the "3 Stooges Tour" - Arne Duncan's national ride-around with Newt Gingrich and Rev. Al Sharpton:

"Despite a decade of hard sell by right wing think tanks, foundations, and big media, the American people have not bought the corporate version of school reform. Most people just don't believe public schools should be privatized or militarized, or operated by business people like businesses instead of by educators, parents and communities in the interests of children, parents and communities, like the best schools always have been run. And most educators doubt that high stakes testing improves educational outcomes in any meaningful way.

Check it out, and don't miss the great interview with Substance's George Schmidt. 

PURE has just been awarded a $3,000 grant from RESIST, Inc, a national progressive foundation located in Somerville, MA.

RESIST began in 1967 in support of draft resistance and in opposition to the Vietnam War. As the funder of first resort for hundreds of organizations, RESIST's small but timely grants and loans are made to grassroots groups engaged in activist organizing and educational work for social change. RESIST defines organizing as collective action to challenge the status quo, demand changes in policy and practice, and educate communities about root causes and just solutions. RESIST recognizes that there are a variety of stages and strategies that lead to community organizing. Therefore, they support strategies that build community, encourage collaborations with other organizations, increase skills and/or access to resources, and produce leadership from the constituency being most directly affected. In fiscal year 2008, RESIST gave over $265,000 to 138 organizations across the country.

"Each year, RESIST funds groups like PURE, because our mission is to support people who take a stand about the issues that matter today, whether it's to resist corporate globalization, promote a woman's right to choose, or develop activist leaders,” says Board Chair Kay Mathew. “And we believe it's especially important to help grassroots organizations that might be too small or too local – or too radical – for mainstream foundations.”

RESIST Contact: Robin Carton, Grants Manager

RESIST, Inc.

259 Elm Street

Somerville, MA 02144

617/623-5110 or robinc@resistinc.org; www.resistinc.org

It's been interesting to see that people are finally taking some of their beefs with CPS to the consumer watchdog at the Tribune. Today, for example, the column intervened for a teacher who worked all summer without getting a penny despite the fact that the school had received a grant specifically designated for her salary.

"The Problem Solver called Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Monique Bond on Monday afternoon. Within hours, several school officials contacted Rhinehart to work out a resolution. 'It's not going to be a problem. It's money that's due to her,' Bond said Tuesday. Bond said she 'feels very confident' Rhinehart will get paid soon. 'Once they get the paperwork and go into the system, I'm sure it will go quickly, Bond said."

Not surprising that they get action "within hours," unlike most regular folks.

It's just more proof that the system is not set up to help the people it supposedly serves, but only to respond to clout and/or bad publicity. 

From Progress Illinois:

This week, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) officials announced an historic $475 million deficit and broke the news to property owners that a tax hike is on the way. In response, Ald. Tom Allen lamented what a drain Mayor Daley's tax increment financing (TIF) system has become on the schools. Exactly how much was diverted into the city's TIF funds last year? Researchers for SEIU's Illinois Council (which sponsors Progress Illinois) tallied up the city's 2008 reports and found that $552 million was redirected into the mayor's "piggy bank." About half of those funds would have otherwise gone to CPS.

Below are the comments that PURE submitted in response to the Race To The Top Fund guidelines. You'll note that they are more rhetorical than regulation-language specific. Maybe that will add some spice to the excellent, thoughtful commentary already posted.    

Comment here on Race to the Top guidelines. You have 10 more days to give your input. Even if you don't think you know enough, write what you know about Duncan's mess here in Chicago and what we need instead.

There's a limit of 2000 characters per comment. I broke mine up into two sections. You can also attach a file. 

The guidelines themselves are here.

Comments on Race To The Top draft guidelines

by Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE)

Our organization has major, serious concerns about the draft guidelines for application for and awarding of federal education grants under the Race To the Top (RTTT) program. We believe that these new guidelines will worsen an already bad situation for our schools and our students under NCLB by destroying more neighborhood schools, ramping up the misuse of biased and uninformative standardized tests, expanding the numbers of students who are pushed out of schools, increasing the marginalization of parents in their own children's education, privatizing a civil right and what should be an open, accessible, accountable public service, and ultimately wasting nearly $5 billion in precious education dollars that could be spent actually improving the schools we have.

These RTTT draft guidelines are overly dictatorial in terms of their demand that states change a variety of state laws and adopt hastily-written national standards and national standardized tests, in order to conform to an unproven, unsophisticated, unprofessional, careless, highly biased vision of education that is overly obsessed with standardized tests, irrationally enamored with amateur educators, and unduly impressed with charter and other privatized school management systems. The drafters of this plan seem to be in total denial of the cautionary facts and research surrounding the strategies they promote, and to be completely unaware of the basic elements of real state of the art educational practice.

PURE's recommendations

We propose that these guidelines be overhauled and completely reoriented away from destructive, ineffective plans and towards the support of positive practices and strategies that will actually strengthen schools, improve teaching and learning, and offer our children the real educational opportunity our nation has promised them. The new guidelines would

1. Assure that all planning for school improvement is done locally and that it meaningfully involves all stakeholders (not the limited list cited in these guidelines), including parents, students, teachers, and community members.

2. Promote sound, research-based improvement practices based on the best information available from the USDE's own “What Works” files and other trustworthy sources.

3. Support and fund wholistic improvement programs rather than those narrowly focused on teaching to the test and test preparation.

4. Require true multiple measures of student and school progress such as those outlined by the Forum on Educational Accountability.

5. Make your first priority assisting the schools that we currently have, by requiring a well-supported, careful, parent-, student-, teacher- and community-inclusive analysis of the school's strengths and weaknesses, including an evaluation of the success or failure of any prior improvement or intervention efforts. The subsequent school improvement planning and program implementation process must also be inclusive.

One of PURE's stalwart funders, the 21st Century Fund, has a great project going that should be perfect for lots of CPS schools. The 21st Century School Fund, Healthy Schools Campaign and Critical Exposure has launched Through Your Lens: School Facilities Across America, a national photo and essay contest at www.ThroughYourLens.org on August 18th.  The contest, which ends September 14th, is tied to the policy debate about federal funding for public school repair, renovation and construction.

Winning photos and stories featuring the good, bad and ugly conditions in public school buildings from students and teachers will be displayed in Washington D.C., possibly at the Russell Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building the first week of October. But photos and essays from others are also welcome and will be posted at www.ThroughYourLens.org. The photo exhibit will open as Congress is considering legislation to fund the repair, renovation and construction of safe, healthy, and green school buildings.

Please help spread the word, thank you!

A lot of us school reformers did a double take reading yesterday's Tribune cover story on high school turnarounds by education reporter Azam Ahmed.

It's a shock to read a story that doesn't just pay lip service to the opposition to CPS's turnarounds in that superficial "telling both sides of the story" format that we're used to. You know, they write the story based entirerly on the CPS press release, and then get (usually) me to throw in a critical comment for "balance."

Some credit must go to the crisis in the newspaper industry, which seems to have emboldened the Trib lately.

More credit should go to Catalyst, which has veered away from its former cheerleading (such as calling AUSL a "proven program" before results were in) to more fact-based stories such as "Turnarounds keep most students" which made use of Consortium research and acknowledged that AUSL school Dodge was on a similar upward trajectory in test scores and a similar downward trajectory in student enrollment as nearby traditional neighborhood school Dett.

The story also noted that AUSL schools receive extra funds and resources that are not available to traditional schools, and that Sherman had pushed out a number of students. 

For whatever reason, it's good to see more accurate and unbaised reporting. Hope it lasts, and that the President

is learning something to balance out the lies his Education Secretary has been telling, before Duncan is allowed to

use NCLB to send the entire nation down the same path of destruction he took Chicago.

PURE founding president and executive director Bernie and Joy Noven pulled off a coup over the weekend by organizing a protest at the Uptown post office over the firing of their beloved 23-year mailman, and then getting a major Sun-Times columnist to cover it .

For some reason, Brown's column refers to Joy and Bernie as "old-school reformers" rather than "old school reformers" - or, actually, to be more correct,  "veteran school reformers," but you get the idea!

Nice work, Novens. Your great track record suggests that you'll get what you're asking for.

Mike Klonsky over at Small Talk has been doing a great job keeping up with (and skewering) his buddy (he wishes) Bill Gates. The latest news is the secret $4 million Gates spent pushing the New York State legislature to renew Mayoral control for NYC schools.    

In light of this story, PURE's long-proposed boycott of Microsoft in public schools is beginning to look more and more like an idea whose time has come.

In order to do this credibly, we first had to get the PURE office off of Windows. It took a while but we now use the Linux operating system with Ubuntu and Open Office.

These programs would be great for schools because they are free. They don't require the expensive multiple licensing and fees that you have to pay for Windows and other Microsoft programs (and the fines that schools and districts sometimes incur). Schools would also save on tech support because Linux programs are better, more reliable systems. Windows is a historically a lousy product. Linux never crashes. We've been Microsoft-free for six months now, and we're doing just fine.

So, besides saving enormous amounts of money at a time of severe budgetary belt-tightening. a Microsoft boycott might help loosen the company's stranglehold over the nation by cutting off the constant supply of users from elementary schools on up. And eventually, perhaps, loosen the chokehold Gates has over public education.

New York's Leonie Haimson has fired off another zinger at Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan with Part 2 of "Arne Duncan is a National Embarrassment" on today's Huffington Post, and it's right on target.

Deadline Note: Leonie reminds us to submit out comments on the Race To The Top plan here no later than Aug 28.

Leonie criticizes Duncan's national tour with Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich.Take a look at this "artist's rendering" of this "road show." 

What's really wrong with this picture? Leonie explains: "The fact that Duncan is joining these two disreputable figures reveals troubling insensitivity on his part. The last time Gingrich got involved in the education issue, Newt proposed forcibly removing children from inner-city parents to put them in orphanages and boarding schools.

"As for Al Sharpton, he was prompted to become involved in the education issue in the first place in return for a $500,000 donation from a prominent hedge-fund, which was lobbying the state and the city to acquire off-track betting parlors. The cool half a million Sharpton received, improperly funneled through a tax-free pro-charter school organization, kept him out of jail when he was fighting federal charges of tax evasion and other illegal activities.

"Even worse are Duncan's funding proposals. His $4.3 billion slush fund called "Race to the Top" is designed to reward school districts and states for implementing a narrow set of unproven strategies, based on the deregulatory biases of the corporate world. These schemes include pressuring states to raise their caps on charter schools and instituting teacher performance pay based on student test scores, despite the lack of any supporting research or proof of success in the real world.

"To add insult to injury, in apparent mimicry of the disregard in which parents are held here in New York City, the Race to the Top guidelines maintain that states will be awarded funds to:

'the extent to which the State has demonstrated commitment, support, and/or funding from the following key stakeholders: the teacher unions, charter school authorizers, the 'business, community, civil rights, and education association leaders' and private foundations,

"Never before has a Secretary of Education so aggressively inserted himself into local politics and so insistently pushed for changes in state and local laws -- with such a tin ear for the actual priorities of parents. Never before has a Secretary of Education so aggressively attempted to bribe states to adopt policies with little or no research to back them up, and that will lead to widening inequities."

There's a lot more good stuff - including a link to PURE's Duncan debunkin'. Read the whole post here. 

In these tight economic times,

CPS continues to waste more than

$100,000,000 a year

on a program that doesn't work,

and harms children.

Tuesday, PURE sent CPS CEO Ron Huberman a proposal for CPS to stop flunking children and redirect the annual $100-200 million costs to programs that work. The CPS policy is a proven failure, and there are better ways to spend that money including lower class size, early intervention (like the highly successful Child Parent Centers CPS has closed), and an improved, proactive assessment system using true multiple measures, not the multiple barriers in the current promotion policy.

The CPS policy also disproportionately affects African-American and Latino children, which violates their civil rights.

We are confident that Mr. Huberman, who is known to make his decisions based on data and research, will toss out the 13-year-old policy as recommended five years ago by Chicago researchers.

Here's the graphic cover, the executive summary, the full proposal, and a list of references to research that supports our recommendations.     

Hope his guy Arne is listening to what Obama said yesterday in Green Bay:

"if we're all we're doing is testing and then teaching to the test, that doesn't assure that we're actually improving educational outcomes.

We do need to have accountability, however. We do need to measure progress with our kids. Maybe it's just one standardized test, plus portfolios of work that kids are doing, plus observing the classroom. There can be a whole range of assessments, but we do have to have some kind of accountability, number one."

...lead, according to Ami Novoryta, writing in Education Week.

"Too many urban school districts hire charismatic superintendents with less experience in schools than first-year teachers. Meanwhile, seasoned school leaders are overlooked. Sadly, our students pay a high price for leaders with style, not substance.

"Some say desperate times call for desperate measures. Urban schools are in crisis. What we need, they contend, are 'outside the box' innovators.

"But how many Hail Mary passes are we willing to throw on behalf of our most disadvantaged children?

"More than we should. In January, Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago appointed former police officer Ron Huberman to lead the city's public schools. Huberman is a Daley protégé who spent two years as his chief of staff and 21 months leading Chicago's Transit Authority. With more experience in law enforcement than classroom management, he now leads America's third-largest school district."

Ms. Novoryta, who worked for a Chicago non-profit and is now studying at Harvard's Kennedy School for Government, says, "We cannot afford to hire school leaders whose learning curve is steeper than our children's. It's time to stop scouring other professions for silver-bullet-wielding saviors.

"Instead, let's identify, prepare, and promote leaders from within. There are extraordinary teachers who understand how children learn and how to improve their education. There are principals who motivate and empower teachers, and who make the most of every dollar spent and every hour devoted to learning. These leaders have a fighting chance to improve—not just shake up—our schools."

She points out that all five districts selected as finalists for last year's Broad Prize for Urban Education are led by former teachers with extensive public school experience.

The "charter movement," as Fed Ed Head Duncan calls it, is nothing if not consistent.

The Boston Globe reports that Massachusetts charter schools "tend to enroll few special education students or English language learners. That imbalance raises questions about how much expertise these schools can offer and about their efforts to recruit such students, whose academic needs are generally greater than those of other youngsters."

Meanwhile, at the front door of Arne "Remove charter caps or else" Duncan, according to this NPR report, "recent test scores of public school children in the nation's capital notably surpassed their charter school counterparts."  

PURE friend Leonie Haimson, leader of NYC-based Class Size Matters, sent us a link to her latest article on Huffington Post, "Arne Duncan has become an embarassment."

Leonie and other NYC parents are furious with Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan for fronting for the renewal of mayoral control in NYC schools. Duncan wrote an infamous letter to the New York State legislature warning them against saddling the mayor with a school board he could not fire, and against allowing too much parent voice in the schools. Mayoral control was just renewed, with only a few changes that might involve the public a little more in their schools.

Leonie writes that Duncan has become a "laughingstock" in NYC because of his interference in city school affairs. "Duncan's latest gaffe was his gushing words of praise for a blatantly propagandistic series of articles in the New York Post.... Duncan called the Post series "thoughtful" and praised the paper for its "leadership", even though these articles simply regurgitated the spurious statistics provided by the city's press office.... Duncan's calling the Post series "thoughtful" is like describing spam as filet mignon."

Leonie reports that Duncan's latest intrusion into local politics has provoked outrage from parents and teachers. Here's a sample: "Obama should replace Duncan with someone who actually knows about education, not the corporate version and scam that Duncan is part of. Obama may not be getting my vote again if 'change' does not occur soon. Duncan is Bush league."

Well, NYC parents, welcome to our world. We've been embarassed by Duncan for years. Let's get together and see what we can do about it. 

I was interviewed for this Politico,com story on Arne Duncan a while ago - it came out today.

A couple of noteworthy quotes: “They don’t have a balanced education program when they put so much emphasis on charter schools. I think they have latched onto charter schools as a magic solution, and it isn’t,” said Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy, an advocacy group for public schools. “I think they should focus on regular public schools. That’s where the majority of students are.”

And this one from Ed Trust:'s Amy Wilkins:" It’s pure Obama, pure Duncan."

Honey, you don't know PURE.... 

Chicago Tonight is covering the CPS clout scandal tonight at 7 pm (channel 11) and I will be on the panel.

I'll get a chance to say the following to the Tribune reporter, who will also be on: the way this story is beginning to play out is a joke. 

The Tribune's "gotcha" headline this morning suggests that the villain behind the story is Board President Scott's aide, Greg Minniefield. OOOH! Caught ya red-handed, you varlet! You'll pay for your crime.

Clearly CPS has chosen this nice, loyal guy to be the sacrificial lamb, hoping that they can hang him and then go about business as usual.

Let's hope that Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald isn't put off the scent by this ploy. The feds need to go through the enrollment lists of every one of the selective enrollment high schools, as well as such notable "clout" elementary magnets as Andrew Jackson, Hawthorne, and South Loop, to match up the students with their application forms. That really shouldn't be too hard.

It's time to put a real end to the incredibly cynical misuse of the CPS desegregation program which has established a system of "gated-community"-style schools for the city's privileged class . 

Heard back from Xian Barrett from DC - Xian is there as a winner of the Teaching Ambassador Fellowship awards. Supposedly Fed Ed Head Duncan and his staff are getting input from Xian and the other 10 winners on how to improve schools. 

So, very cool that Xian has been promoting LSCs; he wrote: 

"I have mostly been just listening, but I did jump in several times to explain that LSCs are the most democratic system--the parents, students and community members involved just need to be supported and given opportunity to grow into the position."

Great news! Xian Barrett, a CORE and GEM member and a teacher at Julian HS, has been named  by Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow for the 2009-2010 school year.

From the USDE  press release: “ 'Enlisting the support of teachers and other educators is crucial to the success of the national movement to reform American education,' said Duncan. 'I look forward to working with this year's fellows as partners as we discuss how to recognize and reward teachers, professional advancement, high standards and other key issues.'

"The fellows are participating in a four-day summit beginning today at the U.S. Department of Education headquarters in Washington, D.C. This school year, the teachers will engage in education policy discussions, work with Education Department officials in various program offices and participate in a variety of education projects."

I first saw Xian at a TSJ curriculum fair a couple of years ago. He had organized a group of Julian students to talk about the lack of support the school was getting from CPS CEO Duncan. They were well-prepared and eloquent, and their stories were heartbreaking.

Xian is an active member of CORE and GEM, and is unlikely to hold back in his comments to Duncan and his staff. It should be an interesting year! Xian is the only teaching fellow from Chicago.

“Inequality is not incidental to privatization, it is its very premise.”

In a message urging folks to comment to the Dept. of Education on the "Race to the Top" funds, Janice Ressinger, the education policy person on the United Church of Christ's national staff, shares two great quotes on privatization by political philosopher Benjamin Barber, from his 2007 book, Consumed. You just read one, from p.157 - here's the other:   “Privatization is a kind of reverse social contract: it dissolves the bonds that tie us together into free communities and democratic republics.  It puts us back in the state of nature where we possess a natural right to get whatever we can on our own, but at the same time lose any real ability to secure that to which we have a right.” (pp. 143-144 ).

Comment process sounds a lot like the CPS school closing "hearings"

The comments Jan (hopes she) submitted are at the end of this post, but first, here's the link to read the guidelines and send your own comments:

http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html

and second, here's Jan's description of the difficulty she had trying to write. view and submit her comments:

"I discovered significant difficulties in the process of commenting.  In the on-line form provided, you are limited to 2,000 characters (each space counts as a character).  My entry is 1,998 characters.  I will tell you that when you submit and preview your entry, there will be no paragraphs, so don’t waste spaces with paragraph breaks (I lose space for words with those breaks.). When I previewed mine, it overflowed the lines of the form off the left margin, so I am not sure it will readable to the US DOE.  One can send an attachment, so I attached the comment as well and re-sent it.  Both times, although I touched the “submit” button, I received no confirmation that my comment had been successfully submitted. Neither have I received an e-mail confirmation."

Jan's submission:

The proposed Race to the Top strategy should be redesigned to improve struggling public schools. These guidelines will not accomplish that goal.

(C)(2) With myriad variables affecting student achievement it is dangerous and unfair to tie teacher salaries to standardized test scores. Also, this merit pay plan may encourage teachers to seek positions in wealthy districts where children encounter fewer barriers to learning.

(C)(5)Yes, test data should be turned around quickly to improve teaching, but other reforms are needed to support educators and improve high-need, high-poverty schools, including basics like small classes, and social workers and counselors with workable case loads.

(D)(2)(i),(ii)Yes, state laws should be strengthened to hold charter schools accountable, but do not require states to lift caps on the number of new charters unless and until charter schools are better regulated.

(D)(3) School improvement strategies in the last bullet of this section should be prioritized rather than restructuring and governance changes. Although staff reconstitution has improved schools in some instances, it has often proven difficult to rebuild the school community. Conversion to charters or contracting with Education Management Organizations has too often failed to improve schools. Closing schools contributes to undesirable churning of students whose families are already likely to be very mobile.

(E)(2) These rules reward states that maintain overall investment in public schools; rules should also reward greater equity. You propose continuing to overlay No Child Left Behind’s sanctions and compliance strategy on extreme resource inequity. The federal government should allocate resources for equity and also use its power to pressure states to expand the opportunity to learn before punishing struggling schools. In a country where children neither start at the same place nor play by the same rules, justice cannot be served by attention to outcomes alone.

You can listen here to the NPR story on clout in CPS magnets including some quotes from me...

The National Conference of State Legislators has released its 2009-2010 education policy statement which includes this concern about charter schools: 

"Despite the mixed results indicated by the body of research, the U.S. Department of Education is considering a plan to evaluate state charter school laws, rewarding states that meet whatever quota of charters is determined in Washington, DC and punishing states that fail to meet the quota.... The Department of Education's emphasis on charter schools as a means to improve struggling schools is a regulatory step that goes beyond the legislative intent of Congress. This action could have the effect of usurping state chartering authority and preempting state constitutions. It is also beyond the limits of the language creating the Department, but for what end? If a medicine were discovered that helps 17% of people, doesn't do anything for 46% and hurts 37%, would the Food and Drug Administration approve and encourage that medicine for all?

"The NCSL strongly urges the Department to refrain from linking a state's charter school laws with its eligibility for federal assistance....We have already seen and experienced the damage that can be done when the federal government adopts a component of reform from one state and imposes it upon the other 49."

The Catalyst Notebook offers a rare (for Chicago media) factual analysis of AUSL hype, via the Consortium. Like the SRI/Consortium study of R2010, they find that the AUSL schools are not much different from the nearby traditional schools.

Unfortunately, they're about two years too late with this analysis and the suggestion that someone around Secretary Duncan needs to ask the right questions about AUSL. Starting this week districts across the nation will be forced to adopt AUSL-style “reform” in order to qualify for a piece of the $5 billion “Race to the Top” fund.

I commented to Catalyst that the next time they ask the Consortium to do some research for them, they look into how many and which students are “counseled out,” denied enrollment, or otherwise pushed out of AUSL and other Renaissance 2010 schools including charter schools. This phenomenon is rarely considered in comparing these schools with neighborhood schools that accept all students. It's high time someone dug into that.

Today Governor Quinn signed SB612, making it law. PURE opposed this bill because it raised the cap on the number of charter schools -- despite all the problems and controversies surrounding charters - and included a change in the LSC exemption clause, which CPS has used to get rid of LSCs.

We originally asked for an amendatory veto of this bill to remove the LSC section. That language was secretively attached to the bill in the last day of the legislative session, slimy enough in our minds to call for a veto.

We were also disturbed because we have a lawsuit against CPS over this very clause in the law. This looked like a move by CPS to circumvent the legal process.  

On examination, however, the revision actually clarifies  the law and the legislature's original intent to maintain elected LSCs already present at small or alternative schools.

We've filed a response to CPS's latest request for dismissal of our case. The response includes an analysis of SB 612. We expect to be back in court on September 23 at 10:30 am (Daley Center, Room 2301). Come see what happens!

Charter "accountability"

The new law is being hyped as a charter accountability law. I guess if I wanted to rob a bank legally, I would pass something called the "PURE heist accountability act." Anyway, look to see more charter schools end up on the "failure to make AYP" list since at least SB 612 forces charter networks to report state test results for each individual schools. Currently, results of many low-performing charters are masked by aggregating them with scores from higher-performing, generally higher-income schools in their networks.

Mayor Daley is demanding that top CPS staff (along with folks from other city agencies) take unpaid days off to help balance the budget.

PURE offers a furlough schedule that will assure uninterrupted operations at CPS:

• August 26, 2009
• September 23, 2009
• October 29, 2009
• November 18, 2009
• December 16, 2009
• January 27, 2010.

What's special about those dates, and why won't we miss CPS staff if they take unpaid leave on those days? Because those are Chicago Board of Education meeting days. On those days, CPS always assigns staff to fill up about half of the "public" seats in the Board chamber -- specifically, the ones positioned within camera range.

This arrangement keeps the real, typically disgruntled members of the public out of the meeting room and offers the cameras a Potemkin Village of satisfied, supportive faces to assure Chicagoans that all is well in our schools.

You can see this for yourself any Saturday at noon when the Board meetings are aired on the Cable Access Network's channel 21. These folks aren't doing a THING but filling chairs. So, take the days off, CPS staff, and let some of the folks who pay your salaries sit down!

The Chicago Public Schools Board of Education has not held an afternoon meeting for several years, but they have agreed to begin public participation for their August 26, 2009 meeting at 4 pm, with the business meeting starting at 6 pm. We hear that they may continue alternating between morning and afternoon meetings during the coming year. PURE's Wanda Hopkins and GEM and CORE members have been asking for this change for a long time.

Naturally, it is difficult for many people to attend weekday morning Board meetings. Back in the Vallas era, the Board alternated the time and also the location of Board meetings. The afternoon meetings were always held in a school. These meetings became EXTREMELY popular with the public! In fact, it's commonly thought that the Board stopped this practice after hundreds of protesters against the first major school closings in 2002 filled the auditorium at Herzl Elementary and brought down the house. 

So, the time of this meeting will be more accessible to more folks, but not the location. You'll still have to get downtown and, if you drive, pay Mayor Daley's exorbitant parking rates. And even then, you will probably not get into the Board chambers at 125 S. Clark since CPS fills up the camera-range chairs with highly-paid CPS administrators in order to minimize the number of seats available to the general public. 

But at least it's progress! SIGN UP TO SPEAK beginning at 2 pm. 

Fifteen Chicago Parents Union members from 12 CPS schools took their initial training last Friday and Saturday, and will begin the fall 2009 school year as CPU union stewards.

We leaned all about parents rights and effective advocacy strategies. We heard from our partners from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, the Center for Conflict Resolution, Northwestern's Children and Family Justice Center, and the law firm of Elaine Siegel and Associates. 

We had a quick "Media 101" class from the managing editor of Medill News. 

And we talked about a lot of issues that affect parents out in the schools. 

This was just the beginning. If you missed these sessions, you can jump in by coming to the CPU union steward general meeting on Saturday, August 29, at 10 am at PURE, 100 S. Morgan. Training for union stewards will be ongoing, but you must be trained to be a CPU union steward. 

Materials and links to materials used in the training will be posted online shortly both on the PURE web site and at www.chicagoparentsunion.org. 

Not when it comes to standardized tests.

The Tribune's consumer help column recently tackled the problem of a suburban high school student whose ACT test was tossed out because the school sent his and 35 other students' ACT answer sheets to the wrong address.

The quote above is from the teen's mother, who tried to get the school, the state board of education, and the testing company to do something about the lost tests.

"These tests are for the kids, and they worked long and hard taking it. They should not be subjected to a second round of stress to that magnitude," she said. 

But this was a nut that the help column could not crack. 

Because standardized tests and their rules are really not about children, are they?

A couple of days ago, Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice shared a wonderful story about a summer writing program for African-American boys. Founded by UIC professor Alfred Tatum, the program has created a strong group of "Brother Authors" who aren't hiding their love of reading and writing. Check out some of their work here.

There are great programs like this going on inside and outside of our schools. Why are they so sporadic, so that they merit the special attention of a columnist? These programs and strategies work, yet billions are spent closing schools -- even some with precious, uplifting programs like "Brother Writers" -- and replacing them with flavor-of-the-month "reform" programs that simply dislocate people and programs.   

Congratulations to CORE member Liz Brown for exposing CPS's plans for a "secret  job fair" this Friday where job seekers could attend by invitation only (preference was given to Teach for America greenhorns and teachers laid off by school closings, etc.). Liz brought the issue up at the Wednesday Board meeting. Ron Huberman responded that, no, that couldn't be - we wouldn't do that.

Turns out they did. 

To his credit, once Huberman found out what his staff was doing, he called an end to it and opened the job fair to anyone.   

Stories like this morning's Trib report about the squabbling Downers Grove school board really tickle my funny bone.

Apparently, among other problems, a Board member "got into a shouting match with board member Megan Schroeder after he questioned how her daughter was chosen to give a graduation speech at Downers Grove South two years ago. Then Beckman cut the meeting short, bringing down her gavel and calling for a quick motion to adjourn."

Double standard for LSCs

But these stories also frustrate me. This kind of mess is not unheard of in school boards, or in any other elected body. So, why are LSCs held to a higher standard? If LSCs disagree, air dirty laundry, or make controversial decisions, people like Mayor Daley decide that they should be done away with.

Another example of this double standard is the way CPS uses the Open Meetings Act to interfere with LSC operations. While we respect and support the OMA, too often CPS improperly tries to "enforce" the law based on its own interpretations in order to force LSCs to re-take votes, unseat members, or put principal contracts on hold.

Here's just one example of what goes on in other elective bodies, according to the Illinois Attorney General's annual report for 2006:

"Niantic, Macon County—The Office of Attorney General Lisa Madigan received a complaint that Village Board members routinely gather at a local tavern after regularly scheduled meetings and, in some instances, discuss business. Board members circulated a flyer telling citizens that 'some Board members may go to Christine's or Uncle Monkey's after the regularly scheduled meeting.' The flyer indicated that 'due to the possibility that Village business may be discussed during this purely social gathering, the public is invited to attend.' The Office of the Attorney General intervened regarding this violation of the Act and the Village agreed to comply. The advance notice require- ment was not met in this instance because the public body did not provide a specific location for a meeting, did not specify a location that was 'open and convenient” to the public as defined in the Act, and also did not provide 48-hour advance notice for a meeting.'

Yet no one is calling for an end to all Village Boards.    

Anyone out there think that there are no "irregularities" in the CPS high school selective enrollment process?

I didn't think so.

A program that essentially started out in the late 1990's as a means of getting a school board president's child into an elite high school ("Chico High" aka Northside Prep) is finally being investigated. Let's see if Ron Huberman is serious.

UPDATE: Here's the video clip, and the narrative, and it's pretty hot. Special Education professional development contractor Phyllis Porter has filed a lawsuit against CPS and Area Officer Karen Saffold alleging that Saffold solicited a bribe from her, and then had her contracts canceled when she refused.

Of course, I'm sure this is an isoiated incident....

****

PURE received this message this morning - probably worth tuning in for!

Investigative reporter Pam Zeckman of Chanel 2 news has contacted me
regarding a matter involving Chicago Public Schools and myself.   My  company and
reputation has suffered due to malicious lies and manipulation by  several
CPS administrators because I would not pay  a bribe.  I had no other
recourse but to seek legal  assistance in this matter.
The details will be broadcasted on  Wednesday, July 22, 2009, 10:00 P.M. On
Channel 2 news.  Please  watch.  Thank you for your support.  

The Hyde Park Herald (home newspaper for President Obama and Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan) ran a story this week (look at the bottom of the front page image that comes up) about an R2010 hearing last week in the neighborhood.

The story  reflected significant skepticism about the plans that were presented, including this question from a staff person associated with one of the presenters: "I don't understand why new schools are being proposed for this area. Why can't partnerships be made to improve the schools that are already here?"

The response from the Office of New Schools front person was typically sneering: "There are a number of neighborhood schools underperforming... but the community seems to say, 'We don't need new schools. We're OK.'"

Or, maybe the community knows how CPS has been robbing our schools to give scarce resources to R2010 start-ups, and that many of the new schools are also underperforming.

Community wisdom. It's worth considering.    

My letter on the truth behind the Duncan-Chicago myth is published in this week's Education Week.

In case you're not an online subscriber, here's what I wrote:

With billion of dollars and millions of children's lives at stake, Education Secretary Arne Duncan's claims about his record in Chicago merit special scrutiny, especially if federal education funds are tied to requirements that districts across the nation rapidly replicate the “Chicago model.”

Advocates in Chicago have a special vantage point for this effort. We have been comparing Mr. Duncan's rhetoric with reality for several years, and finding significant factual errors and misstatements. His comments in “Start Over” fit this pattern.

For example, Ms. Duncan says, “Chicago success proves that we as a nation can expect dramatic and quick turnarounds in our lowest-performing schools.” Yet the Rand Corporation (2008) and SRI International (2009) found that Chicago's new schools perform only “on par” with traditional neighborhood schools. Yet the traditional schools serve more low-income, special education, and limited-English proficient students.

Mr. Duncan states that “In every elementary and middle school we turned around, attendance rates improved.” But state data for the 2007 “turnaround model,” Sherman Elementary, show that attendance dropped from 91.4% the year prior to the takeover to 90.6% in the first year of the takeover. Attendance nearly recovered its pre-takeover rate at 91.3% in 2008. That's not a terrible record, but it's not an improvement.

Other post-turnaround data for Sherman are even more troubling. By 2008, the data show a 20 percent drop in enrollment, a 10 percent drop in the number of low-income children, and a 17% increase in the mobility rate.

Reality, not hype, should provide the context for considering Mr. Duncan's urgent call for bold and rapid change. Yes, our children need better schools, schools with more resources, more time, smaller classes, better-supported teachers, safer buildings, more participation of parents and community, and programs with a real track record of success. We fear that following Mr. Duncan's lead will send us at breakneck speed down a $5 billion-dollar path to privatization, national standardized tests, and loss of local control over schools, leaving our children even farther behind.

"We got another reminder recently that when it comes to tracking the performance of public education, it pays to be skeptical about claims of success."

So says the Tribune in yet another editorial attack on Chicago's public schools which includes yet another illogical promotional ad for charter schools.

Trib folks, you can't reject the admittedly dubious claims of CPS officials about the schools overall, yet embrace their even more unreliable internal studies claiming that their charters outperform the neighborhood schools charter students "would probably have attended." CPS's charter reports have been dismissed by researchers, in part because they fail to acknowledge that local charters serve proportionately fewer low-income, special needs, and limited-English speaking students.

WBEZ says that the turnaround model of the Academy of Urban School Leaders (AUSL) is showing "results" and is "becoming the go-to plan" for CPS.

Funny, we thought AUSL became Arne Duncan's go-to plan years ago before it had shown any results at all.... Arne just stated that the AUSL schools were "dramatically better," and handed more schools over to their miracle workers.

However, this week AUSL leaders say that three of their four elementary schools showed state test score gains that outpaced the district overall, and CPS stats back them up (here are links to preliminary score spreadsheets on District 299); look for Dodge, Sherman, Harvard, and Howe.

But none of that is worth a thin dime until we see the context, that is, what demographic changes have been made, what extra resources the schools have, etc. Because what we know about AUSL is that...

• AUSL picks and chooses its students. A significant number of Orr students were barred from the school once AUSL took it over in the fall of 2008. Data that PURE has been disseminating about the "miracles" at Dodge and Sherman make it clear that the first principle of "improvement" for AUSL is to change the student body.
• AUSL has major resources not available to other schools, including funding from Bill Gates and other deep pockets. This allows AUSL to place up to three adults in every classroom, a luxury no traditional public school can dream of having. 
• AUSL uses paid front people to promote their programs from the point of view of "parents" and "community". AUSL also fought HB363, a bill to increase oversight of CPS's school closings, turnarounds, and other school changes. The bill passed.

Mike Klonsky has been reporting on efforts by the Civic Committee and the Renaissance Schools Fund (RSF) to bury the SRI International/Consortium report on the mediocre results of R2010 schools versus regular neighborhood schools:

"Yesterday I received further confirmations of suppression efforts by Civic Committee and RSF leaders, including threatened lawsuits, to prevent the study from being shown to the public." 

This supports my charge last May that the report was purposely delayed: "A report critical of Renaissance 2010 was apparently available at about the time of Mr. Duncan's confirmation hearings, but was not made public until after he took office and after the Chicago Board of Education voted to close yet another 16 schools to make way for more replacement schools." 

This from the same Civic Committee folks who lambasted "vested interests" who "have no incentive to publicize the reality" (p. 2, "Still Left Behind").   

I finally had a chance (i.e. enough time to waste) to read the Civic Committee's newest attack on our public schools, "Still Left Behind: Student Learning in Chicago Public Schools." 

They have got to be kidding us.

They actually have the nerve to "expose" the bad news behind the myth of CPS's ever improving schools and complain that CPS is not a credible source of information on student achievement, then recommend more charter schools based on internal CPS data on the great success of CPS's charter schools.

And these are our foremost civic leaders? 

Rico Gutstein from Teachers for Social Justice just passed along this news:

Xavier Botana has accepted the position of chief academic officer for Portland Public Schools. In this role, Xavier will be responsible for overseeing our academic programs including curriculum, special education, English as a second language and talented and gifted services.

Some of you may be thinking, Xavier Who? Botana was one of the lower-profile big wigs at CPS, and one of the most honest and collaborative. He was one of the few people in CPS to respect and welcome PURE's input. He invited us in on projects to increase parent involvement and to help parents better understand the assessments used in CPS. He is one of the truly good guys and I'm sorry we lost him.

Hearings on possible new CPS schools are being held this week, starting tonight, in various communities - check this list for a nearby hearing and go find out what CPS is planning to do to ... er, for your neighborhood.

Community Forums to Consider Proposals for New Renaissance 2010
Schools | July 7-11 | Various Locations
	SOUTH CHICAGO
 
Tuesday, July 7
6:00 pm- 8:00pm
 
Villa Guadalupe
3201 E. 91st Street
	ROGERS PARK
 
Tuesday, July 7
6:00pm-8:00pm
 
Rogers Park Public Library
6907 N. Clark Street
	WEST TOWN/HUMBOLDT PARK
 
Tuesday, July 7
6:00pm-8:00pm
 
Erie Charter School
2510 W. Cortez
	 
AUSTIN/NORTH LAWNDALE
	Wednesday, July 8
6:00pm-8:00pm
 
Austin Public Library
5615 W. Race
	PILSEN

Wednesday, July 8
6:00pm-8:00pm
 
Lozano Public Library
1805 S. Loomis
	SOUTHWEST
 
Wednesday, July 8
6:00pm-8:00pm
 
Archer Heights Public Library
5055 S. Archer
	ENGLEWOOD
 
Thursday, July 9
6:00pm-8:00pm
 
Rust Memorial Church
(Englewood United
Methodist Church)
6400 S. Stewart
	NORTH CENTER/NORTHWEST
 
Thursday, July 9
7:00pm-8:30pm
 
Irving Park YMCA
4251 W. Irving Park Road
	KENWOOD/GRAND BOULEVARD
 
Thursday, July 9
6:00pm-8:00pm
 
Little Black Pearl Art & Design Center
1060 E. 47th St.
	FAR SOUTH
 
Thursday, July 9
6:00pm-8:00pm
  
Neighborhood Housing Services
11005 S. Michigan
	RIVERDALE
 
Saturday, July 11
10:00am-12:00pm
 
Chicago Housing Authority
951 E. 130th Place 

Today's Tribune business section includes an interview with Arne Duncan (as my visiting mom points out, you wouldn't find him on the education page, would you?) which includes this revealing interchange:

Q:You describe your policies as research-driven, but aren't most of the findings unreliable?

A: I'm actually more optimistic than that.

"Flawed CPS research"

The media finally seems to be figuring out that CPS's claims of success are full of hot air. This stunningly common-sense editorial in last Thursday's Sun-Times goes after CPS's claims about charter schools:

"Each year, CPS compares charter schools to comparable neighborhood schools. Charters almost always do better. But CPS methodology fails to account for potential selection bias -- there's a good chance that families that choose charters are more motivated, leaving behind in neighborhood schools the least-motivated kids. The failure to account for that bias significantly weakens the credibility of the results, several reputable researchers have told us."

Waiting for me in the mail when I got back was this letter from CPS CEO Ron Huberman in response to my letter which was in response to the disturbingly thin report we received in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for annual reports on the racial impact of the CPS promotion policy.

Though he states that CPS believes that their "current measures appropriately evaluate a student's readiness for the next grade level," Mr. Huberman invites PURE to submit ideas to improve the policy, and we invite you to share yours with us so that we can share them with him.

We have shared many such ideas with CPS over the years and we will pull those together for Mr. Huberman along with some of the new research we are carrying out this summer.

We'll keep you posted. 

Well, we are finally ready to take our first steps to make the Chicago Parents Union a strong force beginning in the fall, 2009 school year. Our first event is a two-day training session for CPU union stewards, and we would love to see you there!

The CPU union steward training takes place on July 24th and 25th. Here's a flyer with all the details, and a fact sheet about the CPU.

What's going to happen at the training? Here's just some of what you'll learn:

• Federal, state, and local education rights.
• Great resources for CPS parents.
• Some of PURE's assistant director Wanda Hopkins' secrets for Getting Things Done.
• What you will be able to do and get done as a CPU union steward.

We hope that you will join us. You must pre-register for this free event. We think this is going to be the beginning of something great for Chicago parents, and we would love to have you there as we take our first steps.

You can sign up to be a member of the CPU, and volunteer as a union steward, here. 

Ron Huberman's "data driven" management style may have done some good at the CTA, but without an understanding of the proper use of assessment, the new CPS CEO may data-drive our schools right off the cliff.

His approach echoes calls for national standards and tests from similarly clueless folks who don't have any idea how to determine what students need, and who don't care that bad testing policies inevitably lead to poor teaching and learning.

Especially, they don't understand that tests that are "given" to teachers are probably the least useful assessments. 

"Real data" v hunches

Huberman told the principals that he wants them to be able to run their schools, but their decisions must be "based on real data, drawn from skill assessments" written by the central office. " 'You're given the freedom, but you can't make those decisions based on hunches,' Huberman explained at an editorial board meeting at the Sun-Times before the principals' meeting Tuesday. 'You have to make them based on the analytical framework we're providing.' "

It's also kind of weird that, as far as I can tell, Huberman did not acknowledge that schools have been giving just those sorts of tests, the benchmark assessments, for a few years now. It might be a good idea to evaluate that program before doing it again and more.

Makes you wonder what "real data" Huberman is basing his hunches on? 

Managing what?

Thanks to the Sun-Times for their cautionary comments about Huberman's data-driven approach: "To have a chance at success, Huberman must devote the same level of resources and attention to supporting principals and teachers as they search for those solutions. Lots of new data is impressive only if it can be put it to productive use."

The Sun-Times suggests that it's a problem if educators at the Area Offices are replaced by managers who will not be required to have any education experience. 

"We're all for better-managed schools, but managers also should know how to reach a troubled student and how to coach a new teacher."

Wow. You have to wonder about the thought process that made Arne Duncan (or his speech writer) say, “The charter movement is putting itself at risk by allowing too many second-rate and third-rate schools to exist,” in remarks quoted in today's New York Times.

Putting ITSELF at risk. OK.

You know, Arne, there are actual children in those second-rate and third-rate schools.  Not just your white-man's burden buddies who will move on to another hobby when they get tired of this one, and have wrung out all the available money.

What happened to the "crisis" in our schools, the "immediacy" of getting children out of bad schools? I thought we couldn't wait?

And, hey, why is it the charter operators who get the blame for this? They're supposed to police themselves? Isn't it the superintendents (or, in the most special cities, the CEOs) who should bear the responsiblity (and the blame ) for bad charters?

Disabled children and adults in Illinois may soon lose their services, but thank goodness our legislature was able to find $98 million for UNO to build more schools for its charter network. And, just in case that led to bad feelings among other charter management companies with influential board members, "legislative leaders gave $50 million to four other charter-school operators." After all, it's only money.

Better outcomes?  

The argument seems to be that United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) schools do better than regular CPS schools. Let's take a look.

Keep in mind that the state report card for UNO schools only reports aggregate data for all the network schools, with a total of 2,325 students in 2008. Information about individual UNO schools has to be searched out on the CPS web site.

A look at the overall data shows that the UNO network as a whole is not making adequate yearly progress based on the extremely low test scores of its special education students and the lower performance of its Limited English Proficient (LEP) students. Since UNO refuses to offer bilingual education, that's an especially interesting statistic. 

Another interesting fact is that UNO school started out about half African-American and half Latino. By 2006, the proportion was more like one-third black and two-thirds Latino. In 2008, the percentage of African-American students was down to 15%. 

In 2006, 30% of UNO's students were categorized as LEP. In 2008, that number was down to 6%.

The increase in UNO's test scores mirrors these two important trends in reverse. So, we have another charter network that radically manipulates its student body, and the state rewards them.  

"Outside the hotel, several dozen people protested school closings Duncan made in his previous job. Called the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, the group carried signs that said such things as "Duncan is Flunkin,'" the Tribune reports.

Thankfully, the protest came in between downpours. While my husband and about 45 teachers, parents and students were outside marching, I was cozy and dry inside the breakfast with my new bud, Bill Daley, who is breakfast sponsor Advance Illinois' co-chair with Jim Edgar. Arne waved at me while chewing a bagel. Miguel DelValle promised me that he would fight to assure that the assessments to which Advance Illinois' recommendations are tied will include formative assessments and not just standardized tests. 

That's the crux of the matter, as I wrote yesterday in my critique of the AI report. If assessment in Illinois isn't radically changed (there, I used their words!) the rest will be an unmitigated disaster. But that's not the change they are pushing for, and, aside from one comment about needing multiple assessments, it's not what Arne talked about.

No, Arne was all about charters and turnarounds, even though he admitted that there are not enough good models."We have to increase our capacity across the country" for creating new schools. "Some will work, some won't," he said.

Wow, $5 billion and we'll still just be experimenting and trying to hit on some things that might work.

Arne's whopper of the day

Arne repeated his whopper about North Lawndale College Prep's graduation rate (claiming it to be 97% when it is really 46%), and he did it during the Q and A session when the school's co-founder, AI executive director Robin Steans, was standing right next to him. So, we don't have enough good models, and we have to lie about the ones we promote as good models. But it sounds as though Arne wants quantity and not quality when it comes to turnarounds and charters/   

Later, at the demonstration, I handed out two fact sheets, "Dodge-ing the Truth" and "Problems with Illinois charter schools." Please share the facts with your friends and family - don't let Arne fool you!

Advance Illinois, the self-described bipartisan, objective education advocacy, came out with their preliminary report today on what needs to happen in our schools.

It's actually not as bad as I had expected, based on the initial lackluster and biased set of research reports they had listed on their web site (now somewhat expanded and specifically labeled "unbiased"). 

But first, the outcome I was expecting from the first day that this "independent, objective" group announced their intentions to develop recommendations to address the shocking "crisis in our schools" using the same scare tactics that have preceded every other attack on public schools, their teachers and communities:

"The group's proposed reforms correspond to criteria the federal government will use to award additional education stimulus dollars on a competitive basis starting this fall." (from AI press release, not yet posted)

Yes, folks, their recommendations are just what Arne is threatening that districts must do in order to get federal funds. Get my smelling salts!

Will they listen to themselves? 

But the serious, positive surprise is the call for more meaningful assessment as described in the following sidebar on page 12 of the report:

    "The Challenge of Defining Teacher Effectiveness:  Defining teacher effectiveness is no simple matter. Educators disagree on how (or even whether) to measure a teacher’s impact on student achievement, and the use of standardized test scores is complicated at best, given that many students are in untested grades, and growth can be hard to measure at the high school level where students move from biology to chemistry, from World History to U.S. History. However, the need to examine teacher effectiveness is clear, and a growing number of districts and states are finding ways to measure teacher impact by relying on multiple measures of student achievement, observation, samples of assignments, student work and more. Moreover, the use of value-added data for the purposes of evaluating teacher preparation programs is more straightforward. Because programs produce teachers across a range of grades and subject areas, looking at the overall and average student growth achieved by graduates provides meaningful insight into program quality and should anchor the accreditation process." (emphasis added)

Devil's in the use of measurements

While it's encouraging to see a somewhat thoughtful analysis of the need for broader measures beyond standardized tests, it's hard not to be afraid, very afraid, that the key concept in this sidebar will not permeate the report's call for:

• raising state test cut scores for students,
• tying teacher salaries, principal evaluations, and university preparation programs to "student performance," and
• creating standard end-of-course high school exams.

Yet the quality of the assessments will completely determine the quality of the outcomes.

In fact, the need for broader (and, hey- why not? bolder) assessments is not mentioned in the press release.

Two last thoughts and an action alert 

1) "Unbiased"???

It's hard to take a group seriously that claims it in unbiased and then continues to promote charter schools as the solution for school failure. The fact that AI director Robin Steans and her family founded the North Lawndale College Prep Charter School, which has the distinction of being one of the first Chicago charter schools to be placed on the NCLB "failure to make AYP list," suggests she ought to know better. Everyone else ought to read the new Stanford report.

2) "Bipartisan"?

Does anyone in Illinois find this term meaningful? Except, of course, when referring to our record of incarcerated governors?   

Join CORE tomorrow at the Hyatt Regency

You may remember that AI will host a breakfast with Arne Duncan tomorrow, outside of which several dozen CORE members and other folks will protest his Chicago policies and his plans for the nation. It should be an interesting morning.

When? Begin gathering at 6:30 am

Where? Hyatt Regency, 151 E. Wacker Drive (corner of Michigan).  

Well, R2010 has accomplished one thing, anyway. CPS now officially has 666 schools. Last year's press releases stated that CPS had "more than 600 schools" but I guess now they want to be more accurate and data-driven. 

Not that this is proof that R2010 is the devil's handiwork. Of course not.  

"If this study shows anything, it shows that we've got a two-to-one margin of bad charters to good charters," said lead author Margaret E. Raymond, who directs Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes" (CREDO).

"This study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their traditional public school counterparts." (CREDO press release)

*** 

Yesterday, CREDO released a national study on charter schools which suggests that about 3,000 of the nation's 4,700 charter schools are worse than the schools they are designed to replace. 

Of course, this horrible news was not mentioned in any Chicago mainstream media.

Well, if you consider this to be good:  

• Illinois Blacks enrolled in charter schools do significantly worse in reading compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools. Black students receive no significant benefit or loss as a result of charter school attendance compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools in math.
• Hispanics enrolled in charter schools do significantly worse in reading and math compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools.
• Special education students and English-language learners in Illinois receive no significant benefit from charter school attendance compared with their counterparts in traditional public schools in reading or math.
• The effect of charter school attendance on growth results in math is mostly positive across the lower deciles. However, charter schools are not creating significantly different results for students compared to their virtual peers from traditional public schools in reading.
• Charter schools are more likely to retain academically low-performing students.
• The results suggest that new charter school students have an initial loss of learning in reading and math compared with their counterparts in traditional schools. In subsequent years, charter school students continue to incur a loss of learning in reading from charter school attendance while the impact on math becomes insignificant. By the third year of attendance, there is no significant impact from charter school attendance on either reading or math.

The Illinois data does show some benefit for students across the board in math, and for low-income students in charters.   

Here's the full report on Illinois' charters.

The untold story

No one mentions that charter schools were designed by law to be better than traditional public schools, not on a par with them. 

No one stacks this study up against Arne Duncan's claims that Chicago's charters are dramatically better than neighborhood schools. 

And no one mentions in this context what was so well put by Marcia Williams, a teacher who posted on the Catalyst notebook site: 

"One of the advantages that charter schools have over public schools is that any student who is enrolled in a charter school, that charter school can drop a student if the school feels that student is not an 'asset' to the school. They can transfer a student out of their school anytime of the school year and that happen before testing occurs. Believe me, this happens more than the press is aware of. Several students who sat in my classroom and were new to the school were dropped from the charter school they attended for a variety of reasons. But two of the main reasons were for academic or behavioral issues. So now these students enroll in the good old public schools. Public schools can't just decide to drop a students because of behavorial or academic problems."

At some point, this reality needs to be factored in by researchers evaluating charter schools.

Poor accountability

While one might logically conclude that charters are not a viable strategy to improve schools, and that we should turn to more successful programs, CREDO instead urges more accountability both in the authorization and possible revocation of charters.

The Illinois legislature just increased the number of charters allowed in the state, and the claim has been made that they demanded "increased accountability" to go with the increased numbers.

But a close look at HB 612 reveals very little support for this claim. Here's what's new:

• Charters must submit an audit and federal tax form to the state board, but that's nothing more than any non-profit must do.
• Charters schools will get up to two years to remediate themselves once they are notified that their charter may be revoked. The charter school creates its own remediation plan (unlike regular schools, where CPS writes the plan), and is then held accountable for carrying out that plan (you know, the one they wrote themselves).
• The state will now prepare a report on charter school progress every two years, instead of every year. As is the case now, the state evaluation wil be based on reports from the districts (in other words, whatever CPS tells them).
• A task force will be formed to look into whether or not the state needs new charter authorizers. Currently local districts and the state are authorizers. It may be that charter supporters want to take that decision away from some local districts which have not approved charter applications.

Congratulations to PURE member Amy Zimmerman, director of Health and Disability Advocates, for successfully adding to parents rights in Illinois by shepherding HB 628 through the legislature. As reported by the Tribune, once the governor signs this bill, Illinois parents will have the right "to monitor a child's special education classroom, or to observe in advance the classroom a school district believes is the best fit for the child."

I ran into Amy in Springfield at a Senate Education Committee meeting the day that HB 628 and HB 363 were being considered. I mentioned to her that Sec. 1118 of the No Chlld Left Behind law, which details the parent involvement requirements of the law,  already includes the right of parents to "reasonable access to staff, opportunities to volunteer and participate in their child's class, and observation of classroom activities."

HB 628 would apply to all parents of special needs children, not just those in schools with NCLB funds. It also applies to advocates who assist parents in making sure their children have the services they are entitled to.

This is news that parents need, especially at a time when many parents feel their children are being shortchanged by CPS. Let's spread the word!

More on classroom observation - yes, we can!

Considering the importance of parent involvement for student academic growth, parents and principals in Chicago sure spend a lot of time clashing over whether parents should be in the classroom or even in the school. The classic example is the number of LSC members who have been arrested for trespassing or threatened with arrest, just for trying to do their job as LSC members. Can you imagine that happening to Michael Scott in any school?

The best schools, the best principals, and the best teachers have no problem having parents around. The extent to which it becomes a problem is usually a pretty good measure of school dysfunction.

Not to mention that most CPS parents have the right under NCLB to be in the school.

Having said that, we can't let parents run wild, and some do!

What we need is an in-school etiquette in which parents and school staff are trained and which everyone follows. Because we have no real rules now, we have no real etiquette. Because we are so bad at this type of interaction, most of what we do turns out awkward, unpleasant, and unproductive.

A few years ago PURE developed some guidelines and tip sheets for classroom observation by parents. We think they hold up pretty well as at least a beginning for better communication and interaction.  

ABC-7 news answered my question about what happened to the Cash for Grades program.

ABC's Paul Meincke asked Ron Huberman about the program yesterday, and it sounds as though CPS is going to use the budget crunch as a cover for dumping the program.

This is just the kind of mess that PURE predicted the pr9ogram would create. What do we teach our children when we pay them for grades one year and not the next?  

Trust and consistency are the most important virtues for successfully nurturing children. CPS's constant play for attention and love for gimmicry is simply unhealthy.

PURE is supporting our partners at CORE who are doing a picket demonstration to welcome Arne back to Chicago on Friday, June 19, at 7:30 am at the Hyatt Regency, 151 E. Wacker Dr.

More about this event will be posted as the week goes along, but here's an earlier story with some background. Please note that the time of the event has been changed from lunch to a 7:30 am breakfast. (Did we scare them? Or did Bill Gates just write a smaller check than they expected?)  

UPDATE: I was close - Bill Gates is having Arne at his own event, a luncheon on the same day. Oh, OK.  

I just e-mailed this response to "Start Over," an essay in the June 12 (June 19 print) Education Week by Arne Duncan:

Considering the billion of dollars and millions of children's lives that are at stake, Education Secretary Arne Duncan's claims about his record in Chicago merit special scrutiny. Mr. Duncan has made it clear that he intends to tie federal education funds to requirements that districts across the nation rapidly replicate the “Chicago model.”

Advocates in Chicago have a special vantage point for this effort. We have been comparing Mr. Duncan's rhetoric with reality for several years, and finding significant factual errors and misstatements. For these inaccurate statements to be repeated on the national stage and in service to a potential orgy of spending on programs that have a questionable track record of success puts our children's educational future at serious risk. Chicagoans must speak out and share what we know.

For example, we have learned that independent research on the Duncan reforms (known collectively as Renaissance 2010) by the Rand Corporation (2008) and SRI International (2009) finds that his new schools perform only “on par” with traditional neighborhood schools. We've also found that the new schools serve fewer low-income, special education, and limited-English proficient students.

In other words, Renaissance 2010 has yet to yield academic improvement, even with less-challenging students. Yet Mr. Duncan decries “school officials (who) have been content with changes that produce nominal progress.”

More specifically, looking at the data from state school report cards has taught us to question every dramatic claim that Mr. Duncan makes about individual turnaround schools.

Here's an example from his Education Week essay: Mr. Duncan states that “In every elementary and middle school we turned around, attendance rates improved.” But state report cards for Mr. Duncan's “turnaround model” for 2007, Sherman Elementary, show that attendance dropped from 91.4% the year prior to the takeover to 90.6% in the first year of the takeover. Attendance nearly recovered its pre-takeover rate at 91.3% in 2008. That's not a terrible record, but it's not an improvement.

Other post-turnaround data for Sherman is more telling. By 2008, there was a 20 percent drop in enrollment, a 10 percent drop in the number of low-income children, and a 17% increase in the mobility rate. This data strongly suggest that Sherman may be manipulating its student body to create better student outcomes.

But the clearest case of enrollment manipulation in Chicago may be Dodge Renaissance Academy, the school where President Obama made his February announcement of Mr. Duncan's nomination to head the U.S. Department of Education, and a school often cited as an example of the success of the Chicago model. District data show that only 12 students who were enrolled at Dodge when it was closed for turnaround in 2002 were still there in 2005.

We urge the nation to check the facts that Mr. Duncan dodges with his rhetoric. Reality, not hype, should be the context for considering his urgent call for bold and rapid change. Yes, our children need better schools. They need schools with more resources, more time, smaller classes, better-supported teachers, safer buildings, more participation of parents and community, and programs with a real track record of success. We fear that following Mr. Duncan's lead will move us at a breakneck speed down a $5 billion-dollar path to privatization, national standardized tests, and loss of local control over schools, leaving our children even farther behind.

Sunday's Tribune story about the apparently falsified attendance records at Bowen displayed more than one kind of school problem.

Marking students present who had not been in school for weeks is wrong, but so is the attitude displayed by the school's principal:

"One teacher at Bowen Environmental, Eugene Hill, said a school official told staff that attendance data was being inflated to save jobs. 'There are students being marked as present who haven't been in school for months,' said Hill, who claimed he was reprimanded for questioning how attendance was kept.... Bowen Environmental's principal, Camilla Covington, said she was not aware of attendance irregularities at the school and emphasized the positive things the school is doing to promote neighborhood involvement. She said Hill is upset that he was graded poorly following a recent observation of his classroom."

Boy, haven't we all met that principal, or one just like her?

There are many fine principals in Chicago, and they have the hardest job in the world, but too many of the principals we run into have this same vindictive, "no bad news about my school," "What Whistleblower Protection Act?" attitude.

It's a shame.

She's Baaack... 

But it also reminds me of my most vivid memory of Mary Beth Vander Weele, whose name turned up unexpectedly as an appointee to the panel Governor Pat Quinn has put together to investigate the University of Illinois student enrollment "clout list." 

I thought Mary Beth was long gone. She started out as the Sun-Times education reporter during the early school reform years. Her dogged investigations for the newspaper apparently made such an impression on Paul Vallas that he hired her as the head of investigations for CPS (eat your heart out, Roz...). She eventually left to start her own "corporate investigations" company in Washington, D.C.

PURE had had a good relationship with Mary Beth when she was a reporter. She liberally referenced PURE, PURE founding president Bernie Noven, and even fledgling school reformer me in her 1994 book, "Reclaiming our Schools."

We even got along pretty well when she became Inspector General for Vallas. Then one day I was meeting with her about charges that had been brought to our attention by several teachers and staff  from Schurz High School. I was concerned that one staff member seemed to have been fired for reporting some of the problems.

Mary Beth's comment to me was "Well, I've found that whistleblowers are usually not very good employees." 

That sort of ended that conversation, and any other we might ever have had in the future. 

My sharp-eyed Mom sent me this clipping from the real estate section of the Arizona Republic. I know it's hard to read (I'll tell you what it says) but first lf all, isn't it sensational that the article is called "Done Deals"??? They know our Gery so well.

So, for the sum of $2,400,000, "Gery Chico and his wife Sunny" (isn't it fun that her name is Sunny??) "bought a 5,812-square foot home with a pool originally built in 2009" ("originally built in 2009"???) "near the Mirabel Golf Course in Scottsdale. Gery Chico is a partner at Chico & Nunes law firm in Chicago. He served as chief of staff to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley from 1992 through 1995. In 2004, he was a candidate for the U. S. Senate."

Interesting that they don't mention that he was CPS school board president for a few years, during which time his original law firm mega-drupled its income from city contracts, and then disastrously tanked shortly after Chico left the school board.       

It's nice to know that public service ultimately has its rewards. And I think he might have room for a guest or two from the old days.       

The Tribune's John Kass reports that Paul Vallas has decided to stay in New Orleans for at least another year.

Not to say that he would have been a worse county president than the current occupant, but who needs Vallas micromanaging every little thing again? Who wants to hear the media slurp up every whopper he tells about his amazing success? Don't we have enough of that already... and now from Washington, too?

No, we got rid of Vallas once, and it was a good thing. Let's not go through that again. 

An intrepid group of GEM members slogged through this morning's heavy rains to deliver our request for a meeting with Governor Quinn to ask him to veto SB 612.

We were delighted to run into Millie Santiago, a former reporter for Channel 44 who was always enthusiastic about covering LSC, parent and community issues. Millie is now on the Governor's Communications staff. She offered to hand-deliver a copy of our letter to Deputy  Chief of Staff Billy Ocasio and to help with our request.

Millie was an LSC member herself. We also learned today from Mike Klonsky at Small Talk that Gov.  Quinn served on the first LSC at Sayre Academy, along with Mike's wife Susan. I believe that makes him the highest-ranking LSC veteran!

Here's the final press release. 

GEM will hold a press conference tomorrow, Thursday, June 11, at 10:30 am on the Thompson Center plaza (State of Illinois Building). We will ask Governor Quinn to veto SB 612.

From the press alert:

Governor Pat Quinn is a well-respected reformer who has publicly supported more transparency in government. We are asking him to veto this bill which so blatantly used the most cynical, secretive legislative processes to bypass public debate and scrutiny of matters that should properly be considered in the full light of day.

Details are here.

I thought the most interesting things about Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan's comments on yesterday's NPR Talk of the Nation were his bob-and-weave responses to two pretty tough questions from host Neal Conan about Chicago reforms.

First, Conan asked if Arne was touting the same reforms for the nation as he had carried out in Chicago. Arne replied, "I learned a lot of lessons in Chicago." 

Later, when talking about how the governor of South Carolina tried to reject the education stimulus money, Duncan commented that South Carolina was shortchanging its students by not taking the money. Conan asked, "Are the results in Chicago good enough that you can go tell South Carolina what to do?" Arne replied, "We all have a long way to go – we're proud of the progress we made in Chicago, but they have more work to do."

Hmmm. So, if Chicago isn't holding up as the be-all and end-all model of bold success, why force districts to mimic Chicago "reforms" (mayoral control, lots of charter schools, alternative certification, etc.) as a prerequisite for getting federal funds?

Here's another one. A caller from Ohio mentioned that the charter schools in his state were lower-performing than traditional schools, and challenged Arne's support for charter schools. Arne's answer: "I didn't say I was for charter schools, I'm for good charter schools."

Well, read this comment from Mark Stewart, a former Chicago charter schools teacher, in response to this show which shows so clearly why Arne needs to be asked even more probing questions about what he and his charter school favoritism did to Chicago:   

I used to teach at a Chicago charter school. Since I've left and begun to take a wider view, I've noticed a pattern that a friend pointed out to me. To quote her, "a public school closes, kids/families scramble for another school, a charter school miraculously opens nearby, kids go to the other nearby neighborhood school or maybe try out that new charter. The charter may/may not "accept you" (they have enrollment limits, normally do not accept kids other than Freshmen, charge fees, historically have few Special Ed/ELL services, and stringent behavior codes). The neighborhood school becomes overcrowded with very large class sizes (some reports up to 60 in a class) and the quality slides. Then that school is targeted for closure ... and around it goes." Our school had no parents nor teachers on the board, and as I understand it, charter schools aren't required to. Mr. Duncan claimed that he's interested in accountability, but with no parent/ teacher involvement, how accountable are they? He also said that we must end a system allowing high-school students to have a 3rd-grade reading level. But if, as he suggests, the charter schools tend to serve the best students, how will the new system help the kids left behind. Try again.

Can't let the Trib get away wth their knee-jerk rationale for more charters, as epitomized by today's editorial::

"We do need more charters, as those 13,000 kids in line will attest".

For a corporation that demands and extols "data-driven" management, this loosy-goosy "accountabiltiy" measure looks pretty silly.

Especially given the fact that "real" data -- you know, the data that's used to close schools and flunk kids? -- shows charters not doing very well. 

In a rare moment of harmony, the Chicago Tribune joins PURE in calling for an amendatory veto of SB612.

Of course, their reasons are a bit different. The Trib is happy about the charter expansion even though charters are not outperforming neighborhood schools and serve fewer low-income, special education, and limited English speaking children. They don't mention the sneak attack on LSCs, either.

Unlike PURE's position, they wish the charter cap had been lifted entirely. 

No, their objection to SB 612 is that charters will now have to have 75% instead of 50% certified teachers. They even say that this might be the DEATH of charters.  

Does anyone remember the Trib coming out in favor of hospitals having non-certified staff? air traffic controllers?

In fact, the Tribune Foundation, which is now more or less independent from the Tribune Company, but whose leadership has always come from the newspaper side, always supported certifying child care and preschool staff, opining that this would raise the quality of early childhood education. They've put millions of dollars into preschool teacher certification. Pretty hypocritical, no?

Mike Klonsky's Small Talk reports on what is likely to be a major bump in the Arne Duncan road show.

Fed Ed Head Duncan has been going around the country with Al Sharpton talking about education and civil rights, but it's looking as though Rev. Sharpton is not so keen on one of Arne's signature strategies, mayoral control.

According to the Gotham Schools blog, Sharpton wants state lawmakers to build more meaningful parental input into a new school governance law.

New York City's mayoral control law sunsets this month, and NYC parents, teachers and community groups have been fighting hard for a new law that includes more parent voice, such as Chicago's LSC law. PURE has supported this effort with trips to New York , copies of the school reform law and LSC training materials, and conversations with state legislative aides.

We're watching this one closely! 

At 4 pm tomorrow, Tuesday, June 9, Prescott teachers, parents, and students, members of CORE and others will be protesting outside of Prescott Elementary at 1632 W. Wrightwood.

Reports of problematic behavior by the school's new principal -- who became available when his contract was not renewed by the Ravenswood LSC last year -- are detailed on the Substance website.

PURE has no inside information about the Prescott situation. but there are far too many cases where a new principal gives a great interview and then turns into what can only be described as a psycho after signing the contract.

"New CPS Principal Syndrome" is characterized by extreme paranoia, secretiveness, and delusions of grandeur. 

The syndrome is so well known to CPS that the Law Department developed a workshop for new principals called "How not to be a one-term principal," which, among other things, advised principals to cooperate with the LSC -- what a concept. 

Also, CPS does not give LSCs the kind of information they need about principal candidates, including why they left their previous position, and too many LSCs fail to do even the most basic background checks, such as ask a previous LSC about the candidate.

We have long supported independent, professional mediation in these kinds of cases by a group such as the Center for Conflict Resolution. Instead,  CPS chooses to interfere in its characteristic heavy-handed and biased way, leaving schools nearly paralyzed by conflict.

Here's a great story in ChiTown Daily News about a social worker at Medill who helped her students create a documentary about the closing of their school. The students want their voices and their pain to be heard. Even though they know that the documentary will not stop CPS from closing their school, they hope that telling their story might make a difference for other students.

They need help finishing the film and getting it distributed. This sounds like a worthy cause, no?

Here's how you can help, according to Project Focus executive director Daniel Yang:

"Any donations that you could offer would be really appreciated. They would go to finishing the documentary, packaging and printing copies, and distributing them to the parents and students of Medill elementary, in addition to key policymakers. All donations made via paypal from the medillmatters website, automatically references the project so that the donations are not confused with general donations to project focus: on the paypal website, it reads "medill matters, reference: project donations."

"In addition to financial donations, you can help support the project by encouraging your network to vote for the article at the http://www.windycitizen.com/.

The more votes the article accumulates, the higher on the list you'll find it."  

PURE has several tip sheets for parents who have just learned that their child is being sent to summer school.

• What to do if your child is not promoted.

• How to help your child move up to the next grade after summer school.

• "What is a Portfolio" and "Parts of a Portfoiio," which can help you gather evidence needed for a waiver request if CPS decides to hold your child back after summer school. 

PURE can help parents who have questions or concerns about the promotion policy, Please call our office at 312-491-9101 or e-mail us.

We are also looking for families who might be interested in participating in a legal strategy opposing the CPS promotion policy. Please contact us via e-mail or phone.   

PURE friend Leonie Haimson, director of Class Size Matters in NYC, is one of the authors of a new book,

NYC Schools Under Bloomberg/Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know

a collection of essays from folks on the ground in New York. Here's what they conclude:

"Educators, parents, and scholars challenge the Bloomberg administration’s claims of progress in the New York City public schools. Seventeen writers argue that under Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein NYC schools have stagnated or lost ground in achievement, class size, curriculum and instruction, overcrowding, transparency, and equity."

Sound familiar? Sound kind of like the results from "Chicago School Reform: Lessons for the Nation" which PURE and FairTest wrote in 2007.

So, how does Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan get away with demanding that districts move to mayoral control in order to get federal money? Does he want schools to fail? 

The NYC book is available for free download here. 

UPDATE: I wasn't very clear when I wrote about what happened with SB 612 - guess I was just too mad -- but here's a little more detail:

SB 612 is what they call a "shell bill" - they leave the bill open and then at the last minute they add a lot of amendments to it. One amendment that was added to SB 612 was to section 5/34-2.4 b of the school reform law called the "small schools exemption," which allows CPS to eliminate LSCs in certain small schools.

The new amendment in SB 612 is an attempt to allow CPS to eliminate LSCs from more school. That is very bad news. Our legislators allowed them to sneak this amendment in at the last minute so that no one knew they were doing it and we had no way to stop it. 

The best thing to do now is ask the Governor to veto the bill. You can call his office at 312-814-2121.

**** 

Some time on Saturday, May 30, legislators sneaked in an amendment to SB 612 that will allow CPS to create turnaround contract schools without real LSCs. SB 612 passed both houses on Sunday.

CPS: Ha, ha! We have paid lobbyists and you don't!

It was a nasty twist that this betrayal of LSCs was slipped in as an amendment to a bill that will add 45 more charter schools in Chicago. Charter schools are also not required to have LSCs. This will make it easier for CPS to move ahead with what we have been trying to stop in our small schools lawsuit, that is, ban LSCs from most if not all Renaissance 2010 schools.

Take a look here to see how it all happened at the last minute., and who was responsible.

This is just one example of how CPS takes advantage of the fact that grass roots advocacy groups can't afford to have full-time lobbyists to keep track of all the game playing that happens in Springfield.

It's also an example of the kind of bad law that gets passed in the final hours of the session.  

The lawsuit will go on, and we will win, but this new law will make it harder for parents to have a voice in the future.       

Unless Governor Quinn decides to veto it. After all, shouldn't Chicago parents and others have some say in laws that affect us before they are set in stone?

Springfield

Office of the Governor 207 State House Springfield, IL 62706 Phone: 217-782-0244 TTY: 888-261-3336

Chicago

Office of the Governor James R. Thompson Center 100 W. Randolph, 16-100 Chicago, IL 60601 Phone: 312-814-2121

Understanding Government''s Matthew Blake does a good, objective job looking at Arne Duncan's record in Chicago in light of the district's poor results on the NAEP:

"It's not clear that the results of Duncan’s Chicago reforms justify taking his ideas to a national platform.  In 2001, Duncan became Chief Executive Officer of a bad school system. And earlier this year, he left a system that was still bad. Chicago students continue to test significantly worse than the average student in the rest of Illinois, in other large urban centers, and in the U.S. at large. Education experts see promise in Duncan’s CPS reforms. But they have yet to make a measurable difference in student achievement."

Read the full article here. 

"And so we have to stop lying to children. We have to tell them the truth. We have to be transparent about data."

So says Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan, in the bully pulpit calling for national standards (and, of course, the inevitable national standardized tests for all).

Well, it's also wrong to lie about children. Yet a few moments after he made the statement above in a speech at the National Press Club on May 29, Duncan told at least three major whoppers about his time in Chicago (check out the speech for yourself to see if you can find more!) 

Whopper #1: "What we did in Chicago is we moved the adults out. We kept the children, and brought in new teams of adults. Same children, same families, same socioeconomic challenges, same neighborhoods, same buildings, different set of expectations, different set of beliefs. And what we saw was dramatic change."

Here are the Facts: There was not and has not been dramatic change. In fact, the research shows that there has been little if any change for all of Duncan's "reforms".

What school is he talking about in Whopper #1? Well, at this point, all of Duncan's "turnaround" schools seem to have blended into one magical place we might call "Dramatically Better Elementary," but in this case we think he might be talking about Sherman, the turnaround model for 2007 (Chicago has a new model every year). Yet, if he is to be truly "transparent about data," Duncan would have to admit that, after the turnaround, Sherman actually performed worse on standardized tests than several schools CPS proposed to close for poor performance in 2009. And there were other troubling data at Sherman: student enrollment plummeted, the mobility rate skyrocketed, parent involvement went down, and science scores tanked after the turnover.    

Whopper #2: "We had a school that we did -- we turned it around. The students left -- this is (inaudible), came back -- that was one of the worst schools in Chicago; that in the third or fourth year of the turnaround had the highest gain of any elementary school in the state. Went from being one of the worst to having the greatest gain of any elementary school in the state of Illinois."

Here are the Facts: We know he is talking about Dodge, which did get that "greatest ISAT gain" nod. But he is lying about who the students are at Dodge, as he has been doing for several years now. In fact, the original Dodge students DID NOT COME BACK, according to CPS's own report, which states that only 12 students who were enrolled at Dodge when it was closed in 2002 were still there in 2005.   

Whopper #3: "But with new opportunities, with new expectations, with a new high school in North Lawndale where 95 percent of the children graduate, and 90 percent of those who graduate go on to college, I am convinced we can finally get to what Dr. King talked about."

We know he's talking about North Lawndale College Prep, a charter school which, excuse me, actually has a graduation rate closer to 50%, so low that the school just landed on the NCLB restructuring list (so that it has to be - what? -- turned into a charter school?). The lie about North Lawndale's graduation rate has been perpetuated by Duncan and others - I even got the Tribune to print a correction on just this issue a while back.  

So, what are we going to do about Duncan's lies, besides ask our fairy godmother to make his nose grow every time he does it?

Just keep telling the truth, I guess. 

Chicago parent, teacher and foe of high-stakes testing Wade Tillett gets a big chunk of space on Daily Kos thanks to this post by Kenneth Bernstein, who adds some kind words about PURE's ongoing effort to educate folks about the dangers of Arne Duncan's schemes.

Be sure to check out bubbleover.net for the latest in the local fight against high-stakes standardized testing.

It will only be a few days before flunking notices go out for Chicago 3rd, 6th and 8th graders. Few parents will be prepared for this - please call (312-491-9101) or e-mail us if you need help or if you hear of anyone whose child is affected this year. We are preparing some new legal strategies and would like to include more families.

"Flunkin' Duncan" might be gone, but thousands of children will continue to be harmed by the current CPS promotion policy.   

The May 7th Reader included an article on charter schools that I could have sworn was written by the CPS PR department. Reader comments were ruthless (but on point!): "This was such a one-sided piece of propaganda, I'm shocked the Reader took this on." In fact, they did such a  good job of skewering the  writer that I didn't feel the need to say anything (a rare occurrence...)

Thanks to Glenn Krell for alerting me, then, to this great letter to the Reader from PURE hero Dr. Kenneth Saltman.

Here's a quote from Saltman's May 17 letter: "As an Education professor who has written and edited eight books on public school privatization I found Emily Krone’s article to be a stunning case of mildly disguised right-wing pro-privatization propaganda. She paints a misleadingly favorable picture of the charter school movement by cherrypicking from studies. In fact, both nationally and in Chicago there is no evidence that charter schools have improved student performance traditionally defined."

HB 363 passed the Illinois House yesterday on another unanimous vote! (see corrected post from Wednesday).

That's it - the bill is law! Thanks to everyone who helped, and special thanks to Rep. Cynthia Soto for having the backbone to sponsor and carry this bill all the way.

There are four "community group" positions to be filled on the task force created by HB 363. This task force will need to begin work soon to review CPS's school closing policy and prepare proposals for a better process.

We think that PURE would be an excellent community group member for HB 363's Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force!

If you think so, too, we'd appreciate it if you would take a moment to call the four people who will have the most say in who is appointed:

Rep. Cynthia Soto: (773) 252-0402

Rep. Michael Madigan: (773) 581-8000

Sen, John Cullerton: (773) 883-0770

Sen William Delgado (Senate sponsor): (773) 292-0202

Here are some reasons choosing PURE would be a good thing for CPS students! 

• PURE sat on the Blue Ribbon Capital Development Task Force created by Paul Vallas in 1995. On that Task Force, I strongly advocated for exactly the kind of fair and transparent process that we are hoping to create now.

• PURE also sat on the Community Capital Plan Commission, organized by Chicago's Neighborhood Capital Budget Group in 2004. This group carried out national research and consulted experts in creating a facilities planning proposal which should be of great help to the Task Force.

• Recently, PURE sent a FOIA request to CPS for a report on the impact of school closings on students which CPS was supposed to have made public. Our persistence paid off when CPS finally provided the report, although the content fell short of expectations. This is the kind of intensive, informed, child-centered monitoring that PURE is known for and that we believe will be an asset to the Task Force's work.

• PURE has an excellent communications network throughout the city, which is a critical need for a fast-moving project that intends to be inclusive and community-based. We are committed to helping assure the broad and meaningful involvement of CPS parents and LSCs.

The print edition of today's Tribune story on the heavy high school counselor load starts out this way:

"School guidance counselor Alexander Hughes has been keeping track of about 270 students this year at Northside College Preparatory High School, a caseload he is thrilled about, based on past experience.

"Two years ago he was in charge of more than 500 students at another Chicago high school, he said, a situation that left little time for students who needed individual attention."

The print edition also features a half-page picture of Mr. Hughes with a student.  

Now check out the web version, where Mr. Hughes' comments are swapped out for a story from a suburban high school.    

Later on in both versions, it's explained that Northside gets its extra counselors from grant money, parent fundraising, and parent volunteer support. So, CPS is not necessarily favoring Northside with resources not provided to other schools, but these are still important resources that the average high school may have a lot more trouble accessing.

And the bottom line is the same- every school should have enough counselors to meet the needs of the students, and the state and the district have a responsibility to provide them.

Thanks to State School News Service's Jim Broadway for the tip that HB 363 has been moved to the House floor and recommended for passage by the Rules committee!

Ogden gets $60 million "makeover" -- Andersen plans tent city 

1. $150,000 per Ogden child

The Tribune reports that parents at Ogden Elementary are upset. While Ogden gets a $60 million makeover, their children will have to go to school in a temporary location, probably Schlller or the closed Truth, schools that historically served Cabrini Green. 

Ogden's K-4th grade enrollment is about 400, of which only about 25% are low-income compared to the 85% city wide. Ogden's rehab budget amounts to about $150,000 per child.  

You may remember that Ogden's upper grade students are already using part of the Carpenter building. They'll get the rest after CPS phases Carpenter out beginning this fall. 

2. Andersen plans camp out (from CORE e-mail)

On Saturday, May 30, from 11 am until 10 am Sunday, Andersen school is planning a "sleep-out." Andersen is located at Honore and Division on the near north side, not far from Carpenter. Both schools are in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood and have been told that "they are not a good fit for the neighborhood." The Board voted to phase out Andersen last year. At the time, they mobilized 300 parents, teachers, students, and community members to protest but they won only minor concessions.

The camp out is being organized to protest the accelerated phase-out of the school and its takeover by the LaSalle Magnet II school. Andersen is fighting to stay together even as the Board takes the school apart grade by grade.

The sleep-out is being timed to coincide with the "Do Division Street Fair." The festival promoters describe the area as "the hottest, hippest, most cutting-edge neighborhood in Chicago." 

HB 363 is now sitting in the House Rules Committee which currently has no meetings scheduled before Sunday, when the General Assembly plans to conclude its business. This is usually a bad sign. Folks might want to give Rules chair Barbara Flynn Currie a call (Springfield 217-782-8121, Chicago 773-667-0550) and see what the plan is to move this important piece of legislation.    

I was privileged to be in the courtroom yesterday when Judge Clayton Crane granted a new trial to Victor Safforld, also known as Cortez Brown, citing "staggering evidence" that police under Jon Burge most likely tortured Brown to get the confession that was about the only "evidence" they had to convict him. The officers who were brought in to give their side of the story took the fifth amendment. Burge was hiding out in Florida.

Here's the Sun-Times story.

My husband, the Rev. Larry Turpin, started organizing support to free Victor six years ago, just after Governor Ryan exonerated four Death Row inmates including Madison Hobley. Larry had been visiting Madison for l8 years, beginning with his arrest.

Larry asked Madison, "Who's next?" and Madison told him to begin helping Victor. 

This ruling may be the first time that a judge made the assumption that a convict was tortured based on information that has trickled out about the torture over the years.

The judge is likely to set bail at a hearing next Friday which means Victor may be getting out that soon. It's up to Atty. General Lisa Madigan to decide if the state will retry Victor. Without their key "evidence," the confession that Judge Crane just threw out, it's hard to imagine how they can proceed. 

Daley has some questions to  answer

Larry raised the point with the media that Richard M. Daley was the states' attorney when Burge's officers were torturing arrestees, and Daley was made aware of allegations of torture. He chose not to do anything. 

Will the weight of the disastrous parking meter sale, the fiasco he calls Renaissance 2010, and now the looming specter of his responsibility for our own local Guantanamo coming out encourage Daley to consider whether it's time to begin what will no doubt be a very comfortable retirement? 

The Sun-Times reported on a secret meeting held on May 5 in New York with Oprah and Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Eli Broad, David Rockefeller Sr. and Ted Turner. 

Given the penchant of most of those guys to throw multi-millions at such failed strategies as school turnarounds and mayoral control, it sends a shiver down my spine to think about what they might be cooking up next..

Who will save us from the do-gooders and their reckless experiments on our children? 

We have had many complaints from parents and LSC members at Blaine about the high cost to families of sending their children to this supposedly free public school.

Last week the Tribune reported on the $2,250 per year parents pay (essentially tuition) to support the school's full-day kindergarten.

This is a program that most schools pay for out of their discretionary funds, While it may be true that Blaine has a smaller pot than schools serving more low-income students, that doesn't explain why Blaine seems to have hundreds of thousands of dollars rolling over in their internal accounts every year (so why hit parents up for hundreds of dollars for kindergarten?).

The Tribune quoted one parent leader as saying that no parent was forced to pay or made to feel uncomfortable if they were unable to pay, which is not what parent told us.

The PURE's efforts to get someone at CPS to look closely at the Blaine funds on behalf of some Blaine parents were futile. In Chicago, that usually means that someone is protecting someone.  

Advance Illinois is marketing itself as an "independent, objective" group that is preparing to come out with "research-based" solutions for school failure on June 18th. They're getting big star Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan to keynote their unveiling. Check out the invitation below- you really ought to go (call them at 312.235.4531 or info@advanceillinois.org).

But what kind of research is "objective" AI looking at? To get an idea of their research pool, look at this list of "selected reports and publications" on their web site. Look at what's there and what's missing.

For example, they cite such research powerhouses as the Target Area Group and PRISE (astroturf organizer groups funded by Gates money, like AI). To no one's surprise, these studies confirm the corporate-political mantra that parents just want more charter schools. 

Of course, they don't cite PURE's report co-written with FairTest showing that mayoral control and Renaissance 2010 don't work, or PURE's report on the lack of accountability of Renaissance 2010 schools.

And AI doesn't cite the 2008 Rand study on Chicago's charter schools or the 2009 SRI International study on Renaissance 2010 showing that traditional neighborhood schools are just as good as these over-hyped, super-resourced new schools. 

So, "objective"? Sorry - nice try, pretty web site (though when I try to download the PRISE report, it just redirects to the AI home page), but no sale.

But still, wouldn't it be fun to go hear the inevitable presentation of "bold" proposals for more charter schools and AUSLs??    

Governor Jim Edgar and Secretary William M. Daley Co-chairs of Advance Illinois

Cordially invite you to a luncheon reception featuring

Arne Duncan U.S. Secretary of Education

Secretary Duncan has called education "the civil rights issue of our generation" and challenged Illinois to "think differently" about education reform. Please join us for a conversation about what it will take to improve our schools, informed by the Secretary's stimulus initiatives and new policy recommendations to be released by Advance Illinois on June 18th.

Advance Illinois aims to make every student world ready by advocating for research- and best-practice based reform that puts students first. It serves as an independent, objective voice to promote a public education system in Illinois that prepares all students to be ready for work, college and democratic citizenship.

Amazingly, SB 750, Senator Meeks' proposal for real school funding reform, has moved to the Senate floor.

State School News Service has given permission for folks to share his detailed report:

.

"His success will be determined by whether he can both carry out Mayor Daley’s education plans and become credible with Springfield, teachers, and parents."

That's a quote from Matthew Blake's extensive article, "Man or Huberman?" on the Understanding Government web site. You might find it interesting, and not just for the quote from me. 

The bill passed the Senate yesterday on a vote of 53-yes, 0-no, 5-present, despite heavy lobbying by CPS to kill the bill.

Here's the version the Senate passed (Senate Amendment 2). 

No "no" votes in the Senate! What a sweet vindication for parents and community groups who have been protesting CPS's Renaissance 2010 plan since before it was called Renaissance 2010. 

The bill now needs to pass the House again because it's been revised, but after such a strong showing in the Senate, and some compromise language, it's likely that HB 363 will succeed there, where it passed unanimously already in a somewhat different version.

If that happens, and if the governor signs it (PURE has already been in contact with his office with information about the importance of the bill), we will have a new tool to work with. No, it's not the same as the legislature giving Carpenter and Johnson and South Chicago their schools back, but for those of us who are willing to work hard and use the tools that are available, it's going to be a great opportunity.    

Read more in this story in Catalyst. 

My mom sent me this fun story from Thursday's Arizona  Republic. It was written by Littisha A.Bates, a young woman from Chicago who attended the same elementary school as Michelle Obama (Bryn Mawr) and graduated from Kenwood, where then-State Senator Barack Obama was the graduation speaker.     

She wrote the essay after having heard President Obama speak again, this time at her graduation from Arizone State University, where she was receiving a doctorate in sociology.

I was especially pleased to read about what she plans to do with her education: "I intend to use the tools I've learned to inform policy makers, to work to close the racial and ethnicity gaps in the test scores of schoolchildren...I want to help increase the involvement of low-income and racial- and ethnic-minority parents in their children's schools."

You go, girl! 

From a May 18th post on the CTU website: "Today, HB 363 was brought back to the Senate Education Committee with an amendment. The amendment lets the Special Joint Chicago Education Facilities Committee move their findings into legislation for a law to be passed instead of just allowing CPS to make the findings a policy. The new amendment passed. It will now go to the Senate floor for a vote. Then, because it was amended, it must go back to the House floor for concurrence. If the House votes to concur, then the bill will go on to the governor to sign into law."

The amendment passed 8-yes, 0-no, 2-present in the Senate Education Committee. That was an important vote because there were some committee members who did not seem to like the idea of the legislature "micromanaging" CPS's facilities activities with new law. If you recall, Senate Education Committee chair stated his opinion that CPS "needs to be micromanaged." 

Here's the text of Senate Amendment 2, which is the current version of HB 363. 

So, folks, it's time to make those last phone calls, and we need you to call your state representative and senator, since HB 363 needs to pass both houses again! Click on the Senate and House members lists here to find contact information.    

The Illinois State Board of Education has just signed our children up for national standards, which will inevitably lead to national standardized testing (see today's Tribune story). 

If you think test prep has taken over our schools now, just wait.

President Obama campaigned on a platform that included getting away from standardized testing as the be-all and end-all of accountability. For example, he said, "Part of the problem we've had is that 'No Child Left Behind,' the law that was passed by Bush, said we want high standards, which is good, but they said we are going to measure those high standards only by a single high stakes standardized test that we are going to apply during the middle of the school year...a whole bunch of schools said we gotta teach to this test … It's a shame."

Disappointingly, his appointees are turning out to be a bunch of what progressive education wit Susan Ohanion calls "standardistas".

Arne Duncan is just the best-known example, a man who continued to flunk thousands of students every year based on state test scores alone, despite local research showing that retained students drop out earlier and in greater numbers.

Sadly, another Obama-appointee, Russlynn Ali, sounds like another standardista. Lee is Obama's choice for the critical position of Deputy Secretary for Civil Rights overseeing the USDE's Office for Civil Rights. Lee ran the West branch of Education Trust, a group that promotes national standards and standardized testing.

If there was any doubt that Lee rejects President Obama's wise call for multiple measures, look at her 2006 statement praising the decision by the California state superintendent that no student would graduate from a California high school without passing the California High School Exit Exam. Lee states that "there are no acceptable alternatives" to the exit exam.

We'll have to find out how she squares that with research showing that students of color and girls fail to pass the California exit exams at greater rates than white males, which at least suggests that the tests are discriminatory.

So, whose civil rights will she uphold?

Wow! Two essays in Sunday's Sun-Times recognize that CPS neighborhood schools need help and deserve recognition.

Sue Ontiveros wrote about a lively production of "The Wizard of Oz" at Roosevelt High School: "From what I've observed over the years, so much of the positive attention -- and resources -- in the Chicago Public Schools is directed toward the magnet schools, particularly at the high school level. It leaves those at neighborhood schools feeling like Cinderella- before the ball."

Since Renaissance 2010 started, the neighborhood schools have also seen resources siphoned off for the Mayor's new schools.  

The paper's main editorial yesterday was titled "Neighborhood schools need the most help." The editors comment that "CPS, rightly, has been criticized over the years for failing to clearly prioritize its highest need areas and throwing all its resources behind efforts to fix those schools."

A cost-free school improvement suggestion 

I wrote to the Sun-Times thanking them for acknowledging that neighborhood schools need to be the focus for our efforts and resources. And I suggested a cost-free improvement strategy: a return to respect for and engagement of parent and local school councils in our schools.

Since the mayoral takeover of Chicago's schools, CPS has squandered the volunteer efforts and contributions of thousands of parent, teacher, community and principal local school council members who take office every two years prepared to help their schools, only to discover that CPS neither welcomes their input nor takes it into consideration.

Since the mayoral takeover in 1995, CPS has sent back tens of millions of federal parent involvement dollars which could have been used to encourage and support increased partnerships with parents. Poor district leadership has allowed these funds to be used to reward a few favorites with expensive trips and stipends rather than for local parent-designed programs as required by law.

We can turn that situation around and apply the energies of thousands of motivated parents and LSCs members towards real school improvement. That means that CPS needs to get out of the way in many cases, and let local leadership grow and strengthen. That is the only way to get all hands on deck for the challenges we still face.

The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) has begun a campaign to end the  "20 day rule."

Under this CPS policy, the system waits to see the enrollment numbers on the 20th day of the school year to decide how many teachers your school needs. 

PURE is helping out by spreading the word and asking parents and students to share your stories of waiting days for a teacher to be assigned to your classroom, sitting in an auditorium for the first weeks of school, etc.

Call or e-mail us if you have a story to share (contact info here). 

Here's how CORE describes the problem and their suggested solutions: 

"Every year, many schools, often the same schools CPS later wants to “turnaround”, end up short staffed. New staff is not hired until at least the 20th school day, causing classes to be overcrowded, without teachers, and resulting in massive schedule changes in October. Because enrollment is underestimated, kindergarteners are forced into classes of 40 students while the school waits for the board to approve another teacher.

"In most cases, this travesty contributes to the educational disparities of students who already have social and economic disadvantages. The CPS formula for assigning teachers allows for no flexibility, and leads to split level classes, dropped electives, and overcrowded classes. A formula that took into consideration the students’ needs would allow for smaller classes and more teacher availability.

"Instead of experimenting with untried, expensive programs, such as small schools, “turnarounds”, (an excuse to fire all the teachers), and union-busting charter schools, we support the following changes to CPS policy:

1. Use a staffing formula that takes into account September enrollment trends for particular schools, neighborhood changes that may lead to additional enrollment, and potential for increased enrollment due to nearby school closings.

2. Discontinue the 20-day rule. Keep all the teachers hired before September in the building.

3. Stop “turnaround” policies; instead lower class size and add support people such as social workers, counselors, tutors, mentors, teacher aides, and advocates in under-achieving schools.

We finally received another long-awaited, FOIA'd report, this time the one promised in the CPS elementary promotion policy, which states on p. 6:

"The district will maintain all testing data by race and ethnicity of test-takers and shall annually review this data in regard to students who are promoted and retained pursuant to the requirements of the policy in order to ensure that there is no disparate impact based upon race or ethnicity created by the operation of the policy. All such data shall be made available to a parent upon request" (emphasis added).

If you take a look at the far right-hand column of the chart, it's hard to see how CPS could have reviewed this data annually and not seen a disparate impact between African-American students and everyone else.   

The headings on the report, which can't be read in the dark heading at the top of the page, are as follows:

Year - District enrollment for grades 3, 6, and 8 - race - number promoted - percent promoted - number retained - percent retained.

CPS's promises to Office for Civil Rights 

Some may recall that the CPS promotion policy was changed in 2000 after a complaint PURE filed with the Federal Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. This complaint ended CPS's policy of holding back students based on their Iowa test scores alone. The provision cited above was part of that agreement, and was clearly meant to assure that the CPS policy would not have a discriminatory impact. But the results suggest that the policy continues to discriminate against African-American students.

PURE will consider our next steps, and would welcome e-mails or phone calls (312-491-9101) from families whose students have been held back. 

Attorney General had to step in again 

We had been requesting this report (which any parent was supposed to be able to get, according to CPS's policy) since February. CPS did not respond to that letter or a follow-up letter we sent in March, so again we wrote to the Attorney General. Within days (or maybe even hours!) of receiving her letter, CPS had the report in the mail.

Perhaps this language, from the AG's letter, spurred them to action:

"Based on the information provided, it appears that CPS's processing of her FOIA request has been deficient and in violation of the clear provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Please be reminded that a public body is statutorily required to respond..."

That emphasis was actually in the AG's letter!

About a year ago I told Arne Duncan that if he said that the Renaissance 2010 turnaround schools were "dramatically better" one more time, my head would explode.

He didn't stop altogether. 

But at least he has developed a little self-awareness after a few weeks in D. C.. In his speech to the Education Writers' Association a couple of weeks ago, he said,    

"As you know, I favor certain words over others and I am blessed to have so many of you sifting through all of my rhetorical quirks with a combination of derision, dismay .... and occasionally—insight.

"I am deeply grateful for that—and to show my gratitude, I am going to get through this speech tonight without using three of my favorite words—and they are:

• extraordinary

• dramatic
• and incent."

Now if he could just set aside some of his more dangerous "quirks", like advocating to close 5,000 schools.

The mythologizing of Arne Duncan is moving along at a pretty fast past. Bernie Noven alerted me to this adulatory article from the London Economist and urged me to respond using some of the recent data about Arne's record here in Chicago, saying that people "out there" have no idea about the reaiity here in Chicago. Here's what I sent.   

“Golden Boy” Arne Duncan is a pleasant fellow who held the position of Chicago Executive Officer (CEO) of the Chicago Public Schools for seven years without losing his cool.

He's so cool, in fact, that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

As a long-time Chicago public school parent advocate, I have had a front row seat at the Arne Duncan show. When Mayor Richard Daley appointed Mr. Duncan to replace Paul Vallas in 2001, there was a palpable sense of relief across the city. The new CEO's Opie-from-Mayberry modesty was a soothing antidote to the previous six years spent with a CEO who could suck the oxygen out of a room.

We soon discovered, however, that Mr. Duncan simply provided a more complaisant and – more importantly – a more compliant cover for City Hall's machinations.

Mr. Duncan sounded so sincere when he proclaimed that it was his moral obligation to close down poor-performing schools so that the children who attended them would not have to go one more day without a high-quality education. We had to find out for ourselves that, in fact, most of the students in the closed schools were dispersed to other low-performing schools and never set foot in the newly-equipped, highly-resourced replacement schools. And when we tried to get the truth out, few in the media or among the city's powerful corporate and foundation leadership wanted to hear it.

Everyone wanted to believe Mr. Duncan's heartfelt promise to create “dramatically better” schools under the Mayor's Renaissance 2010 initiative. Doing our own research we discovered that many of the “failing” schools Mr. Duncan closed were outperforming the so-called “dramatically better” turnaround models serving similar populations. When we tried to get that truth out, the media ignored us or wrote their own “corrections” to our reports.

A report critical of Renaissance 2010 was apparently available at about the time of Mr. Duncan's confirmation hearings, but was not made public until after he took office and after the Chicago Board of Education voted to close yet another 16 schools to make way for more replacement schools. That report, by SRI International, was paid for and then spurned by the private civic fund that supports Renaissance 2010.

To date, neither of the major Chicago newspapers has reported on the damning evidence from the SRI report. Yet both newspapers regularly promote the public relations spin from CPS and charter supporters that the new schools have long waiting lists (“so they must be doing something right!”) along with the unreliable, unscientific internal CPS data showing that charter students are outscoring students in the neighborhood schools they would “probably” have attended.

Mr. Duncan has now accepted the position of top educator in the nation, although he has never taught a class, earned an education degree, or distinguished himself in education theory. He has promised to bring the same miracle to schools across the nation that he brought to Chicago. Let us hope that the truth will be more appealing to the American people than Mr. Duncan's golden promises.

UPDATE 

Mike Klonsky points out in Small Talk that the headline attributing the "close 5000 schools" idea to Obama was misleading and not supported by anything in the story, and that it was changed to "turnaround" from "close" in subsequent editions. That only changes the post below a little...

++++ 

President Obama needs to hear some noise from us here in Chicago because he has just about lost his natural mind with this idea. He's getting behind the destructive strategies of Renaissance 2010 in a way that may just destroy the heart and soul of hundreds of communities across the US.

Obama wants to see 5,000 schools closed and "turned around." Yeah, you know, he wants to take what Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan has done here in Chicago

...which hasn't worked... 

and multiply it about 100 times across the U.S.. 

And he's going to use the precious stimulus money - you know, the money that's supposed to help create new jobs - to fire thousands of experienced teachers.   

Duncan says that "The point is to take bold action in persistently low-achieving schools."

Boldly go where?

I disagree. I think the point should be to try to do something that works, not to BOLDLY go expand a program that doesn't work and actually creates worse problems.   

For example, William J. Mathis, adjunct associate professor of school finance at the University of Vermont and a superintendent of schools, reviewed the existing body of research on each of the five NCLB restructuring options (the final sanction for failure to meet adequate yearly progress) and found that

• “there is little or no evidence to suggest that any of these options delivers the promised improvements in academic achievement”" and
• “negative side effects are frequently recorded including increased segregation, substantial, short-term drops in achievement scores and organizational instability.” 

Need to hear more?

Laura Varlas wrote this about another presentation at the recent Education Writers' Association conference:  

"In a later panel, University of Chicago professor Charles Payne presented data from his latest book, So Much Reform, So Little Change, which emphasizes the importances of maximizing schools' social capital, and how many reform efforts neglect this keystone to supporting any lasting improvements. 

"Payne said in schools with low academic achievement, building high levels of trust makes academic improvement three times as likely than in schools with low levels of trust among educators and students. He cited a ten percent improvement in graduation rate in schools where students say they know and trust their teachers.

"The way schools are being closed in Chicago has eroded an enormous amount of social capital by not including parents in the process. These parents care about their kids and schools, and have been marginalized by people doing things for their children, without including them in the process."

It can't help the level of trust, either, when the entire school staff is fired and replaced. Illogical. 

What to do instead? 

We agree with Dr. Mathis and will forward his recommendations on to Obama and Duncan:

• stop expanding the number of charter schools and relying on takeovers, privatization and other restructuring efforts for school improvement, and
• focus on making sure that all schools have adequate resources and support so that they can improve, and support such proven strategies such as early education, smaller class size, small school communities, intense personal intervention, and strong counseling and social support systems.

Reach out to Arne

Let's all start communicating our concerns to the President and to Arne- he must miss us, after all.

You can e-mail the President at http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

Here's Arne's contact info:

(202) 401-3000

Principal Office: (OS) Office of the Secretary

E-Mail Address: arne.duncan@ed.gov

Location

Region: HEADQUARTERS

Building Name: LBJ EDUCATION BUILDING

Building Address: 400 Maryland Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20202

Room Number: 7W311

Here are the links to research supporting the need for HB 363. These reports are referenced in this one-page fax appeal PURE sent Friday to all Illinois Senators, asking for their support for HB 363.

Read here about how CPS has given an unfair share of resources to Renaissance 2010 schools.

Here's the 2009 SRI International report which found that Renaissance 2010 schools are doing no better than traditional neighborhood schools.

Here's the 2008 Rand report which found that CPS charter schools perform only about as well as neighborhood schools.

Here's the letter from the Illinois Network of Charter Schools reporting that only 50% of CPS charters made adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act last year.

I've been plenty critical of foundations that throw their support to failed strategies such as school "transformations," or fund fake grassroots campaigns.

It's especially refreshing, then, to pass on news of the Schott Foundation's campaign to bring equity and fairness to public education. 

Previous Schott research determined that African-American and Latino students have only about "half a chance" to learn as their white and Asian counterparts.

In order to change that disastrous inequity, Schott is calling on the federal government to hold states accountable for providing adequate resources to schools, not just for increased test scores.

"The Opportunity to Learn Federal Recommendations represent a significant shift in the role the federal government plays in ensuring all students have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn....The recommendations merge the concept of identifying and tracking key resources to support those children most in need, with the notion that federal powers of oversight and accountability are necessary."

We will keep you posted about this campaign as it moves ahead.

Check out this on-line editorial by founding PURE president Bernie Noven in today's Tribune.

Among other things, Bernie writes: "There are many ways to improve our schools if we remove the politics involved in our school systems."

The more things change, the more they stay the same, right Bernie?? 

I was catching up with my e-mail from yesterday and noticed this announcement which I received from a member of the media and not from the sponsoring organization, the Appleseed Foundation.

Today is the last day to register for Monday's free event which will look at the state's parent involvement policies under NCLB. Call Theresa Burridge at 312-988-6564 or e-mail her at theresa.burridge@chicagoappleseed.org.

It just seems odd to me that despite our having reached out to the sponsor in the past, and despite PURE's long-time activism as a parent group, we would not have been informed about this event.

Also, the Illinois Parent Leadership Council has apparently been operating for a couple of years at least without our having heard anything about their work. Not that we are able to keep up with everything, but we do try to stay alert to anything that has to do with parent involvement.  I guess we'll have to FOIA their meeting minutes....     

HB 363 is moving along the legislative path. It is scheduled for a second reading tomorrow. That is generally just a formality (read more here about the legislative process in Illinois).

CPS is fighting very hard against this bill -- even in its weakened version -- so we need every vote we can get, including those of suburban and downstate senators. Who do you know out in the suburbs or back on the farm who would be willing to call their senator about HB 363?

Remember, CPS has free access to our tax dollars to pay lobbyists to fight on their side every minute, every day. We have to do our own "leg work" - so, let your fingers do the walking to your telephone and make a call to your own state senator and any others you feel moved to call (senators from outside Chicago need to know how important this bill is to Chicago children and schools). Ask for a direct commitment that they will vote yes on HB 363.

Here's a way to get your own senator's contact information quickly. You can find the contact info for all other senators here.

I know that a lot of you have been calling already because you've been reporting back - thank you so much! We just need to keep the pressure up for a few more days! 

UPDATE: The version of HB 363 that passed the Senate Education Committee was not the new amendment submitted by Sen. Delgado but the same House Amendment 2 that passed the full House.    

In calling the bill for a vote, Education Committee Chair James Meeks did not specify which amendment was being voted on, and the action listed on the General Assembly web page also did not specify, so it was difficult to know which version was actually approved. Based on my earlier post about the Delgado amendment, it would have been easy to assume that it was that version that passed. I apologize for any confusion.   

******   

Momentum is on the side of LSCs and the community now that HB 363 was approved without dissent by the Senate Education Committee and sent to the full Senate for a vote.

While this was not the stronger bill that many advocates had wanted, it is still a major step in stopping an unfair, damaging process. And more changes are going to be made before the bill goes to the Senate floor, so it's not over yet.   

Committee chair James Meeks didn't even call for testimony on the bill - he was that sure of a positive vote. Many thanks to Senator Willie Delgado, a former LSC member who reminded me that he had taken PURE training in the early 1990's. Sen. Delgado championed the bill before the committee.

Senator Heather Steans voted in favor of the bill while expressing her concern that it might lead to micromanagement of CPS. To a chorus of "Amens", chair the Rev. Sen. Meeks proclaimed that he had no problem with micromanaging CPS, that CPS needed to be micromanaged.

Here's the testimony that I had prepared but did not need to present.  

Senator William Delgado has introduced yet another amendment to HB363 which appears to be even more watered down than Amendment 2. This proposal removes much of the protective language while it specifies in greater detail the composition of and timeline for the facilities task force.

Take a look at the amendment and take a minute to call the members of the senate ed committee to tell them we need a stronger bill, not a weaker one. The committee meets at 4 pm today, so you have some time to make your voices heard.

Phone numbers are listed here. 

Update: From Glenn Krell - "I originally learned of Illinois' (weak) FOIA law at a training session for LSC members held where? ... at PURE! Since PURE shares some credit for today's story, please feel free to make that point in your blog if it's not made there pointedly enough... credit where credit is due to PURE, please, for planting the seeds that helped later on! You provided advice throughout, as well and I'm very grateful.

***** 

CPS continues to claim that  they are involving the community in a meaningful way in their school closure decisions.

There was more proof in today's Tribune that they are lying.  

The Tribune highlighted the quest of Edison parent and PURE member Glenn Krell to find out why CPS wanted to move his children's highly successful school from its original location to another, less appropriate facility.

He sent in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents describing CPS's decision making process regarding the move. Five months later Glenn received a letter from Arne Duncan telling him that the reasons were secret. Duncan went on to say that this secrecy "protects the decision-making process by allowing the free flow of information among the decision-makers and the individuals who advise them."

We applaud the Tribune for taking on the fight for tougher FOIA laws in Illinois. A while back PURE brought in Terry Mutchler, then the Attorney General's Public Access Counselor, to  offer some LSC training on the Open Meetings Act and FOIA. We learned that Illinois' FOIA laws are among the weakest in the nation. It isn't an exaggeration to say that the level of corruption in this state is due in large part to the inability of the public to monitor and hold public agencies accountable for their actions.

PURE's positive FOIA stories are outweighed by the numbers of FOIA requests that are ignored or denied. You may remember how long it took me to get the school closing impact report, at which point we learned that the was completely inadequate for the purpose of tracking the impact of school changes on students.  

Just today I will file another complaint with the Attorney General because I have not gotten a response to two FOIA requests I sent to CPS asking for the reports they promise under the student promotion policy concerning the policy's racial impact.

That kind of information is of utmost importance to parents and the public. For CPS to promise such reports and then not prepare or use them is totally irresponsible.

HB 1370 will address some, though not all, of the problems with our current FOIA laws including penalties for non-compliance. Amendments to this proposal are apparently being made right now, according to reports.

Here's another great story by Christopher Brinckerhoff on charters.  He quotes PURE's Wanda Hopkins cautioning President Obama on his non-critical embrace of charter schools, and John Ayers, former Chicago school reform advocate turned senior associate at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, denying that charters skim off the best students.

He says, “The fact is, we teach the toughest kids in the system, not the easiest kids,” he said. “Now some charter schools individually, yeah sure, they push out kids; and when they do that their authorizers should come down on them like a ton of bricks.”

Not true. Charters in Chicago serve fewer low-income, fewer limited English speaking, and fewer  special education students. And, as we learned through our FOIAs to charter and other Renaissance 2010 schools, it is the "authorizer," that is, the CPS Office of New Schools, that encourages their schools to push out unwanted students (so who is going to come down on CPS like a ton of bricks??? Arne Duncan and the Feds???). 

More straight talk on charters 

By the way, thanks to District 299 for linking to this great post , "What is a Charter School and Why is it Eating my Neighborhood?" by Edward Hayes -- read it for more straight talk like this on Renaissance 2010: "Most of these whiz-bang new schools are charters that cannot hire union teachers.Thus as old-fashioned and ineffective schools close, and are replaced with modern and ineffective schools, senior union teachers are displaced by younger, lower-paid, and non-union faculty."  

Check out this story by Christopher Brinckerhoff which has been posted here and here.

State School News Service's Jim Broadway has really hit the nail on the head in his response to the Edgar/Daley essay on schools. Much better than mine... beginning with the appropriate comment on the headline. Why blame schools for the fact that Illinois' NCLB tests are relatively easy? Schools don't make those decisions.

Anyway, if you're not subscribed to SSNS, you are missing gems like this....

Comment: Doing the same since 1983

In a polemic preposterously entitled "Forcing public schools in Illinois to measure up," published in the Chicago Tribune this week, former Gov. Jim Edgar and William Daley observe: "As the saying goes, 'the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.'"

Indeed. What "we" have been doing since 1983 has been to allow non-educators to meddle with public education, advancing their untested theories about what is "wrong" with the schools and pontificating on how much better they would be if they were run like businesses. Perhaps doing that, over and over, and expecting a different result is insane.

To suggest education leaders have resisted change is amazing. No public enterprise has been subjected to more change over the last quarter century than education. From educators' credentialing to wave after wave of "tough" standards and high-stakes tests that scare the hell out of kids, deprive them of instruction that cannot be tested and label their schools and teachers as failures for not overcoming the deficits of their environments - you can't really believe schools have not accepted change.

But one thing has not changed. For all these years, we have been told - by non-educators who appear to believe it - that test scores are driven solely by what takes place in the school. From the security and opulence of their gated communities, corporate and political leaders look at the schools, particularly the urban schools, with disdain.

Bad test scores are a result of a cause, for sure. In medical terms we would say they are a symptom of something. But what if the proximate cause is not poor schooling but poverty, social, material and cultural deprivation? To "fix" the schools will not fix the deprivation so the achievement gap will not be closed no matter how we change the schools. To try the same thing, over and over, expecting a different result will not render that result. It will just illustrate Albert Einstein's definition of insanity.

UPDATE to the update:

The Senate Education Committee has posted their next meeting -- next Tuesday, May 5, at 4 pm -- and has listed HB 363 on the agenda.

http://ilga.gov/senate/committees/hearing.asp?CommitteeID=611

HB 363 was listed as "held in committee" after the last committee meeting.

This is another good reason to contact the committee members over the weekend - their local office phone numbers are listed below.

If you can, try to attend the meeting. It's the best opportunity to get in front of the committee members and impact the outcome of their vote.   

Here's a one-page info sheet on why we need HB 363.  

From Wednesday: 

Looks as though HB 363 did not move out of the Senate Education committee today, which may be a good thing, since some advocates of the bill were caught off guard when it was called to be considered at the committee meeting yesterday.

This gives us a little more time to call our state senators and urge them to put the moratorium back in. Some of us may even be able to get down for the next committee meeting. I'll keep you posted on that when I find out when it is.

Here are three good reasons why we need the moratorium back in. Listed below are the local phone numbers for the Senate Education Committee members. They should be home on Friday, May 1, and will not be back in session until next Tuesday, May 5.

Chair James Meeks: 708-862-1515

Vice-Chair Heather Steans: 773-769-1717

Member Dan Cronin:  630-792-0040

Member Deanna Demuzio: 217-854-4441

Member Michael Freirichs: 217-355-5252

Member Susan Garrett: 847-433-2002

Member Kimberley Lightford: 708-343-7444

Member Iris Martinez: 773-463-0720

Member J. Bradley Burzynski: 815-895-6318

Member David Leuchtefeld: 618-243-9014

Member Kyle Carter: 217-428-4068

Brother Richie continues to praise the results of his 1995 takeover of the Chicago Public Schools: “Test scores are improving, the dropout rate continues to fall, first day attendance continues to grow, more young children than ever are participating in pre-Kindergarten and after school programs and more students are prepared to go on to college or some form of higher education,”

But Brother Bill has a far gloomier take on things. With Jim Edgar, co-chair of Advance Illinois, he writes in yesterday's Tribune: 'Illinois has fallen behind the country on virtually all educational measures. Illinois must think very, very differently and commit to behaving dramatically differently to even be considered for a share of a $5 billion federal program to promote innovation in education."

Of course, Richie is only fronting for himself, while Bill is fronting for Advance Illinois which itself is fronting for the privatization-charterization agenda of Big Business, AKA the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That crowd is all about crisis talk that makes people feel less confident in their neighborhood public schools so that we will stop fighting school closures (Look out! Unionized teachers are causing swine flu!).

It's kind of fun picturing the bickering at Sunday dinner. Of course, after the last civil war over CPS schools (the Civic Committee's "Left Behind" report which also painted a grim picture of the schools and made the Mayor mad) we got Renaissance 2010. 

In this tough economy, it's nice to see that Bill Gates is keeping some folks busy.

Right on the pre-arranged (by Gates-funded PR consultants, no doubt) schedule, we have the Jim Edgar-Bill Daley Tribune editorial diatribe against Illinois' public schools, and this back-up slap letter to the Tribune editor from Rev. Patricia Watkins, who wears several Gates-funded hats along with her clericals. She's the executive director of TARGET Area DevCorp, the convener of the City Wide Education Organizing Campaign, the head of PRISE, which fronts for AUSL on the West Side, and the person representing us parents on the Board of Advance Illinois.

We saw the wind-up last month when Watkins and her mighty band of Gates-keepers held a conference to announce the findings of their survey - that is, that parents just don't know how bad their schools are.

Now the pitch. Our schools are so terrible, Watkins complains, and yet Illinois has a cap on charter schools.

Yep, more charter schools -- that's the answer Bill Gates pays for.

But wait a minute. What about the charter schools that just got put on the NCLB failure list? and all of the other under-performing charter schools that are only a year or two away from the failure list? Is it possible that the parents  of those charter schools students don't know how bad their children's schools are? Can Rev. Pat help them out?

Or is the Gates team striking out?  

This afternoon  at 4 pm the Senate Education Committee takes up HB 363, the school closings bill. Please take a moment if you can to call the committee members listed below and urge them to protect CPS students and their communities --- support HB 363 PLUS – put the MORATORIUM back!

The “school closings” bill passed the Illinois House and is up for a vote this afternoon in the Senate Education Committee.

The original bill included a retroactive moratorium on school closings which would have reversed the March 2009 Chicago Board of Education vote to close, consolidate or turn around 22 CPS schools.

The moratorium language was removed before it was passed by the House.

Advocates of HB 363 were told that the bill would not pass unless the moratorium was taken out. We were told that legislators prefer not to undo something already done by a governing body.

This is a special case where an exception should be made because CPS has proven that its school closing decisions are irresponsible and may harm children. Here are three examples.

1. The CPS Board's closing decisions were made without reference to data or reports about the impact of prior closings on students. CPS had promised to prepare such a report and make it public. PURE filed a FOIA request to get a copy of this report. CPS could not “find” it for over four months, and did not produce it until a month after the Board decision to close, consolidate or turnaround 22 more schools. The report CPS finally provided was about schools, not students.

2. The new schools aren't “dramatically better” as we had been promised. In fact, new research, paid for and then withheld by the Renaissance Schools Fund until after the March 2009 Board vote, shows that Renaissance 2010 schools are lagging traditional schools.

3. Two-thirds of Renaissance 2010 schools failed to respond to a FOIA request from PURE for board rosters, by-laws and minutes, yet we had been promised that these schools would be “more accountable.”

For the sake of hundreds of CPS children who are about to be displaced by another round of CPS school closings, we need the Senators to put the moratorium back into HB 363 and pass the bill!

Chair James Meeks: 217-782-8066

Vice-Chair Heather Steans: 217-782-8492

Member Dan Cronin:  217-782-8107

Member Deanna Demuzio: 217-782-8206

Member Michael Freirichs: 217-782-2507

Member Susan Garrett: 217-782-3650

Member Kimberley Lightford: 217-782-8505

Member Iris Martinez: 217-782-8191

Member J. Bradley Burzynski: 217-782-1977

Member David Leuchtefeld: 217-782-8137

Member Kyle Carter: 217-782-5755 

A story from the potentially great excuses department: A teacher at Beveridge Elementary School near Gary was arrested for buying bottles of liquor from a guy in a car outside the school and stashing them in her classroom closet.   

How about this? "I wanted to give the students an easy way to remember the name of our school."

The story reports that the "beveridge" guy has been making rounds at several Gary schools selling liquor to teachers and principals for about four years. He also sells purses and jewelry, taking special orders for some items, police said.

Maybe we should give up on fair state funding and start a School Shopping Network? 

The Sun-Times reports that Ron Huberman is planning to get tough with four CPS charter schools now eligible for restructuring after 5 years of failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under NCLB.

Restructuring, according to NCLB, can mean turning the school over to charter management.

Anyone get the joke? It's on us!!

Daley-backed schools not standouts, study says

Check out the above article by Northwestern University student Anthonia Akitunde about the new report that Renaissance 2010 schools are doing no better, and in many cases worse, than neighborhood schools.

"Katheryn Hayes, communication director of RSF, said the report was affirming because it found that RSF-funded schools were 'performing equally well to students in CPS schools' very early and serving students in the same income bracket and ethnicity."

But we were promised "dramatically better" schools, not schools performing "equally well" as the schools CPS claimed were failing so horribly that they had to be closed. 

RSF spinning away

Today Catalyst reported that the Renaissance Schools Fund (RSF) has issued its own analysis of the report -- which RSF paid for but apparently does not feel was spun positively enough.    

The RSF analysis includes data from 2008 which was not included in the commissioned report, and which RSF claims show an upward trajectory of achievement.

Catalyst points out, "These measures, however, use a controversial approach that compares Renaissance schools to nearby neighborhood schools. The method does not control for the background characteristics of individual students."

Most researcher would consider such comparisons to be invalid.  

By the way, I originally referred to the report as a University of Chicago study. It is actually a study by SRI International with a U of C co-writer, and is available on the web site of the Consortium on Chicago School Research. 

Funders liking these results?

Akitunde's story says that the results will be used in RSF's grantmaking decisions. Let's see if the funders are as "results oriented" with Renaissance 2010 as they claimed to be when they stopped funding LSC advocacy and CPS watchdog groups.   

Many thanks to Enrique Perez for including my article, "FOIA Power," in today's Enrique's Community Updates.

Grass roots advocates in Illinois have become more interested in using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as an advocacy tool since Attorney General Lisa Madigan strengthened oversight and monitoring of the FOIA compliance of public bodies. Here are some examples of how PURE has used the FOIA in our fight for an equal, high-quality education for all children. It has taken a lot of persistence, but we believe that the results have been well worth it.

1. April, 2008: Using FOIA to debunk Renaissance 2010  

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) leadership insists that Renaissance 2010 schools are superior to regular neighborhood schools, in part because they are "more accountable." CPS uses that reasoning to justify massive school closings and teacher firings, which PURE believes are destabilizing and detrimental to children's education.

So, we thought we would find out how accountable Renaissance 2010 schools really are. We sent FOIA letters to all 85 Renaissance 2010 schools asking for the minutes, by-laws and board of directors lists of their governing boards for that year. Only one-third of the schools responded, even after they received a follow-up letter from the Attorney General stating that they were required to comply. We concluded that two-thirds of Renaissance 2010 schools do not have legally-mandated governing boards. This looks to us like a major lack of accountability. Our report on these findings has been a useful tool in our ongoing critique of Renaissance 2010.

2. January, 2009: Using FOIA to hold CPS accountable for school closings  

In 2007, CPS agreed to make an annual report to the public on how school closings and other such changes affect students. They made this promise in part to convince State Representative Cynthia Soto to pull a bill off the table that would have reformed CPS's facilities planning process. Rep. Soto reintroduced the bill this year because CPS had not kept the promises made in 2007.

To highlight this problem, PURE sent a FOIA to CPS requesting the annual reports that were promised in their 2007 school closing policy. The first letter went out on January 6, 2009. CPS requested an additional 14 days but then sent nothing. We sent a follow up letter on February 6 and a follow-up e-mail on March 18th. There was no response. We then sent a letter to the Attorney General and visited House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie's office on March 30, seeking her assistance. Rep. Soto's new bill, HB 363, was up for a vote in the House that week. CPS assured Rep. Currie's office that the report was "in the mail." That was three weeks ago and we just received the report today (April 16, 2009). Read my comments on a disappointing report.  

We hope that Rep. Soto's bill, HB 363, will result in a legal obligation on the part of CPS to monitor and report on how Renaissance 2010 affects students. No accountability requirement could be more needed.

3. My favorite FOIA story so far: Curie principal "could care less about the FOIA"

In his ongoing efforts to dismantle local democratic school governance, Mayor Daley provoked a media firestorm in 2007 when he proclaimed it a "national disgrace" that the Curie High School Local School Council (LSC) decided not to renew their principal's contract. His claims that she was a "star principal" were met with silence by the LSC, which was legally barred from discussing details of her performance in public.

However, I had seen some video footage of Curie LSC meetings showing a side of the principal that made the LSC's decision more understandable. Unfortunately, the videos belonged to the school and were under the principal's control! So, I sent the school a FOIA request for the video of one particular meeting. The principal did not respond. I sent a letter to Arne Duncan, as the supervising official. The CPS law department stepped in and arranged for the principal to speak to me. I told her that I had been requesting the video and she said, "We don't make copies of videos!" I said,"Well, under the Freedom of Information Act, you are required to." Her response was, "I could care less about the Freedom of Information Act!"  

It took a few more days and more help from the CPS Law department, but I eventually got the video and posted it on YouTube. We believe it is a good example of why LSCs remain a critical element of school improvement in Chicago. Look at the video and judge for yourself if this was a good use of the FOIA law.

Support HB 1370 to strengthen FOIA laws in Illinois: HB 1370, a bill drafted by Attorney General Madigan and others and sponsored by Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie to strengthen Illinois's FOIA law has passed the House and now needs support in the Senate.  

The Attorney General's web site offers a lot of useful information about FOIA including a sample FOIA request form.

The story in today's Tribune about CPS placing a bunch more schools on a year-round schedule quotes me saying that it is very hard on families if their children are on different tracks. 

The context of that statement was that CPS should have one standard calendar for all schools instead of the current situation where some schools are on a "regular" calendar, others on multi-track and still others on a single year-round track.

All those different schedules can create havoc for families. Children's safety can be compromised and family budgets challenged to cover extra child care or loss of work time to tend to children on non-standard schedules.

City services, especially park programs, are also geared to the "normal" summer vacation rhythm, leaving those on non-standard schedules without equal access to those important sports and enrichment opportunities.

It was surprising to read CPS CEO Ron Huberman's statement, then, that parents and teachers wanted the change. Two years ago Arne Duncan put Hurley Elementary on a multi-track schedule despite the strong opposition by the Hurley LSC and massive demonstrations against the change by Hurley parents. Is this a new day? Did the LSCs of some 80 schools actually sign off on this change? We're going to try to find out.

The none-too-flattering report on Renaissance 2010 is finally out. University of Chicago researchers, funded by the business sponsors of Renaissance 2010, found that overall students in Renaissance 2010 schools scored lower than comparable students in neighborhood schools.

We've been looking for this report since Catalyst first mentioned an impending negative analysis of the Mayor's school reform strategy back in February. 

We speculated then that the report would not appear until after the Board of Education approved a bunch more school closings and gave away more neighborhood school buildings to Renaissance 2010 schools, and we were right. 

No doubt the report was also held back in order to assure that no pesky facts would get in the way of Arne Duncan's confirmation as Fed Ed head. When Arne told Congress that his school programs were "dramatically better," they simply had to trust him.

This report was funded by the Renaissance Schools Fund, the fat cat business folks like MacDonald's and Walgreens which GEM is beginning to target for boycotts and demonstrations. Not only is their support for Renaissance 2010 looking worse and worse for their public image, but it's more clearly than ever bad for our children and our schools.   

Today I received my copy of "Charter School Board University," a how-to guide for effective charter school governance written by Dr. Brian Carpenter. I turned to page 164 and there was the promised reference to PURE's press release and report on the lack of accountability of Renaissance 2010 boards.   

PURE's full two-page press release is included at the end of the chapter, which is titled "Ways Your Board Can Get Into Trouble Without Even Trying." One Amazon.com reviewer called that the book's "must read" chapter.

Dr. Carpenter found the PURE press release via Google and e-mailed us for permission to use it in his book as a cautionary tale for charter schools. Of course, we agreed.

Unfortunately, CPS seems to provide a limitless supply of cautionary tales for other districts. See, for example, our complete report written with FairTest in 2007, "Chicago School Reform; Lessons for the Nation."  

Dr. Carpenter's book is the kind of practical guide we wish CPS would provide for LSCs (and we have tried to provide with our own LSC Guide.

PURE is a parent group. We like and support public school parents. SO, it really gets our goat that the best thing the Tribune and other pro-voucher, pro-charter folks can say about their pet programs (and they say it OVER and OVER again - see preceding post) is that parents like them, and the schools have long waiting lists.

Parents seem to like the D. C. program, too, but get this, from the report summary: "The program had a consistently positive impact on parent satisfaction and their perceptions of school safety. (But) students who were offered OSP scholarships (vouchers) did not report being more satisfied with school or feeling safer in school than those without access to scholarships." (Words in parentheses are added.)

Frankly, I think it's more important for students to feel satisfied and safe than for parents to be happy. Parents don't have to be in the schools every day.

And parents are a pretty happy lot in general when it comes to their children's schools. The annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll of the public's perceptions of public schools consistently finds that "Parents of school-aged children are overwhelmingly positive in their evaluations of the quality of their own children's education. This is a recurring finding in Gallup (and other) surveys" (emphasis added).

Why is it that the Gates Foundation and others are willing to pay community groups hundreds of thousands of dollars to go around the neighborhoods trying to convince parents that they should be dis-satisfied with their schools (because parents are so deluded, they have no idea how bad their schools are) but they use "parental satisfaction" as their primary justification for expanding charter and other non-neighborhood schools.

Fed Ed head Arne Duncan has stepped into the voucher bees' nest. He will not support renewal of the five-year-old Washington D. C. voucher pilot program even though a third annual report found some statistically significant reading gains.

This has caused the usually Arne-loving Tribune to go into a tizzy and spew a bunch of misinformation, including the idea that the new report on D. C. is positive, and that the 20-year-old Milwaukee voucher program has been a success.   

The truth is, the two major studies of the Milwaukee program (in 1995 and 2009) concluded that there was no measurable academic benefit to students in the voucher program.

And, the official Department of Education report found no evidence of a statistically significant difference in test scores between voucher and non-voucher students.

Let's look a little deeper. The D. C. report shows that  reading (but not math) scores were higher for voucher students who came from schools that were already making adequate yearly progress and for higher-achieving students. Results for voucher students in the first cohort, that is, the students who entered the program three years ago, were also higher in reading, but the authors consider that data unreliable.

Scores were statistically no better for non-voucher students and voucher students in the lower third of the test score distribution or whose schools failed to make AYP. These already-disadvantaged students are designated by Congress as the highest priority group for the voucher program, but they showed the least academic gain.

The National Association of School Boards concludes, "not only does the experimental program lack academic evidence to support its continuation, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report documented several accountability shortcomings – including federal taxpayer dollars funding tuition at private schools that do not even charge tuition, schools that lacked city occupancy permits, and schools employing teachers without bachelor’s degrees . It also noted that children with physical or learning disabilities are underrepresented compared to the public schools."

Yeah, we know what that's like.

Thanks to Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie's office for forwarding a letter from CPS CEO Ron Huberman to me with an attached school closings report (both documents are here). I guess our copy is still in the mail.

It's good to read in CEO Huberman's letter that he intends to post this kind of information on the CPS web site at some time in the future. That will make our four-month journey to get this report no longer necessary. He also states that, while there was no report done last year, he has asked for a report on last year to be included with this year's report.

General comments about the report

It's a disappointment that the report is not about students; the CPS school closing policy requires a report on "the impact school closings have on CPS students." This report is clearly labeled as a report of "whole schools."

It includes fairly basic data about the closed and receiving schools including enrollment, attendance, misconduct reports, student transfers under NCLB, test scores, graduation rates, and "on track" rates. 

Some comparisons can be made. A rough eyeballing of the data suggests that more indicators improved in those comparisons than worsened, but it's impossible to say that the closed schools would not also have improved with the rest of the system.

The report will certainly give advocates (and reporters) a lot of information to work with. For example, this is the only CPS document I've seen that gathers together the closed schools with their receiving schools from 2002-2007. 

What's missing?

Well, we thought the point of this report was to monitor any harm that might come to individual students as a result of school closings. For example: 

• How many students dropped out instead of going to their receiving school?
• Did any students lose academic ground as a result of their transition to a different school?
• Did any students experience bullying or other acts of violence, or report feeling less safe in their receiving school?
• Did students in the receiving schools experience problems?
• Where's the demographic data???   

There is nothing like that in this report, and I have shared these concerns in a response to Mr. Huberman.

It may be up to HB 363 to assure that the safety and well-being of CPS students is monitored and protected.   

The changeover from Margaret Spellings to Arne Duncan as Fed Ed head may not be very "dramatic" in terms of NCLB implementation, but one difference is clear; Ed Review, an official e-mail newsletter of the Department, showcases Arne's superlative vocabulary of adjectives and adverbs:

"The Secretary hosted more than 150 representatives from education and community groups at the Department for a briefing on the ARRA. 'We see an extraordinary opportunity to change students' lives,' he stated. 'We want to push a dramatic reform agenda. We want to use an unprecedented investment in education to change outcomes and dramatically improve achievement.' " 

A few months ago I told Arne that my head would explode if he referred to AUSL turnaround schools as "dramatically better" one more time, and he actually stopped... at least in front of me. But now I fear that the nation's collective head is at risk.

Pro-voucher and the NCLB test-and-punish folks have tried to promote their failed strategies as the way to bring about educational justice.

Sure, as long as you don't mean "justice for all."  

But the Chicago Urban League just moved us another step toward true educational equity with its successful application of the newish, 2003 Illinois Civil Rights Act in their lawsuit against the State of Illinois for failing to have an equitable school funding system. 

The Sun-Times reports today that "A lawsuit challenging the state's education funding system survived a key legal hurdle Wednesday in what advocates hailed as a 'milestone' ruling. A judge threw out four counts of a suit filed by the Chicago Urban League, but left intact a fifth count alleging that Illinois school funding violates the rights of black and Latino children."

The final version of HB 363 that passed the House is actually Amendment 2, and the annual report requirement which had been added into HB 363 in Amendment 1 was taken out again with Amendment 2, along with several other elements, most notably the immediate moratorium on closings. All in all, the final version is very stripped down. It will be up to the committee established by HB 363 to create an effective policy. That will make our fight for a meaningful process harder down the road, but we are ready for that fight.

And it's a critical fight, contrary to what some folks are saying. For example, some feel that without the retroactive moratorium, HB 363 is worthless.

The truth is, legislation rarely goes back and fixes past mistakes. It was a real long shot to go for a roll-back on CPS's March 2009 closing decisions. There would be no bill at all if we had made that a make-or-break element.

And we need this bill. HB 363 can fix the problem moving forward. HB 363 is an acknowledgment on the part of the state legislature that the CPS facilities planning system is broken. It is a statement of intention that the state is going to intervene and fix the problem. It will provide a whole set of new tools to control and monitor facilities decisions.

And while we all wish the problem had been fixed last year, it wasn't. Rep. Soto was right to give CPS enough rope to hang itself when she pulled the bill in 2007. Because CPS failed in so many of its promises, and we can clearly document that failure, we actually have a realistic shot at fixing the problem now. 

So, our job is to get the bill passed in the Senate and then make absolutely sure that the plan drafted by the committee fulfills the criteria that the current version of the bill requires such as

• Equitable and efficient use of resources

• Fair across all groups including racial, ethnic, income, disability
• Genuine involvement of parents and the public
• Educationally sound and fiscally responsible planning
• Following the principal in state law that the individual school is the essential unit of school governance and the primary responsibility for school governance and improvement is in the hands of parents, teachers, and the community.

 So, let's get busy!!

We've been waiting for CPS's report on the impact of school closings and other interventions/changes on students for a LOOOONG time now. The CPS school closing policy says the report will be made annually and will be available to the public.

Our first FOIA letter asking for the report went out on January 6, 2009. CPS asked for an extra 14 days to comply. When we didn't hear anything, we followed up on February 6 with a letter and on March 18th with an e-mail. 

We still didn't hear back from CPS, so on March 24th we complained to the Attorney General. We brought it to the attention of House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie's office on March 30. Later that week, CPS told Rep. Currie's office that the report would be in our hands in "a day or two."

No report. Last week I received another message from Rep. Currie's office that CPS told them the report had been mailed to us on April 9.

On April 6, I received a copy of a letter written by Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office to the Chicago Public Schools on PURE's behalf. 

The letter states, "The office of the Attorney General asks that you evaluate and respond to Ms. Woestehoff's request for records immediately in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act" (emphasis added...).

Still no report.

I'm not sure if they think we'll just give up and go away or if they are simply that unconcerned about having any credibility with legislators, much less the public.

A new study by William J. Mathis, adjunct associate professor of school finance at the University of Vermont and a superintendent of schools, reviews the existing body of research on each of the five NCLB restructuring options (the final sanction for failure to meet adequate yearly progress) and finds that

“there is little or no evidence to suggest that any of these options delivers the promised improvements in academic achievement” but notes that “negative side effects are frequently recorded including increased segregation, substantial, short-term drops in achievement scores and organizational instability.”

Based on his review of research, Mathis recommends that districts

• stop expanding the number of charter schools and relying on takeovers, privatization and other restructuring efforts for school improvement, and
• focus on making sure that all schools have adequate resources and support so that they can improve, and support such proven strategies such as early education, smaller class size, small school communities, intense personal intervention, and strong counseling and social support systems.  

Also, check out an article in the latest Rethinking Schools, "Arne Duncan and the Chicago Succcess Story: Myth or Reality?" by  GEM members Jitu Brown (from KOCO) and Pauline Lipman and Rico Gutstein (from UIC). I think you know the answer to that multiple-choice question.

In some cities, it's great news for everyone when extra money comes in. In Chicago, we tend to take cover from the mud spray of the hogs stampeding the trough.

Anyway, here's what I think I know about the 2009 federal education stimulus plan.

Three pots of money

There are 3 different pots of money:

1. Expanded “formula funds”: added money for current programs including Title 1 “poverty” funds and special and vocational education monies which already come with specific guidelines for use.

2. “Fiscal Stabilization” funds which are supposed to be used primarily to plug education budget gaps and save teacher jobs.

3. “Race to the Top” funds : Duncan's slush fund to help “grow” programs like Renaissance 2010, merit pay, and other “fresh” reforms.

Illinois' share of Pots 1 and 2

Illinois is guaranteed at least $3 billion from pots 1 and 2 over two years.

• $1 billion from expanded “formula funds”

• $2 billion in “fiscal stabilization funds”.

Pot 1, expanded “formula funds”: Must be used according to the current guidelines for each program. For example, Title 1 poverty funds must follow the child who generates the funds to his/her school and must be used for supplemental programs.

Pot 2, “Fiscal Stabilization” funds: 82% of these funds (Pot 2A) are supposed to be aimed at avoiding layoffs and deeper budget cuts. 18% of the funds (Pot 2B) can be used for other government services, even non-education programs. The only potential for new capital funds comes from Pot 2B.

Governors must make the application for these funds (starting 4/1). The first part of the money is supposed come in two weeks. In Illinois, Gov. Quinn's budget proposes to

-- use $800 million to pay schools for “backlogged bills the state hasn't paid” (Pot 2A)

-- increase overall funding for K-20 by about $214 million in the new budget (Pot 2B)

Obama has said he wants this money to go to retain teachers. Duncan has said that he will “come down like a ton of bricks” on states which use this money and still make major school staff layoffs.

Chicago's cut: $1.3 million more for parent involvement

According to ed.gov, Chicago's share of the expanded Title 1 money alone is $272,166,592.

That should result in $1,360,000 in new parent involvement money (required by law to be at least 5% of all Title 1 spending).

Pot 3: Arne's Slush Fund

Duncan has pledged $5 billion in “Race to the Top” grants: $4.3 billion for states, $650 million for districts (like Chicago). Applications will be available later this spring.

Arne says he will only fund the “freshest, boldest, most out-of-the-box” ideas like year-round school and merit pay for teachers. Not the “status quo.” Unfortunately, we are all too familiar here in Chicago with what Arne considers “fresh” and”bold.” Nuts.

The camp-out will now take place next Friday, April 17, beginning at 7 pm and ending Saturday 4/18 at 7 pm. The event scheduled to begin tonight has been canceled.

Carpenter parent leaders learned that Ogden, whose "West" branch currently shares their building, will hold classes Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week. The parents felt it would not be appropriate to camp out on school grounds while children were in class.

You remember that CPS just "gifted" Ogden with the rest of the Carpenter facility for next year, leaving the neighborhood without an open enrollment school.

Oddly enough, Ogden's web site makes no mention of this special schedule for classes during spring break, and instead indicates that school will be back in session on Tuesday, April 14.

I don't think it's paranoid to wonder if the Ogden classes weren't called in order to put the Carpenter parents in a bad light if they went ahead with their action.

We will share more details about the April 17th action as we learn them.

Remember this old chestnut of a poster (which, of course, I have hanging in my  office)?

What with the Defense Department cutting back on F-22s and $3 billion in education stimulus money coming to Illinois, will making regulation lemon squares and peanut butter cookies become part of basic training? 

One of former president Reagan's crazier ideas was to re-start the neutron bomb program.

The idea behind the neutron bomb was that it killed people while leaving buildings intact. So, you can get rid of the enemy and still have all their factories, bridges, etc.

Fortunately, Ronnie Ray-gun wasn't much more successful with this idea than he was with Star Wars, though he still managed to spend gazillions of "the little guys' " tax dollars on these schemes before they went away.

But now we know that Ronnie was just ahead of his time. The neutron bomb of the 21st century is called Renaissance 2010. It closes schools, removes the children, fires the entire staff, and then gives the building away to a private manager. Ka-boom!

When will we ever learn?

Maybe he'll whip out his badge and arrest himself. 

This morning's Sun-Times reported that CPS CEO Ron Huberman is firing and replacing two CPS principals.

Since there was no mention of using the lawful probation removal approach which requires due process, Huberman seems to be relying on an illegal 2007 CPS policy which gave the Board broad powers to fire any principal it wished.    

State law gives that power to LSCs only, unless CPS removes the principal as a part of probation.

We figured it would only be a matter of time before CPS tried to use the illegal policy and it would be challenged in court. We are glad to see that PURE's General Counsel, Elaine Siegel, is on the case.  

Here's the full CPS press release detailing how this move will "strengthen leadership" at the schools. 

A better leader?

Besides the illegal process, Huberman is sending a principal to Oglesby who currently oversees Reed school which actually performs significantly worse (about 40% meeting/exceeding ISAT standards) than the school Huberman is sending her to (Oglesby averages 51% in reading).

Since CPS just voted to phase Reed out, I have to wonder if this move is an effort quiet the Reed principal down or reward her for already having quieted down. 

In the case of Julian, parents, LSC members and students have complained loudly for a couple of years at least about CPS's hamhanded interference and undermining of the school. It's likely that the new "leadership" is being put in place to help the starvation process along, no doubt so that the building can be turned over to some charter operator.

The Illinois legislature is on a break until April 21. While our local reps may be away for some R&R (I imagine impeaching a governor is exhausting...), most will be in their Chicago offices at some point in the next two weeks, so this is a great time to reach out to your state senator to make sure he or she supports HB 363.

In addition to your own senator (find here), key members to contact are

• Education Committee chair Rev. James Meeks: (708) 862-1515
• Ed. Committee vice-chair Heather Steans: (773) 769-1717
• Ed Committee Minority Spokesperson Dan Cronin (630) 792-0040
• Senate President John Cullerton: (773) 883-0770  

TALKING POINTS: 

1. For ten years, the Chicago Public Schools have been closing schools and handing the buildings over to private companies. Many communities have lost all of their neighborhood public schools.
2. Some of the privately-run schools pick and choose their students. Some push out students  who are behavior problems or low achievers. The data shows that these new schools serve fewer low-income, special education, and limited-English speaking children.
3. Overall these new schools have not done a better job educating children, so why are we paying for all the expensive new programs, firing teachers, and moving children around like chess pieces? CPS has broken a promise made two years ago to report on the effect of all these changes on children.
4. These privately-run schools are not accountable to the community. They do not have LSCs or other effective ways for parents voices to be heard. A recent PURE study showed that parents make up only 5% of the members of charter school boards. Many of the privately-run schools do not have public meetings or public records of their activities, even though they are funded by the public.
5. It's time to put an end to the irresponsible experimentation with our children. HB 363 will set up an independent fact-finding panel to prepare a process for school closings that is responsible, fair, and in the bests interests of children, families, communities, and our city.

Make sure you get a clear commitment from your state senator to support HB 363.

Thanks!!! and please pass this request along to your networks!

This Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the Carpenter school community will be camping out around the school at 1250 W. Erie to protest the closing of that school. CPS is giving the building currently housing this well-performing neighborhood school over to a selective enrollment high school for upper-middle-class Ogden Elementary. 

There are fun activities planned for the three days including an art contest for children sponsored by teacher Jay Rehak, and other teacher-designed games and projects.

The protest will wind up with a march at 1 pm Friday to Santa Maria Adolorata (528 N. Ada). For some, this may make for an especially meaningful Good Friday observance.  

A strong showing for this protest can be a great kick-off for our push to pass HB 363 in the Senate. 

UPDATE: Here's Rep. Soto's press release with details of the version of HB 363 that passed and why it is so important for her community and for the city in general.

*****

In a big victory fo CPS students, HB 363 passed unanimously today in the Illinois House! Here's the vote history.

Thanks to Rep. Cynthia Soto who is the sponsor and fought so hard for the bill in its original, stronger version, and to Designs for Change for their work developing the language of the bill and helping to get it passed.

CPS has taken a hit with HB 363. Passage of the bill makes it clear that the state legislature no longer trusts CPS to make fair, sound school facilities decisions, and they feel they need to step in to fix the mess CPS has made.

Stay tuned -we still need to get the bill through the Senate and we'll need everyone's help to do it.

We expect a vote in the House today on the amended version of HB 363, and it looks good for passage, in part because it has been somewhat watered down. It no longer calls for a moratorium or a reversal of the school closing decisions made last month, and it does not include the mediation and arbitration provisions of the original bill.

What is does call for, though, is important and deserves our support. There will be an independent panel made up of legislators and representatives of community groups which have a track record in  school facilities issues. This panel will design a fair, effective process for making facilities decisions which will then be enacted into law. 

Interestingly, the amendment also calls for an annual report such as the one described in CPS's current school closing policy, the one they seem to be unable to locate to comply with our FOIA request. 

While we are not getting everything we asked for in HB 363, it is a major accomplishment to get this much when CPS and the mayor must have opposed it with every fiber of their we-hate-open-public-processes-and-fair-decision-making beings.

Please make one more call to your state rep. today to make sure they vote yes on HB 363. Barbara Flynn Currie has already signed on to it, so you no longer need to call her. Find your state rep's phone number here.

A lot of the credit for this victory goes to Valencia Rias and Don Moore of Designs for Change who have carried the ball on this bill.  

More good news is that a lot of excellent groundwork has already been laid for the committee. The late-great Neighborhood Capital Budget Group worked for years to pull together the best ideas of experts and regular folk in their Master Facilities Plan proposal which is still available on their web site, www.ncbg.org.       

How long does it usually take for mail to get from downtown to the West Loop? 

Anyway, the report that CPS assured Rep. Currie's office was "in the mail" to PURE on Monday has not arrived yet.   

The point of the report is not to provide reading material for education policy wonks but to offer critical information to Board members as they make very serious and potentially life-changing decisions about the lives of thousands of children and hundreds of adults.

Even if CPS has "found" the report and can produce it, any information it may provide is worthless if it wasn't available to the Board members before they voted.

PURE just joined a coalition dedicated to reform in state campaign finance laws. It's called Change Illinois, and it's a good start. Making the legislature respond to the voters and not political contributors is a key step in cleaning up the toxic mess of Illinois politics. If we fix things at the state level, we might have some real help mucking out Chicago.

And that's really what's going to have to happen before we have a chance of making our schools work for all children.

Change Illinois has a phone number - 1-800-719-3020 - that will hook you up with your state reps so you can tell them you want them to support HB24/SB1768 which calls for meaningful campaign finance reform.

I have long thought that there is a good way to end standardized tests misuse – we just need to put an end to graded classrooms.

Lots of people seem to agree with me; 79% of people responding to this poll on Parade.com favor the idea.

Putting students in a room based on their age alone is an archaic idea. Flunking them when their age and progress level don't match some arbitrary standard is ridiculous and cruel. People learn at different rates – why is the school system set up to punish the ones who learn a little slower and hold back (and bore) the faster learners?

Closing schools and firing staff when some percentage of students in a building are not meeting that absurd standard is a criminal waste of human and financial resources.

Radical tampering with schools?  

I know that people, especially parents, can freak out over any kind of tampering with school the way they experienced it. Report cards are supposed to have letter grades, children are supposed to move up from one grade to the next every year, classmates are supposed to go to a senior prom and graduate together.

Non-graded classrooms would be too radical a change for many.

But schools are already being radically tampered with. Standardized testing's iron fist has a chokehold on U. S. public education. We are seeing massive student retention, higher dropout rates at earlier ages, and loss of school subjects like civics and art, which we all took for granted.

The tests have enabled the growing disaster of school privatization which is beginning to force parents to “shop” for schools, and to allow privatized schools to pick and choose their students.

Meanwhile, some schools and districts have started non-graded classrooms and like the results as Parade Magazine reported this week.

What are non-graded classrooms?

Here are some details from a good overview in the ERIC digest:

“Nongraded education is the practice of teaching children of different ages and ability levels together, without dividing them (or the curriculum) into steps labeled by grade designations. Children move from easier to more difficult material at their own pace, making continuous progress rather than being promoted once per year."

“Graded education assumes that students who are the same age are at basically the same level of cognitive development, can be taught in the same way, and will progress at the same rate. Intellectual development is assumed to be the goal, and the division of curriculum into discrete skills and subjects to be the most effective organization. Research has discredited all these assumptions....

“In its influential position statement, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (Bredekamp1987) summarized this accumulated knowledge of child development and described appropriate teaching practices for primary-age children. Its list of developmentally appropriate practices closely matches the components of nongraded education. The inappropriate practices it lists are typical of traditional graded education.”

Check out this great Progress Illinois story, “The Case of the Missing School Closing Report”

on PURE's so-far-ignored FOIA campaign to get a promised CPS report about the impact of school closings on students.

Here's some new info.

First of all, PURE's Wanda brought the missing report issue before the Board of Education during public testimony last Wednesday. Their response? Blank looks. If they had read the reports and used the information to help them make sound school closing decisions, you'd think they'd remember. Instead, they had to refer it to Law Dept. Head Pat Rocks.

Yesterday, I met with Ted Fetters, an aide to Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, to talk about HB 363 and some of the current problems with the CPS school closing process. We talked about the missing reports and he offered to call CPS to see if they would send the reports to him. I thought that was a great idea. He called me later to tell me that they promised to send me the report and that I should get it in a day or two. I'm not holding my breath but I will report back if it comes.

They told him that there was only one report, from the 2006 closings, because there were no closings in 2007. But that's not true – this 2007 Board report shows that LeMoyne was closed and Harvard was turned around, which is a form of closing. Also, not sure why there wouldn't be a report from 2008.

More later!

Don Rose blasts Arne Duncan as Fed Ed head in this essay from the Chicago Daily Observer. His main criticisms are of Duncan's slavish reliance on standardized tests and his blind support for charter schools. 

Rose is a long-time political strategist and is a mentor of David Axelrod, President Obama's chief of staff. Let's hope he still has Axelrod's ear, because he's making a lot of sense here.

Another interesting side note is that Rose's essay was reprinted today in the Sun-Times (i.e. the "paper" paper) but is just one more piece that's not available online from that paper's web site (here's another recent no-show).

GEM is planning some key actions this week in support of HB 363, which needs to come before the House for a vote by Friday.

On Tuesday, March 31, we hope to get at least 50 people to Springfield to meet with legislators about the bill. Here's the schedule:  

• 6 - 6:30 am Bus arrives, loads and leaves from Dominick's Food Store on Canal and Roosevelt.
  

• 9:30 am  Arrive in Springfield and meet with House Reps.

• 11am Press conference.

• Meet with legislators until 3 pm.
  

• 3:30 Meet with Rep. Soto for final instructions and thanks. Final version of bill submitted to LRB for drafting.
  

Wednesday, April 1 (elementary schools), and Thursday, April 2 (high schools): Report card pick up. GEM groups will collect signatures on petitions in support of HB 363 at various schools.We'll have more on this later.

Finally, don't forget to make your FOUR PHONE CALLS Monday!

Thanks! 

We hear that AUSL was handing out flyers opposing HB 363 at the "community" forum yesterday.   

Their hypocrisy is breathtaking. They participate in a "parent survey project" that finds that parents and the community want to be more involved in school decision making, but they refuse to have LSCs in their schools and oppose a bill that would provide for more community input into school closings. 

Thanks to District 299 for posting the full press release about the astroturfers' survey. It confirms the criticisms I raised last week about the hidden agenda behind this Gates-funded project.

Here's what the group claims they found out from parents (with my comments and emphases added):

Parental Knowledge Gaps:  

* Tremendous lack of awareness regarding the troubled state of public education in Chicago, including systemic problems like current low academic performance levels, graduation rates, and post-graduation college achievement levels. (Comment: That is their main goal - to create public mistrust of the public schools) . 

* Lack of knowledge regarding potential school closures and student transfers, and a feeling that existing transfers are not going well for students. (Comment: Clearly they are going to "educate" parents about how well those transfers are actually going....)

* Lack of knowledge about charter schools, including how they are funded, and who can attend them. (Comment: Of course, parents need to learn the two key charter school mantras: "We have waiting lists!" and "Charter schools are public schools!" - but will they also address the knowledge gap about how charters push students out when they're not a good "fit", the fees and contracts required by some charters, and the research showing that charters are not educating children any better than the "failing" neighborhood schools?) 

PURE's parent survey

On his blog, Curtis Black compared this report with PURE's 2006 parent survey, which actually found some useful new connections between parent involvement and student achievement. In light of this week's events, it''s interesting to note that the Gates Foundation had agreed to provide funding for a parent conference as a follow-up to our survey, but then backed out of the agreement, which is very bad behavior for a foundation. I guess our findings didn't serve their school choice agenda, so they went out and found some folks who would.   

I've written about astroturf organizers before. Tomorrow, with funding from by Bill Gates and in service of AUSL, a handful of them are putting on a conference as part of their campaign to give public schools a bad name so that groups like AUSL can move in and take them over.

This strategy has been thoroughly discredited, even by a former high-ranking official of the U. S. Dept. of Education, who said that "NCLB was a Trojan horse for the choice agenda — a way to expose the failure of public education and ‘blow it up’ a bit. There were a number of people pushing hard for market forces and privatization."

But BIll Gates has unlimited resources and if he wants to throw money at the choice agenda, there certainly are people in Chicago willing to run after it. Sadly, this includes some former school reform allies. But who knows? In retrospect, some of these folks could have been in it for the money then, too. There was plenty to go around in the early days.

Anyway, local Chicago funders say that these kinds of groups have "more impact" than "old style" school reform groups like PURE. Take a look for yourself at the partners list below and see if you think this is a dynamic, broad-based coalition, or perhaps just a Coalition of the Willing to be Paid 

Community groups to host Citywide Education Summit on Friday, March 27th

Convened by Target Area DevCorp and the following members:

• Action Now Albany Park Neighborhood Council (APNC)
• Ambassadors For Christ Church
• Association of Howe Elementary School Parents
• Coalition of African Arab Asian European and Latino Immigrants of Illinois (CAAAELII)
• Disciples for Christ
• Enlace Chicago
• Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN)
• Metropolitan Area Group for Igniting Civilization (MAGIC)
• New Birth Christian Center Organization of the NorthEast (ONE)
• People's Community Development Association
• West Town Leadership United (WTLU)

MEDIA ALERT

NEW SURVEY SHOWS CHICAGO PARENTS POORLY INFORMED ABOUT CRITICAL SCHOOL PROBLEMS Community groups to host Citywide Education Summit on March 27

WHAT: The Citywide Education Organizing Campaign will release Parent Perceptions, Student Realities in Chicago Schools, the findings of a citywide survey of parents and caretakers of Chicago public school students, at a Citywide Education Summiton Friday, March 27, 2009 to advance the debate about solutions to ongoing problems impacting education in Illinois.

WHY: Most Chicago parents receive inaccurate or incomplete information from unofficial sources about the current challenges faced by Illinois students. This knowledge gap disempowers parents from participating in district-level decision-making regarding significant school changes. The Citywide Education Organizing Campaign hopes to raise awareness about current education problems and groom parent and student leaders to participate in a dynamic, forward-looking dialogue on the next wave of Illinois school reform based on the latest available information.

WHO: Confirmed groups include: * Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, President, Enlace Chicago * Audrey Donaldson, Leadership Coach, Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) * Robin Steans, President, Advance Illinois * Rev. Patricia Watkins, Convener PRISE Reform * Dea Meyer, Exec. V.P., Civic Com. of the Commercial Club * Anne Hallett, Exec. Dir., Grow Your Own Illinois * Rami Nashashibi, Exec. Dir., Illinois Muslim Action Network

WHEN: Friday, March 27, 2009 9:30 AM–12:30 PM (Registration and complimentary breakfast beginning at 8:30 AM)

WHERE: Ukrainian Cultural Center, 2247 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL

It's decision time for HB 363, the bill sponsored by Rep. Cynthia Soto calling for a moratorium on school closings while a citizen/legislative panel prepares a proposal for a fairer, more open process.

You've read about the Soto bill here, but now it's time for action. The House must pass an amended bill by April 3 in order for the bill to proceed to the Senate. The GEM coalition is supporting the bill and an amendment that assures that the moratorium is retroactive to include the schools closed at last month's board meeting.

Our state representatives should be in their Chicago offices on Monday, March 31, because there is no Springfield session that day.  We'd like to generate hundreds of phone calls on Monday in support of HB 363. You can begin calling now, but please make a follow-up call on Monday if you don't hear right away that your rep supports the bill.

Go to civicfootprint.org to find your Rep’s phone number – all you need to know is your address.

We're also asking you to call three other influential reps:

• House Speaker Mike Madigan: Chicago 773/581-8000; Springfield 217/782-535
• Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Curry: Chicago 773/667-0550; Springfield 217/782-8121
• Representative Esther Golar in the 6^th District  Chicago 773/925-6580; Springfield 217/782-5971

TALKING POINTS: 

1. For ten years, the Chicago Public Schools have been closing schools and handing the buildings over to private companies. Many communities have lost all of their neighborhood public schools.
2. Some of the privately-run schools pick and choose their students. Some push out students  who are behavior problems or low achievers. The data shows that these new schools serve fewer low-income, special education, and limited-English speaking children.
3. Overall these new schools have not done a better job educating children, so why are we paying for all the expensive new programs, firing teachers, and moving children around like chess pieces? CPS has broken a promise made two years ago to report on the effect of all these changes on children.
4. These privately-run schools are not accountable to the community. They do not have LSCs or other effective ways for parents voices to be heard. A recent PURE study showed that parents make up only 5% of the members of charter school boards. Many of the privately-run schools do not have public meetings or public records of their activities, even though they are funded by the public.
5. It's time to put an end to the irresponsible experimentation with our children. HB 363 will call a time out on school closings and set up an independent fact-finding panel to prepare a process for school closings that is responsible, fair, and in the bests interests of children, families, communities, and our city.

Make sure you get a commitment from your state rep to support HB 363.

Thanks!!!  and pass this request along to your networks!

Today's print Sun-Times (I couldn't find it online) reports that Board of Education members will vote today on doubling what we taxpayers pay them for showing up once a month and voting yes on everything on the agenda.

Board member payments would go from the current $1,000 per month to $2,000. The Board president's payment will go from $1,600 to $3,000/month. 

This is not a reimbursement allowance, folks. No receipts necessary. That, according to the policy, would be too "cumbersome" for these seven intrepid souls. They need to save their strength to raise their hands to support all of those great mayoral plans for our schools.

Cost of living, schmost of living. The payment was $700/month or $8,400 annually in 2002 ($12,000 for the prez). Assuming the Board votes yes today (shall we?), the new annual payment for being a Board member jumps 350%, or 50% per year, to $24,000. The prez's loot triples over 7 years.

Just for showing up once a month and voting yes. 

Prior to the mayoral takeover of the schools, Board members actually engaged in school policy making through Board committees which met at least once a month and reviewed and received public input into issues prior to each monthly Board meeting. Every Board member sat on at least one committee.

This current group should be ashamed of themselves for even considering giving themselves a raise for doing nothing but rubber-stamping bad policies.

** Press release **

For immediate release

March 24, 2009

Parent group files FOIA complaint with Illinois Attorney General

CPS failed to provide required reports about impact of school closings on children

Contact: Julie Woestehoff, PURE executive director, 312-491-9101

Chicago, March 24, 2009: Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) filed a complaint with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan today charging that the Chicago Public Schools has denied PURE's request for copies of reports required under the 2007 CPS school closing policy.

Section V of the CPS policy states, "The CEO shall review the school closing process annually and report to the Board on the impact school closures have on CPS students. The report shall be made publicly available."

PURE initially requested copies of these reports under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on January 6, 2009. CPS immediately filed for an extension, but has since failed to respond to the request.

PURE's letter to Attorney General Madigan states, "The policy itself requires public disclosure of the reports, and disclosure is clearly in the public interest. We know that students who are moved from school to school can lose academic ground. There may also be emotional and social repercussions from such moves. We need to know what has been happening to our children, some of whom have been subjected to multiple school moves under Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 program. Parents, the general public, and the Board itself should have objective information about how school closings have affected children. This is especially pertinent in light of the Board's vote last month to close another eight schools.

“If these reports do not exist, the public has a right to know that the Board of Education is making decisions without having any information about the impact those decisions have on children, information that they themselves requested.”

According to PURE executive director Julie Woestehoff, “If Board members don't know how their school closure decisions have been affecting children, they should stop approving these proposals. In fact, if they didn't care enough about children to insist on having this information before they voted to close more schools last month, they should resign before they make one more irresponsible decision. This is yet another reason why Chicago needs an elected school board."

PURE letter to Attorney General

CPS school closing policy

A couple of recent stories are not to be missed as we prepare for yet another contentious Board of Education meeting this Wednesday, March 25, when we expect the Board to approve and renew a number of charter and other novelty school contracts (here's the Board agenda).

1) This story from WBEZ’s Linda Lutton, on the truth behind the turnaround at Harper:    

"Harper High School on the city’s south side is getting the most extreme fix Chicago has for schools: a 'turnaround.' Eighty percent of the staff is new. And the district has spent millions of extra dollars to improve Harper and raise academic performance. But if scores go up, it might be due to something else as well: 30 percent of Harper students are gone."

2) Mike Klonsky's comments on the latest Rand Corp report showing – AGAIN again -- that charter schools don’t outperform Traditional Public Schools (TPS). Mike's six reasons why:

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

What a lovely, thoughtful, eloquent essay south suburban parent Crystal Alston wrote in the Sun Times today. She talks about having to scrape together the money to send her child to a private school because she doesn't believe he would be safe or well-educated at the local public school. 

Given the typical Chicago editorial bent, you would expect to read on about why there should be more Renaissance 2010-style school choice, or even vouchers. (See. for example, more whining from the Tribune today about the failed D.C. voucher program that mean ol' Sen Durbin is shutting down.)

But that's not Ms. Alston's solution.

She writes, "I'm not complaining, nor am I asking for school vouchers. What I am asking for is equal access and opportunity for all students to attend quality public schools in Illinois.

"I am asking for the same textbooks, computers and libraries that 'good' schools have. I want the same quality facilities, instruction and availability of educational resources to provide a level playing field for all of the state's children.

"Shouldn't every child have a chance? Doesn't every American child have the right to equal access to a quality public education? I sure think so. It is fair. It is humane. And it is simply American."

That's what most parents want, and it's the right goal. It’s what PURE keeps trying to get across to the politicians starting with President Obama, who is still too closely following an education script written by the business community. Since we now know how poorly that group has been taking care of its own business, isn't it about time we began to listen more closely to parents and their partners, the teachers, when we talk about how to improve schools?

Am I just being a grouch, or is there something a little off in the story about CPS students designing Kobe’s Nikes?

Yes, the sponsoring program, After-School All-Stars, seems to be providing a great service by offering after school programs to thousands of children across the country who might otherwise have nothing to do after school. 

And I  love the fact that the students were invited to Nike headquarters. It’s neat that they were given tickets to a pro basketball game. And it’s very cool that they met Kobe Bryant. Students at schools like Claremont and Parkside deserve the same kinds of special experiences that more affluent communities provide for children.

The problem I’m having with the story is that it was presented not as a fun kind of career day or as a reward to motivate students to study more, but as an actual educational experience. You know, like the Westinghouse science competition.

In this case, teams of students designed shoes using an interactive feature of the Nike web site. Well, go on the Nike web site and try it out for yourself. You can “design” a shoe using the $140 “Kobe” model in about three minutes.

Educational?

A teacher from one of the schools seemed thrilled: “That was great because we're a technology-based school."

So, it was special because the students used computers? Is this one of those CPS technology schools that doesn’t have internet access? There are a few.

Well, at least it wasn’t a practice test for the ISAT. That’s not particularly educational, either.

We really need to get better at recognizing and valuing real teaching and learning.

The mind set of a whole lot of people needs to change if we are to have any hope of giving all of our children an equal, quality education.

For a start, we have got to call the corporate-political leaders out for being such miserly hypocrites when it comes to education.

Let’s take the Illinois state budget. With all the hand-wringing over a tax increase, Governor Quinn’s budget would give only measly $174 million in new money to K12 education.

Let’s put that $174 million in perspective. 

• It’s about $75 MILLION LESS than the $250 million taxpayer dollars that the state legislature is about to hand over in "commitments" to Chicago’s Olympic Committee, to be used in the very likely event that the games lose money.

• And it’s about $1.826 BILLION LESS than the amount the Education Funding Advisory Board thinks our children really need THIS YEAR to pay for an adequate education for every child.

Here are some more disturbing education funding facts from A+ Illinois:

• Illinois consistently receives one of the worst grades in school funding equity from Education Week. In 2006 they earned a D+; their ranking of C+ last year followed two years of receiving F grades.

• On the most recent "nation's report card," Illinois had one of the nation's largest learning achievement gap between students in poverty and wealthier students and has made no significant progress in closing these gaps in recent years.

• Research has found that fiscally efficient, high performing schools in Illinois spend $6,405 per student per year. Illinois' current foundation level falls over $1,000 short of what is needed to get the job done.

We have to agree with the Sun-Times’ Mark Brown who agrees with Rev. Sen. James Meeks that the Governor’s plan does not do enough for our schools. Fighting for tax reform that does not include school funding reform will doom yet another generation of Illinois schoolchildren to a system that has led to our state’s embarrassingly large funding, equity, and academic gaps between the rich and the poor. 

Last month the CPS Board voted to close Carpenter Elementary, a school which has been performing pretty well and improving over the years, and whose students are 96.6% low-income. Next month the CPS Board is likely to hand Carpenter’s building over for an expansion of Ogden, a school with 25.3% low-income children.

The “hearing” on this latest example of Mayor Daley’s war on Chicago's low-income families will be tomorrow, Friday, March 20, 2009, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Children & Youth Services Building, 1615 W. Chicago. Sign up to speak between 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

We understand that the Carpenter school community was generally unaware of this hearing until they got the word from GEM members earlier this week. They are planning an action outside the hearing location beginning at about 5 pm. Come protest Renaissance 2010 and show your support for this active, courageous group of parents, teachers and students.

Yesterday I wrote (again) about the need for more responsible education policy making. It’s frustrating when President Obama declares that science policy should be based on science, but continues to press for more charter schools based on hype and not on data. 

It was gratifying, then, to read one little line in the Tribune this morning, in their editorial challenge to Governor Quinn. They wrote that Quinn should only raise taxes after he has followed their 12 step reform program which includes: “More (education) money only for districts that agree to spend it on tactics—such as smaller class sizes in the lower grades—that certifiably produce better educations for kids.”

Wow - the Tribune promoting smaller class size? A real, proven strategy? And it’s not even April Fool’s Day!

For several years now, the Tribune has been riding a tired old “more charters” hobby-horse, feverishly promoting charters based on such “evidence” as waiting lists and an unsubstantiated need for competition among schools. So, it’s good that, at least in this case, they highlighted a sound strategy rather than the business-generated boondoggle that charters have become.

Cost-benefit analysis needed

Given the current state of the economy and the need to get the biggest bang for our taxes, it is surprising that so little effort has been made to do a cost-benefit analysis of Renaissance 2010.

Most Renaissance 2010 schools could not open or operate without the bonus cash of $500,000 CPS gives each school for each of its first three years. They are also given higher priority for CPS repair and maintenance funds.

Most of these schools cannot operate without cash infusions from private donors which will never be reliable, permanent funding streams but which serve to divert resources away from other programs which may better support Chicago's families.

And, the budget for CPS administrative support for Renaissance 2010 continues to grow. The CPS FY2009 administrative budget for the Office of New Schools is nearly $5 million, and that isn’t counting the new CPS Turn-around department with an FY09 budget of about $1.5 million. (See CPS FY09 budget, pages 191-193 and 212-213).

It's well past time for Renaissance 2010 to prove its worth or shut down. A good start would be an independent report on any effective programs or strategies that have actually come out of these schools, along with a true accounting of what they cost. Then we might have some idea of what we are all paying for, and if we are getting our money's worth. 

Last week, scientists expressed satisfaction with President Obama’s executive order reinstating real science as the basis for scientific policy making.

The Tribune reported, “The order directs his administration to develop guidelines ‘to ensure that in this new administration we base our public policies on the soundest science, that we appoint scientific advisers based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology.’ "

One prominent scientist described this as a “breath of fresh air.”

So, when will some of that fresh air blow into the federal Dept. of Education? New Fed Ed boss Arne Duncan has no education credentials, nor does he have any relevant experience running schools. He was appointed for his political, ideological adherence to the corporate agenda to privatize public schools -- and there's NO EVIDENCE that privatization works.

Maybe close Obama friend Sen. Dick Durbin can help. In a response to a Tribune editorial last week criticizing Durbin's role in ending a Washington, D.C., voucher program, the Senator suggested that “Many benefiting from this program want no questions asked about its efficacy. I think the taxpayers deserve better.”

Not to mention the children.

Durbin explained, “The Department of Education and Government Accountability Office have both studied the program and found ‘schools’ (sometimes consisting of a single room in a church basement) with significant health and safety issues, teachers who lack college degrees or teaching credentials, and no meaningful evidence that voucher students are performing better than their public school counterparts.”

This is a start. Let’s hope that Sen. Durbin reminds his friend that education policy must be based on evidence, too.

Ellsworth “Babe” Woestehoff 1920-2009

I left Chicago five weeks ago for a vacation and stayed on past my original return date because my father unexpectedly became ill and died. In drafting his obituary, I reviewed his fascinating career as a reading specialist at the University of Chicago, where he worked with the founders of the “Dick and Jane” series, and at the University of Rochester, where he held a joint appointment in the Pediatrics Department of the Medical School as part of a cutting-edge, inter-disciplinary approach to children’s learning and behavior problems. He retired from U of R as a professor emeritus.

Upon his retirement, Dad happily put his professional life behind him and concentrated on an abandoned avocation, playing the french horn. But he shared enough with me to make it clear that the “new” insights about education policies and practices I was gaining through my work at PURE were things he had understood for over 50 years.

For example, he disapproved of the way standardized tests are being used in Chicago: “They can predict a presidential election based on 800 phone calls, but they have to test every child to figure out if a school is working!”

Dad’s take on a major flaw in our approach to teaching reading: “Children get individual lessons for playing a musical instrument, but when we teach them to read, we do it in classes of 30.”

One of his favorite stories to tell me, for obvious reasons, was the one about the obnoxious parent group that emerged during his first job as a reading consultant to a public school system in Minnesota. The parents got up in arms because they felt that the schools were “abandoning phonics” (wow, the more things change....). The district administration was no doubt setting my dad up as the fall guy, but he won the parents over by meeting with them, patiently explaining the program, and showing them the significant improvements in student outcomes that were taking place over time as a result of the new program. The group, which had started out with about seven members, grew to 750, and then dwindled back down to the original seven. He loved telling that story, and now you know it, and you know a little bit about the amazing "Dr. Babe."      

We are hearing that CPS is beginning the move to remove hundreds of LSC members for non-compliance with their training requirement. 

Supposedly, CPS is saying that LSC members must prove that they took the training, and taking no responsibility for record keeping - despite the fact that state law makes CPS responsible for the program.

We are recommending that LSC members retain counsel - Elaine Siegel is the most experienced LSC lawyer we know. She can be reached at 312-236-8088.

Congratulations to the six schools saved from Renaissance 2010 this year. Of the six, three were among the most active with the GEM coalition -- Peabody, Carpenter, and Holmes. 

This development suggests that CPS is following their usual formula -- rather than fix a broken policy, they try to silence its most outspoken opponents.

Back in 1999-2000, when parental outrage over Paul Vallas's irresponsible, wildly unfair retention policy was at its peak, we watched as one angry parent after another was taken aside at a BOE meeting and offered the school of their choice for their child from among CPS's best magnets. Parents told us that CPS made it clear that the price of the special placement was their silence.

In the case of the six "saved" schools, we have seen the passion and determination of their teachers, staff, parents, and school community members as this fight has worn on. They are true heroes of the movement. We believe that they will remain committed to the overall cause of Renaissance 2010 resistance. But there's no doubt that it will be more difficult for them to maintain that that high level of activity now that it is no longer so directly personal. Anyway, CPS counts on that.  

Back in January 2008, PURE suggested that the new president (whom we most foresightedly predicted would be Obama) should rename NCLB, and we suggested  "Equally Excellent Schools for Every Child" or E3.

We also proposed a new mission statement for the law to replace Bush's biggest bang for the buck vision: “The purpose of E3 is to assure that every child in the United States has access to a free, high-quality, effective education in their own neighborhood."

Apparently, Arne Duncan may be open to the idea of relabeling NCLB. This is something that happens regularly with the federal program for elementary and secondary schools (formerly called ESEA) when a new administration takes over and the law is reauthorized, or renewed, which will most likely happen this year.

Eduwonk has started a contest for new names for NCLB, with somewhat predictable results...Daily Kos pulled out some of the current entries:

• Double Back Around to Pick Up the Children We Left Behind Act,
• The Rearranging the Deck Chairs Act
• The Teach to the Test Act
• Could We Start Again Please Act.

Of course, we here in Chicago know that Arne Duncan is real good at relabeling, especially when it comes to plans that get rid of LSCs. Contract schools, small schools, alternative schools, they're all just labels designed to get around the school reform law.

Under Mayor Daley's control, we've also had remediation, probation, intervention, restructuring, re-engineering, and turn-arounding. Each one is trumpeted as the answer to school failure (and the justification for closing schoo,ls, firing people, and dismantling LSCs). And each one has been a failure, because they are all the same top-down, punitive plan, relabeled.

Passed along from Pilsen Alliance

2-23-09  Monday -        Candle light vigil
location: Carpenter School, 1250 W Erie St
time:  5:30 p.m. will start walking at 6 p.m.
asking participants to please bring a white candle.
	2-23-09 Monday      Candle light vigil
Location Peabody school
Time 9:00 pm (out side school)

UPDATE:

Everyone can do something!!!

• Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 23 and 24 - Phone banking session from 4pm to 8pm at CTU headquarters (4th floor of the Merchandise Mart), working on turnout for the Wednesday Board meeting.

• Monday, 2/23, candlelight vigil at Carpenter, 1250 W. Erie, 5:30 pm
• Mondat, 2/23, candlelight vigil at Peabody, 1440 W. Augusta , 9 pm.

• Tuesday night, Feb. 24, candlelight vigil at the Board, 125 S. Clark St. 7 to 9 pm. Camp out begins at  9 pm. 25 tents will be set up along Monroe and Adams Streets. Call Wanda to get involved - 773-663-5420.

• Wednesday, Feb. 25th, Board of Education meeting when a vote is likely to be taken on school closings, consolidations, turn-arounds and phase-outs. If your school wants a bus, get reimbursed by calling Sandy Shultz of the Chicago Teachers Union at 312-329-6226. Sign up to speak beginning at 6:30 am; attend public testimony beginning after 10:30 am; join the rally and march at 3:30 pm.

It's encouraging to hear from people outside of Chicago who see charter schools as a serious, work-in-progress strategy for improving education and not as a rhetorical weapon to destroy teachers unions, local control, and opportunities for the most at-risk children (read, for example, Mike Klonsky's recent "Spinning Charters"). 

Yesterday we received a request from the National Charter School Institute, which works with charter schools leaders and boards to provide training, policy development, and technical assistance.

The group's CEO, Dr. Brian Carpenter, is writing a governance/training book and wanted to use PURE's press release summarizing our recent report, "Accountability and Renaissance 2010," as an example of boards that govern irresponsibly. 

Of course, I said yes, and asked if I could share his letter. Here it is:

Hi Julie,

Brian Carpenter here. Thank you for permission to reprint the press release in the forthcoming second edition of my book on charter school  governance. (We will be pleased to send you a courtesy copy of the  book if Mary has your address.)

I found the press release by Googling the words "charter school  violate FOIA." I was just digging around for examples. I was intrigued  by the press release because, somehow or another, news of this hadn't  reached me despite my best efforts to keep my finger on the pulse of  charter schooling everywhere.

While I am a staunch advocate of parental choice and charters, I also  believe strongly, without apologies to anyone, in accountability-- apparently the same animus for your organization, though I perceive  from the press release that we have different methods of achieving  it. That difference, however, doesn't invalidate or excuse the  behavior of the boards of the schools mentioned in your press release.

Perhaps our paths will cross when I am in Chicago sometime. Again,  thanks for your interest and cooperation.

Best regards, Brian L. Carpenter, PhD

CEO National Charter Schools Institute

(989) 205-4182

www.NationalCharterSchools.org

Next step - we need to get it passed in the House! More later.

Yesterday the Grassroots Education Movement presented two research reports which challenged the supposed success of CPS's turnaround and charter schools:

• The second "Data and Democracy Report", written by Pauline Lipmap et al for the UIC Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education raises a number of significant concerns about CPS's school closing policy.

• "The Charter Difference", by Liz Brown and Eric Gutstein, compares charters with neighborhood high schools and finds that charters enroll fewer low-income, limited-English-proficient, and special education students, and their results are no better than the more inclusive neighborhood schools. 

CPS Chief Education Officer Barbara Eason-Watkins responded with the same tired, lame defense of Renaissance 2010 schools that CPS always makes -- "They have waiting lists." 

About the reports (from the Tribune):

"The (UIC) study found that while housing prices in many of these neighborhoods boomed, many economically disadvantaged families were priced out. The study also found this push-out may have led to decreased enrollment at Peabody and Carpenter."

"(The second study found) little difference between ACT test scores in charter high schools and in neighborhood high schools from 2006 to 2008. The report found charter high schools enrolled fewer low-income students, nearly half as many limited English speakers and "significantly fewer" students with special needs.

The Sun-Times story offered a defense of charter school fees by Noble Street Charter founder Michael Milkie. He claims that some regular schools charge fees, too, but failed to mention that state law requires regular schools to waive fees for low-income families, which charters don't do. 

Eason-Watkins can't provide any evidence that charters are any better either. Chi-Town Daily News reports "'The high demand for enrollment is an indication that charter schools are thriving, and we have an obligation to meet that demand by bringing even more quality options for education to families across Chicago,'” she said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

I guess in Barbara's mind we don't need educational quality, we need "thriving choices."

From DFC:

We need your help to make sure that the "Equitable and Effective School Facility Development Process" Bill (House Bill 363, sponsored by Rep. Cynthia Soto), passes the House Elementary and Secondary Committee on Thursday at 8 a.m.

An overwhelming positive vote will be a big rebuke to CPS, as it completes its current charade of hearings and secret deliberations.

A decisive win in the first step of the legislative process will also create momentum behind House Bill 363.

We have to keep the pressure on; CPS is. They know how critical this bill is. Also, this is just the first of six votes that the bill will face.

Ir is critical to call or fax House Committee members in their home offices today and their Springfield offices on Wednesday. Here's the list of representatives where you can access their contact information. Talking points about the bill are below.

DFC is also looking for people to come to Springfield to lobby on Wednesday and, if possible, stay over for the  vote at 8 a.m. on Thursday morning.

• DFC is renting a 12-person van for Wednesday  that leaves the Home Depot at 5 a.m. at 87th and the Dan Ryan and the Dominicks at Roosevelt and Canal at 6 a.m.  There are a few spaces left.  Call Valencia Rias at 312-236-7252, ext. 241 for details.  You will be home between 7 and 8 p.m on Wednesday.

• Arrange your own transportation.  Drive down with a few other people and join the group to lobby.

Lobbyists from the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Principals Association, along with Valencia, will be there to help.

Please make some calls on Tuesday or Wednesday or come to lobby on Wednesday.

Sincerely, Don Moore and Valencia Rias

Talking Points for Gaining Legislative Support for House Bill 363, Which Establishes a Fair School Facility Development Process in Chicago

  Key Message

I am calling to ask Representative [???] to vote for and co-sponsor House Bill 363, which was introduced by Representative Cynthia Soto.

Currently, Chicago’s facilities process is blatantly unfair. House Bill 363 will put a one-year moratorium on school closings, turnarounds, phase-outs, and consolidations in Chicago. This moratorium will give the legislature a chance to develop and pass a new state law that creates fair procedures for decisions about school facilities in Chicago.

Specifics

Currently, Chicago’s Chief Executive Officer announces a list of school of schools that the Board intends to close, consolidate, phase-out, or turnaround.

This plan is largely a plan for driving low-income families out of neighborhoods that the Mayor’s School Board wants to help gentrify.

Once a school is placed on this list, they are supposedly given a chance for a public hearing.  However, these hearings are a sham:   (1) the “independent hearing officers” are highly paid consultants to the Board and almost always support the Board’s initial recommendations; (2) Board members almost never attend the local hearings; (3) the Board never even sees the testimony introduced at the local hearings before they make final decisions, and (4) the original recommendations are rubber-stamped by the Chicago Board for virtually every school.

Sadly, high-achieving schools that serve low-income students are being closed.  For example, in Representative Soto’s district, Peabody and Carpenter Schools are both more than 90% low-income, yet they both have more than 60% of their students who meet state test standards.  Peabody and Carpenter are being closed. Amazingly, the school system’s highly-touted turnaround schools, which the Chicago Board cites as models, have only 40% of their students meeting state standards.

It is time for the state legislature to step in.  Please help our children by co-sponsoring and supporting House Bill 363.

For More Information, contact:  Valencia Rias (312-236-7252, ext. 241) or Elena Rios  (312-236-7252, ext. 234)

Wish I could have been there when some one hundred people picketed the Rock'n'Roll McDonald's and the Walgreen's across the street yesterday:

Footage on ABC, story in the Sunday Sun-Times.

Thanks and congratulations to the GEM folk who pulled off a great event!

It brings back memories of PURE's 1993 picketing of the Walgreen's at State and Washington in response to Walgreen's support for a lobbying campaign which helped defeat (in a squeaker) a statewide referendum calling for the state to provide at least 50% of school funding. 

CPS schools didn't open on time that fall because a state law required the district budget to be balanced before the doors opened. We protested at Walgreen's until, we were told, Mr. Walgreen called Gov. Edgar and told him to do whatever it took to get the schools open and get us off their backs. A day or two later, the schools opened.

We have to keep the pressure on Mayor Daley and the Board of Education, but the businesses that fund Renaissance 2010 that are its soft underbelly. They give big bucks to the Mayor's program because they think it will enhance their corporate image, in which they invest millions. It doesn't take a whole lot to tarnish that image. 

Especially businesses like McDonald's and Walgreen's, which promote themselves as family friendly, need to hear from families who have been hurt by Renaissance 2010. 

And the fun has just begun. More protests are on the way- stay tuned!

PURE supports the CTU in its efforts to stop school closings and promote high-quality, certified, union teachers. The CTU has asked PURE and other members of the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) to support the Employee Free Choice Act. 

From the CTU: 

"The Chicago Federation of Labor where CTU President Marilyn Stewart serves as a Vice President is hosting a rally on Tuesday, February 17th at 5:30 p.m. at Plumbers' Hall to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

"Marilyn has asked that all participants wear RED or a CTU-identifying piece of clothing to show our strength and support. In exchange for this, she has asked the other unions to support our rally against school closings on February 25th. 

"We need to work together so that all Unions have a larger and stronger voice in what goes on in our nation, cities and schools. So please pass this information around to anyone and everyone you know."

Upcoming GEM events (forwarded from CORE)

Picket this Saturday at Rock'n'Roll McDonalds

This Saturday, on Valentine's Day, parents, teachers, students and community members will ask McDonald's to have a heart. We will picket the Rock'n'Roll McDonalds at 600 N. Clark, to inform the public of their anger toward big-business for meddling with our schools.

From 2004 until 2008 McDonald's Corporation and Ronald McDonald House Charities paid $1,000,000 to $1,999,999 to the Renaissance Schools Fund, a fund that undermines neighborhood schools. During the same period Walgreens paid $250,000 to $499,999 into the fund.

The picket will begin at 12 noon, at both locations, and last approximately two hours. Those gathered will ask customers to tell store to discontinue their support for Renaissance 2010. 

Protest on Wednesday, February 25th to Save our Schools

Take the day off on February 25th or come after work to 125 S. Clark to protest the proposed school closings, consolidations, turn-arounds and phase-outs.

Twenty Two schools are targeted and your school could be next. The probation list and underutilized school list are a mile long, we cannot let the Board unilaterally close our schools and replace them with unproven and unaccountable charter, turnaround and contract schools.

Help restore democracy and fairness to the educational system in Chicago. Contact coreteachers@gmail.com [mailto:coreteachers@gmail.com] for more information.

UPDATE: CORE members have also attended every hearing and have been posting notes from each one. 

George Schmidt and Substance have meticulously covered Board of Education meetings and other key school district events for years. It's great that Substance is now reporting out on the Renaissance 2010 hearings on a daily blog. If you aren't reading it, you're missing some of the most important developments in the Renaissance 2010 resistance movement. 

Substance has reported, for example, that, after being called out at the January Board of Ed meeting by GEM coalition members for not attending any of the hearings, some Board members have begun showing up. 

Substance also reported announcements by CPS officials at two recent turnaround hearings that new CPS CEO Ron Huberman is reversing Arne Duncan's policy of staffing turnaround schools with non-union staff and dismantling the schools' local school councils, though we believe that these LSCs will continue to be advisory only, and, as we have reported, Renaissance 2010 "LSCs" are virtually non-existent. 

And Substance reported that threatened schools have boycotted the dog-and-pony show "hearings" put on by AUSL to try to sell their services to the community.   

"During the February 9 hearing, (hearing officer Fred) Bates announced that there would be a "community" hearing the following night. Leaflets announcing the community hearing were in the back of the hearing room. The leaflets said that the community hearing was being organized under the aegis of 'Renaissance 2010' so that the community could hear about AUSL. The number to call for additional information about the AUSL marketing hearing was the CPS Office of New Schools number. The next night AUSL held their own hearing on the Reconstitution of Holmes. Only four people showed up; not one of them a parent. The Holmes community decided to boycott the event meant for them. A day earlier, parents, teachers, and community leaders from another targeted school (Bethune Elementary) boycotted a similar AUSL hearing at Chalmers Elementary School on the West Side."

We agree with George that it's shameful that the mainstream media mostly ignores the critical news being made out in the communities. Let's spread the word - urge your friends and neighbors to check out Substancenews.net.

Coverage of the Renaissance 2010 hearings in the mainstream media has been sparse, and there are significant major stories that are being overlooked by all but George Schmidt's Substance. Today's Tribune story does report on the Las Casas hearing, but fails to offer any rebuttal of CPS's excuse for the closing, that is, that it will save money. 

I posted this comment:  

"CPS officials have a responsibility to disclose the full financial ramifications of this proposal. While they may save some money on facilities (though that is not necessarily the case), private placement is also costly.

"More importantly, before closing this school, CPS officials have a responsibility to detail specific plans for placement of each of these special needs students so that parents can determine if their children's needs will be met. In fact, given the detrimental effects the dislocation is likely to cause to many, parents have a right to expect that CPS will provide these students with extra services on top of what Las Casas currently provides.

"CPS has not done this in the past, for example when they closed Spaulding High School in 2004 and students were dispersed throughout neighborhood schools without adequate care given to appropriate placements.

"It's irresponsible to shut down a school that is working for so many at-risk children without a more detailed, public, cost-benefit analysis and a satisfactory plan for the student's future education. Just saying that the facility costs too much is not reason enough."

A lot of us like the Olympics in general, but feel squeamish about said Olympics coming to Daley's Chicago. In the same way, while it's discouraging to see that the nation has once again showed its lack of support for school facility needs, I can't say I was too sorry to see the billions for new school construction taken out of the stimulus package. 

What we are experiencing here in Chicago is a greedy property grab by Mayor Daley and his corporate cronies on the Renaissance 2010 Fund Board. Because they have already run through local capital money for their pet boutique schools, they are even more frantic to grab existing neighborhood school buildings, as this year's school closing list demonstrates.

Federal school construction money might ease up the land grab, but under Daley's control those funds would most likely be used for new buildings for restrictive charter and other privately managed schools, not neighborhood schools. CPS already directs an unfair proportion of capital money to Renaissance schools. 

Having to cannibalize the current stock of school property for their privatization schemes seems to have led Daley and friends to propose even more outrageous closings and turnarounds this year, which in turn is pushing parents, teachers, legislators and others to mount the strongest challenge ever to Renaissance 2010. Silver lining?

Catalyst editor Lorraine Forte's opinion piece questioning Ron Huberman's appointment as CPS CEO was posted on Huffington Post and contained the following paragraph:

"The mayor's signature initiative, Renaissance 2010, has arguably done more to fuel frustration with the system than to improve it, and has still left too many needy communities without better schools. A University of Chicago researcher is slated to release a report on Renaissance this year that is expected to be critical of the effort." (Emphasis added)

I guess this critical report will not be made public before the February 25th Board of education meeting, another reason the Board should refuse to approve the latest proposals. 

From Don Moore at Designs for Change

Dear Coalition Partners,
	Representative Soto's House Bill 0363, now has nineteen co-sponsors.  Our
activism in contacting legislators and encouraging others to contact them
has made a big difference.
Many of you may already have seen it, but "Newstips," an on-line publication
of the Community Media Workshop has an excellent in-depth article by Curtis
Black about Representative Soto's bill and the unfairness of the Board's
current method of closing schools. The article goes into
the examples of Peabody and Carpenter Elementary Schools and shows in detail
how the Chicago Board's "utilization formula" grossly underestimates the
space that these schools need to create an effective educational program.
It would be a great piece to use in talking with legislators and others
about why house Bill 0363 is needed.
The advice we have been given is to focus especially on the following
legislators:
•  Rep. Barbara Flynn-Currie.  She has South Chicago Elementary School in
her district, which is slated for closing.  At South Chicago, 54% of
students met state standards last year, compared with 40% at the Board's
model turnaround school (Sherman).  Rep. Currie is also the Democratic
Majority Leader in the House.  Everyone should call her, but she would be
particularly responsive to anyone from South Chicago Elementary School and
anyone who lives in her district.  Her telephone numbers are 217-782-8121 in
Springfield and 773-667-0550 in Chicago.
•  Rep. Michael Madigan, Speaker of the House. His telephone numbers are
217-782-5350 in Springfield and 773-581-8000 in Chicago.  Everyone should
call.
•  Senator James Meeks, Chair of the Senate Education Committee, which will
consider House Bill 0363 if it passes the House.  His telephone numbers are
217-782-8066 in Springfield and 708-862-1515 in Calumet City.  Everyone
should call him.
•  Contact your own House member, if they are not a co-sponsor of the bill.
Current sponsors and co-sponsors are  Cynthia Soto, Luis Arroyo - Karen A.
Yarbrough - Sara Feigenholtz - Maria Antonia Berrios, Marlow H. Colvin,
William Davis, Paul D. Froehlich, Annazette Collins, Elizabeth Hernandez,
LaShawn K. Ford, Esther Golar, Deborah Mell, Arthur L. Turner, Michael K.
Smith, Thomas Holbrook, Monique D. Davis, Kenneth Dunkin, Constance A.
Howard and Roger L. Eddy.

	

Thanks to teachers for Social Justice for this good outline (somewhat updated for today) of actions we can all take TODAY and in the next days to continue ramping up the pressure on Renaissance 2010 before the Feb. 25th Board meeting.

1) Call your state rep and some of the others recommended by Designs for Change to get their commitment to sign on as a co-sponsor of HB 363 (more here).

2) Show your support by attending one of the two final hearing which are both tonight from 6 pm to 8 pm:

Dulles (Turnaround)

731. E. 63rd

Johnson Elementary (Turnaround)

Douglass Park Field House (south of Collins HS)

NOTE: The hearings for Dulles, and Johnson were JUST scheduled by CPS and AUSL (Academy for Urban School Leadership--they are the "turnarounders"). We suspect that CPS is REACTING to all the opposition, which is NOT being reported in the mainstream media. See http://substancenews.net/ for detailed news on school closings and hearings, and see the R2010 Talking Points, put together by PURE (Parents United for Responsible Education).

3) Attend a regional CORE (Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, a caucus in the CTU) meeting. CORE's regional meetings are all online at <http://www.coreteachers.org>www.coreteachers.org, and they are all at 4:00 today, Wednesday, February 11.

4) Attend a public meeting organized by the school/community against the closing of South Chicago Elementary, on Wednesday, Feb 11, 5-7PM in Russell Square Park (3045 E 83rd St).

More upcoming events:

5) Thursday, Feb. 12th - 5:30 pm at PURE offices, 100 S. Morgan Street

GEM planning meeting for Feb. 25th, Open meeting to plan for next week's Board meeting

6) Saturday, Feb. 14th

Tentative date for boycott. Theme - "Have a heart" Details to follow.

I attended the final arguments in the CPS Desegregation case this morning.

Some observations:

This is the same old CPS - MALDEF attorney Rick Meza and U. S. Justice Department counsel Jeremiah Glassman both pointed out that CPS wants to blame anyone and everyone for CPS’s  failures. No textbooks? That’s an LSC function. Of course, they don’t mention that LSCs’ discretionary funds have been frozen for 13 years and that during that time, CPS has forced LSCs to use those funds to pay for resources that CPS used to provide.

The site visitors found violations of the consent decree? Well, CPS argued, they just picked bad schools to visit.  

Both attorneys also spoke of the strong outpouring of commentary from the public which had a consistent theme of distrust of CPS – none of this testimony favored lifting the consent decree.

As someone who has watched CPS lawyers in action quite a bit, I was not surprised when they pulled out a nasty little passive-aggressive argument -- they claimed that the fifteen students from Little Village School of Social Justice who testified at the hearing were evidence that CPS’s efforts to remedy the system's discriminatory actions are working. The students were diverse, were proud of attending a diverse attendance-area school in a brand new building, were taught by a non-minority teacher, were involved in an interesting learning process, and spoke articulately and thoughtfully.

See, Ma! We done good!

Fortunately, Rick Meza, the General Counsel of MALDEF, reminded the judge of what the students actually SAID, which was that they know of other students are who are not fortunate enough to live within the district of this brand new school and so attend a more typical CPS school which is under-resourced and unable to provide the kind of education that the consent decree was created to insist that CPS provide the same high-quality education for all students. 

CPS wants us to trust that they will make it all better if the judge just lets them run things on their own. Right.  

Judge Kocoras is not likely to make a ruling for some time. Stay tuned.  

Julie

Please try to attend the closing arguments in the CPS Desegregation hearings tomorrow, Feb. 6, at 10:30 am, in Judge Kocoras' chambers downtown at 219 S. Dearborn, Courtroom 1725. This will be a major education story no matter which way the judge rules.

We join Ricardo Meza at MALDEF in urging you to attend -- it is very important for the judge to see community support for the Consent Decree at closing argument.

The hearings, which were originally planned for one day, went on for several days as dozens of people testified about their concerns about the unequal state of our schools and the danger of letting CPS off the hook on its promises under the Consent Decree of a fair and equal education for all children. Please come show your support for our students and our schools.

News from Pilsen Alliance:

WHAT: Parents, teachers, and students from Carpenter and Peabody Elementary School, schools targeted for closure as part of Mayor Daley’s Renaissance 2010 Plan are preparing to march with candles, posters, and flashlights to remind the community how education can enlighten a child’s life and be a symbol of hope for an entire community. 

WHEN: Thursday, February 5, 2009, 6:30pm

WHERE: Eckhart Park, 1330 W. Chicago (intersection of Chicago Avenue & Noble Street)

Come and support! Bring your base, candles and  flashlights. See you there!

Less than a week ago, PURE's Wanda Hopkins stood before the Board of Education members in a Grim Reaper costume. She reminded them that, with authority comes responsibility. She also stated that we know where they live and work.

PURE has posted this information on our web site, shared it with e-mail groups, and handed it out at various events.

Today the Sun-Times confirmed the rumor that Rufus Williams is out as Board president, and that other Board members may be leaving, too. 

The current Board members have seemed to think that they can rubber stamp policies that harm children, and remain anonymous. That's no longer going to be possible for them.

In addition, we are exposing and holding accountable the people behind Renaissance 2010. Their names, contact, and business information are here. 

Our GEM coalition has proposed local boycotts and demonstrations at MacDonald's and Walgreen's, two of the many businesses that fund Renaissance 2010.

Such boycotts could become nation wide as the same tactics to destroy our public school system spread under No Child Left Behind, mayoral control and Education Secretary Arne Duncan's leadership.  

State Representative Cynthia Soto announced today that she is sponsoring a bill that will place a moratorium on Renaissance 2010 school closings and other interventions.

House Bill 363 will also set up a legislative committee whose job it will be "to analyze past school district experience with respect to the closing or opening of schools, school repairs, school additions, school phase-outs, school consolidations, and school boundary changes; to consult widely with stakeholders about these facility issues; and to examine relevant best practices from other school systems for dealing with these issues systematically and equitably."

Soto sponsored a similar bill last year which passed the House. She agreed not to send the bill to the Senate after CPS offered to negotiate an improved school closing policy. 

Unfortunately, the policy changes simply didn't make enough difference in the way CPS went about the closings this year, and in some respects CPS failed to follow their own policy, so Rep. Soto is back with an even stronger bill. 

Many thanks to this caring and courageous state legislator! Now we need to support her and our schools by calling our own state reps and asking them to sign on to HB363.

Click on your state rep.'s name here to access his/her local telephone number. 

The data is clear - African-American teachers are being systematically pushed out of the Chicago Public Schools by Renaissance 2010.

This chart, prepared by PURE from data on the Interactive Illinois Report Card, shows that the percentage of African-American teachers in CPS has dropped by 1% every year since 2000, for a total drop of 9%, while the percentage of teachers of every other racial group has increased.  

This is unconstitutional. The CTU has said they will pursue U. S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights claims. The sooner the better! 

Major problems with Renaissance 2010

1) Renaissance 2010 is not an education plan, it’s a business and real estate developer plan.

•    This is Mayor Daley’s plan to push poor African American and Latino residents out of the city.

•     Schools to be closed/etc. have over last 5 years mapped onto areas gentrified or adjacent to gentrified/gentrifying areas, according to a UIC report. 

2) Students are being displaced and discarded. 

•    Research across many cities is conclusive that mobility sets students back academically, which is why responsible school districts try to limit mobility.

•    Stability is not just about being in the same school building; it’s about having the same adults around, yet CPS fires them all in a turnaround.

•    Reports exist all over the city of students in Renaissance 2010 schools being pushed or “counseled out” of these schools, (see PURE report, for example) or not accepted in the first place. Renaissance 2010 schools serve nearly no Limited English Proficient students and fewer special education students than regular schools.

3) Violence has increased in and around schools affected by Renaissance 2010.

•    Closing schools and combining students from different ethnic, racial and gang affiliations has led to an increase in violence centered on our schools, and has become so bad that visitors are now barred from CPS basketball games.

4) The hearing process is fraudulent.

•    CPS changes the school closing, etc., criteria every year.

•    Board members do not attend hearings, do not even read the hearing reports, yet they have voted to approve every recommendation.

•    Only three hearings are being held out in the community for all 22 schools. Individual school hearings are all held at the downtown CPS headquarters, costing $25 for parking.   

•    Hearing officers are highly-paid consultants to CPS & not independent.

•    Data and Democracy report 2008 demonstrates that CPS formula for underenrollment does not account for educationally appropriate use of space. To determine actual space utilization requires on the ground assessment by school community to see how space is actually used. Many AMPS schools fit CPS underenrolled category. This raises questions about why CPS is using this category with these schools.

5) Teachers are not fairly evaluated.

•    Highly qualified certified teachers and staff are being displaced by this non-education plan, including National Board Certified teachers.

•    Data from ISBE shows that the percentage of African-American teachers has declined 5% since the beginning of Renaissance 2010 in 2004, while the percentages of all other racial groups has increased. 

6) Ren 2010 schools do not have LSCs, accountability is poor.

•    PURE report shows two-thirds of the Renaissance 2010 schools failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests for basic information about their governing bodies in 2008. Information from the schools that did respond showed that only 5% of their governing body members were parents.

•    A lawsuit against CPS for disbanding LSCs in small and alternative schools was recently allowed to go forward by a Cook County judge. 

•    Renaissance 2010's Transitional Advisory Councils and Alternative LSCs are appointed by CPS. They have no real power and members can be removed by CPS for virtually any reason.

7) Ren 2010 schools get an unfair share of resources.

•    CPS provides special resources to Renaissance 2010 schools, which also receive $500,000 in start-up funds for two years and additional private funding.

•    Most regular schools would have done better if they had such resources.

•    Sherman was given a new sports field.

•    A Senn High School student reported (January 14, 2009) that the Naval Academy housed in Senn got a new science lab while Senn students do not have adequate equipment and are not allowed into the Naval Academy side.

•    A May 2007 Catalyst analysis showed that “Nearly $50 million of $265 million in renovations now underway are being done in Renaissance and charter schools, according to April reports from area offices. That’s about 19 percent of renovations taking place in buildings that house just 4 percent of students.”

8) Renaissance 2010 does not work, needs to be stopped.

•    Sherman Elementary is lower-performing than the proposed 2009 elementary turnaround schools, yet Sherman is supposed to be their “model” (see graph comparing Sherman with proposed 2009 turnarounds and graph of more worrisome Sherman data.

•    A 2008 Rand Corporation study showed that Chicago’s “charter schools performance in raising student achievement is approximately on par with traditional public schools.”

What we want:

•    A moratorium on Renaissance 2010.

•    LSCs in every school.

•    Unionized, certified teachers in every school.

•    A financial audit and other independent research done to determine effects on students and the effectiveness of Renaissance 2010 schools.

•    Use of models found within regular neighborhood schools (i.e. Big Picture, CTU Fresh Start schools)

Update: Steinberg says that he has seen an LSC do this. OK - so why weren't charges filed? It is illegal. 

------

So far I have neither read nor heard any comments in the media from people who oppose the appointment of Ron Huberman on the basis of his sexual orientation. So why are columnists and bloggers raising the issue, and why is at least one of them associating such a position with local school councils?

Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg states that, of course, being gay isn’t an issue in terms of Huberman’s job performance, but he goes on to say, “But it will matter, perhaps enormously, to some he had to deal with, particularly those who object to some action of Huberman's and are searching for what they consider a fault to bludgeon him with.”

So, opposing Huberman is anti-gay. Bad enough.

Then he goes on to equate the anti-gay feelings in those who oppose Huberman with the LSCs which, according to him, have fired principals for being the wrong race.

Wow.

And there’s no evidence that these supposed race-based firings by LSCs have happened. On the contrary, we know that many principals have tried to keep their jobs by filing discrimination complaints and lawsuits, yet none has ever succeeded in those efforts. The LSC training material explicitly instructs LSCs about discrimination laws and what they may and may not consider in their principal contract decisions. 

Like most people who don’t keep up much with schools issues but believe everything written about them in the newspapers, Steinberg is most likely referring to the Curie LSC case, where the Mayor tried to conduct a media witch hunt when a family friend's principal contract was not renewed by an LSC. I've referred Steinberg to the You Tube clip which gives just one example of the type of unprofessional antics which actually led to the principal’s firing.    

If the Mayor didn’t plan the current Ron Huberman uproar, he certainly must be enjoying the direction it’s taking, with suggestions being made now that people who oppose the appointment are anti-gay and that anyone who questions the Mayor’s judgment is also questioning President Obama’s judgment in selecting Daley’s last appointment, Arne Duncan, to be Secretary of Education.  

Unfortunately, most of the media played the big anti-Renaissance 2010 demonstration last Wednesday as a form of protest against the Huberman appointment. While our coalition’s message was focused, and came across clearly in and of itself, the Mayor’s timing of the appointment placed the two issues side by side. Reporters get to write only one story, so the issues inevitably converged.

Let me state categorically that PURE does not consider Huberman’s sexual orientation to be an issue. We do consider his lack of experience in the field of education to be a major, legitimate area for criticism which we will not yield no matter what slimy tactics are attempted. We also consider his appointment to be just one more piece of evidence that the Mayor is not an education mayor, but the same corporate, real estate, and self-serving interest mayor that he is in every other area of city government.   

With respect to the idea that Vallas and Duncan were such great picks, we have to be clear that Vallas was able to address only some of the bureaucratic and budget problems at CPS, and that Daley himself said Vallas had to go because he had not done more to move the system academically. Vallas was even less successful in Philadelphia -- he did not improve academics and he left the system worse off financially than it was when he came. The jury is definitely still out on the job he is doing in New Orleans, but we have heard some dire reports about public schools being severely shortchanged in favor of charter schools.

It's a widely held opinion throughout Chicago that Duncan was selected to be the US Education Secretary because of his friendship with Obama and not for his track record as an education leader. Though the local media has hyped Duncan as a great success, and he himself has hyped his programs as "dramatic, tremendous" successes, the facts and the experience of people in the schools tell a much different story. The recent 500-person demonstration and rally against Renaissance 2010 displayed the anger and disgust people have for the damage Duncan's administration has done to our schools. The lackluster data coming out of Duncan's Renaissance 2010 "model" schools provide more evidence that the damage was not worth it.

It's legitimate for us to demand a different kind of school leader, one who has a better, not a worse, grasp on education, than previous picks.

That's the title of the conference sponsored by the Renaissance Schools Fund on May 6, 2008. It's also the title of a very funny "sales brochure" created by CPS parent and teacher Wade Tillett and friends for Wednesday's protest.

Items in the brochure:

• public ed. bake sale (corporations, get your piece of the public ed pie!)
• shell game (where'd the undesirable student go?)
• $1 schools (everything must go!)

The brochure concludes, "Seriously, are we going to let 'entrepreneurs' decide what to do with public education?... Let's take a stand. Here's what we can do now: 

• Don't eat at MacDonald's (member of Renaissance Fund)
• Don't buy Evans pork rinds (member of Renaissance Fund)
• Don't do business at Wal-Mart, Sears, Microsoft, Walgreen's, Sara Lee, Kraft, Azteca, Chase Bank, Bank of America, Allstate (big funders of Renaissance 2010)"  

Yesterday's demonstrations at the Board were amazing and exhilarating.... you can read all about them in places like District 299  (which shares a photo of Wanda in her Grim Reaper costume) and ChiTown Daily News.

The march around the Loop was symbolic - we were connecting the Renaissance 2010 dots. How do they connect?

Look here for the map, and here for the names.

Memo: Wear black!

We are mourning the impending death of public education in Chicago with actions at CPS and around the Loop.

No, it’s not about Ron Huberman. It’s Mayor Daley who has been doing a “Meigs Field” on our schools since he took them over. Now it's time to do a Meigs Field on Renaissance 2010.

Please copy and share this "Stop Renaissance 2010" flyer with your school and your community. We need everyone to join in the protest Wednesday at CPS headquarters, 125 S. Clark Street. 

• 6 am -- begin to "line up to sign up" to speak at the Board meeting (remember, if you spoke last month they will not let you speak this month, but you still need to be in line to get a seat in the Board chambers)
• 10 am -- gather in the first floor lobby for a press conference
• 3:30 pm -- rally and march starting at CPS headquarters 

We're going to have some fun as we carry out the very serious business of protecting our children, our schools and our communities from the destructive Renaissance 2010 program.

• Look for scary Board member masks...
• Check out the "New Market of Public Education" sponsored by Mayor Daley which will include the Public Ed. Bake Sale, $1 schools, etc. 

See you then!   

Please read the previous post, if you haven’t already, to get some idea of what’s behind the Renaissance Schools Fund.

In fact, their web site makes it clear that the Renaissance Schools Fund both bankrolls and makes decisions for Mayor Daley’s Renaissance 2010 program.

While we plan to come out in numbers for the Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, it’s important to recognize that behind the masks of the rubber-stamp Board of Ed are the real players, the Mayor and the members of the Renaissance Schools Fund.

Their names, businesses, and contact information are listed here. Go ahead and begin to use this information. We will be providing some ideas, too, as the fight to stop Renaissance 2010 moves ahead.

But we aren’t going to let the Board of Education members off the hook, either. Here are their names, businesses, and contact information, too. Even though they aren’t the real decision makers, they still need to answer to Chicago children, parents, teachers, and the community for their rubber-stamp votes.     

Finally, here's the list of donors to the Renaissance Fund. A lot of these folks oppose fair statewide school funding, but don't mind giving millions to fund a program that is destroying public education in Chicago, one school at a time.      

Take up the White Man's burden --

Ye dare not stoop to less--

Nor call too loud on Freedom

To cloke your weariness;

By all ye cry or whisper,

By all ye leave or do,

The silent, sullen peoples

Shall weigh your gods and you.

    From “White Man’s Burden,” by Rudyard Kipling

Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker updates the 1899 poem for today in describing her commitment to Renaissance 2010 as a member of the Renaissance Schools Fund:

"You are fighting on behalf of young people who don't necessarily have the support at home or in their local community," she said. "To me, it's obvious.”

Thanks (I think) to Mike Klonsky’s Small Talk for alerting me to this nausea-inducing Education Week article on the great white folks behind Renaissance 2010. (Ed week is pay as you go for the online edition now).

I’m glad not to have missed Penny’s (what an ironic name) breathtaking display of arrogance, as well as Arne Duncan’s profession that he likes to work with these rich folks on the Renaissance Fund board: “I see them as real partners. They are as emotionally invested and intellectually invested in making a difference in kids' lives as we are."

If I’ve gotta get up at 5 am this Wednesday to go stand in line at CPS headquarters for the Board meeting, it helps to have my fires of outrage stoked by reading about how the rich folk on the Renaissance Fund feel about taking over our schools and communities, since we obviously can’t handle the responsibility, and to know that new Ed Sec Arne just loves to partner with “emotionally and intellectually invested“ rich folks, just not emotionally and intellectually invested parents, students, teachers, or regular community people. I guess our kind of “investment” (wink, wink) is just not what he values.

Ed Week: “Both the Chicago Public Education Fund and the Renaissance Schools Fund have adopted practices used by venture capitalists, who contribute startup money for new businesses in exchange for owning a percentage of them, closely monitor their growth, and often play leadership roles in the companies they finance.”

The Ed Week article offers no critique and raises no concern about who should "own" the schools, nor does it offer any suggestion to our families and communities about how to protect our children from the inevitable “dot.com collapse” in our schools under venture capitalist leadership.

This is a new department for PURE Thoughts, but we have learned that, contrary to the reason PURE reported last October, the principal of Prosser was absent from the school for documented medical reasons.

PURE regrets the error.

No, not Jan. 20 but another great day, the January 10 meeting at Malcolm X. If you weren't there (and even if you were) you will enjoy this video from Labor Beat:

The Struggle Against Renaissance 2010

View it on Google Video.

See excerpts from the Community Hearing at Chicago's Malcom X College on January 10, 2009, highlighting testimonies of teachers union members, community organizations, students and parents.

The hearing considered: At the current pace, 50% of all the Chicago Public Schools will be privatized by 2020. How will this impact students, parents, teachers, communities? The meeting was Sponsored by: Caucus Of Rank-and-file Educators (CORE); The Chicago Teachers Union; The Pilsen Alliance; PACT; CSDU; Substance News; Blocks Together; Kenwood Oakland Community Organization; Parents United for Responsible Education; Teachers for Social Justice; The Southwest Youth Collaborative. 

The video gives selections of speeches from Professor Pauline Lipman, Educational Policy Studies; Julie Woestehoff, Parents United for Responsible Education; Lourdes Guerrero, Teacher Representative; Jesse Sharkey, Social Studies teacher; Lanetta Thomas, High School student; Alina Mojica, former charter school student; Kristen Chapman, High School teacher; Marilyn Stewart, President, Chicago Teachers Union; Meg Sullivan, terminated charter school teacher; Lorenza Ramirez, parent of former charter school student; Carol Reynolds, charter school teacher; Lou Pyster, retired school teacher; Alfred P. Rodgers, Parents United for Responsible Education; and Debbie Lynch, Former President, Chicago Teachers Union. Lynch, with much audience support, expresses disappointment over President Obama's appointment of Arne Duncan, responsible for so many of these destructive policies in Chicago public education, to become the new Secretary of Education. Video is 29 minutes.

To order a DVD, indicate title "Struggle Against Renaissance 2010" and send a check for $15 to:

Labor Beat, 37 S. Ashland, Chicago, IL 60607.

Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is affiliated with IBEW 1220. Views expressed are those of the producer, not necessarily of IBEW. For info: www.laborbeat.org / mail@laborbeat.org / 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video or YouTube and search "Labor Beat".

A new era of responsibility....

Those words in President Obama’s (man, doesn't that sound nice?) inaugural speech may not soar for everyone, but since “responsible” is PURE’s middle name, the message scored a direct hit here.

And it’s not the first time we’ve been pleased to hear such talk from him, and not just generally but in the specific context of education.

Right before he clinched the Democratic nomination, Obama made a speech in which he said, “I believe it's time to lead a new era of mutual responsibility in education, one where we all come together for the sake of our children's success.”

Here are some of the examples then-nominee Obama used to illustrate “irresponsibility”; he said,

• Forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong.
• Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind is wrong.
• Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong.
• We also need to realize that we can meet high standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year preparing for a single, high-stakes test.

Here’s another example from a speech in Ohio: “(A)s president, I’ll double the funding for responsible charter schools. Now, I know you’ve had a tough time with for-profit charter schools here in Ohio. That is why I’ll work with Gov. Strickland to hold for-profit charter schools accountable; and I’ll work with all our nation’s governors to hold all our charter schools accountable…. Charters that aren’t will get shut down.”(emphasis added)

The era of responsibility couldn’t come too soon for our children. It’s time for us grown-ups to stop playing destructive games like Renaissance 2010 and start supporting public education in a real, meaningful, serious way. 

Perhaps to divert attention from another round of closing struggling schools and replacing them with a less effective management team, CPS has the nerve to play the "tough economic times" card, according to the Sun-Times.

Yeah, let's throw another few hundred people out of work in order to help the economy and save money.

Which is yet another farce. CPS has created an enormous new bureaucracy to manage Renaissance 2010, and spends millions to upgrade and provide state-of-the-art resources for those schools which also cost more because of their significant teacher turn-over and the costly enrollment phase-in process often used.

Let them prove that Renaissance 2010 has saved even one dollar. 

Well, the CPS web site is down today. Perhaps they don't want anyone to find more damning data like the comparison in this morning's Sun-Times of the "model" schools Sherman and Harvard and the so-bad-we-have-to-turn-it-around-failure Holmes:  

"Even with last year's dip in scores, Holmes' 41.5 percent passing rate is still higher than those of two schools CPS touts as turnaround successes due to their rising scores -- Sherman, with a 40.2 percent pass rate, and Harvard, with a 40.1 percent pass rate.

But you can find similar red flags on the Interactive Illinois Report card, where this graph clearly shows that so-bad-we-have-to-turn-it-around Johnson, for example, looks stronger than the AUSL "models" Sherman and Harvard whose "business savvy" leaders are about to take over Johnson, get rid of all the  better-performing staff, and replace them with its own less-effective version. Sounds pretty Enron, as George Schmidt would say. 

The same type of child-endangering idiocy was rubber-stamped last year by the Board. A year ago I presented them with eerily similar data comparing Sherman and the so-bad-we-have-to-turn-them-around schools on last year's hit list: "(Sherman's) student gains last year were no better than the same data for schools that CPS just decided to close for poor performance, and far worse than others on the closure list."

It's time to stop the madness -- Moratorium on school closings.

The list is the same as the one PURE posted last week with the following 1 change and (UPDATE) 4 deletions:

Carpenter is moved from the closure list to the phase out (which is, of course, the same as closing, just slower).  

Key (which was to be phased out) and Ross, Curtis and Lavizzo (which were to be turned around) are off the list entirely - George Schmidt suggests it was probably a call from Alderman Anthony Beale that accomplished the last two changes.

Alderman Beale does not play around when it comes to the Board of Ed. Last spring he requested a meeting of the City Council Education Committee for the express purpose of taking Rufus Williams to the woodshed. It may have been the most fun I've ever had at City Hall.

Targeted schools

From Tribune staff report

(Yes, PURE will attribute this list to the Tribune even though they would not attribute last week's list to us).

Looks like CPS is about to add another jewel to the Renaissance 2010 crown.

Today’s papers report another Aspira-like scandal, this time rocking Chicago Hope Academy. Apparently a teacher was molesting a student and the school decided to expel... the student.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has called the non-denomination Christian school out for trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug. 

And, to no one’s real surprise, the school, famous for being on the receiving end of an Oprah’s Big Give, is about to be welcomed into the Ren 2010 family.   

“Chicago Public Schools officials said the charges did not jeopardize the academy's efforts to contract with the district and become a public school in fall 2010.”

As with Aspira, Chicago Hope does not feel the need to be accountable to the public.

“Head of School Mike Laneve ...said he could not discuss school affairs in public.”

They should fit right in.

Former Aspira charter school teacher turned whistleblower Meg Sullivan is finally getting the acknowledgment she deserves from the mainstream media. Over the past months Meg has persistently told her story, has been ignored by CPS and insulted by Rufus Williams, and has kept telling the truth.

Here's a Substance story about her testimony at the August 2008 Board meeting.

Today the Sun-Times backed her up with their editorial "Inexcusable delay in charter school probe" at http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1376087,CST-EDT-edit14a.article

 "The cause of the delay, it seems, was bungling by CPS investigators and the Office of New Schools. The law department was slow to look into the strip search allegation and then it wasn't clear who should investigate charter school staff, who aren't CPS employees. The audit of attendance records was complicated by the fact that charters use a different system than regular CPS schools.

"If charter schools were new, we might accept such delays. But they arrived in Chicago in 1997, with 30 now operating on 67 campuses.

"Critics have seized on this alleged misconduct to indict all charter schools. We don't buy that. But the slow response gives credence to those who fear charters are not watched closely enough."(Emphasis added)

Frankly, we believe the underlying reason for the delay is the political clout of the charter operator, and that's truly disturbing given Chicago's history. What's merely wasteful when it means your hired truck may be a dud becomes truly tragic when it leads to crimes against children.

Linked to this editorial is a story from an Arizona charter school fan who admits that many of that state's charters are not accountable and should be closed.

If all charters had real LSCs, as we are proposing, local accountability would greatly improve.

Debby gave us a preview of this dead-on essay in her brief remarks at the CORE meeting Saturday.

From the Sun-Times op-ed: "It is ironic that Duncan is now moving to the Cabinet post when he essentially has admitted that he does not know how to manage low-performing schools. His entire approach has been to close underperforming schools and turn their management over to outside organizations, many with no track records of school reform.

"Research on teaching (hard-to-reach students) is clear and compelling: They need master teachers, an extended school day, and small schools and class sizes to break the debilitating hold of crushing poverty on their learning.

"I hope that President Obama talks to some of these front-line teachers about how to improve the nation's schools. The Duncan/Daley solution of giving up on struggling schools has been an absolute abdication of responsibility and public trust, and should certainly not be seen as a model for America."

Kind of makes the Duncan love-fest in the Senate yesterday even more disturbing, doesn't it?

PURE’s web traffic broke all previous records last week, no doubt driven by interest in the school closing list. Our usual average of 1,000 hits a day nearly doubled.

We’re getting a lot of help from some refreshingly lively local reporting on District 299, Catalyst's online news, Chi-Town Daily News, and WBEZ, which will report on the whole issue of “the list” this afternoon as well.     

And the great showing at Malcolm X certainly makes the media sit up and take notice.

In addition, Curtis Black did a thorough story on PURE’s Renaissance 2010 accountability report last week. Don’t miss it! 

I just heard from friend and colleague Leonie Haimson of NYC's Class Size Matters that, two weeks after CPS's motion to dismiss our LSC case failed, parents in New York City won a battle against mayoral control, too.   

Last week, New York State Education Commissioner Richard Mills ruled that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to move decision making power from local school leadership teams (SLTs) to principals was a violation of state education law. The ruling restored some power to SLTs, which are New York City schools’ similar but less powerful version of LSCs. 

Read more here. 

A lot of people have already commented on the fantastic CORE meeting on Saturday at Malcolm X College.

District 299 had a nice write up and there were major stories in the Sunday Tribune and Sun-Times and on WBEZ. More on that in a minute.

Nagging at me is how all these media outlets justify using the list prepared and first published by PURE, without saying where they got it. The Sun-Times even blared on their Sunday front page that it was their exclusive.

PURE posted the list on Thursday before noon. The facts were reported Friday in the Chi-Town Daily News. What we posted was not a scanned copy of a CPS report. The person who shared the information with us would not let us copy the list, and read the names of the schools aloud to us in a random pattern. I typed the list and organized it into the categories that every news outlet has since reprinted.

I’m trying to get some clarification from the Sun-Times and Tribune about why they are using this list without crediting PURE.

But that’s a minor irritation compared with the great pleasure of being with 500 fired up, angry, articulate, passionate students, teachers, parents and community folks on Saturday. The stories we shared are heartbreaking, but now that the truth about Renaissance 2010 is finally coming out in a major way, the stories will be our fuel for the fire.  

And if 500 came out on a Saturday morning during a near-blizzard, just imagine what will happen on January 28th at the next Board meeting? Plans are to begin challenging the Board during public comment in the morning and to stay in the Board chambers throughout the afternoon and until the Board members come out to vote on their next list of victims in the Renaissance 2010 War on our Public Schools. We’ll be doing other things, too, while we wait and after the vote. Stay tuned for details.  

I can't be in Washington D. C. for Arne Duncan’s confirmation hearing tomorrow, but I have a few questions I'm sending to panel members hoping they will be asked. 

1 - President-elect Obama campaigned against high-stakes testing and overuse of standardized tests. Under your leadership, Chicago has continued to place a great deal of emphasis on standardized tests, including using the state test scores to determine which students will be promoted or will graduate, and narrowing the curriculum to focus on a small set of tested skills. (See note 1) How will you help President Obama keep his campaign promise to improve the quality of student assessment and reduce the emphasis on standardized tests? 

2 - You were selected for this post in part because you have closed and reopened a number of schools in your district. What has been the impact of your school closing policies on children whose schools have closed? On children in those schools which have received students from closed schools? May we have copies of any reports your administration prepared tracking these students? Were these reports made available to the public? (See note 2)

3 - Please explain how you compare academic results of Chicago’s charter and other Renaissance 2010 schools to regular neighborhood schools when many of the Renaissance 2010 schools have advantages over traditional schools such as parents who are motivated enough to negotiate challenging entrance procedures, significant private funding, and restricted enrollments? Do you take these differences into account in analyzing and comparing results? If there are successful programs in Renaissance 2010 schools, how have they been shared with traditional neighborhood schools?

4 - We understand that you have removed democratically elected, parent-majority local school councils from most of your new schools and replaced them with bodies that are appointed by the Board of Education and have by some reports fewer than 5% parents as members. (See note 4) A lawsuit against the Chicago Board of Education to stop the dismantling of these governing bodies was recently allowed to move ahead by a Cook County Circuit Court judge. (See note 5) How does this reflect your commitment to public accountability and parent engagement, particularly in school decision making?

A final concern: Since state law changed in 1995, the head of the Chicago public school system (and no other system in the state) is allowed to be a non-educator. Parents, teachers and the community strongly object to this situation and believe that having a non-educator heading the school system has led to some of the questionable policies and practices referenced above. When President-elect Obama named Arne Duncan as his choice for education secretary, a sense of betrayal and keen disappointment rippled throughout the education community, and particularly among African-American educators. We urge you to consider voting no on this unfortunate choice, and that you demand a nominee who has intensive, authentic education experience and the highest quality education credentials.    

Note 1 - For example, “Intensive prep for the ACT exam in Chicago's public schools not only failed to boost ACT scores, but actually dragged them down, according to a University of Chicago study to be released today.”

Note 2 -  “There has always been a gap between African-American and other students in terms of mobility, but data show that this gap [is] widening,” says senior research analyst Marisa de la Torre. De la Torre is conducting a follow-up report on mobility, updating a 1994 study that provided the first in-depth look at the problem in CPS. De la Torre speculates that public housing demolition and school closings, which hit hardest in low-income black communities, are to blame.” (Catalyst Magazine, March 2007)

Note 3 - “A close look at Sherman (a Renaissance 2010 “model”) shows less than exciting results, which also are compromised by a significant alteration in the student population as evidenced by the enrollment drop and the drop in the school's low-income rate, from 99 percent in 2006, the year before the takeover, to 84.2 percent in 2008....in science -- where there is less opportunity for teaching to the test -- (state test) scores dropped dramatically. The percentage of students meeting and exceeding state standards in science dropped from 32 percent in 2006 to 20 percent in 2008. Keep in mind that Sherman has more resources than typical CPS schools. These perks are unlikely to be economically feasible on a larger scale, which is one more reason to question its usefulness as a model.” (JW op ed, Sun-Times, Dec. 27, 2008)

Note 4 - “Fifty-seven schools or charter networks were contacted. More than two-thirds of these Renaissance 2010 schools failed to respond either to our first or second FOIA request or to a letter from the Illinois Attorney General. We conclude that these schools have no governing bodies, which violates the law and CPS policy. Within the smaller set of 18 responding schools/networks, we found more reason for concern: Only 7 of the 152 board members of the responding charter schools are parents, or less than 5%. This indicates a major lack of legally-mandated parent involvement in school governance.” (PURE report, Accountability and Renaissance 2010)

Note 5 - “Cook County Circuit Court Judge Sophia Hall denied a Chicago Board of Education motion for summary judgment which asked her to throw out the small and alternative schools Local School Council (LSC) lawsuit filed by a number of LSCs, LSC members, parents, and advocacy organizations. LSC attorneys Elaine K. B. Siegel and Associates argued that the Chicago Public Schools’ broad practice of closing schools and reopening them without elected LSCs violates the school reform law.”  (report on PURE Thoughts)

Parents, teachers, students and the general public have a right to know who is behind Renaissance 2010, a Chicago program that has led to the closure of some 30 public schools, the wholesale firing of school staff without due process, the dismantling of democratically-elected local school councils, and the disruption and dislocation of thousands of children which are associated with academic setback and increased violence.

Funders of Renaissance 2010 have contributed up to $50 million to the Renaissance Schools Fund. 

Who are they? See the full list here.

Many of these corporations and businesses give huge donations to Renaissance 2010 in order to profit from the positive publicity they expect to get from their support for these new schools. Included are businesses which seek to portray themselves as family-friendly, and which need your family budget dollars to make a profit.

Examples are McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Sears, Microsoft, Walgreen’s, Sara Lee, Kraft, Azteca, Chase Bank, Bank of America, and Allstate. Also on the list are public utilities like People’s Gas and Exelon.    

It is up to us to decide whether we want to patronize businesses that support Renaissance 2010. We might also want to ask why profits from our gas and electricity usage are being used for this purpose.

PURE was given this list in a meeting with a CPS staffer this morning. We were asked not to share the list so that the staff of schools on the list would not panic. We informed the staffer that we would not agree to that condition, and that we felt PURE was not a more important stakeholder in this process than the staff of affected schools. We have already been called on the carpet by a high-ranking CPS official for posting this list.   

According to CPS, this list is still fluid:

Closing

Las Casas Occupational - closed (don’t want to renew the lease, building not in good shape) - students will go to home schools

South Chicago Elementary (under-enrolled), students going to home school

Peabody Elem 1440 W Augusta - receiving schools Ogden, Talcott, Lozano

Carpenter - receiving schools Ogden, Talcott, Lozano

Nia Foundation -

Princeton - students go to home schools

Consolidation

Abbott - consolidated into Hendrix

Schiller - consolidated into Jenner

Medill - consolidated into Smith-Joyner

Global Vision consolidated into New Millenium

Davis Developmental Center 91st Jeffery - will consolidate with Hughes into new building being built for Hughes (which burned down)

Phase out

Key - Ellington receiving

Lathrop - receiving schools Johnson and Lawndale

Hamilton - receiving Blaine, Burley, Audubon

Best Practice 

Reed - receiving Banneker Parker and Nicholson

Turnaround

Dulles 

Johnson 1420 S. Albany

Bethune 3030 N, Lawndale

Ross - 6059 S. Wabash

Holmes - 955 W. Garfield

Yale

Curtis

Lavizzo

Fenger HS