The latest offer of “help” from the hedge fund crowd comes from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which is establishing ELP Venture, a “venture philanthropy fund” to offer rewards for more education innovations to inflict on CPS students.

According to the Sun-Times, “Rather than focus on proven reforms, the group hopes to develop ‘the new, yet-to-be-proven reform,’ said class member Gillian Darlow, a principal at Civic Consulting Alliance.”

How have they done so far? Well, Global Council Chair, Bruce Rauner, was one of the corporate brains behind SB7 and its 75% “strike-proof” vote standard that was supposed to be too high for the Chicago Teachers’ Union to meet. We know what happened there. Rauner also supports the Noble charter network schools, one of which is named after him. We all know what those schools are like.

Rauner admits to his lousy track record in education reform: he “warned the group that the ‘school improvement wars’ was an important struggle but also was ‘ugly, dirty’ and ‘not fun.’ He said he provided $20 million to help with education reform and 80 percent of it was ‘wasted.’ ’’

But now they’re going to collect $10 million to fund more “unproven” boondoggles.

Hey Bruce – why don’t you mess around with your own children’s schools for a while and leave ours alone?

The first head-shaker this morning was Rahm in his own words extolling an improved CPS graduation rate but writing almost exclusively about the great things going on at the private, religious school, Christ the King, where he was speaking. Does he ever pay attention to where he is before he speaks?

He still managed to spout the “100% seniors graduated 100% seniors accepted at college” bull that has become so prevalent. Geez, these privately-run boutique high schools are going to have to come up with a new schtick pretty soon if they are going to keep the attention of the (“Squirrel!!!”) foundation community.

This time it’s Goldner, another Noble school. The Sun-Times reports that Goldner did the 100-100 – but they do not mention how many students left before their senior year. And you can’t find out anywhere anymore. CPS took down their research site. I guess too many of us were getting too many facts there. The state report card won’t tell you how many students were freshmen at Goldner four years ago because the Noble Network was still aggregating all their school data then. The annual charter school reports on the CPS web site have become so bare-bones that they are pretty worthless as an accountability tool.

But here’s another 100-100 story that we can refute. Noble Comer College Prep mom Donna Moore sent me this link with the comment that there were 150 freshmen at Comer during the school’s first year, and only 106 (her estimate) who graduated. Yet principal claims he and, of course, the staff, got “every low-income student to college.”

Of course, we all know by now what else Noble is doing to every student. 100% wrong.

If you take the time to read Diane Ravitch’s latest book review, “Do Our Public Schools Threaten National Security?” you will be rewarded with one of her best critical summaries of corporate reform propaganda.

She recaps several generations of alarm-raising about public education, concluding,

Somehow, despite the widely broadcast perception that educational achievement was declining, the United States continued to grow and thrive as an economic, military, and technological power….How is it possible that this nation became so successful if its public schools, which enroll 90 percent of its children, have been consistently failing for the past generation or more?

The current red-flag-waving book is a report by the Council on Foreign Relations headed by former NYC schools Chancellor Joel Klein and former Bush Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. According to Ravitch,

What marks this report as different from its predecessors, however, is its profound indifference to the role of public education in a democratic society, and its certainty that private organizations will succeed where the public schools have failed. Previous hand-wringing reports sought to improve public schooling; this one suggests that public schools themselves are the problem, and the sooner they are handed over to private operators, the sooner we will see widespread innovation and improved academic achievement. The report is a mishmash of misleading statistics and incoherent arguments, intended to exaggerate the failure of public education.

My favorite part is seeing PURE’s expose of the Noble Street Charter Network’s fine-based discipline policy nicely worked into Diane’s argument that charter schools have not lived up to the hype.

The task force asserts that charters will lead the way to innovative methods of education. But the charters with the highest test scores are typically known not for innovation, but for ‘no excuses’ discipline policies, where students may be fined or suspended or expelled if they fail to follow the rules of the school with unquestioning obedience, such as not making eye contact with the teacher or slouching or bringing candy to school or being too noisy in gym or the lunchroom.

The real threat to national security is squeezing the democracy out of our schools with such “reform school” approaches replacing efforts at real school reform, and with standardized testing narrowing the curriculum so that our schools are simply no longer able to produce informed citizens. And, I guess, that’s what the Joel Kleins of this country are really after.

Oh, and me.

Folks, take a look at this Tribune editorial slamming me for being against discipline and Nobility, and you’ll see what it looks like when you hit a nerve.