Both Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama are on the defensive this week about their education plans after a group of civil rights organizations challenged the basic elements of the administration's Race to the Top and Blueprint for Reform plans, adding a powerful voice to the increasingly loud complaints coming from other sectors across the nation about the direction Duncan and Obama are trying to take public education. Obama and Duncan have called their efforts the civil rights issue of the 21^st century.

But they don't want to sound defensive, so they are trying to sound as though they are on the offensive against a fearsome foe – they call it the Status-Quo.

From Obama's speech today at the National Urban League:

“This status quo is morally inexcusable ...I know there’s also been some controversy about Race to the Top. Part of it, I believe, reflects a general resistance to change. We get comfortable with the status quo even when the status quo isn’t good. We make excuses for why things have to be the way they are. And when you try to shake things up, some people aren’t happy.”

From Duncan's speech to the same group Tuesday:

“We have to challenge the status quo—because the status quo in public education is not nearly good enough—not with a quarter of all students and, almost half, 50% of African-American and Latino young men and women dropping out of high school.”

What's YOUR Status-Quo?

If we are all going to roll up our sleeves and fight this foe, I'm going to need to know more about it. What is this Status-Quo?

I have some ideas.

Maybe the Status-Quo is retaining students for 15 years, spending over $1 billion on it, learning that it doesn't work, hurts students, and accelerates the drop out rate, but refusing to quit doing it. That's what Arne Duncan did here in Chicago. I'd fight that Status-Quo, and will fight expanding testing barriers such as graduation tests.

Or maybe the Status-Quo is 20 years of high-stakes testing (including 7 years under Arne Duncan) marked by press conferences touting annual “progress” in tests results now called “lies” by Fed Ed Head Duncan, while more reliable national results show that Chicago has stagnated near the bottom of large urban school districts. I'd fight that Status-Quo, and will fight more standardized testing and more stakes attached to tests.

How about the refusal to acknowledge the facts about charter schools, dodging them with this cutesy phrase: “We don't like charter schools...we like GOOD charter schools!” I'd fight that status-quo, if only to keep from having to hear that lame sentence again.

Maybe the Status-Quo looks like the years of failure and stagnant drift during Duncan's tenure as CEO of CPS, which added thousands of push-outs to an already horrifying drop out rate. But how do we fight that, when Duncan is now trying to make the entire nation follow his lead?

I'm really thinking that the Status-Quo is actually a mythical beast, a Jabberwocky designed to create a generalized sense of fear so that the public will accept the disorder, breakdown, bungling, botched fouled-up mess of a public education system that has already resulted from corporate “reform” and which is only going to get worse if President Obama continues to turn a deaf ear to the people who have the most at stakes in the schools, and Arne “Oz” Duncan continues to pull switches behind the curtain, pretending to fix things but in reality just making noise and blowing smoke.

The real fight isn't the status quo versus “reform” or the mean, bad people who have bad posture and hate change versus the brave, thoughtful, wealthy reformers.

The real fight is going to be Truth versus Lies. And you can count me in on that fight.

Folks, Tuesday's my birthday so I will not be blogging but enjoying my wonderful family (husband, Mom who is visiting from Phoenix, two sons - my daughter-in-law is away working on a movie -- she's so cool!) and trying not to let school issues raise my blood pressure.

Your Public Schools Action Tuesday assignment for today, if you choose to accept it, is to give a gift to PURE. If you really support public schools, you will support PURE. PURE has been there for public school parents and students for nearly 23 years. We have stuck it out through thick and thin and, despite appearances, things today are very, very thin. 

But we've been poor before and we keep going. The internet gives us so many new opportunities for reaching people with our message and our perspective. And believe me, Wanda is still out there helping people one-on-one every day (despite the fact that she was completely flooded out last Friday - please keep her and her family in your thoughts - and the hundreds of others out there with similar stories). 

More on PURE's history here (PURE's Greatest Hits). Donate here!

Thanks so much for your support! 

Today the representatives of seven major national civil rights groups canceled a planned press conference at which they were about to discuss their powerful new challenge to President Obama's education policies.

Instead of making their public presentation, the leaders met with Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan. 

Those of us in Chicago recognize this move. I remember back when CEO Duncan was "assigned" to me to make sure I talked to him before going public with any complaints. Whenever he'd see me, he'd bend over (way over) and ask me if everything was OK. Needless to say, this strategy didn't work, since Arne's concern didn't extend to actually addressing any of the problems I raised. 

I'd really like to think that the high profile and serious message of today's leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson of Rainbow Push along with the NAACP and the National Urban League, will motivate the Obama administration tor do more than call out the spin doctors.

Valerie Strauss, who writes the Answer Sheet blog at the Washington Post, characterized the civil rights proposal as a "thrashing" and says this:

You won’t see these sentences in the piece: “Dear President Obama, you say you believe in an equal education for all students, but you are embarking on education policies that will never achieve that goal and that can do harm to America’s school children, especially its neediest. Stop before it is too late.”

But that, in other nicer words, is exactly what it says. The courteous gloss on this framework can’t cover up its angry, challenging substance.

This call is for the sake of our children, and I hope that the President responds responsibly.

Today's CTU community summit/rally was held at Ariel Academy, a small school founded by John Rogers, Jr., president and CEO of Ariel Capital Management, and a good friend and basketball buddy of President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, whose first real job in education was with Rogers' Ariel Initiative. 

To his credit, John Rogers was at the rally, where he heard complaints, challenges, and calls for change from the speakers, beginning with new Chicago Teachers' Union President Karen Lewis's fiery speech which soundly rejected the Daley/Duncan/Huberman version of school reform. 

I decided to try to send a message to Arne through John Rogers, so I went up to him, introduced myself, and thanked him for coming. I said that what the speakers were saying was very different from the way his friend Arne Duncan talks about education. I asked him to share with Arne what he was hearing today and he said that he would -- that he would be talking to Arne this afternoon and he would tell him what he heard. 

Maybe Mr. Rogers will also share our message with Mr. Obama.

Good friend, longtime PURE member, and DePaul education professor Marie Ann Donovan wrote this timely message about the current Chicago Public School budget mess:

"Picture CPS principals on the rooftops of their schools, wetting their pointer fingers, sticking them out into the wind to tell its direction.Then picture them doing this every half hour. That's about what it feels like to be a CPS principal--'Stay tuned' is their mantra. They turn off their Blackberries at midnight and when they turn 'em back on at 4:30am (because they can't sleep due to worry, anyway), there's been a change or other amendment to what they're to do. That's what it's like to be a CPS principal these days in terms of trying to figure out how to lead your school in the coming year.

"I'm growing more concerned about the planned rise in 'combined-grades' [not to be confused with multiage or ungraded] classrooms, due to the teacher layoffs and increased class sizes. I heard from a number of CPS principals just yesterday that many of them/those they know are resorting to this come fall.

"Here's the thing: Principals are holding off on notifying teachers about their staffing plans simply because they're holding out hope that funding will get restored. I appreciate their concern--for it truly is one--and applaud them for their continued fighting with Central Office to get more $ support in their schools.

"If you're a teacher of a certain grade level and you learn in mid- or late-August that you're going to be teaching 32 kids from two different grade levels, that doesn't give you a lot of time in which to prepare/learn the other curriculum. You wind up scrambling the days before school opens, and the week the students return, just to figure out who's who and 'where' they are in terms of their next learning steps, based upon their test scores from spring (=old data, let's face it) plus your expert judgment of children's learning needs. THEN you have to scramble to quickly sort 'em all out into their learning groups so that by Week 5 you can administer the required District curriculum-based tests (half of which you'll now have to create from the new curriculum you're teaching, due to the other grade-level's children in your room). What do you get? I fear not a whole lot of learning--through no fault of the teacher or the kids or the parents.

"I also fear this will be the proverbial 'final straw' on teachers' backs--and we'll lose some fine folks in our system."

What can we do? Join the CTU for a community summit on the CPS budget, Saturday, July 24, from 11 am to 12:30 pm at Ariel School, 1119 East 46th Street. More here.

From the CTU web site:

Will your neighborhood school be next on the Board of Education's chopping block?   The Board has already... ELIMINATED after-school and sports programs, CUT over 200 citywide teachers (special services, literacy coaches, hospital teachers, and more), REDUCED world language classes,

...and plans to: INCREASE high school class sizes, DECREASE the number of electives offered to our students, and FIRE more teachers in addition to the hundreds already terminated or displaced WITHOUT regard to seniority and tenure.

The Board hasn't learned its lesson yet. Let's plan how we will fight these cuts together.

The Chicago Teachers Union and community partners invite you to the:

Save Our Schools Summit Saturday, July 24, 2010 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Ariel Community Academy 1119 East 46th Street (parking in school lot) For more information, please contact: Norine Gutekanst at (312) 329-6226 or norinegutekanst@ctulocal1.com

The media, business, and even the Obama administration have been pretty nasty to teachers lately. This week I saw a group of retired teachers from Webster, New York, get together to honor my Mom (on the right in photo), who was a music teacher at the school for almost 20 years, and was in town for a visit.

The true warmth, friendship, and trust in this group was a joy to behold. Sadly, many of them expressed to me that today's teachers don't have as much opportunity to teach in the very collaborative way they were able to teach, because of current education policies from ESEA on down.

Take a minute today to hug or otherwise thank a teacher. We need to unite and fight the anti-teacher, anti-public school forces that are trying to destroy public education.

I grew up in the suburbs of Rochester, New York and never knew that Frederick Douglass worked in the city most of his life. I knew some about Susan B. Anthony but never knew that they were close friends and colleagues.

I mentioned this to our docent at the Susan B. Anthony House yesterday, opining that a field trip would have gone a long way toward improving my sense of local history. As a former history teacher herself, she was somewhat protective of the profession, acknowledging that teachers have so little time to get in all the "key" points of history, and that they often have to practice "subversive omission" - deciding what to cover and what to skip. 

I get that, I guess. I was also somewhat surprised to learn that the Susan B. house was not yet a museum most of the time I was in school, which may explain the lack of field trips. Not so surprising is that the Frederick Douglass museum, just down the block, is still very much a work in progress.

Anyway, I loved the tour and especially loved the sculpture, in a little park midway between the Anthony house and the struggling Douglas Center, depicting Susan B. and Frederick having tea. Go see it some time.  

According to Education Week, Arne Duncan announced yesterday that "we will revise our ESEA reauthorization proposal to require parent and community input," a response to recent challenges by PURE and others to his administration's failure to acknowledge the need to involve parents and the community in critical decisions about schools, starting with his own Race to the Top and  ESEA revision plans.

In a speech to the NAACP, Fed Ed Head Duncan said that states and districts will have to involve parents in addressing school turnarounds in  order to qualify for federal funds. This means, he said, "notification, outreach, public input, and honest, open discussion about the right option for each community."

Unfortunately, Duncan's track record in Chicago makes us skeptical that this is anything more than empty rhetoric. His efforts to "involve the community" in turnrounds here meant that perfunctory hearings were held where hundreds turned out to offer powerful testimony about a school's strengths along with thoughtful, research-based suggestions about how to support and improve the existing school, yet Arne Duncan ignored it all and shut the schools down.

Duncan replaced empowered local school councils elected by parents and the community with toothless advisory councils appointed by – Arne Duncan.

And, most importantly, Duncan's school “turnarounds,” which were so vociferously opposed by parents, community members, teachers and students, left Chicago with schools that were not better than the ones they replaced, except in their facility for weeding out and eliminating the most challenging students.

So, parents will continue to challenge Arne Duncan's plans. Leadership on real, meaningful parent involvement must start at the top, in the Department of Education. This means that Arne Duncan must begin really listening to parents, and the only way we will know that he is actually hearing us is when he begins to modify the RTTT and ESEA proposals that parents so strongly oppose and replace them with solid, proven programs that parents want.

Two months ago, a number of public school parents wrote a letter to Congress and President Obama expressing our concerns about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Blueprint for Education proposed by U. S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan for changing this federal education law.The signers and hundreds of other parents sent this letter to their congressional representatives.  

Today I faxed the Parents Across America letter to every member of Congress as they return from their Independence Day break. I added a copy of the recent Education Week essay (p. 1) (p. 2) on the same topic I wrote with Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters in NYC. 

This might be a good time to make a follow-up call to your Senator and Congressman. While many are saying that a revised (reauthorized) ESEA is unlikely to be voted on before the fall elections, revised language is being hammered out in committee right now, and it may be too make meaningful changes later on in the process.

• Parents, students and community members join teachers across the nation in opposing the major elements of Race to the Top
• Charter schools are not working as hyped, and in fact the majority are not performing as well as regular public schools. Rapid expansion of charters is a dangerous idea.

What we DO want: More parent involvement, real multiple assessments, smaller class size, and equal resources for all schools.

Don't forget to sign the Parents Across America petition and sign up for our Facebook page! 

Today is Dick Durbin Day on Public Schools Action Tuesday (PSAT)!

Let's work on getting Illinois Senator Richard Durbin to rethink his support for Race to the Top. Specifically, we want him to support the House version of the education jobs bill, HB 4899, which would save up to 140,000 teaching jobs in part by using some funds previously set aside for Race to the Top.  

Sen. Durbin is one of thirteen senators who recently wrote a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee chair Sen. Daniel Inouye opposing this bill, which was formulated by the chair of the House Education committee, Rep. David Obey.  

Now that Arne Duncan has moved to Virginia, Senator Durbin does not represent him anymore, and does not have to support Duncan's harmful, wasteful RTTT polices. Let's remind Senator Durbin that he does represent us, and that we want him to do the right thing for the children, schools, teachers, parents and communities of Illinois:

Call and urge the Senator to vote for HB 4899, the House version of the Education Jobs bill in the Supplemental Appropriations package, to prevent devastating class size increases, and cut wasteful funding for reckless federal grant programs like "Race to the Top," charter school expansion and teacher performance pay.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D): http://durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm DC Phone: (202) 224-2152; Fax: (202) 228-0400

Chicago phone:  (312) 353-4952 -fax: (312) 353-0150

Here are some other folks to contact if you have a few extra moments today:

Sen. Roland Burris (D): http://burris.senate.gov/contact.cfm

DC Phone: 202-224-2854 Fax: 202-228-3333

Chicago Phone: 312-886-3506

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Dan Inouye (D): http://inouye.senate.gov/Contact/Email-Form.cfm Phone: 202-224-3934 Fax: 202-224-6747

President Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact Comments: 202-456-1111, Switchboard: 202-456-1414 FAX: 202-456-2461 

(Thanks to Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters and the CTU web site for the quick cut-and-paste!)

And thank you for supporting public schools! 

Friend and NYC parent Leonie Haimson just posted this blistering commentary on Bill Gates on Huffington Post.

Gates is in Seattle today speaking before the American Federation of Teachers, where the CORE/new CTU folks are already waking things up. I've read that CORE's Carol Caref questioned from the floor why Gates was invited.

Leonie offers a thorough analysis of the damage and dishonesty of the Gates Foundation's incursion into public school policy making. She writes,

In the past eight years, the foundation has spent nearly $4 billion promoting his personal education agenda; at first providing subsidies to districts that would agree to close down large neighborhood high schools and start small schools in their place; and now encouraging the rapid and widespread proliferation of charter schools. Gates also is aggressively promoting efforts to create programs that link teacher evaluation and compensation to standardized test scores.... the Gates initiative has turned districts upside-down, at first establishing as many small schools as possible, creating thousands of new administrator jobs, eating up classroom space, and compelling the neediest kids who were excluded from the new small schools to travel long distances to attend even more overcrowded large schools in worse conditions than before, relegating those schools to failure.

It's well worth reading.

UPDATE: I e-mailed Tim King, founder and CEO of Urban Prep, about the numbers discrepancy. He says that the Sun-Times number is wrong and that he has no idea why they wrote that. He confirms that Urban Prep has 107 graduates. 

****

Today's Sun-Times print edition reports on what must now be called the Miracle in Englewood. Urban Prep Charter School still has a 100% college-going rate with ALL 95 graduating seniors going to college!

Problem is, for the past few weeks, the orgy of happy-weepy media reports about the Urban Prep Miracle was that all 107 graduating seniors were going to college (see, for example, People Magazine, Good Morning America, "Urban Prep Named Person of the Week on ABC World News). 

So, since their first self-promotional blitz, they've lost 12 students (the Sun-Times suggests they "transferred") ? And that's on top of the other 50 or so members of the class of 2010 who had also gone missing from the rolls since the school first opened, as I reported earlier:   

• According to the Illinois Interactive School Report Card, there were 166 freshmen enrolled in 2007, Urban Prep's first year. Of these original freshmen, the Tribune reported that 107 are graduating seniors. This yields an overall school graduation rate of 64%, or nearly 6 points lower than the average district rate of 69.8%.
• Just as they struggled as entering freshmen, as reported by the school's founder, many of these graduates will likely struggle in college given the school's composite state high school examination results of 15%, compared with the Chicago average of 28%.

With this new figure in the Sun-Times, the overall graduation rate at Urban Prep goes down to 57%.

So, it begins to look more and more as though Urban Prep's real "accomplishment" is pushing out and/or refusing to graduate any senior who has not been accepted into college.

Oddly enough, this story, which takes up a full page on p. 19 of today's print Sun-Times, is not available online. An oversight? Or an effort to keep the new "miracle" news and numbers under wraps to protect the hype? 

Last year, PURE challenged CPS CEO Ron Huberman to stop flunking kids, which costs up to $100 million per year, and instead consider more individualized instruction plans using a nongraded classroom approach.   

At his request, I prepared extensive background materials on nongraded classrooms. That's the last I heard from him on the subject. 

Fortunately, today there are several superintendent-educators who have seen the wisdom of nongraded classrooms and are implementing this program in such places as Kansas City, Maine and Alaska. 

"The current system of public education in this country is not working" said Superintendent John Covington. "It's an outdated, industrial, agrarian kind of model that lends itself to still allowing students to progress through school based on the amount of time they sit in a chair rather than whether or not they have truly mastered the competencies and skills."

As PURE also pointed out, the nongraded classroom can take power away from high-stakes testing, which essentially punishes children for not learning at the same pace as others of the same age. In a nongraded classroom, the child moves ahead when he/she has mastered a skill or set of skills, and no one is 'held back" for not doing so on an artificial age-based timetable. Yet no one is "socially promoted" because no one moves until they are ready.

And in these tough economic times, doesn't it make a lot more sense to stop doing something that is expensive and doesn't work -- flunking students -- and start doing something that actually helps them?

In addition to an excerpt from PURE's letter to President Obama, there are some good responses here in Eliza Krigman's National Journal blog on the Obey amendment issue.

Some of you know that I also blog on a nationwide site called the Examiner (subscribe to my blog! They send me a little tiny bit of money! though it's mostly the same as PURE Thoughts).  

Anyway, I just received this e-mail from someone over there at the Examiner which disturbed and angered me.  It read:

Good afternoon!

We have a wonderful opportunity for you. A new documentary, Waiting for Superman, will soon be released and we are working on getting Examiners free, possibly sneak preview access, to this film. We have chose you because of your great content and standing in the community. We’d like you to participate in screening the film and covering the critical education issues it addresses. We’ll also be promoting content related to the film, profiling profound teachers making a difference. Please let me know if you’re interested and available. These dates may change, but I wanted to send you a tentative schedule. Seats are limited and invitations will go out to those who respond first.

One look at the web site for this film makes it clear that this is a propaganda piece for Race to the Top, charters, and other corporate attacks on our public school system. You don't have to look too far to see Bill Gates and the Walton family behind it. 

I replied to the e-mail this way:

This is a deeply disturbing "offer" which goes against everything I write on my Examiner page.

Please take a look, for example, at this entry about school turnarounds, or this letter from parents across American about how Race to the Top shuts out parents. 

Race to the Top and the expansion of charter school such as the ones highlighted in this piece of propaganda are what's destroying public education in the US. We know that these schools push out lower-performing students and refuse to even admit many special education or limited English-speaking students. And, overall, research shows that charter and other corporate-run schools are doing a worse job than traditional neighborhood schools.

Why are the Examiner lists being used to promote the corporate takeover of public education? Please explain to me how this happened, and share with me the Examiner's policy on using your member writers to promote specific kinds of political movements.

I'll let you know if they respond.

By the way, the film will be previewed in Chicago on July 21.

From today's Chicago Tribune front page story about the turnaround at Chicago's Marshall HS:

(T)he outward signs of change have been apparent for weeks. The red brick facade has been scoured, leaving a salmon-colored dust on the sidewalk. Mounds of sod sit on the freshly paved parking lot, and workers have gouged the outline of a new football stadium into the brown earth behind the school....a number of students won't return to Marshall next year, according to the head of the school turnaround office, Donald Fraynd. There are about 120 seniors without the credits to graduate who will be encouraged to enroll at alternative schools. Another 20 to 30 with the poorest discipline records will be encouraged to go elsewhere if they can't get their acts together, Fraynd said.

"Just throwing money" at turnarounds?

Those business types who used to bluster that more money isn't the answer to fixing schools are singing a different tune now that some big money is flowing  into their coffers. Larry Miller's blog figures the running cost of the Green Dot Charter Co. takeover of Locke High School in Los Angeles: "Before and since Green Dot’s takeover, tax dollars have financed Locke’s annual operating budget of upward of $30 million, which during the four-year turnaround will total about $115 million....By then, expenditures will have exceeded that four-year, taxpayer-supported budget by about $15 million, with philanthropies making up most of the difference."

Miller quotes Tim Cawley, a managing director at Chicago's own turnaround monster, Academy for Urban School Leadership:  "(E)ven expenditures surpassing $15 million on a big school could be a smart national investment. We’re wasting billions every year by not fixing these schools because the students they’re not educating end up filling our prisons.”

Gee, that argument sounds familiar. Oh, yeah, it's one that public school advocates have been making for years here in Illinois and elsewhere as we beg and plead for states to adequately fund our schools, with the corporate types fighting it every step of the way.

We Chicagoans have a moral obligation to communicate to our Senators and Congressmen that Arne Duncan is not telling them the truth.

Despite the recent flap over the Obey amendment, most of them probably still think he's a nice guy. In fact, one of Arne's greatest assets is his ability to lie with a pleasant, non-threatening smile on his face. And that's a problem because, if Congress believes his lies, they will pass his ideas into law. That will extend and expand the damage already done to our children and our schools under No Child Left Behind (and here in Chicago, under the Duncan/Daley school administration) for at least the next five to ten years.

From a New York Times interview:

“Mr. Duncan says he encounters no public opposition. 'Zero,' he said. '...There’s just an outpouring of support for the common-sense changes and the unprecedented investments we’re making.' “

Folks, this is what he's telling lawmakers.

He's also telling them the same lies we've talked about here on PURE Thoughts – his lies about Dodge, Sherman, charter school success, about how he wants to get away from “bubble tests” and have more parent involvement. He knows that's what legislators want to hear.

But we know it's just ArneSpeak.

In a recent interview, former Bush education appointee and current Arne Duncan critic Diane Ravitch talked about meeting with Arne's staff and sharing her concerns about his ESEA plans. The staffers denied that Duncan's plan pushes charter schools or performance pay. They told Ravitch that her concerns were misinformed. She was dumbfounded. But that's ArneSpeak.

If we've learned nothing else from the recent conviction of police torturer Jon Burge, which took place 37 years after his first reported guilty act, it's that we MUST not tolerate public officials who lie or actively cover up the truth.

Speak out, folks! It's time to tell the truth about Arne Duncan, what he's done here in Chicago, and what he's trying to do to our children's education.

Start your letter, e-mail or telephone call with this simple fact: Arne Duncan does not tell the truth. Then tell them how you know.

I'll be posting my letter soon.

I faxed the following letters Saturday afternoon in support of the proposal to save up to 140,000 teaching jobs using some funds allocated to RTTT and other Duncan initiatives (more here).

To President Obama:

We at PURE were very sorry to hear that you have threatened to veto Congressman Obey's proposal to use funds previously committed to the Race to the Top and other programs in order to save teacher jobs. We know that you support funding jobs for teachers. However, we strongly disagree with your opposition to paying for this initiative with funds previously allocated for Race To the Top (RTTT) strategies, teacher pay-for-performance programs, and charter school expansion. While you characterize these strategies as “sweeping reforms,” we believe that they are unproven, reckless, wasteful experiments which put our most vulnerable children at risk. In fact, we would like to see all the funding for these programs cut unless and until they have developed a true track record of success rather than simply a modestly effective public relations campaign.

Full letter to President Obama here.

To Senator Durbin:

We at PURE were very disappointed to read your letter to Senator Inouye opposing Congressman Obey's proposal to use funds previously committed to the Race to the Top and other so-called reform programs in order to save teacher jobs. We understand that you support funding jobs for teachers. However, we strongly disagree with your opposition to paying for this initiative with funds previously allocated for Race To the Top (RTTT) strategies, teacher pay-for-performance programs, and charter school expansion. You call these programs “vital,” “bold,” and “critical reform efforts.”

We see the Obey amendment as a win-win situation.

Full letter to Sen. Durbin here.

From Secretary Duncan's recent speech to the National PTA:

Finally, our blueprint to reauthorize ESEA supports family engagement in a host of ways. We support programs that actually ask families how they feel about their child's school and educational experience—giving parents a real voice and opportunity to engage. We must do a much better job of listening to our children and to their parents. Their honest feedback will absolutely drive improvement....The blueprint enhances information and transparency in school report cards about academic performance and school climate for parents. And it empowers families with additional high-quality school options.”

This sounds a lot like the parent survey which Arne started here in Chicago the year after PURE carried out our own parent survey. It was a good idea to ask for parental input, but the information was not used in an effective way. The results were boiled down into one data point on Arne's scorecard, offering little insight into what was really happening at the school with parents.

Arne's vision for parent involvement also sounds a whole lot like the Gates-funded astroturf parent organizing that has been 

going on in Chicago for a few years now, where folks are paid to go door to door explaining to parents how bad their schools are and trying to convince them to enroll their children in charter and turnaround schools.

ArneSpeak on “ambitious parent engagement”

Let me give you an example of what I mean by ambitious engagement. When parents demand change and better options for their children, they become the real accountability backstop for the educational system. Parents have more choices today than ever before, from virtual schools to charters to career academies. And our schools need empowered parents, although I know not all school administrators welcome that. We need parents to speak out and drive change in chronically-underperforming schools where children receive an inferior education. With parental support, those struggling schools need to be turned around now because children get only one chance at an education.

Maybe when he says “I know not all administrators welcome” empowered parents, he is making an honest admission. When Chicago parents spoke out, he sure didn't welcome it and he sure didn't listen.

Clearly the kind of ambitious parent engagement Arne wants is having parents doing his dirty work, demanding that schools close. No, thanks. We wouldn't help when Arne closed schools and fired people in Chicago and we sure aren't going to help him do it from Washington D. C.

Please note that ArneSpeak on ESEA includes no mention of parent voice in school decision making, which is considered by parent involvement experts to be a critically important component. We know why Arne doesn't mention it – he doesn't want it. He tried to get rid of as many of Chicago's parent-majority local school councils as he could, and to turn them into advisory bodies appointed by – you guessed it – Arne himself.

Congressman David Obey's proposal to take $800 million from RTTT, charter school expansion, and teacher performance pay programs to help save 140,000 teacher jobs passed the House of Representatives last night by a vote of 239-182. 

Thanks to everyone who stepped up yesterday and called, wrote and e-mailed your congresspeople!

This is the first serious legislative challenge to Arne Duncan and his policies, and may be an indication of what the ESEA fight ahead might look like.

It's not over yet, though. The bill must go to the Senate, which will have to reconcile the House bill with their own version of a larger appropriations bill.

And President Obama has threatened to veto it.

Thirteen Senators, including our own Dick Durbin, have written a letter to Senate Appropriations chair Daniel Inouye, urging him not to fund the teacher jobs bill by derailing the "bold education reform efforts" in RTTT and others of Fed Ed Head Duncan's pet programs.   

The Senate is on break until July 12. This would be a great time to contact Sen. Durbin and let him know what you think of Duncan's "bold reform efforts." 

Calls/letters/e-mail to Sen. Burris and Sen. Inouye would also be a good idea. 

I'll post my own letter to the three Senators and to President Obama tomorrow.

More from Duncan's speech to the National PTA:

"Unlike in the past, our ESEA proposal also emphasizes measuring student growth, not just absolute test scores. I'm much more interested in growth and gain than in absolute test scores. I want to know how much individual students, schools, districts, and even whole states are improving each year."

So, he's still wedded to single annual standardized tests, and now “growth” in test scores will become high-stakes.

"The administration has also set aside up to $350 million for a special Race to the Top assessment competition. That competition will support state-led consortia to build a new generation of better assessments—to test not just basic skills on bubble tests, but the higher-order skills that students need to survive and thrive in the 21st century. This has never been done before. And these assessments must give us objective, real-time data on student progress—not just end-of-year results."

If you read Arne's words carefully, the “new generation of better assessments” will still include testing “basic skills on bubble tests” – but, he promises, not JUST basic skills on bubble tests.

He also talks about “real-time data on student progress” - which sounds a whole lot like the three-times-a-year bubble tests that Arne developed here in Chicago to help prep students for the annual state test.

So, where's the press for higher order skills assessments which have “never been done before”?

FairTest points out that the guidelines for applying for the $350 million “continue to focus on reading and math, continue annual testing in grades 3-8, continue to test every child instead of using sampling for accountability, and continue to be used as the virtually sole basis for high-stakes decisions. They also continue to prioritize large-scale tests.”

So, ArneSpeak on testing in is "new" ESEA? Sounds like more of the same.

Next: ArneSpeak on ESEA and parent involvement

An alert from FairTest about this report on an amendment Congressman David Obey has made to cut some funds from the Race to the Top program (possibly in the areas that support charter schools and pay-for-performance -- even better!) to help fund a $10 billion plan to save teacher jobs.

We need to support Congressman Obey, who is one legislator among several who oppose the way Fed Ed Head Duncan has turned federal funding into a series of competitions instead of a resource for students with the greatest need.

Please call the Appropriations Committee office and voice your support for the Obey amendment (e-mails are OK - calls are better):

David R. Obey, Wisconsin, Chairman (202) 225-3365 <http://www.obey.house.gov/>

Jerry Lewis, California, Ranking Member (R)(202) 225-5861  <http://www.house.gov/jerrylewis/>

Illinois has two reps who sit on the House Appropriations Committee and need to hear from us:

Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., Illinois (202) 225-0773 <http://www.house.gov/jackson>

From Duncan's June 11, 2010 speech to the National PTA:

As I traveled the country during the last 18 months and visited some 35 states, I heard two consistent concerns about public schools from parents and teachers. First, they feared that schools were 'teaching to the test.' And second, they worried that the curriculum was narrowing, as school districts placed too much emphasis on boosting test scores on fill-in-the-bubble tests in math and English.

OK, so he heard that parents and teachers are unhappy with the over-emphasis on testing. So, what's he going to do about it? What's the ArneSpeak really mean?

Student and school performance should never be assessed solely by test scores but by a range of indicators, such as graduation rates, attendance, matriculation to college, and other measures.

To us, a “range of indicators” means multiple measures, and more specifically, multiple sources of evidence of various types.

But a “range of indicators” in ArneSpeak means what it meant when Arne was in Chicago and he created the “scorecard” approach to school evaluation. The “scorecard” continued to be based on annual standardized test scores, but included other “objective” data such as attendance and graduation rates, which can also be manipulated, and are also not reliable indicators in themselves of a high quality education (see, for example, Urban Prep “miracle”).

So, in ArneSpeak, there's no less emphasis on testing, just added emphasis on other things like attendance which then also become relatively meaningless, high-stakes data.

Next: ArneSpeak on the “growth” measure, bubble tests, and “real-time data”

He says it, but he really doesn't mean it.

A couple of weeks ago, Education Secretary Arne Duncan addressed the National PTA's annual conference and asked for parents' help in improving three specific areas:

“It is time to think beyond assessing students with narrowly-focused bubble tests. It is time to think beyond the bake sale-barometer in promoting parental involvement. And it is time to think beyond the focus on math and English alone, and give every child a well-rounded education. We must stop narrowing the curriculum. Our children need—and deserve—so much more. My hope is that PTAs around the nation can be leaders in pressing for higher standards, better assessments, for a richer vision of parental involvement, and for a well-rounded curriculum” (emphasis added).

WOW! That sounds great. He just checked off two of the four major school reform recommendations PURE has been promoting for years, most recently in the Parents Across America letter to Congress and President Obama. The letter opposed more charters, turnarounds, and testing and suggested instead:

• ending unfair funding disparities,

• reducing class sizes,

• providing a balanced curriculum with multiple assessments, and

• requiring that schools involve parents in the decision-making process.

So, are we halfway to our goal? Has Arne come around to our way of thinking, at least in two of our four major points?

Sadly, no. It's just ArneSpeak. The rhetoric sounds good, but a close read of Duncan's entire speech to the PTA makes it clear that we're not even close. In fact, ArneSpeak sounds just like Arne during his eight years in Chicago, when we had to listen to his empty rhetoric and fight every day against his policies of high-stakes testing, narrowing the curriculum, and shutting parents out of decision making.

I'll be taking that speech apart in the next few days.

Free LSC lessons 1 and 2: Tuesday, July 13, 2010.

Noon to 4 pm at Union Hall, 37 S. Ashland.

You must pre-register! Call 773-663-5420.

We join FairTest in urging you to contact your Senators and Congresspersons NOW about changes in the federal education law, ESEA (formerly NCLB).

While most Congress watchers don't think ESEA will be reauthorized (revised) this year, we are hearing that the members of the relevant committees are meeting every day to work on agreed language. What they agree to now is very likely to end up in the final bill.

This is big, folks. Changes in ESEA will have a huge impact on our children's education for at least the next five years.

Timing?

Congress is in session the rest of this week. Legislators should be in their home districts for a week beginning July 4^th. , and they take a month-long break beginning August 9.

So, think about contacting D. C. offices this week, or making a face-to-face appointment with your Senator and Congressman while they are home.

Calls are better than e-mails. Letters are good, too.

Contact information is here for the Senate and here for the House.

What to say?

Here's a 2-page summary of recommendations from the Forum for Education Accountability, which PURE endorses.

I'll be writing more tomorrow and in the coming days, too, but some main points are:

1. Fewer tests and real multiple measures. Don't use test scores to evaluate teachers.

2. Fair funding – the federal government needs to take a stronger role in making sure that your zip code doesn't determine the quality of your education.

3. Collaborative, local school remediation for struggling schools, not closings, firings, turnarounds and charters.

4. Real parent involvement including a strong parent voice in school decision making.

Need more motivation?

Here's a quote from "10 reasons to say 'no' to Race to the Top" from Diane Ravitch, former Bush education advisor, who now speaks out against NCLB and Arne Duncan's plans for ESEA:

I hope I am wrong, but I believe that 10 years from now, we will look back with regret and even shame on this misuse of federal power. Books will be written analyzing where these ideas came from and why they were foisted on the nation’s public schools at a time of fiscal distress. And we will be left to wonder why so much money and energy was spent promoting so many dubious ideas.

Act now – this is the moment to do something big for our children.

Education blogger Claus von Zastrow reports on City Connects (CCNX), a program of Boston College, which provides an individualized support program for children in 11 Boston public schools using the intervention, prevention, and enrichment services already in the community. 

According to PEN Newsblast, "The beneficial impact of CCNX on student growth in academic achievement (across grades 1 to 5) was on average approximately three times the harmful impact of poverty. By the end of grade 5, achievement differences between CCNX and comparison students indicated that CCNX intervention moves students at the 50th percentile up to or near the 75th percentile, and students at the 25th percentile up to or near the 50th. For multiple outcomes, the treatment effects were largest for students at greatest risk for academic failure. After grade 5, the lasting positive effects of CCNX intervention can be seen in middle-school state standardized test scores, ranging from approximately 50 percent to 130 percent as large as negative effects of poverty.... putting a support person and the model into schools costs a little less than $500 per student per year."

It really didn't take that long - CEO Huberman has already backed down on the 37/35 in a classroom threat.

Elementary class sizes are back to 2010 levels, though Huberman is still saying that high school class sizes have to go up from 31 to 33.

And he thinks the teachers should make up the rest of the supposed deficit by giving back the 4% pay raise called for in their contract.

To their great credit, the Raise Your Hand group, which CPS had invited to join Huberman at the press conference, disagreed, according to the Sun-Times, saying it was up to "lawmakers and Mayor Daley, not teachers, to work on filling the remaining budget gap."

Parents and teachers working together - so far, so good.   

Just came across this essay by long-time Chicago reporter Charles Thomas. He was at an eighth grade graduation a couple of weeks ago, covering the Mayor's speech to the students, and learned that nine of the 36 students in the eighth grade were not allowed to graduate based on their ISAT scores. He wrote:

When one-fourth of a group of 13-14 year old people don't have it together enough to graduate from elementary school it's evidence that (the school), and by extension the Chicago Public Schools, have a long way to go to fulfill the mayor's vision.

Thomas reported that Mayor Daley seemed unperturbed. "Daley was upbeat and optimistic about the future. He smiled as he posed in photographs for each of the 27 Stockton graduates. But somewhere behind that smile, he has to be worried."

I don't know who Ron Huberman, Arne Duncan, the folks at the Tribune, etc,. are listening to, but here's a great letter to the editor responding to a recent silly Tribune editorial about two "great" new charter school teachers. The letter is written by Catherine Rauch-Morse, a Lincolnshire, IL, high school teacher who actually seems to know what she's talking about. It reads in part:

I believe your solution on how to improve the education in this country is simplistic and unrealistic.

You cite two teachers with impressive non-academic resumes who decided to become teachers. UIC College Prep was able to hire them because they were able to pay them enough money and you imply that this somehow guarantees good teaching. One teacher has been at the school since 2008 and the other since 2009. This is not enough time to determine if they are model teachers. They teach freshmen algebra, so none of their students has yet graduated and gone on to college. How can you say the students are well-prepared for upper-level math?

Since this is a charter school, did either of these teachers have a large percentage of students with discipline problems, truancy issues or special-education accommodations? The environment in which they teach bears no resemblance to the everyday life of many teachers. How effective would they be in a regular public school?

I have taught with teachers who have backgrounds like theirs. Some are fine teachers, but others are not. They all have knowledge, but some cannot teach students with problems. You cannot tell how effective a teacher will be by reading a resume or watching him teach a class. A teacher needs to develop a rapport with his students and adjust his lessons on a daily basis to meet their needs. Some of the best teachers I know have ordinary resumes and no awards.

After announcing that Chicago Public Schools annual state test scores had gone up another happy little jot, CEO Ron Huberman stated that his staff would spend the summer looking at those teachers whose tests scores went up the most and find out how they did it so that their secret can be passed on to other teachers.

He also said he will lay off the teachers with unsatisfactory ratings (based on???) first rather than honor the tenure provisions of the union contract.

 So, what's he likely to find in his summer "quest for the best" and "hunt to punt"? I have a few ideas.

The teachers whose class scores went up? They may be great teachers, but also maybe

1) Lucky -- a not-so sharp class last year and one or two very bright students this year.

2) Really into teaching to the test.

3) Working in a school where someone tinkered with the answer sheets.

Those whose class scores went down? They may also be great teachers but also maybe

1) Unlucky - had a good class last year -- this year, not so much.

2) Giving the test in one of the many schools where someone was just shot or murdered close by that week or month.

3) Too busy actually educating children to focus all his/her time on test prep.

What makes a great teacher?

Really, to think that you can identify great teachers by year-to-year changes in ISAT scores is pretty silly given all that we know about  the unreliability of test scores.

Of course, Fed Ed Head Duncan talks as though he's making a big, popular improvement by focusing new federal laws on year-to-year growth rather than the old, hated Adequate Yearly Progress method. But Arne, they are still the same unreliable tests. Calling the idea "value added" doesn't automatically add value.

Here's what FairTest says about the research:

There are too many flaws in "growth" or "value added" mechanisms to trust the results. Researchers at RAND concluded that "the research base is currently insufficient to support the use of [value-added methods] for high-stakes decisions about individual teachers or schools" (McCaffrey, et al., 2005; see also, Bracey, 2007). A National Research Council (2009) evaluation came to the same conclusion.

Maybe Arne and Ron don't care about the research, but the union and its lawyers just might.

The Raise Your Hand group marched on City Hall last Thursday to ask the Mayor to redirect TIF funds to the schools. They think Mayor Daley could do more to help resolve the Chicago Public Schools budget crisis, and are working to collect 10,000 signers on a petition to the Mayor with the same message.

The petition says in part, 

"TIF districts in Chicago are annually diverting more than $275 million in CPS property taxes away from education, roughly the amount of the remaining FY 2011 deficit. Chicago, CPS and the more than 400,000 public school students and their families cannot afford this diversion.... As taxpayers who are invested in the city and our public schools, we refuse to accept a public school system in which our children are expected to share a classroom with 35 - 37 students and accept reduced or scaled back programs that are necessary for a comprehensive education."

Andy Shaw via the Better Government Association is tweeting from the Blagojevich trial and reports that our favorite school turnaround honcho, Donald Feinstein, CEO of the Academy of Urban School Leadership, is on the stand talking about problems AUSL had getting a $2 million state grant to refurbish (Sherman's?) athletic fields in 2005. 

The point is being made that the school is in Rahm Emanuel's former district.

The Sun-Times says that prosecutors "contend Blagojevich put a slowdown on the grant in an attempt to pressure Emanuel to have his brother, Hollywood talent agent Ari Emanuel, raise money for the governor with wealthy people in show business."

You can follow Shaw's tweets here.  

Don't think I wasn't charmed by Catalyst referring to me as "Chicago's own Julie Woestehoff" last week (under the national headline, "Duncan taken to task"), but that still doesn't earn those guys a pass on their bias in favor of the current corporate media line that Chicago's teachers must make one of two choices to balance the budget. Here's how Catalyst reported the Tribune's version of this message:

In an editorial, the Chicago Tribune takes up the painful choice CPS teachers face: watching colleagues get laid off or surrendering a scheduled 4 percent pay increase.

Catalyst implies that the choice is a real thing, not a made-up attempt by CPS, CEO Huberman, and the business community to make teachers entirely responsible for the budget mess.

Apparently some reporters became quite belligerent with CTU president-elect Karen Lewis and other CORE members at last Tuesday's emergency board of education meeting when they refused to take the media bait and say which of the two "choices" they were planning to make. Framing the question that way is not reporting, folks.  

Read more about this media game here.  

She's studied to be a symphony conductor and a doctor. She's been a stand-up comic and drug rehabilitation counselor. She didn't graduate from high school but she was the first African-American woman to graduate from Dartmouth. She's lived in Tulsa and Barbados. She starts every school year by blowing something up.

Those who know Karen Lewis won't be too surprised by her story, but now the general public can be forewarned - we are in for quite a ride.

Read Rosalind Rossi's piece here. 

Some of you may remember when Paul Vallas used his "teaching experience" as part of his resume for the top education position at CPS. His total experience? He taught for a year at a Greek Orthodox grammar school where he had been a student.  

Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan brags that he understands the educational needs of urban children because he used to hang out after school at his mom's Kenwood tutoring program. Apparently you can learn to teach by osmosis while you're being babysat.

Now we have Republican for Senator Mark Kirk, who has been referring to his teaching experience throughout his campaign. Turns out that he was a student aide in a kindergarten for a few months while in college and taught in a private school in England for a year. The kindergarten folks have already gone on the record saying that he didn't teach at all but was there to "play with the children." We haven't heard yet from the British private school, but that'll probably come out soon enough.

This isn't the only hucksterism going on.

What about the education bloggers, education program officers at foundations, well-paid education advocacy organization executive directors, etc. who base their credibility on one or two years in the classroom?

Putting that on your resume is virtually the entire premise of Teach for America.

The Chicago Public Schools revamped its principal selection criteria a few years ago to require potential principals to have at least five years of classroom teaching experience. I think that's a pretty good rule of thumb - if you haven't made it at least five years in the classroom, put your hand down.

And I say that as a parent advocate who doesn't pretend to have ever taught anything beyond Sunday School.

On one hand, you have Chicago Public Schools (CPS) officials and the media telling the public that balancing the CPS budget is up to Chicago's new union leadership, and that they have to choose between two evils:

1. Salary concessions, or

2. 35 in a class.

On the other hand, we've got Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President-elect Karen Lewis sending exactly the right message by 

1. Deferring the discussion/decision to the full CTU membership, and

2. Insisting that the full CPS budget needs to be on the table and available for teachers, parents and the general public to scrutinize before classroom cuts are considered.

Ms. Lewis's position is supported by folks like the Reader's Ben Joravsky, who has become the go-to media expert on Mayor Daley's Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program, which siphons property tax money away from CPS.

For example, Joravsky takes a close look at CPS CEO Huberman's claim that he has cut 1,000 jobs:

As of May 1, 2010, CPS had 1,334 employees on its central office payroll, down from the 1,617 it had on February 1, 2009, when Huberman took charge.

That's a cut of 283 central office employees. Not bad, but far short of 1,000.

But wait—we're not done. You also have to consider the raises that most of the high-ranking employees received under Huberman's tenure. For instance, Huberman started at $230,000—up from the $212,502 his predecessor, Arne Duncan, had been making when he left to become U.S. Secretary of Education.

And don't forget the increases in unspecified central office "contractual services," covering everything from "telephone and telegraph" to "repair contracts." In this year's budget, the board of education increased its allowance for "non professional services" to $243,000 from about $91,000. The budget for "seminars, fees, subscriptions and professional memberships" went up to $120,000 from $45,000. Travel expenses rose to $80,000 from $30,000 and "miscellaneous contingent projects" to $83,000 from $31,000. And so on.

Education Week blogger Dakarai Aarons quoted me in his piece this week about the CPS budget dilemma: 

State and city officials want to hold students and teachers accountable but are unwilling to be accountable to the public even in this extreme emergency.

In response to an e-mail I sent him complaining about his unfair attack on new CTU president Karen Lewis (taking a comment of hers out of context) Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg ran a "Clarification" about the matter this morning, and ended with this gracious statement: 

Lewis represents a fresh start, and she shouldn't feel ill-used on her first day. We all need to try harder in this tight economy, and that includes me.

After I wrote to Steinberg, I dashed off a letter to the editor, which the Sun-Times also printed today, and which seems rather brutal now in light of Steinberg's clarification... anyway, point made.   

Don't miss this great op-ed in today's Sun-Times by former CTU president Deborah Lynch. She says, 

The decision by Mayor Daley and Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman to close their budget gap on the backs of Chicago's schoolchildren is a travesty that Daley should pay for in his upcoming re-election campaign.

Deborah describes what it's like to be in her school, Gage Park HS, now as the Board moves to lay off more teachers:

We are now facing the loss of 12 more of our staff members -- teachers who have bought homes, started families and invested in graduate courses to advance themselves, believing they had a job. Several of them are already award-winning and board certified teachers. Others are coaches of championship teams and faculty sponsors of initiatives such as the yearbook and art contests.

The difference these professionals have made at Gage Park High school is incredible and literally immeasurable. It doesn't show up on the Huberman value added, data-driven drivel that passes for analysis and "rationale" for closing yet another struggling, high-poverty minority school, but it is a treasure for our students.

It's like a wake around here these days. It's hard to comfort colleagues who are leaving by no fault of their own. And it's hard to comfort the students who are also shell-shocked because so many of their favorite teachers are leaving.

We have a community here, something the CPS brass don't understand because they've never worked in a school.

How will the "city of neighborhoods" survive this decimation? Remember Ronald Reagan's proposal for the neutron bomb - it destroys the people and leaves the buildings. I think even Ronnie Ray-gun would be appalled by what CPS is doing.

Education Week just published an essay I wrote with Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters in NYC which describes the frustration of parents across the nation with the Duncan administration's policies and practices:

the parent voice has been missing so far from the national debate on education, and is entirely absent from the top-down, often draconian policies put forward by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

The letter outlines a number of problems parents have with Duncan's Race to the Top and ESEA proposals, and offers a different approach to school improvement that aligns more with what parents look for in schools:  

putting an end to unfair funding disparities, reducing class sizes, providing a balanced curriculum with multiple methods of assessment, and requiring that schools and districts involve parents in decisionmaking.

We're hoping that Duncan will go beyond the rhetoric and begin to truly hear and value the input of parents. 

You can help by signing the Parents Across America petition! 

UPDATE: Neil Steinberg says he will include a comment from me about this issue in his Friday column. 

****

NewsTips' Curtis Black rightly takes Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg to task for taking a comment out of context from CORE's Karen Lewis's acceptance speech Saturday morning following her election as CTU president. 

Here's what Karen said (full speech here): 

"Outside of the classroom, we need society to recommit to bettering all communities.  We also need our parents to recommit to the education of their children.  But inside the classroom, the only people who can improve our schools are professional educators.  Corporate heads and politicians do not have a clue about teaching and learning.  They have never sat one minute on this side of a teacher’s desk.  But they’re the ones calling the shots and we’re supposed to accept it as 'reform.' ”

Here's the "quote" Steinberg used: ""The only people who can improve our schools are professional educators."

Means something completely different out of context, doesn't it?

Steinberg goes even nastier on Lewis, a high school teacher, by making up a classroom “dialogue” with a student who suggests Lewis's comment makes her sound “arrogant.”

The complete lack of integrity displayed in this column really calls out for a full retraction and for an apology to Lewis, to teachers, and to the students, parents, and community with whom she has worked so closely and diligently for the past two years.

Here's some very bad news from today's Tribune:

"Using Chicago crime reports and the reading and vocabulary assessments of a sample of Chicago children, sociologist Patrick Sharkey of New York University found African-American children scored substantially lower on reading and vocabulary tests within a week of a homicide in their neighborhood."

"Data on Hispanic students did not show the same negative effect, and data on other racial and ethnic groups were excluded because so few of those children were exposed to neighborhood homicides. Chicago crime statistics show that black children are the most likely to be exposed to community violence."

"In Chicago's most violent neighborhoods, children's thinking ability may be impaired for about one week out of every month."

""These neighborhoods are very violent, and some children's responses are adaptive," Raviv said. "But there are significant consequences of that behavior that affects their ability to stay in school. … They are more likely to be suspended, expelled or fail to graduate.""

Now, add this horrible statistic to that study:

Chicago is three times as deadly as NYC and twice as violent as LA

Our web site was down last week when Huffington Post had this great essay by Curtis Black. Don't miss it! Curtis also writes great stuff for Community Media Workshop's NewsTips.

I posted this comment in response: 

The extent to which Chicago's foundation community has been in bed with corporations and City Hall is an ongoing civic embarrassment that needs more exposure.

As several of your links above attest, PURE has been speaking out for many years, telling the truth about the efforts of Mayor Daley, Paul Vallas and Arne Duncan to destroy public education in Chicago. As a result, we have lost every penny of local foundation funding. To add insult to injury, these same foundations pour money into astroturf "parent" groups whose mission is to break the historic, powerful alliance between parents and teachers and to undermine public confidence in the schools in order to provide consumers for privatized education.

The only way to break the stranglehold of these corporations is to hit them where they hurt - in their shareholders' pocketbooks. As soon as companies like McDonald's, Walgreens, Sears, and, yes, even Microsoft, understand that people connect them to public school bashing, they will change their "philanthropic focus" in a heartbeat.

Wouldn't it be great if Bill Gates would use his awesome school reform powers to promote the idea that standardized tests scores are poor standards for judging schools, teachers or students?

Why do I think he might do that?

Because he just dropped millions on yet another Chicago program that failed to raise student test scores. But the Chicago High School Redesign Initiative (CHSRI) did apparently increase graduation rates, especially among highly at-risk students, according to a new report by the Consortium on Chicago School Research. Their findings:

"Small schools seem to provide benefits related to the closer relationships among students and between students and adults. In particular, they seem to have a beneficial effect on graduation rates. However, academic achievement, as measured by student test scores, did not improve significantly at CHSRI schools."

College-going - the new test score??

Given the happy/weepy hysteria that swept the nation last month when Young Men's Urban Prep Charter School reported a 100% college-going rate, we seem to be on a track where test scores are not all that important anymore -- that is, not for charter schools, turnaround schools, or any schools or programs Bill Gates funded or Arne Duncan prefers.

Urban Prep students' test scores are near the bottom of Chicago high schools, yet you would think that the school invented the concept of student achievement, and that Urban Prep founder Tim King is the -- well, the Bill Gates of urban high school education.

Keep in mind that we are not talking about graduation or drop out rates, since about 30% of the original class enrolled at Urban Prep has left the rolls. No, we are only talking about the number of students who made it all the way to high school graduation have also been accepted at a 2- or 4- year college, a feat that probably says more about the school's student:counselor ratio and its deep pocket sponsors than anything else. More context on the Urban Prep story here.

No, the novelty schools are held to a different standard than our neighborhood schools which still have to play it the old-fashioned way, one test score at a time.

We all know that Bill Gates didn't graduate from high school and he still did OK. But what do you say, Bill? Are you ready to change the game?

Summer school notices have gone out for Chicago 3rd, 6th and 8th graders whose test scores on the SAT 10 portion of the ISAT were below the promotion standard, or if the student has a report card grade below a "C" in reading or math, or more than 9 days of unexcused absences.  

Please call (312-491-9101) or e-mail us if you need help or if you know of anyone whose child is affected this year. We are preparing some new legal strategies to challenge the CPS elementary promotion policy and would like to include more families. 

We have prepared some tip sheets for parents of summer-school bound students.  

"Serious Quality Challenge in National Charter Schools" (Stanford University press release, 6/15/2009)

"Chicago school reforms fail to raise scores" (Chicago Tribune, 1/17/2010)

"Education Secretary Arne Duncan's legacy as Chicago schools chief questioned" (Washington Post, 12/29/2009)

"They owe us all an apology" (Mike Klonsky's Small Talk, 1/18/2009)

So much failure, so little learning

An important essay by James Stigler in this week's Education Week predicts the inevitable failure of the "reformers" blame-the-teacher approach to school improvement.

Citing the work of W. Edwards Deming, known as the father of the science of quality improvement, Stigler argues that this approach "is not an effective way to improve quality because it has no effect on the process that caused suboptimal results in the first place. Real and continuous improvement, Deming argued, occurs only when the workers themselves study outcome variability and the processes that produce it."

What's needed instead is a “PDSA” approach, Stigler writes: "First, plan an innovation, something worth trying; next, do it; then study the result of the change; and finally, act, whether by trying something else if the innovation didn’t work, modifying the innovation and going through the cycle again, or implementing the innovation as a permanent change in the production process. Over time, PDSA cycles yield permanent improvements in the production process, something that never results from merely inspecting the product and tossing out the defective ones."

This sounds a whole lot like the local school council (LSC) based school improvement process as laid out in the 1989 school reform law. 

Time to get rid of the failure police

It's time to go back to basics. No, not more test prep drill in reading and math. We need to get back to the community-inclusive, teacher-empowering school planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation process schools used to use before Mayor Daley decided it was to his benefit to take over and put the failure police in charge.

We've been having both website and internet problems the past few days, so I'll make this short and to the point as we work to get our groove back!

The newly-elected CTU leaders from CORE have called for a picket outside of CPS headquarters beginning at 6 am on Tuesday June 15. That's when folks will begin to line up for the 8 am sign up for speaking spots at the emergency Board meeting.

For this special meeting, the Board will meet at 9 am. Public participation will begin at 10 am and will be limited to a half hour. 

If you can't be there, you can still be a part of Public Schools Action Tuesday this week. Call Ron Huberman at 773-553-1500 and Mayor Daley at 312-744-3300. Tell them NO to larger class size! They should cut central office, stop retaining students, and give us back our TIF funds, just for starters. 

Please share this fact sheet on the benefits of lower class size, which is associated with

• fewer students held back
• smaller achievement gap
• lower drop out rates 
• higher grades
• better college entrance exam results 
• double gains for poor children and children of color.

Find out more on the Class Size Matters web site. 

What fun to find this snapshot from the same "PURE Blago" trip to Springfield in 2003. Such very different places the two state officials have ended up....

(Note - that's my husband Larry whose shoulder State Senator Obama has his left arm around. I might add that it's not the first time Larry has been at the right place at the right time -- like that time in the fall of 1974 in Saarbrucken Germany where he met me....)  

It was spring 2003, we were hopeful, we went to Springfield to push for reform in state school funding....

He was the new Governor, he had such great hair, and we found ourselves surrounding him with PURE enthusiasm.

Turns out it was Blagojevich who put everyone on notice that he would veto any tax swap or increase, even for schools, and who therefore killed any chance of funding reform during his administration. 

So, in honor of Rod Blagojevich's well-deserved first day in court, this PURE memory.

The panicked folks who babble about US students scoring worse than students in Slovenia on standardized tests have been strangely quiet about this piece of terrifying news:

According to a survey by GMAC Insurance, the average score on a sample written drivers' test has gone down since last year, and 18.4 percent would actually flunk if they had to take the test today.

Yet these losers, these failures, these probable test flunkers, are still out on the roads driving! 

If we take our standardized, multiple choice tests seriously -- and you know we do here in Arne Duncan country -- we should be yanking the licenses of the flunkers and sending them to Kaplan classes to get those rules of the road pounded into their thick heads. 

Because as we all know, the best way to tell if someone is a safe driver is a multiple choice test.  

*****

Take a look at this fun comparison of driving-based performance assessment with multiple choice and norm-referenced tests for more on this critical issue....

CPS teacher Wade Tillett has posted a great postcard to Mrs. Obama on the bubbleover.net site. It reads in part:

I was at Grant Park on election night. Your husband reminded us of the changes that occurred in the last 100 years, and asked us to dream of what life would be like in 100 more....What will prepare us for the unforeseen challenges of the next one hundred years is not the ability to fill in the right bubble, but the ability to ask questions that understand both the urgency of now and the direction of our future.

Please send  a postcard today (or send another if you've already sent one!):

First Lady Michelle Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington DC 30500

The Texas textbook controversy exploded all over the nation as the Texas State Board of Education considered and then finalized some 100 amendments to revised state history standards a few days ago.

Why should folks in Illinois care about what students in Texas are tested on? Because in the perverse world of standards-based education, what's tested is what's taught, and what's tested in the nation's largest textbook market is what ends up being taught in lots of other places, too.

So, here's what the Texas State school board decided:   

• Speeches by Confederate President Jefferson Davis should be taught in equal value with Abraham Lincoln.
• Conservative institutions such as the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America should be emphasized with no counterbalance from the progressive perspective.
• President Thomas Jefferson’s contribution to the writing of the U.S. Constitution did not promote the concept of the Separation of Church and State.
• The anti-Communist campaign of 1950s Senator Joseph McCarty was justified.
• While not removed entirely, as first proposed, the role of such African-American and Latino heroes as Che Guevera and Thurgood Marshall will be marginalized.

Do this mindful of the fact that 48 states have been collaborating on national standards in reading and math. The final draft of these standards is due to come out tomorrow on this site.

Valerie Strauss included my postcard to First Lady Michelle Obama in her Washington Post Answer Sheet blog today. 

Start sending those post cards today! 

LET'S MOVE away from high-stakes testing!

Here's what I'm writing to Michelle Obama as part of this weekend's postcard campaign:

You are a strong advocate for our children's physical health, and for that we thank you. Today we are asking you to be a strong advocate for their mental, emotional and intellectual health, too – to promote the fitness of their minds as well as their bodies.

You planted a garden at the White House to give children a hands-on experience that would help them begin to think about nutrition. Our children need a garden of learning, too, where we plant great ideas, get children excited about education, and harvest academic success for every student. You've asked children to get active, to move, play, and get involved in sports. Children also need to be freed from bubble sheet learning-- to get up off of their desk chairs in class to create, demonstrate, and integrate!

We'd like you to join us in a new campaign – “Let's Move Away from High-Stakes Testing.” The goal of this campaign is to make sure that children grow up with healthy minds, learning a full, enriched curriculum nurtured by a variety of healthy, active, hands-on instructional and assessment methods.

It's important that the whole country get behind healthy learning, and this includes everyone understanding more about what can happen when schools depend too much on standardized tests.

Because, unfortunately, high-stakes testing is an invasive weed in our healthy garden of learning. Teaching to the test has choked out critical areas like the arts, science, history and civics along with physical activity and sports.

Like fast food, high-stakes tests are easy, cheap, quick – and potentially unsafe when overused. Yet they have become the main dish of schooling despite the warnings of scientists that they should be used only sparingly, in a balanced "assessment diet."

High-stakes testing seems to have a disproportionately negative impact on low-income children whose schools can be the educational equivalent of the urban “food desert.” Unlike more upscale areas, these neighborhoods don't offer a lot of fresh produce or wide varieties of foods, and their schools tend to focus more on the empty calories of test drill than on an enriched, varied curriculum.

It's not by choice that this situation has developed. Schools across the U. S. have been force-fed this testing regime under the harsh test-and-punish policies of the No Child Left Behind Act.

As Congress begins to rewrite this law, we are asking for your help to phase out the bad, unhealthy aspects of testing in our schools and help us replace them with an educational diet and exercise program of enriched curricula, diverse instruction, and appropriate, high-quality assessments.

My husband thinks it would be a bad idea for me to walk the four blocks from our house to the Obama's Hyde Park home to deliver a bunch of postcards to Michelle while they're in town for the Memorial Day holiday this weekend, so I guess I'll just drop them in the mail to the White House with everyone else...

Don't forget to send out your postcards to Mrs. Obama beginning tomorrow (May 28th) asking her to help us reduce the focus on standardized tests in our schools. The Time Out from Testing web site offers sample letters, postcard templates, and other tools.

The Obamas' daughters have always attended schools that offer a well-rounded curriculum and de-emphasized standardized testing.

The message to Mrs. Obama is simple: We want the same education for our children that you provide for Malia and Sasha. Our child is not a test score. Encourage the President to end the use of high stakes standardized tests!

Read more about the nation wide postcard-writing campaign in this Washington Post blog.  

Substance is reporting that Debby Lynch's PACT caucus has endorsed CORE's Karen Lewis for CTU president.

With the endorsement of another losing caucus, the CDSU, earlier in the week, CORE would have enough votes to win in the June 11th runoff election if all members of these two caucuses cast their votes for CORE candidates.

Final vote tallies are still murky, but based on the number of votes for the five presidential candidates reported in Substance on May 24th, CORE's Lewis won about 33% of the overall vote, PACT's Lynch about 18% and CDSU's Porter 7%, or a total of about 58% of the vote for president.

Of course, it's unlikely that all votes will go that way, but the PACT endorsement is a major plus for CORE. 

Rep. Joyce just filed yet another amendment to SB 2494, the voucher bill. Amendment 4 was sent today to the Rules Committee, which can mean just about anything,

I believe that a new amendment will have to be passed by both houses. Will they take the time to give a handout to a handful of private religious schools, while leaving our public schools and hundreds of thousands of children behind?

State rep contact info. State Senate contact info.

Check out this article by Oakland teacher Anthony Cody on an Ed Week/Teacher Magazine blog.

Last year Anthony wrote an open letter to Arne Duncan and then created a Facebook page to collect the ideas of other teachers and to organize a national teacher resistance to Race to the Top and the Duncan Blueprint.

A while ago Anthony sent 100 of the teachers' letters to Obama, and one thing led to another which led to Arne Duncan agreeing to a telephone conference this past Monday to "listen" to 12 of them.

We in Chicago know what it's like when Arne "listens." Anthony had a similar experience, but is committed to pursuing any potential opportunity to help teachers influence the critical federal education policy decisions that are going to be made in the coming weeks.    

I posted this response to Anthony's story:

Hi Anthony- As someone who dealt with Mr. Duncan for over eight years in Chicago, I support your degree of skepticism about any positive outcome of this phone call.

Duncan is where he is because he sounds very sincere when he lies, prevaricates, and covers up the truth. His role has been to pour oil on troubled waters, not to improve schools or educate children. He is the "aw shucks" face of the school privatizers, period.

However, the fact that you did get him to respond is definitely a sign that you're now perceived as a threat. You have brought together and made public so many powerful, compelling statements from teachers. Your strategic approach to the forum was just the kind of careful preparation and follow up work that devastates Duncan and his gang.

You can tell from his vague, pandering comments that he means to assuage you and your allies, not change direction.

But you don't have to roll over for such an obvious ploy. Keep doing what you are doing -- crank it up! lots of us will help! -- and pretty soon Arne's act won't be enough. They may have to actually do something different.

Apparently Fed Ed Head Duncan is getting tired of people (like me) dumping on RTTT and the Blueprint for pushing school reform experiments that have little or no track record of achievement.    

Here's a favorite Arne defensive move from a Tribune business section interview last year:

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

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

Now, apparently, he's channeled that optimism into a set of DOE reports that purport to offer a happier, more positive track record for these strategies. According to the DOE, this set of reports outlines "research that supports the proposals in the blueprint." 

After reading one of these reports, I'd have to say that the most honest and expressive phrase used is "This page intentionally left blank." See, for example, page 3 of the "Fostering Innovation and Excellence" report. This is the report which offers "research-based support" for more charters, "innovation," and school choice.

Apparently, the research base is pretty thin.

For example, the "evidence" supporting charter schools is that "many" charters (wait for Arne's favorite adverb) "dramatically" outperform other schools "in the community or state." The report goes on to mention a handful of charter schools and to detail the hype surrounding them (p. 7), including the Chicago Tribune's highest compliment - they have waiting lists.

On page 9, the report actually acknowledges the major study out of Stanford that found overall dismal results for charters nation wide. But the report "balances" this major national study, which reflects countless other negative findings,  with a small study by a charter supporter focused on New York City schools, and about whose work serious questions have been raised. The overall effect is a too-obvious effort to dismiss the bulk of charter research to suggest that the jury is still out. The report goes on to imply that any problems with charters are the fault of state laws. 

The "research" on charter success (p. 10) wraps up with the work of a Chicago astroturf parent group funded by Bill Gates and calling itself PRISE at the time of the report (it has undergone several name changes since then). The group's overall mission seems to be to expose how stupid parents are for liking their neighborhood schools, and to go door to door to try to convince parents to reject the neighborhood school and choose charters.

The "research" on school choice is summarized with this phrase: school options increase choice (oh, really?) and "have the ability to produce positive outcomes of students" (p. 13). Well, don't most schools have the ability to produce at least some positive outcomes?

And again, parental ignorance is posited as a major barrier to choice programs. 

Turnarounds missing 

Conspicuously missing in this report is any "research" to back up school turnarounds, which are one of the four major strategies required by the RTTT grant program, and pushed in the Blueprint. 

Apparently, Arne and his crack team of researchers decided not to try to fake up the kind of false hype about Renaissance 2010, AUSL, and such schools as Dodge, Sherman, etc. which he tried to foist on the public during the first year of his administration until the lies caught up with him.

Still, this report is an embarrassment, a parody of research, a transparent effort to put lipstick on the administration's piggish plans, and a disturbing portent of what we can expect from Duncan's approach to ESEA reauthorization.  

I just sent this message via broadcast fax to our state representatives:

Why Parents United for Responsible Education

OPPOSES SB 2494 (voucher bill) and

SUPPORTS HB 174 or other fair funding for PUBLIC schools

What if our state elected officials went to Springfield

and all our children, parents, schools, and communities got was a handful of vouchers?

That would be shameful.

Read the rest of the message here.

Act locally, call long-distance toll-free.

Yesterday about 5,000 parents, teachers, students, and other public school supporters shut down rush hour in the Loop to protest threatened city school budget cuts.

Today, the NEA is asking for our support for their Speak up for Education and Kids Day.

They have set up a national toll-free call-in number

866 608 6355

for us to call Congress and urge them to pass the Education Jobs bill, an emergency fund of $23 billion designed to save some 300 thousand teaching positions and avoid some of the catastrophic layoffs that are threatening Chicago schools and other districts across the nation as a result of the recession.

The NEA is reinforcing this message with a TV ad that will air in DC and in select House districts.

When you call the toll-free number, you will first hear about the issue and what's at stake.

You can also e-mail your members of Congress to support funding to save education jobs in the emergency supplemental appropriations bill, and become a fan of Speak Up for Education and Kids on Facebook – a community of educators and concerned citizens – now more than 16,000 strong – who believe our nation has a responsibility to invest in education and avoid the short-sighted cuts that could deprive our students of the bright futures they deserve.

Yesterday the students staged a "study-in" at Daley Plaza to raise awareness of the need for better funding for our schools.

Today it's the teachers, parents and community adding our voices to the call to our state legislators to fix school funding. It's Public Schools Action Tuesday - PSAT.

Tuesday, May 25, 4 - 6 pm

CPS headquarters, 125 S. Clark Street

Some legislators are apparently too busy collecting votes for vouchers to help out private and religious schools -- oh, sorry, I mean, "saving" a few "poor children stuck in failing schools" -- to do their real job and support statewide funding reform.

Some are even OK with the Senate's proposed $400 million in education cuts.

If you can't march today, please go to the noto37 site and send a message to your state reps (the site does it all for you) or make a direct call or fax to your House rep or Senator in Springfield or their local offices. Tell them that we expect them to represent us, our children, and our precious and essential  public school system, and that we are watching them.

What a day.

We have Jon Burge in a courtroom here, up on charges of torturing dozens of black men to coerce false confessions 20 years ago

Then you have the Supreme Court In Washington D. C. ruling that Chicago's firefighters' exam was unfair to African-American applicants.

We're going to try to keep the momentum going with our challenge to CPS's discriminatory student promotion policy. For 15 years, CPS has been flunking a disproportionate number of African American and Latino students based on their annual standardized test scores. This practice has to stop.

,

You can mark your calendars.

Mayor Daley has said a lot of crazy things, but his "jokes" at a Thursday press conference were the clearest indication yet that this man has lost whatever grasp he had on reality.

And it's not just his "up your butt with a bayonet" comments. 

It's the implied threat to the Supreme Court which Daley also blathered about, and which the mainstream media has since tried to suppress:

"Maybe they'll see the light of day," Daley said at a City Hall news conference. "Maybe one of them will have an incident and they'll change their mind overnight, going to and from work."

I think that might be a felony. In fact, Daley does have close personal friends who might take that as a direct order. Yet Daley continues to roam unshackled, shooting off his mouth.

But he is done, over, toast. Mark the date.  

Substance is reporting the unofficial, not-yet-final tally in the CTU election as a close tie between the Marilyn Stewart-led UPC and Karen Lewis/CORE. The two caucuses each received about 30% of the vote in Friday night tallies of the straight party votes.

CTU rules require that the top two vote-getters vie in a run-off on June 11. 

The other three caucuses (PACT, SEA, UDC) are running considerably behind the UPC and CORE.

Substance reports that 34 schools' ballot boxes were not picked up Friday. Those votes will be added, as will the votes of those who split their ballots among various caucuses. Final results are expected Monday May 24th.

So- now we'll be wondering if any or all of the three other caucuses will join forces with either CORE or UPC, or if two-thirds of the CTU membership will vote against the incumbents again on June 11, as they did Friday.  

Last week Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-CA) presented an alternative to Fed Ed Head  Arne Duncan's Blueprint for Reform. She calls it Strengthening our Schools (SOS). 

Congresswoman Chu's report summarized the arguments against the Blueprint, criticisms which have been been gaining increased support throughout the recent hearings held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) and the House Education and Labor Committees.

Rep. Chu claimed that the Blueprint will:

1. Box In Schools

2. Ignore Student Needs

3. Tie the Hands of Teachers and Leaders

According to Chu's report, "The most successful school improvements come about when teachers, parents, administrators and the community all come to the table." The SOS plan, she says, will

1. Promote flexibility and collaboration

2. Remove barriers to student success

3. Foster teachers and leaders

A press statement from House education committee chair George Miller reflected support for Chu's position: "Congress should encourage, incentivize and support the universal elements that research and best practices show are working to turn around the country’s lowest performing schools... Research outlined by witnesses shows that successful school turnaround must include flexibility, shared leadership, professional development, capacity building, extended school and learning time, community involvement and beyond."

"There are elements in the research and our experience that tell us that efforts to improve poor performance work best when we work intensively with school leaders and teachers from a sense of shared accountability rather than demanding accountability on a narrow range of behaviors,” said Jessica Johnson, Chief Program Officer at Learning Point Associates. “We also know that meaningful change is more often sustained when a more comprehensive approach is taken and community and parents as well as educators are involved in the solution. The flexibility to orchestrate these variables is critical to success.”

Among the other House committee witnesses was Chicago's John Simmons, whose effective work at Strategic Learning Initiatives has been detailed here.

I have to thank SSNS's Jim Broadway for the biggest laugh of the day - possibly the week, since the Daily Show is in reruns and Rand Paul actually won his primary.

You have to read all the way through this to get the payoff (and it's important information).

Jim is sharing his distaste for the Illinois Policy Institute:

the sham “think tank” that now “informs” so many legislators. Republicans on the Senate Education Committee, for example, tend to review IPI position papers as bills are debated, turning the pages in unison like the sheet music of an orchestra. The IPI is the force behind the school voucher bill that may pass in the House next week. It also urges, among other things, cutting state funding for early childhood education by $200 million in FY 2011, and zeroing out Regional Offices of Education entirely.

He offers this morsel of praise:

While IPI in fact just advocates privatization – it is a nest of lobbyists, not researchers – and despite the fact that I disagree with most of its positions, I will give IPI credit for performing an act of public service. It has revealed a Republican budget proposal.

He gives us the link to the Excel spreadsheet of the proposal.

Knowing how most of us react to the opportunity to review Excel spreadsheets of budget proposals, he gives this alternative:

Sure, it takes a policy wonk to wade through all this. For those of you who don’t have time for tedious study, here’s an article about the privatization of a public school that you may find more interesting.  

Do it. 

I haven't shared a lot of school-related flamingo news lately. Because there hasn't been much.

But here's something special courtesy of the Christopher House Head Start located at the Rogers Park Presbyterian Church, where we were just celebrating 100 years of ministry to the community. Preschoolers emulating John James Audubon's famous flamingo painting, doing a beautiful job and enhancing the door of the children's restroom...

In weeding out some older e-mails, I came across this report out of New Orleans in which I learned that that Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan claims he wants more black teachers in our schools.

According to nola.com, it's become a "theme" for Duncan this year:

In February, Duncan told leaders of historically black colleges and universities that "we have far too few teachers of color. Only 2 percent, one in 50 teachers today are African-American males. Something is fundamentally wrong with that picture."

Although he didn't spell it out on Friday, Duncan's campaign to recruit more black teachers may be driven by research that found improved test scores for black students who spend at least a year with a black teacher. In past speeches he's mentioned that black teachers are more likely than their white peers to want to work in high-poverty, high-needs schools, the front line for closing what he calls the nation's "insidious achievement gap" between white and black students.

Well, I have a "theme " for you, Arne - why don't you look for some of those black teachers in your own #%&*! back yard, where you buried them?

During his time as CEO of CPS, Duncan oversaw the loss of nearly 2500 African-American teachers, while the numbers of CPS teachers in all other racial groups increased. Take a look at this PURE chart from 2009.   

The situation Duncan created became so egregious that CORE filed a federal discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which will decide any day now if they will send the case to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Passed along from Teachers for Social Justice:

MARCH AND RALLY

TUESDAY, MAY 25

4-6 PM

125 S. Clark St (CPS HQS)

Join the CTU, GEM, and others to protest CPS budget cuts--No to 37 students in a classroom. This is a march/rally for all who are opposed to the cuts and who want the city to pay for the crisis through their TIF funds and other sources.

Why are our children always the ones to sacrifice for their economic crisis? How come no one ever asks why the financial and corporate elites don't have to sacrifice and cut profits instead of teachers having to cut pensions/wages, or children having to have cuts services?

Our messages?

• Cut Board Waste, Chop the Top

• Freeze Charters and Turnarounds

• Make the City Pay [through TIF funds, etc.]

Here's a quote from Ben Joravsky's Oct 22, 2009 Chicago Reader article about the TIF Budget:

Earlier this year Gene Saffold, Daley's chief financial officer, and Christine Raguso, head of the community development department, told the City Council's finance committee that the city had a little more than $1 billion in TIF funds on hand at the beginning of 2009. To put that in context, this year's official city budget was about $6 billion.

So you can see, there's a lot of money out there.

If you want more information on the TIF's, the city's "shadow budget" (Joravsky's term), and more, check out the Chicago Reader TIF Archive.

Anyone remember diagramming sentences? 

In some respects, our 2-year-old LSC lawsuit has been like a masters' class in language arts. A lot of it boils down to sentence structure. Which schools are exempt from the basic LSC law? Under what circumstances? With what exceptions? Do the words "or" and "not" relate to the same verb? What does paragraph 34-2.4b of the school code really mean?

Well, our state legislators are definitely not skilled wordsmiths, so we are now waiting for Judge Stuart Palmer to consider everything he heard today in a two-hour hearing, and let us know what he thinks this part of the school reform law means. 

The hearing was a fairly extensive review of the case's main points for Judge Palmer, who is new to the case. His questions were thoughtful and reasonable. He seems reluctant to go against the opinion of our original judge, who ruled last year that CPS did not violate the law in the case of the original three small schools that filed. But Judge Palmer did probe into some of the same issues as they relate to three new small schools in the case.

He also seems to share Judge Hall's interest in the alternative schools issue, as represented by the dismantling of the LSC at Carver Military School. This was the main reason that Judge Hall denied CPS's motion to dismiss the case.

CPS offered their usual odd assortment of arguments. In response to our attorney Elaine Siegel's statement that LSCs are important decision making bodies, the CPS lawyer claimed that this was a "hyperbole" -- that LSCs really have very limited powers, like selecting principals and deciding on student uniforms. Well, we know that's how they treat the LSC role.

CPS said that it was OK to force R2010 schools to have alternative LSCs because they "didn't ask" for real LSCs (not true, actually) and if they had, it could only be a request anyway and not a right. The fact that they misled school communities into signing off on small schools proposals by promising real LSCs, and then went back on that promise, didn't seem to bother the CPS lawyer.

CPS complained that one plaintiff's attachments were not stapled to his affidavit, so the whole thing should be thrown out (the judge disagreed). 

They argued that the case is too old -- even though they are the ones that have delayed it over and over again. 

And CPS seemed to think it was OK to close a "school" one day and "reopen" it the next, claiming that the school has no existing LSC anymore. Elaine suggested that would be like claiming at the end of every two-year Congressional term that the House of Representatives no longer exists. 

So, we wait for Judge Palmer's opinion. Stay tuned.  

Public Schools Action Tuesday :

If you can't attend the LSC lawsuit hearing today at 11 am (Daley Center, Room 2305) please do something else for LSCs by calling Governor Quinn and asking him to veto HB 6017, the bill that adds a  non-teaching staff member to the LSCs, ending the parent majority. LSCs had no input into this bill. We are concerned that this change could create an imbalance on LSCs by allowing principals to exert more control.LSCs have been the cleanest form of government in Chicago - why mess with success?

Governor's office: 312-814-2121

UPDATE: Thanks to Grand Boulevard's Andrea Lee for passing on the information that the CNN report was rescheduled for Wednesday, May 26th at 7 pm. 

The impact of school closings and the University of Chicago's study on wholistic school reform will be the subject of a story on CNN at 7pm CST/8pm EST this evening (May 17). We know that tonight's story will include the experiences of at least one Chicago family affected by school closings.  

The following day, same time, same station, the U of C researchers and others will discuss school disciplinary policies.

Please join us tomorrow, Tuesday, May 18, at 11 am in Room 2305 in Daley Center. The new judge, the Hon. Stuart Palmer, is likely to take some action regarding the two-year-old LSC lawsuit.

• He may agree with the Chicago Public Schools' motion to dismiss the case. In that event, we will file the case with the appeals court.

• He may decide we will go to trial.

• He may ask from more information and set another hearing date. 

This case was first filed in February, 2008. We have yet to get past CPS's efforts to get the case dismissed. Legal strategies generally take lots and lots of time, but are a necessary part of our overall fight to strengthen local governance of our schools, which is even more important during a budget crisis and with public education itself under attack.

*****

Since the Mayor took over the schools in 1995, CPS has attacked LSCs at every level, in spite of a strong body of research evidence that LSCs have been a key element of the most successful improvements in Chicago’s schools.

LSCs have successfully engaged parents and community members in their local schools, even in disadvantaged communities where civic involvement is historically low. LSC have proven to be the cleanest form of government in Chicago. There is no research showing any negative effects of LSCs.

On the other hand, there is growing research showing the negative effects of Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 plan. The facts show that Renaissance 2010 has disenfranchised thousands of CPS parents, teachers, and community members, is associated with increased youth violence in the city, destabilizes the lives of hundreds of students by causing them to move from school to school or by changing the entire adult staff in their school, and strips communities of meaningful participation in local neighborhood schools which used to serve as community centers.

Steven Colbert did a great riff on the SATs last night. He laid into the test prep companies which "cash in on children's fear" of the tests. He listed the prices of the best-known companies, with Princeton Review topping the pack at $8400. He made fun of the analogy questions. He suggested that a good strategy for getting a great score is to use a number 1 pencil instead of the lesser number 2. 

Right before the SAT story was a bit about the concern of military experts that childhood obesity has become a national security issue. They blame fast food marketing for creating an out-of-shape recruiting pool.

Colbert didn't make an explicit link between that story and the SATs, but there is one. Our children and, yes, our freedom, are just as threatened by the privatization of education which uses standardized tests as the coin of the realm.  Maybe the military experts will stand up for our children's education some day -- after all, a sound mind is at least as important to military readiness as a sound body.

On Wednesday, May 26, the U.S. Department of Education will host a forum for parents, A Conversation with Parents around Family Engagement and ESEA Reauthorization, from 11:00 to 12:00. The meeting will be held at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Building at 400 Maryland Avenue S.W., Washington D.C.

Senior staff will inform parents of the changes in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Parents will have an opportunity to share their concerns, comments and questions.

We're hoping that a number of parents will raise some of the questions and concerns detailed in the recent Parents Across America letter to President Obama and Congress. Check out (and sign!) the PAA petition site where parents are reporting where they've sent copies of the letter.  

No travel for Chicago parents?

We understand that a number of Chicago Title 1 Parent Advisory Council members are planning to attend this meeting, which is great.

However, we have also heard that some are being told to cancel those plans based on a new CPS policy restricting travel due to budget problems. 

We believe that this should not apply to parent travel using Federal Title 1 parent involvement funds. If you have questions or are having problems with your travel plans, or if you want to learn more about the parent forum, please call the USDE Region V office, 312-730-1700. Ask for the parent involvement specialist.

Although PURE wasn't mentioned in today's Sun-Times story about the program, we are among the local recipients of a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation under their new racial healing initiative.

Kellogg is supporting our assessment advocacy work, specifically our efforts to address the disparate number of African-American students who score too low on standardized tests and are retained. Research has shown that retention is harmful, not helpful, and yet the Chicago schools continue to implement this unfair, unsound policy.

Who knew that eating Frosted Flakes as a kid would some day pay off in a chance to do good work?

The old adage, nothing's ever dead in Springfield, is threatening to be confirmed by the voucher bill that we all thought had a stake driven through it.

State School News Service's Jim Broadway reports that SB 2494 will very likely be brought back -- now, while they are supposedly "working" on a budget deal -- and that many of the "no" votes were changed "yes" votes based on a legislative version of playing chicken. So we will probably get to see Rep. Joyce cry again, and I may get a chance to sell my t-shirts.

Call your reps - the game is not over yet!

Public School Action Tuesday - share this call to write a postcard to Michelle Obama on May 29.

Parents, teachers, students, and concerned citizens have initiated a postcard campaign to First Lady Michelle Obama to help end the over-reliance on standardized tests promoted and even mandated by federal education policy.

Here is what Michelle Obama said about the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind program on the campaign trail in Wisconsin on February 28, 2008: “No Child Left Behind is strangling the life out of most schools....If my future were determined by my performance on a standardized test I wouldn't be here. I guarantee that.”

Thousands of us agree with her criticism. We need her help to end the reliance on high stakes standardized tests.

Background: When the Obamas lived in Chicago, their daughters Malia and Sasha attended the University of Chicago Lab School, whose director has stated, "Personal and political agendas are constantly challenging us...Just one of those   challenges, but perhaps the most misguided one, is that somehow the testing of children will restore order, raise accountability, and quite simply raise the achievement level of American children. From my perspective, nothing could be farther from the truth."

The girls' current school, Sidwell Friends, is progressive and focused on the while child. The school's College Counseling Test Guide states   "The school day is not an appropriate time for standardized test prep work."

Unfortunately, President Obama is pushing a different agenda for other peoples' children. We are asking Mrs. Obama to stand with us as we demand for our children the same excellent, well-rounded education with appropriate, quality assessments that she and Preident Obama have chosen for theirs. 

Here's what you can do:

On Saturday, May 29, 2010, get everyone you know to send postcards to the First Lady.

Address the post card to: First Lady Michelle Obama The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC 20500

Dear Mrs. Obama:

We want the same high-quality education for our public school children that you provide for Malia and Sasha. Our child is not a test score. [Our children are not test scores. My child is not a test score. My children are not test scores.]. Please encourage the President to end the use of high stakes standardized tests!

Sincerely,

[your name]

Phil Kadner, writing in the Southtown Star, perfectly expresses the flawed (or is it just careless?) logic of some voucher supporters:

State Rep. Kevin Joyce (D-Chicago), the House sponsor of the voucher bill, made a passionate speech about the need to help children.

He asked his fellow legislators to imagine they were on a bus driving by a body of water where children were drowning. They would have a responsibility, he said, to stop and try to help some of those children.

Some of those children? The responsibility, it seems to me, would be to try to help all of those children.

If you can't do it, fine. But don't you have to try?

Not in Illinois.

You let the weakest drown. You let them turn to gangs and put them on the streets, where they often end up leading a life of crime.

Tune in Sunday to a public affairs program that is likely to get into some honest discussion about what has worked and what doesn't work in public schools. From the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute: 

Penny Bender Sebring, founding co-director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, discusses what it takes to improve schools.  

This edition of "Beyond the Beltway" will address the questions: Why can't we make school reform work? Has everything been tried? There have been school closings and turnarounds. Students have been paid for good grades.  Charter schools and big voucher program are moving forward.Yet for every success story using a new strategy, there seem to be an equal number of flops. What's missing?

 

On the panel to address these questions with Penny Bender Sebring will be:

 

John Simmons--President, Strategic Learning Initiatives

 

Beth Purvis--Executive Director, Chicago International Charter Schools

 

Steve Jubbs--Oakland School Reformer

 

If you are a Chicagoan, you can watch the edition of "Beyond the Beltway":

• Sunday, May 9 - 10:30 PM, WYCC-TV/Ch. 20, Chicago
• Monday, May 10 - 11:00 PM, Comcast Cable/Ch. 3, Suburban Chicago

For our other colleagues and friends, please check your local listings or watch and listen LIVE on the Web on Sunday, May 9, from 6-8 p.m. The programs are also archived.

 

The Tribune reports that Jaye Williams, wife of former detested School Board President, Rufus Williams, was given a $54,000 raise without Cook County Board approval, which seems to have been illegal.

Mrs. Williams was appointed to the position of Chief Financial Officer to replace Donna Dunnings, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger's cousin, who was fired in the wake of a scandal involving a hire of Dunnings. Mrs. WIlliams' raise from $176,000 to $230,000 looks a lot like part of Stroger's end-of-term buying and spending spree.

Rufus Williams was forced to resign his board president post after having alienated just about everyone possible during his reign. I don't know anything else about his wife, but I do know that this story says a lot about how Chicago operates. People can appear to be thrown under the bus one day, from one area of city/county government, only to pop up a while later, clearly back in the game in another area.

These fat cats do seem to have nine comfy lives, all of them paid for by us, the taxpayers. 

So cool to see our GEM colleague, Kellina Mojica (middle, in Sun-Times photo) receive a leadership award from Jane Goodall.

Even cooler that she received this award in part for her activist work against R2010, as reported by the Sun-Times Rosalind Rossi: "Kellina Mojica, a Julian High School senior who helped found the Julian Jaguars for Justice, a club that successfully lobbied for CTA buses to stop more frequently outside Julian. Kellina, 18, who plans to become a civil rights lawyer, also argued against school turnarounds and charter schools at Chicago School Board meetings and helped build homes in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans."

Suddenly I feel a lot better about the future of education.

Well, the defeat of the voucher bill in the Illinois House shoots down my plan to sell t-shirts saying "My legislator went to Springfield and all I got was this lousy voucher."

But I'll get over it.

And anyway, they'll be back with another try - you can count on that. Our hapless representatives won't pass up another opportunity to cry, beg, plead, and beat their breasts for the poor children of Chicago, especially if they don't have to do anything meaningful, like fund the schools adequately.  

Sadly, House voucher sponsor Kevin Joyce just doesn't get it. According to the Sun-Times, he said about the defeat, "Today, those kids lost out because the people that are a part of that system are afraid of one little change: giving kids an opportunity to go to a better school."  

Few want to "escape" anything - and private/parochial schools are hardly the paradise some would make them out to be. .

Anyway, can you imagine the clout list for getting one of those vouchers???. Maybe the Tribune supports vouchers just to assure a steady supply of headlines like the ones for its prize-winning U of I clout series.  

Thankfully, not all of our elected officials are as clueless as Rep. Joyce. The Tribune offers this slice of sanity from Rep. Art Turner, who opposed the bill: Turner "railed against the current educational system, saying improvements need to be made in the home life of children and in the city school system.... 'Chicago Board (of Education), get busy, 'Turner said. 'Do what you're supposed to do.' "

Right. And state legislature, do what you're supposed to do - fund our schools. 

Saying "No to 37!" hundreds of students walked out of school today and converged on CPS headquarters, then marched to the Thompson Center.

According to the Tribune, police shut down several blocks on Clark Street between Monroe and Adams Street for about two hours for the protest. 

We haven't seen this kind of action since 1987 when parents and teachers took over the Loop to end the 19-day school strike and usher in the era of Chicago school reform.

There' s not much to do now except ask Governor Quinn to veto the bill.

Office of the Governor 207 State House Springfield, IL 62706 Phone: 217-782-0244 TTY: 888-261-3336

Office of the Governor James R. Thompson Center 100 W. Randolph, 16-100 Chicago, IL 60601 Phone: 312-814-2121

Here's PURE's position on the bill.

The letter from Parents Across America to President Obama and our congressional representatives has been sent.  

PAA has set up a Facebook petition here. Please sign on to support parents' concerns that the Duncan/Obama Blueprint for America's schools takes the wrong approach and that parents voices must be heard as critical decisions are made about the future of our children's education.

Fed Ed Head Duncan's track record at CPS on parent involvement included dismantling parent-majority LSCs and returning millions of parent involvement funds to Washington because of administrative roadblocks to their use.

But Arne is sunnily optimistic that more money and competition can fix all that. In his May 3 Georgetown speech he proposed the following:    

• Better school report cards.
• More school choice,
• Support for programs that solicit parental feedback.
• More schools that serve as community centers.
• $200 million for Promise Neighborhoods, which include comprehensive social services.
• Allowing family engagement to be included as one measure of success in teacher and principal evaluations (a proposal made by the national PTA).
• Defining professional development of teachers and school leaders to include working with families. 

The 2 percent solution

Arne also wants to double the funding for parent engagement-- from one to two percent of Title I dollars--or a total of $270 million.

States will be able to use another one percent of Title I dollars – about $145 million -- for grant programs that support, incentivize, and help expand district-level, evidence-based parental involvement practices. Parent Information and Resource Centers will be able to compete for these funds, along with districts, community-based organizations and other non-profits.  

So Fed Ed Head Duncan thinks that parents are blind to their own inadequacies and those of their children and local schools. In a speech at Georgetown University on Monday, he said, "Parents and educators have been looking out the window, rather than in the mirror. Inadequate parental engagement is seen as a problem for other people's children--and not our own." That "cognitive dissonance," he said, quoting his "good friend" Lamar Alexander, leads to "this 'I'm OK-You're Not' syndrome" that's "the overwhelming obstacle to everything we are trying to do. Too many [people] say...'Schools are bad, but my school is good. Sorry to hear about [the low] math [scores on national tests] but my Johnnie is doing fine'."

Building on a joke from another of his new best friends, Warren Buffett (Arne seems to have made a lot of rich friends since the move to DC), he says, "we have to stop treating the issue of family engagement as if it was not our dog."  

Gee, Arne, first of all, how about not thinking of parent involvement as a dog?

But let's look at a more critical, real "cognitive dissonance" -- you know, the one where you tie federal funds to failed strategies like charter schools, turnarounds, and high-stakes testing.  

How about instead of looking out the window at the mess you are making across the country, and admiring yourself and your hot shot friends in the mirror, you try looking at a book, at some of the research into your pet programs that other friends of yours are making money off of?

UPDATE - Here's the Facebook page for the students' action.

Here's a story about it in Substance.

Meanwhile, parents across the city are arriving in Springfield to take the same message to our legislators. They urge those who couldn't get to Springfield to send an e-mail message via the noto37 site today.

Our CPS students have been the leaders of the citywide budget protests this year. CPS and political leaders may not value their education, but the students and their parents do, and we are not backing down.  

Parents Across America

Oppose the Administration’s “Blueprint” for Education Reform

Today, parent leaders and advocates from throughout the nation sent a letter to the President and Congress, asking them to keep the parent voice in public education and to oppose the administration’s “Blueprint” for the re-authorization of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) put forward by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Eighteen parent leaders from cities including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington DC, pointed out that the parent voice has been missing from the national debate on education and is entirely absent from the top-down and often draconian proposals being put forward by the administration.

They expressed their conviction that the Blueprint’s proposals would undermine rather than strengthen their city’s public schools, and that these reforms represent large-scale experiments on children with little or no backing in the research, and lacking informed parental consent.

The signers pointed out that the Blueprint removes existing and essential mechanisms for engaging parents, and that the document’s only recognition of the need to involve parents for parents of Indian children be included in the design of school-level programs. They also drew attention to the fact that class size reduction, the top priority of parents in national surveys and one of the few reforms proven to increase learning through rigorous evidence, is omitted from the administration’s priorities.

In many cities, thousands of parents, teachers and students have erupted in protest against the closing of neighborhood schools which are often the anchors of their communities, and in opposition to the prospect that more exclusive screened schools or charter schools will be put in their place. Yet instead of offering more resources and support to improve the troubled schools that our most at-risk children attend, the proposed legislation threatens to further undermine them, by requiring that five percent be closed, turned into charter schools, or that half their teaching staff be fired.  

The signers of the letter particularly objected to the administration’s focus on forcing states to privatize education, by radically expanding their charter school sector. They urged the Congress “to be wary of the influence of venture philanthropy on our public education system,” and to be aware that “powerful foundations are shaping many of our federal and local education policies with dollars rather than evidence-based solutions.”

According to Leonie Haimson, New York City public school parent and Executive Director of Class Size Matters, “the approach of this administration to education reform has been at best oblivious; at worst, it is highly disrespectful of the central role that parents should play in their children’s education and lives. Moreover, the punitive approaches embodied in the Blueprint would undermine and discourage quality teaching and learning, particularly in the nation’s schools that need it the most.”

Julie Woestehoff, Chicago parent advocate and Executive Director of Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) said, “the Blueprint pays almost no attention to the need to address the enormous disparities in funding across and within states, saying only that states should be asked to measure and report on these disparities. Yet in a plan filled with heavy-handed threats and promises of financial windfalls, this statement seems to be a mere afterthought with no consequences attached.”

The parent leaders who signed the letter insist that the next version of the ESEA must formally incorporate the views of public school parents: “As highly knowledgeable primary stakeholders, we must be permitted to have a seat at the decision-making table.”

The letter concludes its message to Congress this way: “You hold a great responsibility in your hands this year in reauthorizing the ESEA. We hope you will listen to parents, the most important stakeholders of our public school system, before you make the radical and destructive changes that the administration has put forward. “

Read the Parents Across America letter here.

From Voices for Illinois Children:

With Illinois legislators scheduled to approve a state budget by May 7, this could be our very last week to fight devastating budget cuts that would harm our children, families, and communities. It's crunch time: We must take action now for a responsible revenue-and-spending plan.   

Please join Voices and other Responsible Budget Coalition members in TODAY'S statewide call-in action. Urge your legislators, "Raise new revenues needed to prevent devastating cuts in vital public services."

Statewide Call-In Day: Today , May 4, 2010

Call 1-800-719-3020 to be connected to your legislators. Thanks to the Illinois AARP for generously providing phone lines.

Visit Voices' website for suggested talking points.

Once you've made your calls today, you may wish to send a follow-up e-mail to your legislators reinforcing this message using the Responsible Budget Coalition's new e-mail tool.  

First there was the Tribune "Stroger-ing" a handful of Republican legislators who appear to be less than gaga over vouchers. It's the newspaper's new "git 'er done" strategy -- they call folks out by name, threatening them with the wrath of the Trib if they don't toe the Trib party line. The election countdown is listed at the bottom of the page, every day. 

Oh, and don't forget the line, "We'll find out in the next couple of days if they, and the rest of the House, will vote for parents and kids or …"

Yeah, it's all about the parents and the kids. 

Now State School News Service reports that an out-of-state group is promoting call-ins from across the country to push vouchers on our state. 

"See the list of targets below," a Washington-based conservative advocacy group instructs web visitors as it urges them to carpet-bag support for SB 2494, the pending school voucher bill.

Americans for Tax Reform describes the voucher bill as "revolutionary," although is it like other voucher programs, none of which has worked. ATR says the vouchers' cost would be current per-pupil spending in Chicago or the tuition charged at a private school, whichever is less. Not true in its current form.

"Rather than pursuing the tired agenda of shoveling more taxpayer dollars into failing schools, SB 2494 would allow the money to follow the student to a school of his or her parents' choice," says ATR. ATR gets its misinformation from the Illinois Policy Institute, the Springfield-based privatization group that masquerades as a think tank and somehow has become Illinois GOP legislators' new best friend. But who populates this "list of targets"? Thirty-four Illinois House members - all of them Republicans.

Lobby, even if you don't live in Illinois The IPI must have told ATR these Republicans may be "soft on vouchers." Actually, they may be right. If so, the efforts of teachers unions, the ACLU and others who are concerned about vouchers effects, and about the Constitution, may be working.

ATR thinks non-Illinoisans should play a role in this. "Whether you live in the state or are concerned about the trajectory our national public education system is following, call the provided list of target legislators ... and tell them to vote yes for a sensible budgetary policy," ATR urges its readers.

By the way, if you want to voice your opinion on the bill, you'll find House members' contact information on the General Assembly's web site. The bill is still on second reading, so there's still time to act. The House doesn't convene today until noon. Another amendment has been filed. It will need a hearing to be adopted, but that could happen today. A final vote is unlikely before Wednesday.

It's great to have students writing about some of the stories that otherwise don't get much attention, and nice that we can share them around electronically!

Thanks to Patrick Smith for this one on PURE's LSC lawsuit. 

Check out this article by Ramsin Canon on Gapers Block. It's a detailed, definitive critique of R2010 and other efforts to privatize education and choke it with standardized tests. Here's a quote:

"As President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan take the Chicago model of slow-burn privatization national, Chicago may just be seeing a full fledged revolt against it. With the recent revelation that there are now no educators among the CPS top leadership, scrutiny of a reform program dominated by entrepreneurs and private interests (including a Board of Education stacked with financiers and real estate developers) is likely to sour people further.... Teachers have been under a full assault by corporate interests and the disingenuous reformers they underwrite for decades, and this assault has only intensified since the election of Barack Obama to the White House and the elevation of former CPS CEO Arne Duncan to the top of the Department of Education. Obama and Duncan have undertaken to bring Chicago-style education reform to the level of national policy, without any evidence whatsoever that that reform works."

Share this article with friends, especially those across the country who need to know what to watch out for. 

The new Raise Your Hand Coalition is planning a rally tomorrow, Sunday, May 2, at Lane Tech High School (Addison and Western) beginning at 2 pm.

The group was recently organized by CPS parents concerned about the looming budget crisis in our schools, and the long history of underfunding by the state. So far about 50 CPS schools are represented in the coalition.

They are asking parents and other school supporters to sign the NOto37 petition and share it across the city & state.

RYH is planning a Springfield Lobby Day on Wednesday May 5. They will leave at 6:30 am from Audubon School, 3500 N. Hoyne. Please contact RYH using the Google Group (see link below) if you plan to go with the group to Springfield.

Join the Raise Your Hand Google Group here. You can sign up to receive emails, read the latest “discussions” or volunteer to help on a Sub-Committee (Technology/Website, PR/Communications, Events, Membership/Outreach or Advocacy).

My letter to the editor (first posted here in an expanded format) was published in the Tribune today along with a great letter from the Consortium's Penny Sebring (read all the way down the page) about local models of reform.

Not that that has stopped the Tribune from continuing to be stupid (see here and here, a review of the documentary "The Cartel" which concludes that charters and vouchers are needed to counteract those horrible teachers' unions).

We have just heard that HB 6017 has moved out of the Senate Education Committee and is on its way to the Senate for a final vote.

This bill, which would add a non-teaching member to the LSC and destroy the parent majority which has worked well for 20 years, was the only item on the committee's agenda. No testimony was allowed, and at least one committee member who had questions about the bill was not allowed to ask them. It was "approved" on an attendance roll call vote, which means that everyone in attendance went on the record as voting yes.

This bill is a train wreck waiting to happen. Please contact your local state Senator NOW to get his or her promise to vote NO on HB 6017. Here is their contact information.

Read more here. 

Nice to see that Ron Huberman is confident enough in his financial future to spend $898,000 for a five-bedroom house on the North Side.

According to the Tribune Real Estate section, "The 11-room, Victorian-style house, built in 2008, had been listed for $947,500. Features in the three-story house include 3 1/2 baths, three fireplaces, a finished basement, two wet bars, 8-foot solid cherry doors, crown moldings, Brazilian cherry hardwood floors and a chef's eat-in kitchen with Viking and stainless steel appliances, a large island and cherry cabinets."

CPS continues to deny that Huberman has gotten a raise this year despite the cleaning and dicing the Reader's Ben Joravsky gave the story.

Loved seeing this picture in the Sun-Times today - talk about a power surge! PURE's Wanda Hopkins and CORE's Karen Lewis team up to take on the Board of Education at yesterday's meeting here's the full story. 

There's a great profile of Karen and her campaign for the CTU presidency in this week's Hyde Park Herald, too, though due to that paper's 20th century tech capacity, it's not online yet. Check the HPH link in a day or so - it will update eventually. 

So cool to see this NBC5 story about a Taft High School senior, Marko Delic, running for (and winning!) a community spot on the school's LSC. Marko was concerned about the potential cutbacks in sports programs due to CPS's most recent doomsday budget.

Although thousands of people log hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours as council members every year, there is so little good press about LSCs that this story was especially welcome.

The piece offers a nice overview of LSC roles and responsibilities, and demonstrates why people are attracted to joining an LSC - it offers the best opportunity to make a difference in your school.

Join the Raise Your Hand Coalition in a planning meeting tomorrow evening, Thursday, April 29, at 7 pm at Coonley School, 4046 N. Leavitt.They are hoping that each CPS school will send 2 leaders from your LSC, PTO, PAC, etc.

They're going to be working on a rally at Lane Tech HS (Addison and Western) at 2 pm Sunday (5/2) and a rally in Springfield on 5/5.

It was great to see a turnout of RYH parents at our GEM/Student leader press conference this morning! United we are even more powerful! 

More on the RYH group here.

We've found out some more about HB6017, the bill that wants to add a non-teaching staff member to the LSC.

We've heard that the CTU asked for it, that Designs for Change is on the record in favor of it, and that CPS has decided to oppose it.

Read more about the bill here.

The Senate Education Committee is meeting tomorrow, Thursday 4-28, at 3:30 pm  - just to consider this bill. Many of these folks don't know anything about LSCs. They need to know why the parent majority is important. They are being told that non-teaching staff are not represented, which is not true - all staff vote and are represented by the 2 teacher LSC members. The way the bill is written is a mess, too.

The members need to hear from you TODAY or tomorrow morning - tell them, don't mess with the LSC balance:

Chair -James Meeks: Springfield phone 217-782-8066 Local phone/fax: 708/862-1515/862-4745

J. Bradley Burzynski - Springfield phone/fax: 217/782-1977/782/4885

Dan Cronin - Springfield phone 217/782-8107 Local phone/fax 630/792-0040/792-8620    Deanna Demuzio - Springfield phone - 217-782-8206 Local fax- 217/854-5311

Michael Frerichs - Springfield phone: 217/782-2507 Local fax: 217/355-5255

Susan Garrett - Springfield phone: 217/782-3650 Local phone/fax: 847/433-2002/433-8002

Kimberley Lightford: Springfield phone: 217/782-8505 Local phone/fax: 708/343-7444/343/7400

David Leuchtefeld: Springfield phone: 217/782-8137 Local fax: 618/243-5376

Iris Martinez: Springfield phone: 217/782-8191 Local phone/fax: 773/463-0720/463-0795

Kyle McCarter: Springfield phone/fax: 217/782-5755/783-0116

Heather Steans: Springfield phone: 217/782-8492 Local phone/fax: 773/769-1717/769-6901

Our state legislators are falling all over themselves to get a voucher bill passed before the session ends, and they've already expanded the number of charter schools to get in good with the federal Race to the Top evaluators.

They are completely out of touch with what parents want. This CPS report makes it clear that it's not "choice," vouchers or charters.

In 2009, 26,381 CPS students were eligible to transfer to other schools because they were "stuck" in schools deemed as failing under NCLB. 

483 students applied.

Only 276 or about one percent of those eligible actually transferred.  

Only 1 of the receiving schools was a charter school.

Bill Gates thinks that this is because parents are just too stupid or don't care. That's why he's funding fake parent groups to go around convincing folks that our neighborhood schools are all horrible and that we need more turnarounds and charters. 

Well, Bill's reasoning is as flawed as a new Windows operating system. (That's why we recommend Linux.)

The truth is, parents overwhelmingly want good neighborhood schools, not "choice." That's what national polls say. That's what this CPS report make obvious.

Our legislators need to get off the privatization train, get a clue, and get with the parents and the general public who want all public schools to succeed - and that means we need our state legislators to get off their rear ends and give us fair, adequate state school funding.  

There's so much going on this week - the Board of Education meeting, GEM protests, and the continued craziness in Springfield - here's an EASY thing you can do to for Public School Action Tuesday (PSAT) - send a message to your state representatives via the "NoTo37.org" web site to provide fair, adequate funding for Illinois schools. Say NO to 37 (oh, okay, now "just" 35 students) per CPS classroom.

Fill in your information and the site will automatically send your message to your representatives.

Our elected officials seem to think that they should go home early this year (to begin campaigning for re-election based on their great track record of getting things done for the state, I guess). Do you think they should go home without taking care of state school funding??? If not, send a message! NO RECESS for you until you have done your homework!

And don't forget to join the Facebook page for Raise Your Hand, the multi-school CPS parent group that has come together to fight for our children's education.

Raise Your Hand is holding a planning meeting Thursday, April 29, at 7 pm at Coonley School, 4046 N. Leavitt Street. They are hoping that every CPS school sends 2 leaders from the LSC, PTO, or other school group to this important meeting.   

Our new judge just informed our lawyer that he wants more time to review our case and has canceled tomorrow's hearing.

While we are frustrated by these continued delays, it's encouraging to hear that the new judge is taking the case seriously.

Thanks to everyone who planned to be there - please spread the word about this change, so that we don't have too many people showing up for nothing tomorrow.

We'll let you know when we have a new date.

Here's what the case is all about.

Passed on from CORE's Jackson Potter-

Chicago Youth Initiating Change (CYIC), the Grassroots Educational Movement (GEM), and the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) will be co-sponsoring a press conference and picket against the proposed educational budget cuts slated for the 2010-11 school year. 

The press conference/picket is scheduled for Wednesday, April 28th beginning at 10 am at 125 S. Clark and then again at 4pm at Federal Plaza located at Dearborn and Jackson.  These organizations will holding a press conference where they will be presenting solutions on how to solve the current educational budget crisis schedule to take place in Chicago.  Afterwards, the demonstration will march to local, state, and federal government buildings in order to provide our public officials with a list of demands. 

These actions are in response to the $600 million deficit, which will drastically impact the Chicago Public School system in the following areas: ·        Increased class sizes of up to 35 students. ·        Layoffs of more than 2,700 hardworking teachers.  ·        Major reductions in after-school programs. ·        Major reductions in funding for magnet, Montessori, gifted and other specialized programs. ·        Significant cuts in Bilingual education. ·        Major reductions in full-day kindergarten programs.

Join students, parents, teachers, and community members as they take to the streets to fight to save public education in Chicago.  If you are not a Chicagoan, please still come and stand in solidarity against these educational budget cuts as this crisis is occurring across the state of Illinois. 

Please feel free to forward this information to anyone that is interested in supporting this cause. 

UPDATE: We understand that the Chicago Teachers' Union is behind this bill, and that Designs for Change is on the record supporting it. We've also been told that CPS is opposing the bill. Wow- are we on the same side for a change?

Another heads-up from Jim Broadway at SSNS shows why LSCs need our own lobbyist in Springfield...here's HB 6017 which passed the House unanimously back in February that would add a non-teaching staff person to every local school council.

Calls to your state senators on this are in order.

School staff vote for and are currently represented by the two teacher members. While it's not the worst idea to have non-teaching school staff as LSC members, it destroys the key parent majority on the LSC, which has been one critical element of LSC success. If the make-up of the LSC is going to be changed, more parents should be added to maintain that important parent majority. 

Where was LSC, parent or community input into this bill? 

The Senate Education Committee meets this Thursday at 3:30 pm to consider this bill alone. Committee members are: James T. Meeks, Heather Steans, Deanna Demuzio, Michael W. Frerichs, Susan Garrett, Kimberly A. Lightford, Iris Y. Martinez Dan Cronin J. Bradley Burzynski, David Luechtefeld, and Kyle McCarter.

SB 2494 has passed out of the Executive Committee and is headed to the House floor where, according to resident expert Jim Broadway, it may be voted on tomorrow.

The speed is likely an indication that Madigan intends to let this bill pass. Is this a bone they are throwing at bill sponsor Sen. Meeks to deflect him from the real issue, the failure of the General Assembly to address true school funding reform?  

Last chance to call your House representative and get him/her on the record about this bill. You may have to call the Springfield numbers. Here's why they should vote no. 

It was nice to read Mike Klonsky's letter opposing vouchers in the Sun-Times this morning. Mike was pointing out that S-T editorial writer Steve Huntley misconstrued the facts about vouchers, claiming that they worked when in fact they have not improved student outcomes. I'd thought about correcting Huntley myself, but sometimes I just get tired of being the only one carping on these issues. Thanks for the carp assist, Mike.

Propaganda is an ugly word, but promoting groups that pretend to represent parents' concerns while fronting for the corporate education agenda is ugly, too.

Here's the headline of the latest piece of propaganda that Catalyst recently posted about SAGE, the most recent incarnation of a Rev. Patricia Watkins-led astroturf "parent" group:

"New campaign urges parents to understand the poor quality of their schools"   

You know, we learn in organizing 101 to lead with a positive message -- what are you for? Maybe this is why Rev. Watkins is on her second or third version of the same group.

The "Schools Suck Bloc" - U.S. students lag Uzbekistan, etc. 

The first tip-off that this "campaign" is a front for the corporate agenda is that the event was focused on a student report comparing state and U.S. schools with "the rest of the world." 

This is a favorite exercise of anyone looking to raise the fear factor about our public schools -- OMG!!! The U. S. is lagging behind Singapore in science!!! Soon there will be a Singaporean yanking out the U. S. flag from the surface of the moon because our children are just too darned badly educated!!!

To understand how bogus these comparisons are, just take a look at this analysis from the Fair Test web site, or an article by the late Gerald Bracey, "The Evolution of the Schools Suck Bloc,"  in Huffington Post.

The Bad Fairy of School Reform

The second tip-off is Watkins herself, who has become the Bad Fairy of School Reform. She shows up everywhere to spread the educational bad news equivalent of the curse on Sleeping Beauty ("Aurora will prick her finger and die!"). Watkins is not only the head of the new SAGE group (stands for Statewide Action and Grassroots Education) but she also heads the Target Area group and the PRISE group (funded by the Gates Foundation to "educate" parents on the West Side about how bad their schools are and how much they need PRISE ally AUSL to run their schools), convened the short-lived City Wide Education Organizing Campaign, and represents us parents on the Advance Illinois board. Watkins is also a paid staffer for Grow Your Own Teachers.

Same groups, different "campaigns"

The list of Watkins' fellow leaders at another one of her groups, the United Congress of Religious and Community Organizations, is almost identical to what Catalyst refers to as a "wide variety of groups" making up SAGE, and last year's list of sponsors of the City Wide Education Organizing Campaign's Summit. Recycling? or just rebranding?

Teacher bashers

The third hint is the quote from Tim Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a group founded by teacher-bashing Washington D.C. schools superintendent Michelle Rhee. NTP supports linking teacher pay to test scores. Daly's quote says it all: "good teachers aren't being rewarded and bad ones aren't being punished."

Maybe we should just get out the stocks and the tar and feathers.

Parents just need business to help us understand

Finally, there's Watkins' overt play for business support. According to Catalyst, she believes that "parents need to collaborate with business people and research groups." I don't have a problem working with research groups as long as they are not working directly for the business groups, But that's not easy to sift out.

"I think what's been missing is the critical voice of the parent," says Watkins. So, we wonder whyshe works with a group that opposed HB363, the bill (now law) that wanted to bring the parents' voice into facilities decision making?

PURE began our fight for fair, adequate state school funding about 20 years ago. We joined a group called Coalition for Educational Reform which ultimately filed a lawsuit against the state for failing to be the predominant source of K-12 school funding as the Illinois constitution required.

The court rejected that case, saying that this was a legislative problem and that it was the responsibility of the state's elected officials to address it. They failed to take on that responsibility.

In 1992, PURE helped get a referendum on the statewide ballot to force the state to provide at least 50% of all school funding. The referendum needed a 2/3 majority to pass. It fell short by only a few tenths of a percent. 

The fight has gone on since then. The parents pictured here were with PURE in Springfield in March, 1997, making the same case as Chicago Public Schools parents are making downtown at the Thompson Center today, and that the Responsible Budget Coalition is advocating for in Springfield. 

And while this decades-long struggle for fair, adequate school funding reaches a crisis, the Tribune and others are making a full-court press to get a voucher bill passed. What's wrong with this picture?

There's so much for you to do tomorrow that I'm giving you this Public Schools Action Tuesday (PSAT) off to get ready.

1) Vote in the elementary school LSC elections- remember that you can vote in your local community school election, at any elementary school your children attend, and at many magnet schools. For example, Inter-American Magnet School has always been a hotbed of parent involvement since PURE's Joy and Bernie Noven helped in the school's earliest days -- and this election is no different! IAMS has a large election area - call the school to find out the exact perimeter, and VOTE!!!! Here's how!

2) Join CPS parents demonstrating for fair state school funding - Wednesday, 4/21 beginning at 9 am at the Thompson Center. Details here. Folks, our state legislators are planning to call it quits in just over 2 weeks without a plan for solving the severe budget crisis. Are we going to let them get away with it???

3) If you feel really ambitious, you can join the projected 15,000 people headed to Springfield to deliver a more personal message to our representatives: The Responsible Budget Coalition has brought together more than 200 groups to demand that the state create a fairer tax and budget system. Lots of good groups involved, though PURE and others seem to have been left off their invite list. 

4) If you still have some energy left after all of that, please call your state rep again and make sure he/she will oppose the voucher bill, SB2494. Here's why!

Thanks to Grand Boulevard's Andrea Lee for alerting folks to the Monday, April 26th meeting of the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force. This is the second meeting of the group, and the first to be held in Chicago.

The meeting will be at 10 am at the Bilandic State Office Bldg - 160 N. LaSalle, Conference Room N-505.

This is a public meeting. 

The minutes of the first meeting, which Andrea passed along in an e-mail, show some promising signs. It's great to see that Jackie Leavy, the great leader of the late lamented Neighborhood Capital Budget Group, is in a key staffing position. The expert witness they called is Mary Filardo, who runs the excellent 21st Century Schools Fund in Washington, D.C. Mary has a long track record of supporting capital planning advocacy here in Chicago.

And, it's worth a lot to see comments like these placed in the public record:

Rep. Soto: Why can’t the Chicago Public Schools plan with the communities to ensure continued use of local school buildings for students from local families? It seems like CPS improves schools, then pushes out the children who had previously attended them.

Ms. Evans (CTU) remarked that she has observed schools being brought into a state of good repair by CPS, only to be closed, consolidated, put into CPS’ “turn-around” program, or turned over to charter school operators under the City’s and CPS’ “Renaissance 2010” program.

Dr. Berry (Chicago Principals' Association) agreed with Ms. Evans and Ms. Carroll that CPS’ capital spending priorities seem to prioritize schools in gentrifying neighborhoods, while letting other facilities languish without adequate investment, and questioned how CPS is choosing which schools to repair, in relation to other educational programming and school restructuring

And it's always good to get our public servants on the record admitting that they can't tell their buttresses from a hole in the ground: (CPS staffer Taylor said that she)

cannot provide information as to what happened to schools that have received facility investments, vis-à-vis CPS’ educational programming decisions, the Renaissance 2010 program or the Modern Schools Across Chicago Program (which is TIF-funded).

Finally, while we shouldn't have to pass a General Assembly resolution to get it, it will still be useful to have the information that CPS promised to provide to the Task Force: 

• List of schools that were given to charters and AUSL

• List of all schools that received facility investments, with the capital costs, over the past five years, including schools funded through Modern Schools Across Chicago.

• Chicago Public Schools’ Chief Administrative Officer Robert Runcie (and other CPS staff that deal with the educational aspect of facility investment funding) will report to the Task Force on which schools receiving facility investments were closed, consolidated, or turned over to charters or contract schools, including the sources of funding for renovations, new construction, and capital repairs.

• List of schools where the CPS “Ground Breakers” Program has operated in the past, and is currently operating.

It was reported that CPS has opened 5 new schools under the Modern Schools Across Chicago program this year and next year they will build 17, with the final 6 to be built the following year. Maybe with this task force we will be able to keep track of who is benefiting from all that capital money that CPS always says they don't have. 

The Sun-Times columnist Stella Foster is reporting that CPS Chief Education Officer Barbara Eason-Watkins is leaving at the end of this year to become superintendent in Michigan City, Indiana.

The next step toward a well-deserved retirement?

Maybe I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but we really do need to step it up and stop vouchers in Illinois. SB2494 is scheduled for a hearing in the House Executive Committee this Thursday, April 22, at noon, and there's a good chance that it will be sent to the House floor. The bill already passed the Senate due to an unusual alliance of Republicans and African-American and Latino Democrats including Sens. Delgado, Hendon, Emil Jones, Jr., Lightford, Martinez, Munoz, and Sandoval along with sponsor Meeks.

Read about some of the main problems with vouchers here. Here's the list of House member contacts. You know what to do.  

I just wrote this letter in response to the Tribune's endorsement today of the bill:

It's disappointing that Steven Chapman's thoughtful analysis of current school privatization “reforms” like vouchers and charter schools (“Education reforms get a failing grade”) didn't migrate across the page. Just days after publishing Chapman's excellent essay, the Tribune editorial board is once again throwing its weight behind the pending state voucher bill and test-driven teacher evaluation.

Chapman looked at the facts, including the solid research that voucher programs do not work, and concluded that we need to look more deeply to find answers to school problems. But your editorial board chose to ignore the facts and promote a false “either or” choice of the status quo or costly strategies which have been proven to be ineffective.

How much better it would be if you looked a little deeper, as Chapman suggested, and supported education reforms with real track records of success. There are working models in our own back yard, such as the local school council-based reforms of the 1990s detailed in Designs for Change's The Big Picture, the wholistic approach described in the Consortium on Chicago School Research's Organizing Schools for Improvement, and the parent- and teacher-centered programs of Strategic Learning Initiatives.

It's time to move away from your knee-jerk advocacy for privatization and teacher bashing. Our children truly cannot wait for real school improvement to take hold across Chicago.

 

We'll be back in court on Wednesday, April 28th, at 12:30 pm, as our small schools LSC lawsuit moves ahead. This is our first date since our original judge recused herself.

New judge and courtroom: Judge Stuart Palmer, Room 2305 Daley Center.

Here's what the case is about.

Yes, that's a Board meeting day and public participation will still be going on... that will make it a hard choice for some folks, but it is VERY important that we show our new judge that this is an important case for the community. Please come out and show your support!    

Parents from several schools across Chicago are planning a fair school funding demonstration on elementary school report card pick up day, this coming Wednesday, April 21, from 9 to 10:30 am at the Thompson Center.They want parents from every school to join them in this important event!

Here's a flyer for the event. They even have a Facebook page! 

Don't forget to vote in the LSC election that day, too!

From Jan Ressinger of the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries:

Just after noon today, Florida Governor Charlie Crist vetoed the radical Senate Bill 6, that would have eliminated all tenure for new teachers and made teacher pay and continued employment highly dependent on student test scores. 

Strong opposition including massive protests grew around this bill in Florida, where Crist received more than 109,000 e-mails, the majority requesting his veto of the anti-teacher bill.  Here is an analysis from the Miami Herald.

The public reaction to this bill from parents, teachers and students signals opposition to policies in Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top federal stimulus competition and also policies being proposed in the President’s “Blueprint” for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now called No Child Left Behind.

A strong argument for term limits... doubt that Jeb Bush would have done that.

Was it a meteor? A UFO? Or just the light of reason dawning at the Tribune (Education Reforms get a Failing Grade: Neither conservatives nor liberals have a cure for bad schools)?

Of course, he immediately states that the other side's reforms (he lists lower class size and increased funding) haven't worked either. You know, "Well, we were both wrong."

But I'll let that pass and bask in the hope that this new enlightenment will take root across the page -- I expect to see Tribune board editorials any day retracting their support for Sen. Meeks' voucher bill (they loved it as recently as two weeks ago), slamming the Advance Illinois agenda for our state's Race to the Top proposal (they just came out for more charters and test-driven teacher evaluation) and demanding more accountability from charter schools (here's just one example le of the double of the double standard they have been using).

Chapman does something even better than admitting that the Trib has been wrong -- he admits that we don't know enough about what works in education and why, and cautions that imposing one-size-fits-all solutions "such as those offered by the Obama administration" is the wrong approach.

But we do know some things. There are models of success in our own back yard, such as the local school council-based reforms of the 1990's detailed in Designs for Change's The Big Picture, the wholistic approach described in the Consortium on Chicago School Research's new study, Organizing Schools for Improvement, and the parent- and teacher-centered programs of Strtegic Learning Initiatives. 

And we need to stop wasting time on all the mandates and top-down "fixes" that don't work and get busy doing a better job expanding some of the things that do work.

Catalyst has a fine article on new surveys of teachers about current education reform ideas. The body of the story makes it clear that teachers have some serious problems with test-score-based teacher evaluation: "(T)eachers have said loudly and clearly in two recent national surveys—one conducted by Learning Point and Public Agenda—that standardized tests are an inferior way to evaluate them."

But you wouldn't know that if you, like many folks, had only read the headline which, at 3:20 today, read: "Surveys show teachers not opposed to using test scores to rate teaching."

Huh?

At 3:23 I posted a comment challenging the headline and suggested that this kind of thing causes people to suspect Catalyst of editorial bias.  

By 3:30, the headline had been changed to "Surveys show not all teachers oppose use of test scores to rate teaching."

Plus points for being responsive to readers. Minus points for not making any kind of sense.

But read the article. It offers some good information and places the issue in the context of fast-moving processes to begin test-based teacher evaluation in Illinois. The train is out of the station and headed for your school and your children's education. 

Public School Action Tuesday (PSAT) - What can you do today to support public education? Call your state representative and get their commitment to vote NO on SB2494, the Meeks-sponsored voucher bill  - you can find their phone numbers here.

I know, this is the same action I suggested last Tuesday, but SB2494 has moved in the House from the Rules Committee to the Executive Committee, and has a real chance of moving on to the floor for a vote as soon as next week. Jim Broadway of State School News Service points out that it is the Democratic Hispanic and black legislators who helped pass this bill in the Senate: 

The Democrat supporters were primarily members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus and supporters in the Hispanic legislative bloc. With the guarantee of solid GOP support in the House, the same voting blocs could easily send this bill to Gov. Pat Quinn for his signature.

What's wrong with vouchers?

First of all, they don't work. Just this week, a study of the longest-running voucher program, in Milwaukee, found that voucher students do no better than regular public school students. 

Secondly, vouchers take scarce funds away from public schools and sends them to private and/or religious schools that are not accountable to the public.

As I mentioned in my post last Tuesday, Senator Meeks has provided us with a perfect example of why vouchers will not solve school problems or serve all children. Salem Christian Academy refuses to admit students who score below the 50 percentile in reading and total math. "S.C.A. is not a school that can accommodate students with special educational needs. We attempt to enroll students who are able to achieve at grade level with a minimum amount of special assistance.

Public schools must serve students who need special assistance, and they need our help to keep the resources flowing in, not out.

Finally, vouchers distract us from the real work of improving schools for all of our children.

Call your state representative today!

A student letter in Sunday's Tribune said it as clearly as could be: "ISATs should be removed from schools in Illinois."

Why? The ISAT is simply not a good measure of student learning. Laurel Chamberlin, the student, goes on to say, "In a scientific experiment, data are collected many times before the outcome is assumed.... Ideas of a student in elementary or middle school should be expressed not through multiple-choice questions on a standardized test but in ways that truly demonstrate the knowledge of a student."

Critical decisions about the amount and type of testing are being made right now in Illinois, in Washington DC, and across the nation as Race to the Top is implemented and ESEA is rewritten. 

Our children get it. Parents and teachers get it. Will our voices be heard? 

FairTest's Monty Neill and Lisa Guisbond are guests on the Washington Post blog "The Answer Sheet" this morning, challenging Congress to toss out the President's Blueprint for Reform of ESEA and offering better, research-based alternatives.

Neill and Guisbond point out that the Blueprint may actually widen the educational opportunity gap by getting rid of the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) yardstick, which will allow most middle- and upper-income schools to escape the kind of consequences that caused some of them to be labeled as failures under the current accountability system. AYP would be replaced by a focus on the "lowest-performing" 5% of schools based mostly on student test scores and so most likely to affect schools in low-income communities.

Fortunately, FairTest has been working hard and effectively in Washington, promoting the better alternatives laid out in the Forum for Educational Accountability platform. Your donation to FairTest is one positive thing you can do to work for better education for all children.

Today we're launching PSAT - Public Schools Action Tuesday.

Everybody can do one simple thing for public education today: call your state representative and get his or her commitment to oppose SB2494, a bill sponsored by Sen. James Meeks to provide vouchers for private school tuition to a specified number of low-income students in low-performing CPS schools.

This bill has already passed the Senate! We need to stop it in the House.  

You can enter your home address on the form at this link to find your state rep's contact information. They are on spring break this week and should be reachable in their home offices.

Why should lawmakers oppose this bill?

• Vouchers take money away from the public schools which are already under-resourced.
• Vouchers give public funds to private/religious schools which do not serve all children, are not accountable to the public, and have no overall track record of better performance.
• Vouchers distract us from the real work of improving schools for all of our children.

Senator Meeks has even provided us with a perfect example of why vouchers will not solve school problems or serve all children. The admissions policy for the private religious school Rev. Meeks runs states this requirement: “Students entering grades 3rd through 8th must score at the 50 percentile or above in reading and total math on most recent standardized tests.... S.C.A. is not a school that can accommodate students with special educational needs. We attempt to enroll students who are able to achieve at grade level with a minimum amount of special assistance."

Public schools must serve students who need special assistance, and they need our help to keep the resources flowing in, not out. Call your state representative today!

Due to the potentially devastating CPS planned cuts and the general destruction of public education, CPS students have come together to organize a special direct action on April 8^th. Please help spread the word.

A "Field Trip for Our Children’s Future" to fix unequal education funding at all levels.

When? Thursday, April 8th

Here's the schedule - join in whenever and wherever you can:

• 9:00 – 9:30:  Families Gather in front of Inter-American Magnet School, 851 West Waveland
• 9:30 – 9:50:  Teach-in and Rally (quiet, peaceful, and respectful) 9:50 – 10:30:     Board Buses to 125 S. Clark (bring $5 per seat)
• 10:30 – 10:45:  Begin Rally and March as People Arrive
• 10:45 – 12:00:  March and Deliver Demands to Chicago Public Schools, the Federal            Government, the City of Chicago, and the State of Illinois
• 12:00 – 12:15:    Rally w/ Speeches by Students and Parents

Here is a list of the students' demands.

Here's a flyer to share.

We expect that the students will bring up the recent Chicago Reader article exposing the significant salary increases CEO Huberman and other high-paid bureaucrats just took, even as Huberman was claiming that there is no money.

Don Moore of Designs for Change reports that extending the LSC candidate nomination period added about 700 more folks onto the 6,000 or so who had been signed up by the original deadline. That puts the total higher than the 2008 numbers (6383 in my records) and in the same ballpark as 2006 and 2004.

Only 4 schools will need to hold special elections because they will not have enough LSC members to gather a quorum. LSCs which have vacancies but which have enough members for a quorum can appoint eligible people to fill those positions.

***

In more good news, the Murray Language Academy LSC successfully lobbied CPS to get their 7th and 8th grades back.

A politically-connected Hyde Park group (is there any other kind?) had put together a plan in 2002 to turn several Hyde Park area schools into K-6 schools and feed the 7th graders into Canter, a struggling local middle school.

The LSC at Murray, a high-performing magnet school (where I was an LSC member from 2004-2009) was never completely on board with the plan, and when families began to abandon the school in droves, moving their children as early as 3rd or 4th grade to schools where they would be able to stay for 7th and 8th grades, the LSC got busy, and their efforts have paid off.

Some in the local community have tried to make this an issue of "support for Canter." Canter has done well recently under excellent leadership, but it was not the right choice for many Murray families. One school should not be pitted against another. One of the many virtues of LSC governance is that there is a body empowered to determine what is right for their school, and take steps to make that happen, 

Congratulations, Murray LSC! 

I don't usually go in for military metaphors, but I was really struck by the important point made by ret. Major Will Clark in a letter in this morning's Tribune:

Do military leaders blame their troops when a battle is lost? As a retired military officer, I know a military leader would never do that. This responsibility code does not exist for our politicians and senior education leaders.

A battle will always be lost if not focused on a clear objective. As a Vietnam veteran, I believe we lost that war because political leaders did not assign a clear and reachable objective. We were just fighting communism in the jungles. Similarly our politicians and education policy-makers are causing us to lose the war to improve education because they refuse to target a clear objective. Even worse they blame front-line teachers for that loss.

In fact, a large segment of the US public didn't respect the soldiers who fought in Vietnam and we all suffered from that mistake, one which we as a nation have clearly decided we will not make again.

But if we continue to attack our schools' front line troops in a war whose objectives, as defined by our leaders, President Obama and Arne Duncan, as "winning" higher test scores and more choice and privatization, we will, as Maj. Clark says, "be fighting in the education jungle" for years to come.

****

For more thoughtful commentary, check out this great letter by CORE's Jackson Potter in yesterday's  online Tribune edition. Jackson challenges the Tribune's support for charter schools, citing the research evidence that they do not improve education. Yep, that's what I just told them about vouchers yesterday.

Well, he might be too morally challenged for Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, but Steven Hill seems perfect for an administrative job at the Chicago Public Schools.

The Sun-Times reports that Stroger was about to hire Hill for a $127,000 job when someone thought to Google him, and found a report in last Sunday's Detroit Free Press that the FBI is investigating him for possibly diverting $57 million in assets from the Detroit Public School system.

"Hill and his assistant allegedly diverted millions in school funds to vendors who provided little, if anything, in return, the Free Press reported, citing court records.

"Hill — director of DPS risk management from 2001-05 — received luxury vehicles and other kickbacks, according to the suit the school district filed against him. Some of the vendors who benefited were friends or associates of Hill's or relatives of Hill’s assistant."

Apparently no one at the county called Hill's previous employer before offering him the job. Although Stroger spokesman Eugene Mullins still says that Hill "has an impeccable resume," they have withdrawn their offer.

OK, CPS, the guy is available. He sounds like the perfect fit for the classic CPS budget shell game of missing computers, ghost payrollers, and secret fundraising accounts.

Thanks to State School News Service for reporting that the ACLU has sent out an alert for folks to oppose SB2494, Senator Meeks' voucher bill which recently passed out of the state senate, a first for an Illinois voucher proposal.

The ACLU page provides an easy way for you to contact your state reps, who will be taking up this bill after the spring break. Now is also a great time to give your rep a call at the home office. 

Note that  such senators as Delgado, Lightford, Sandoval, Munoz and Hendon voted yes on this bill.

I just sent the following letter to the Tribune in response to their rah-rah response ("Victory for Vouchers!") to Senator Meeks' voucher bill passing the  Senate.

The Tribune once again irresponsibly touts a failed education reform, hailing school “choice” through vouchers as a good in itself, and suggesting, without any evidence, that if families shop for their children's education in the private market, public schools will improve.

Even more unfortunate is your failure to mention that the sponsor of the state senate voucher bill, the Rev. Sen. James Meeks, has a direct financial conflict of interest in this issue. His Salem Baptist Church runs a private religious school which will be able to collect voucher funds if the bill passes.

A close look at the web site of the Salem Christian Academy displays another serious problem with vouchers and other forms of school privatization that the Tribune ignores.

The school's Student Admission Procedure states “Students entering grades 3rd through 8th must score at the 50 percentile or above in reading and total math on most recent standardized tests.... S.C.A. is not a school that can accommodate students with special educational needs. We attempt to enroll students who are able to achieve at grade level with a minimum amount of special assistance."

That's the reality of school choice, and it doesn't sound so good to us.

****

Numerous efforts to reach Senator Meeks to discuss this and others of his proposals (some of which we support!) have been ignored.

The information about Salem's admissions policy came from a comment by Rod Estvan on the Catalyst blog, which I passed along last fall.

Folks seem pretty upset to hear that someone has been stealing the bleachers from Orr High School. Just walking off with them, one after another. New bleachers. The nice shiny kind of bleachers you get when CPS closes your school and gives it away to a private school manager. 

That's right. Orr only got this new sports facility, which cost $150,000, AFTER the school was deemed a "failure" and closed. 

You can watch the WGN video here.

And that's not the first time that CPS has waited until after they have labeled a school a failure, closed it and given it away before they decided to invest in the school's sports program. 

It happened at Sherman "School of Excellence," which got a running track and an artificial turf playing field, but only after CPS shut it down.  

There are a lot of other high schools across the city that would love new bleachers. They should be careful what they wish for.

Oh, and apparently they caught the thief.

We saw it happen over the weekend- "Dr. Death" David Pickens resigns in the wake of the news that he maintained a clout list for magnet school admissions. 

As if there would be no clout list if Pickens had not kept one. 

This morning, it's CPS spokesperson Monique Bond "explaining" to the Tribune why CPS has such a hard time providing timely, adequate special education services:  "There's a point of communication breakdown where the district is not getting the information it needs from the schools."

As if special education services would simply flow to all disabled children if only the schools would communicate better.

PURE has worked with special education families for over 20 years. The REAL problem with getting services is now and has always been the central office, which relentlessly pressures principals and schools NOT to offer or provide needed services. It's just that simple.

No, the real CPS success story is that they continue to get away with their blame game, their scapegoating, and their outright, damn lies.

It would make sense to call for people like Monique Bond to be fired for misleading the public, but these Daley sycophants never stay around that long anyway. After all, there are lots of other city departments that need someone to lie about what they do, too.   

Not really.

But, Illinois did not make the first cut.

Guess we were just a little too slow in selling out our children.

Giving a clear indication of where the Obama administration is going on education, the announcement was made today that only Tennessee and Delaware have been awarded Race to the Top funds in the first round of the new federal aid to education competition.

Experts' first impressions are that these two states won because of their strong commitment to tying teacher evaluations to student test scores.

My sister, Kristin Ziama, a retired Milwaukee Public School teacher and new Tennessee resident, supports this theory. She commented:

What the state of Tennessee has done recently speaks directly to the points Julie Woestehoff made in her RTTT article. To prove they have an aggressive plan to gain more Federal money for their public schools, they have proposed that 50% of teacher evaluations will be based on student performance on standardized tests. This means that schools with students that do well will receive the most money, instead of putting the money where it is needed. It also means placing an over-emphasis on standardized tests, putting the blame for students' poor performance on the teachers, and making the test, and not the enrichment of curriculum and general knowledge, the main focus of education.

I love it when my big sister says I'm right...

But that's about the only positive thing about this news. We are being told that Illinois placed fifth in the race, so it's likely that our state will receive funds in the next round, no doubt after our legislators have made even more bad decisions.

Tomorrow is the last day to sign up to be an LSC candidate. CPS extended the date hoping to add to the approximately 6,000 candidates signed up as of last Wednesday. It takes at least 7,000 candidates to cover all the LSC positions, and more for contested elections.

You can find links to the nomination forms and other useful information here.

Forms must be in the school offices by 3 pm tomorrow, March 24th.

The Sun-Times' Esther Cepeda wrote a thoughtful column yesterday about the changes to NCLB/ESEA proposed by President Obama's Blueprint for Reform. She's hopeful that a refocusing of the law's mission will undo some of the damage caused by NCLB's relentless focus on math and reading test scores:

(B)y the time I stood at the front of my own classroom and was finishing up my master's in education in the early 2000s, it seemed the overriding educational goal of policymakers, administrators and not a few teachers was to create lifelong achievers. And not necessarily high achievers mind you, but kids who could sit quietly and do well enough on standardized tests to achieve adequate yearly progress.

I don't really share her optimism, which is based on the addition of arts, sciences and social studies and a new goal of making every student "college and career ready" as opposed to just proficient on math and reading tests. Since standardized tests will likely remain the prime measure of any of these new goals, things are only going to continue down the path that she describes above. 

I do agree with her overall sentiment that we have lost the true purpose of education. Cepeda contrasts the federal law with the mission statements of her alma maters, for example:

Roosevelt University, which trained me as a teacher, says it is "dedicated to the enlightenment of the human spirit." Its aim is to prepare "diverse graduates for responsible citizenship in a global society." 

She adds that programs based on these kinds of goals are the only ones that will truly create new jobs and move this country ahead. NCLB or the new ESEA are dead ends that will rob our children of their future. 

Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com

The points below are summarized from an excellent analysis by the United Church of Christ Witness and Justice Ministries:

What are some concerns about the Blueprint?

• Requires extremely punitive, unproven interventions for 5 percent of public schools that have been unable over time to raise their test scores.
• Relies on competitive grants, which means that millions of at-risk children will become “losers” in the race for federal funds. ESEA was originally designed as extra support for such children, and was distributed by a formula to assure that the neediest children received the most benefit. The new plan perverts this mission for the purpose of institutionalizing privatization of our public schools.
• Blames school teachers. Because the Blueprint, like NCLB, fails to address massive resource inequality across public schools, it shifts the burden of school reform once again onto the backs of school teachers who are expected somehow to compensate for society's structural injustices. The Blueprint also bases teacher evaluation in significant part on student growth on standardized test scores, a merit-pay scheme, though it acknowledges that classroom observations and other unspecified factors perhaps should be considered as well.
• Continues to rely heavily on the worst kind of standardized testing. Although the Blueprint proposes to improve tests by adding growth models and creating immediate feedback after standardized tests are administered to help teachers with instruction, no one yet has found a workable way to implement these good suggestions. Rather than use multiple measures (multiple sources of different types of evidence of student learning) promoted by hundreds of civil rights, education, and religious groups nationwide, the Blueprint relies on standardized tests which are neither intended nor designed to be the sole measurement of a child's learning. These tests have led to a narrowing of the curriculum to the specific areas on the test. Unfortunately, the Blueprint seeks to re-broaden school curriculum by encouraging states to create similar tests in the arts, the social sciences, and the humanities.
• Relies too heavily on charterization and school privatization. The largest study of charter school quality, a study conducted at Stanford University, found that the majority of charter schools do not match in quality their surrounding public schools. Many have raised concerns about whether all children have equal access to admission in charter schools, and whether children with a range of special needs are accepted or find appropriate programs in charter schools. Charter schools lack transparency in Illinois and other states; one positive proposal in the Blueprint is that charter and other autonomous schools must be subject to the same accountability systems as traditional public schools.
• Does not significantly expand opportunity to learn. The President's proposal pays mere lip service to the need to address enormous disparities in resources. The proposal includes only one of the steps we have proposed to expand resource opportunity: that "states be asked to measure and report on resource disparities and develop a plan to tackle them." However, in a Blueprint filled with carrots and sticks, there appear to be no consequences for states that ignore this request.

Here's more analysis of the President's plan to revise NCLB, called "the Blueprint for Reform." 

What's potentially positive in the Blueprint?

• Recognizes that student achievement is affected by poverty, lack of health care, and lack of enrichment activities outside the school day and during the summer by praising (though not greatly increasing funding for) the "Community Schools" concept.

• Grants flexibility for schools serving American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native children to ensure that programs reflect the cultures and languages of these children, and invites parents to help develop school programming in these communities (but does not offer similar support for African-American or Latino students or their parents).

• Limits interference in all but the bottom 5% of schools.

So, the transparent system to "fix" the bad CPS facilities planning process will start with less than one day's notice, in SPRINGFIELD. Great start, guys.

We would not have known about this meeting at all if not for an e-mail sent out by Task Force member Andrea Lee yesterday. 

The announcement she sent around includes these ironic words:

"This open meeting is for parents, community groups, educators, and members of the public interested in understanding and impacting a more fair, transparent, and accountable Chicago Public Schools facilities’ policy and legislation. " (emphasis added)

I agree with Substance, which claims that "the process by means of which members of the 'Task Force' were selected was a secret from the public that the 'Task Force' was supposed to empower."

I had applied to be a member of the Task Force representing PURE. The criteria under the law for community group representatives was "past involvement in school facility issues." I listed these credentials:

• I am a veteran LSC member and a 20-year CPS parent advocate.

• I was an appointed member of 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.

• I was also a member of 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 must inclusive and community-based. We are committed to helping assure the broad and meaningful involvement of CPS parents and LSCs.

Although no process for applying had been made public, I sent an application letter to Speaker Madigan and Senate President Cullerton (who were each to appoint two community members) and to HB 363 key sponsors Rep. Cynthia Soto and Sen. William Delgado.

I never received a response to any of these letters. 

The only information the larger school reform community has gotten about the Task Force has come from members Andrea Lee (Grand Boulevard) and Cecile Carroll (Blocks Together), who have at least tried to bring some transparency to this supposed transparent process.

It's a shame that the dog-in-the-manger tactics of some organizations, wanting to be "in charge" and take credit for wider community victories, can lead to tactics that are no better than the ones that caused the problem in the first place.

This unfortunate secretiveness puts a shadow on any potential good that might still come out of the Task Force's work.   

The Developing Government Accountability to the People (DGAP) group is mad at Mayor Daley, too. DGAP has given him a bad report card, in part due to his sub-standard schools programs.

PURE was part of this group in the early days, when we used to time the report card to respond to  Daley's State of the City address, which he used to give at an annual League of Women voters fundraising luncheon until they got onto his bad side (not sure why - but you can imagine how those democracy-loving ladies could irritate the little despot).

The DGAP proposals for education we started out with remain about the same, which suggests that we need to crank things up if we are going to get any of these changes:  

1. Ensure LSCs maintain full powers, and support them through adequate funding levels that provide training and supports for LSCs to do their jobs.
2. Implement a moratorium on school closings until a detailed analysis of the impacts of shuffling children is completed, and until a real plan to address the quality of safety and education for every child is in place.
3. Develop and implement a more comprehensive, holistic and fair approach to evaluate student and teacher performance in order to weed out false indicators of performance in high school, college and the workplace, which are currently produced via the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT) and the ACT test standard.

It's great to see the strong media play this year's report is getting (Trib, Sun-Times, for example) - and, again, that suggests that the Mayor's meter may be running out. 

Dad of two CPS seventh-graders Eric Zorn shares a common experience in his column this morning: how to deal with the extraordinary pressures the CPS selective enrollment system puts on 12 year old children. He describes his conflicted feelings about "helping" one of them get a better grade in a couple of recent assignments.

Zorn had called me to talk about the situation, and we had a long conversation about the current system and what might be a better alternative to the increasingly two-tiered CPS school system. I'd offered some thoughts on this subject before in response to an earlier Zorn column on vouchers. (Here's the gist of what I wrote.) In his annotated column, Zorn states that he disagrees with my "optimism" that all schools could be improved, though he leaves out my condition that all schools be given the same level of support that, say, R2010 schools receive.

But reading the various responses to Zorn's column makes it clear that few folks are really interested in thinking realistically about improving all schools. Those that think they have the answer to failing schools offer vouchers, home schooling, or fairy tales like Urban Prep -- which "lost" 50 students in order to "win" a reputation for sending 100% of its graduates to college.  

Those of us who believe in school reform instead of "magic bullets" have our work cut out for us. 

Nice to see a positive editorial about LSCs in today's Sun-Times:

This is the 20th anniversary of LSCs, an experiment unique to Chicago to give parents and neighborhood folks a real voice in running their schools. For the most part, research suggests that LSCs work, helping schools function better and drawing resources and parents into the schools. But LSCs are only as good as the people who run for them.

Don't just take the editors' word for it. Here's Joe Moreno, newly-appointed 1st ward alderman, in the same Sun-Times issue: 

Moreno...has served as a member of the local school council at Jose Diego Academy..."What I can bring as a businessman and as a local school council member is sort of a bridge and a connection to those two entities because they really need to be working together," Moreno said.

Take a look at this list of candidate numbers to see how many have signed up to run at your local schools as of last Friday - please consider signing up yourself!  Who knows, you too may become an alderman!

The candidate numbers document is pretty confusing - the first, third, and fifth columns are 'minimum candidates needed" - the second, fourth and sixth columns are the actual numbers.  

And please also note that the new deadline is Wednesday, March 24 (not the 25th as was previously reported). Here are some PURE tip sheets to help you run a good campaign, and links to the nomination forms.

 “We know that it takes all stakeholders working together to improve our schools. The Administration’s plan leaves out students’ first teachers—their parents. There is no attempt in the ‘blueprint’ to support parents’ efforts to be more involved in their children’s education."

-from press release by National Education Association in response to President Obama's proposal today to overhaul the No Child Left Behind Act

And that's not the only disappointment in President Obama's "Blueprint for Reform," his administration's plan to revise the No Child Left Behind Act. I'll be commenting on more issues in the next few days. Meanwhile, here are three major changes being proposed:

• No more 2014 deadline for 100% proficiency
• No more busing/transfer options for students in so-called failing schools.
• No more mandated supplemental educational services for the same students.  

Finally, someone has put their finger on the pulse of Chicago.

Yesterday' Sun-Times published a letter from Rev. Webb Evans, a long-time African-American activist, complaining that lots of folks now have to pay to go to church. What's worse, "Church people now in many places in Chicago are coming out of a funeral service, prayer meeting, business meetings and other church programs and finding parking tickets on their cars."

Last Mothers' Day I got a parking ticket after coming out of church.

The words "Thanks a lot, Mayor Daley" went through my mind. Don't suppose that ever happened to "Sis" Daley, the Mayor's mom.  

Well, the Rev. Evans predicts that the parking meter mess will turn into another Montgomery bus boycott, and he's blaming Mayor Daley, too.

Chicagoans' level of discontent with the mayor has been simmering since the beginning of the parking meter fiasco last year, and things seem to be heating up along with our recent unusually springlike temperatures. 

A set of articles in this week's Chicago Reader captures the city's mood, beginning with Mick Dumke's "Time for a Revolution,"  which takes off from a similar parking meter comment he overheard in a restaurant. Ben Joravsky takes apart a March 8 New Yorker piece on Mayor Daley, suggesting that its author was taken for a ride, and provides a laundry list of Chicago's Daley beefs. Finally, Dumke offers a list of 10 potential challengers to the Mayor, including Miguel DelValle and the Rev. Sen. James Meeks.

Dumke's theory is that Daley will run again: "Daley is more Ahab than Nixon. He's operating on his own logic, and he's not going to change his course for anybody, even if it takes the ship down."

That certainly jibes with the experience of education activists, whose protests against Daley's Renaissance 2010 program have become an almost daily event, yet the response has simply been more of Daley's pig-headed defiance.

It's true, as Dumke admits, that the candidates running against Daley in recent elections have faired poorly, and other potential challengers like Jesse Jackson, Jr. have eliminated themselves. But he also makes a strong case that real opposition must be mounted against the Mayor in the next election (2011). We can no longer allow this little despot to run roughshod over us and our children.

So, who's it going to be?  

We understand that Sen. Meeks has decided not to call SB 3063, his anti-LSC bill, this week. Senate bills that do not pass out of committee by tomorrow will not be voted on this session unless they are granted an extension. We'll keep an eye out for that, too.

Given that President Obama has promised yet another huge pot of money to expand Chicago-style school "reform" across the US, it's even more important for us to keep telling the truth about what's really been happening here. 

With the help of my eagle-eyed sister, I responded to a St. Paul, MN Pioneer Press editorial which suggested that Minnesotans should consider mayoral control of schools. Today they printed my cautionary letter which included what we think is a better idea:

"a more balanced accountability system with an empowered, elected school board running the schools and a mayor who effectively leverages his or her office to serve the students."

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Rep. Marlow Colvin, normally an LSC supporter, has introduced HB 6017, a bill to add an appointed non-teaching school staff person to each LSC.

This would make 12 members at the elementary school level and 13 at the high school level, and mean that parents would no longer have a majority on the LSC. 

We can't imagine what problem Rep, Colvin is attempting to fix here. There is plenty of evidence that the current make-up of the LSC is working well.

HB 6017 is on the agenda of the same Wednesday 8 am House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee meeting with the elected school board bill.

Wednesday, March 3, is going to be a busy day in our state capital. Friday is the last day for committee action on Senate bills (a week from Friday for the House), so the push will be on to decide which bills survive.

• At 8 am, HB 5415, a bill for an elected Chicago school board sponsored by Rep. Anazette Collins, is on the agenda of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee which will meet in Capitol Room 114.

HB 6017, a bill adding a non-teaching staff member to each LSC, is also on the agenda of this meeting (read more here).

• At 10:30 am, the Sub-Executive Committee-Education, meets with an agenda made up entirely of Sen. Meeks' bills, including his voucher bill (SB 2494), his charter cap-removal bill (SB 2495), and his elected Chicago school board bill (SB 2500), but not SB 3063, his anti-LSC bill, which is on the agenda of another committee meeting Thursday (see below).

• At 3 pm, the House Appropriations-Elementary & Secondary Education Committee will hold a general hearing on "testing." Not sure what that's all about, but we think it would be good for them to hear from parents, teachers and students about the problems with too much testing...

Then, on Thursday at 1 pm, SB 3063, Sen. Meeks' anti-LSC bill, is listed on the agenda of a meeting of the Senate Executive Committee in Room 212 Capitol. Most of our experts doubt that the bill will even be called, but a call to Executive Committee chair Ira Silverstein ((773-743-5015) asking for his support in killing the bill would be a good idea.

At Wednesday's Board of Education meeting, parent activist Sharon Schmidt challenged the amount and quality of testing in our schools and made the following proposal, according to this Substance report:

1. Give parents a schedule of every test every child is expected to take during the year, and include a description of each test.
2. After each test is given, provide parents with a copy of the test and an explanation of how it was scored and how the results are being used.
3. Allow parents to opt out their children from any testing the parent deems inappropriate, experimental, or excessive. 

Illinois law does not require individual students to be tested, and so some parents outside of Chicago have opted their children out of the ISAT.

However, in Chicago, a student can be held back a grade if he or she does not take the test, since CPS uses the ISAT score to make promotion decisions in the elementary grades. Parents who might want to opt their children out of the ISAT run the risk of CPS forcing the child to attend summer school or be flunked.

We've learned that President Obama's proposed FY11 budget will eliminate funding for Parent Information and Resource Centers (PIRCs).

The National Center for Parent Involvement in Education (NCPIE) learned of the change last month in a meeting with a Dept. of Education official.  

What's a PIRC?

Just as a lot of folks haven't heard of L-SCAB, which I wrote about earlier today, a lot of parents -- especially in Chicago -- have no idea what a PIRC is. 

These centers are funded by the federal Department of Education under Federal Title 1, supposedly to support parent involvement in the schools and to inform parents about their rights under ESEA (the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which we used to call NCLB).

The experience of Chicago parents with PIRCs has not been especially useful. For years, the only PIRC in Illinois was located in downstate Lincoln. Lots of help for Chicago parents, right? Some people in the PIRC in-crowd were invited to the PIRC's annual conference in Chicago. Some of us who have been parent advocates for over 20 years have never seen the inside of a single Chicago PIRC conference.

PIRC, or perk?

Then, about four years ago, the feds decided to expand the PIRC program, and opened up RFPs to more groups. PURE applied, and our application was highly rated. That makes sense, since we have been doing -- for free, for years, -- what PIRCS are designed to do.

And a group in Chicago was chosen. Perhaps you've heard about them or attended one of their parent programs. Oh -- no? Hm.

The group in Chicago is the Office for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia University. They were awarded about $4 million. PURE is very familiar with OCAP's previous parent involvement work, and were not at all impressed. What do you think about their $4 million service to Chicago parents so far? 

We believe that much of PIRC funding goes not to groups with the best track record helping parents, but to groups with the biggest budgets that can afford grant writers who are savvy about writing federal grants. I wrote ours myself. It took weeks and filled a 2-inch binder. We lost to Columbia by only a few rating points.

No outcry here

Parents need a LOT of help, and it's unfortunate to watch any funding for parent programs go away, but in our experience, PIRCs have provided little or no help for parents, and have instead feathered the nests of groups that do little with these big payouts but hire staff and take meetings with each other. So, we will not be adding our voices to the outcry against elimination of PIRCS. 

Something that we believe would make the ESEA/NCLB parent component stronger would be more monitoring and enforcement of the law's existing provisions for local school parent programs.  CPS wastes this money and allows and even encourages schools to waste it by using it to pay for expensive conference fees and airline travel for two or three favored parents or school staff. That does not help a school improve parent participation.

Charter/choice connection?

We are also VERY suspicious about why what is left of the PIRC program is being consolidated with the federal Charter School and Parent Choice programs, as described in a letter being circulated for sign-on by NCPIE.

Are they hoping to direct federal funds to replicate the Green Dot LA Parents Union, a group that was established by the Green Dot charter school company to convince parents to turn their public schools into charter schools? Do they like the local Chicago PRISE model, an astroturf group that exists to educate parents about how bad their schools are so that they will embrace turnaround companies like AUSL?

We intend to find out.

As an LSC rally takes place -- for some reason planned by its sponsors in competition with the Board of Education public participation session prior to a critical school closing vote -- there's good news in the form of no news on SB 3063, the anti-LSC bill the rally-ers are protesting.

There was a Senate Education Committee meeting in Springfield yesterday, and SB 3063 was not on the agenda.

Today, a whole raft of bills were sent by the Assignments Committee to the Education Committee for their consideration.  SB3063 was not among them. 

There is still just one sponsor of this bill - Sen. James T. Meeks. No one else has signed on in support.

So, no news -- good news -- so far. We'll keep our eyes open and keep you posted.

A funny thing happened at the Local School Council Advisory Board (aptly referred to by LSC advocates as L-SCAB) meeting Monday evening. A motion was made, voted on, and approved! This is the first and only time in our memory that such a thing has been allowed by Mayorally-anointed L-SCAB chair (and City Hall employee) Tom Grey.

A Brief History of L-SCAB

Some of you may not know about L-SCAB, which is not surprising.

State law established L-SCAB in 1995 to advise the Board of Education on issues affecting LSCs, and unwisely gave the Board the power to decide how L-SCAB members would be selected. To make sure that L-SCAB's advice would never be meaningful or useful, CPS decided that 6 members would be directly elected by LSC members (one per region) and the remaining 9, a strong majority, would be appointed by the Board, which also appointed Tom Grey as L-SCAB president-for-life. 

Grey is famous for stating that there was no reason for meeting minutes to be taken -- until someone "reminded" him of an LSC 101 training point which he must have learned but forgot -- that all public bodies must maintain minutes.

Grey has done an excellent job for the mayor, managing to keep L-SCAB from being of any use to LSCs, in part by refusing to allow members to make motions or take any action.

Then in 2008, PURE's Wanda Hopkins was elected to L-SCAB, and things have changed.

For one thing, CPS staff now only rarely bring any important information to the L-SCAB meetings. L-SCAB usually meets on the Monday before the monthly Board meeting. In years past, there was some effort by CPS to go through the motions of asking the group for input on items on the Board agenda. Of course, there was never any official dissent.

Now that Wanda is on the L-SCAB roster, she reports that LSCAB is not being told much anymore.

So, what did they do Monday?

At this week's meeting, L-SCAB voted to approve a motion (made by Wanda) to send a letter to CPS formally opposing SB3063, the anti-LSC bill sponsored by Sen. Meeks. 

Who knows what they'll do next !!!

Yesterday at a GEM-sponsored press conference, University of Illinois/Chicago Education Professor Pauline Lipman presented a "summary of research" report which included an overview of 10 studies that call into question the effectiveness, fairness, and legality of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Renaissance 2010 (R2010) program.

As Dr. Lipman pointed out in her comments to the media, there is no independent research supporting the Mayor's signature school reform program. 

These consistently negative findings on R2010 strategies bear directly on Education Secretary Arne Duncan's controversial Race to the Top competition. State applications are rated and will be awarded funds based on their adherence to certain key elements underpinning R2010 such as school turnarounds, expanded numbers of charter schools, and high-stakes testing.  

Dr. Lipman listed the following concerns with the R2010 program:

• Students have been transferred from one low-scoring school to another; overall the moves did not significantly affect student achievement.

• R2010 leads to exclusion of vulnerable students, increased school violence, disruption of teaching and learning, disruption and demoralization of receiving schools, destabilization of students and communities, and displacement of teachers.

• CPS charter high schools are not performing significantly better than CPS neighborhood high schools, while enrolling less special-need, ELL, and low-income students.

• Students and communities disproportionately affected are low-income African American and Latino.

• School closings are concentrated in gentrified and gentrifying areas.

• Case studies of schools proposed to close for under-enrollment indicate that CPS uses flawed enrollment data.

• There has been little genuine participation of parents, teachers, students, or communities in decisions affecting them.

• R2010 schools’ governing bodies are not open to public scrutiny.

• Charter schools nationally tend to be more racially segregated than regular public schools.

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Today's Education Committee hearing ended up being quite a show! Several aldermen gave scathing accounts of their view of R2010, and Alderman Munoz forced the committee chair to change her mind and hear public testimony from a small representation of the many folks who came out to support the R2010 school closing moratorium. It was a powerful day.

You can read some of the documents that were handed out at the successful GEM press conference that was held at noon. These include:

• the press release,
• PURE fact sheets on missing children, Top 10 reasons R2010 is a failure, and problems with Illinois charters,
• Dr. Pauline Lipman's summary  of research showing serious problems with R2010.

GEM is holding a press conference today at noon, 2nd floor of City Hall, to share some of the concerns parents, teachers, students and the community will testify to the City Council Education Committee about in their 1 pm hearing on a resolution for a moratorium on Renaissance 2010 school closings, turnarounds, and phase outs. 

Beginning at about 3:30, we expect several busloads of students, teachers and parents from schools threatened with closure, etc, to arrive at City Hall to support the moratorium, join those already at the hearing, speak to other aldermen to get their support for the resolution, and visit Mayor Daley as a follow-up to an earlier attempt to meet with him about school closing issues.

You can read the press alert here.

Stay tuned for more details.

The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) has written this statement in strong support of local school councils and against SB3063.

Here's part of what they say:.      

"When discussing SB 3063, Senator Meeks stated that he wants to 'bring the issue of education to the discussion table and to hold CPS more responsible for school leadership' and that he believes 'most LSC members are not sophisticated enough to pick principals and approve budgets.' Nevertheless, Senator Meeks admits that 'in functioning communities, you have a functioning LSC and in disfunctioning communities, you have dysfunctional LSCs.'

"Although MALDEF agrees that there should be more accountability on the part of CPS, eliminating the decision making authority of all LSCs is both ill-conceived and ill-advised. As recognized by the United States Department of Education, parental involvement in a child’s education is highly correlated with higher test scores, better attendance, and higher graduation rates, among other things. Based upon this research, Senator Meeks should be seeking to find additional ways for LSC members to participate in their children’s education, not the opposite. MALDEF believes that parents, teachers and community members are educated and sophisticated enough to make the sorts of decisions LSCs are empowered to make. Although some LSCs do not function perfectly, scrapping the entire system is simply wrong.

"MALDEF urges Senator Meeks to withdraw SB 3603 and instead find ways to assist LSCs to function more effectively by providing them training and additional support."

I don't know anything about college sports, but I know Arne Duncan and Bill Sweetland has him pegged exactly in this Huffington Post article:

"The educational leader of our country should never be an apologist for the forces of anti-intellectualism. But that is what Duncan's piece amounts to: a bristling defense of pseudo-amateur college athletics....Mr. Duncan's delusions bring up the question of his fitness to be Secretary of Education."

Finally, someone who can beat Duncan in basketball.

The name of my favorite "independent, non-partisan" education advocacy group cropped up in today's Tribune article about former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's million dollar "transition" office.

Apparently federal law says we have to pay House Speakers for an office for up to five years so that they can clear up all those pesky little loose ends that Speakers have to clear up after they leave the position (finish burying the bodies?).

Hastert seems to be pushing the envelope with his expenses - $6,300 for office space in the suburbs, $860/month for a car, and $300,000 for three staffers.   

The Tribune also reports that "the taxpayer-funded office also has assisted Hastert's work with nonprofit groups, including the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid committee and Advance Illinois, an education reform group."

Hastert is a member of the Advance Iliinois Board, which is co-chaired by former Gov. Jim Edgar and mayoral brother Bill Daley.  

It's obvious that AI has clout. It's not often that you see the members of our state legislature's education committees falling all over themselves with happiness to be told what to do, lapping up AI's "recommendations," and asking how fast AI wants to see them enacted into law (as in, for example, our new charter and teacher evaluation laws.)

Well, you know what they say -- if you sleep with the dogs, you might end up with a few fleas. 

Here's some practical advice for the LSC election:

• How to get elected (English and Spanish) 
• How to write a speech for the candidates forum (English and Spanish)

You can download candidate nomination forms from the CPS web site here.

Remember, nominations must be filed in the schools by 3 pm March 11.

The LSC elections are on April 21, 2010 (elementary schools) and April 22, 2010 (high schools).

Alderman Latasha Thomas has agreed to call a hearing on the Dowell/Lyle school closing moratorium resolution on Monday, Feb. 22, at 1 pm in the City Council Chambers, City Hall, 2nd floor. 

PURE and others pressed for a hearing to take place before the Wednesday Board of Education meeting. 

We urge you to come out to this critical hearing, sign up early and speak out - because we have come together in support of our schools, Chicago is finally listening!

Our wonderful office space in the Presbytery of Chicago building at 100 S. Morgan Street will be history after Feb. 28th. The building has been sold and all tenants must move out.

We have truly enjoyed our years in this building. It has provided ideal meeting space for PURE, GEM, and the CPU, and has hosted hundreds of people for thousands of hours of parent and LSC workshops. The centralized location, free parking, and well-designed conference rooms have made it easy for us to get a LOT of work done and work with a LOT of people. The people on staff at the Presbytery of Chicago have been a real pleasure to work with, and have been a great support for us in good times and bad.

Moving Party Tuesday Feb. 24, noon to 6 pm

No, we won't ask you to carry furniture, but we are going to open our office to our members and friends on the afternoon of February 23. Come hang out, have some pizza, help us pack a box if you feel like it, and maybe even trade a donation for some of our office supplies, equipment, books, etc. We'd like to give a lot away so that we don't have to move so much.

Where are we going?

Sorry, CPS and Mayor Daley -- PURE is not going away. But we are not planning to move into the same kind of office space we have had for the past 15 years. We had one very bad experience signing a five-year lease which still haunts us. Besides, Wanda is out in the field 24/7 and most of my work is done via the internet.

We will have a cool Loop "branch" at 39 S. La Salle, Suite 617, in the Law Offices of Elaine K. B. Siegel and Associates. But don't plan to drop in on us there. Wanda is still easiest to reach on her cell phone, 773-663-5420. The best way to reach me is still via e-mail, pure@pureparents.org. For the near future, we will keep our current telephone number, 312-491-9101. 

We have a line on some good meeting space, too. Once we get settled after the move we'll get some workshops and other events back on the calendar. Stay tuned!

"Well, what would YOU do???" instead of vouchers, charters, turnarounds, R2010, retention, high-stakes testing, etc. etc. 

People often ask me that question in response to my attempt to debunk some "reform" flavor of the month (see partial list above). The question is typically asked with an implication that PURE always criticizes, never suggests solutions.

Well, we have a link on our web site called "What Works," and I just added this to it, to emphasize some of the solutions that PURE regularly supports: A PURE Approach to School Improvement.

See what you think and use it if it makes sense.

Even after 20 years, lots of people don't know much about how LSCs operate. You can share with them this great essay on Huffington Post by PURE member Matt Farmer, who includes this story:

"Last spring, when our principal's contract was up for renewal, the teachers and parents who serve with me on our LSC spent scores of man-hours to ensure that our principal got a fair shake. As just one small part of that process, we prepared hundreds of anonymous surveys and questionnaires, which we mailed to parents and teachers. We had a remarkably high return rate on those materials. After we received the responses, we spent many nights side-by-side in meeting rooms at public libraries compiling and discussing the survey results and detailed narrative answers. From time to time, we disagreed with each other, but we always did so without being disagreeable. In sum, our LSC members can tell you far more about what's going on inside of our school than anyone down at 125 South Clark Street can."

That scenario plays out across the city every year, getting no attention but making schools better for children.

I have been so mean to Arne Duncan, basically calling him a liar over and over, that I feel I should give him some kind of credit when he speaks his honest feelings, as he did recently to Roland Martin.

Let him speak for himself:

"This is a tough thing to say, but let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina."

Duncan claims that "the city did not care about education" before Katrina and that New Orleans schools are better now under Paul Vallas.

Well, that's what they said about Chicago schools under Vallas, too. Not so much about Philadelphia schools, which Vallas had to flee with his tail between his legs.

Here's what Gabe Arena, a blogger on American Prospect, had to say -- which I read on Small Talk: 

The statement itself isn't really a call for outrage; it was a trite way to tie test-score gains to the mythology of the city's resurgence. I see it as just another excess of the "education speak" that's bandied about, where everything's about "reform," "achievement," "accountability" -- and "wake-up calls." However, the reason for the correlation should provoke anger. New Orleans schools aren't necessarily doing better with the same students. They are serving a different demographic, one that is more affluent, whiter, and more educated.

And that's what you get when Arne Duncan is being honest.

UPDATE: We have further word from the state representative side of the Capitol that the Meeks anti-LSC bill is DOA.

****

A PURE member just wrote that his state senator called to say Senator Meeks has no support for SB3063, the bill to make all LSCs advisory. Folks down in Springfield are scratching their heads about  why Meeks would sponsor such a bill. 

Our efforts are paying off, but as they say, nothing ever dies in Springfield, and we need to fight this bill to make sure it is at least locked up with the key thrown away.

Two things you can do right away:

• Fight the Meeks anti-LSC bill -- Strategy meeting tomorrow, Wednesday Feb. 17, 6 pm, at Mollison Elementary School, 4415 S. King Drive (and get LSC training credit for 7-8 or -9) - sponsored by the MidSouth Education Committee.

• Call on City Council Education Committee members to sign on to the R2010 moratorium resolution and call for a hearing on the resolution BEFORE the Feb. 24th Board of Education meeting. 

Here is the list of Education Committee members' contact info.

Here is the Lyle-Dowell moratorium resolution.

Here is a sample letter to the members which includes evidence of R2010's failure. 

Tribune pundits Eric Zorn and Dennis  Byrne debated vouchers in this morning's paper. They both make some good points. Zorn points out, as I have done here, that Senator Meeks runs a private school that does not accept students with special needs or who score below the 50th percentile, which kind of makes its own argument against a voucher law.

While I agree that a voucher law is not likely to be passed in Illinois, the related debate is critical -- how do we improve struggling schools? who should be running schools? what can be done about unmotivated students and parents? what's the best way to develop a strong teaching force?

These questions bear on existing, new and potential legislation including the one that just increased the number of charter schools. It's disappointing that Zorn tosses off "more charter schools" as a solution -- given his use of research to challenge vouchers -- since the research on Illinois charter schools is overwhelmingly negative.

WBEZ is reporting that CPS will pull some schools off the R2010 hit list and use less severe interventions at others after hearing from thousands of school supporters at last week's R2010 hearings.

Substance and others have intensely criticized Board members in past years for voting to close schools without having attended any closure hearings or read the hearing reports as required under Board policy.

It's been different this year. Board of Education members attended some school closure hearings for the first time. They heard the issues raised by parents, teachers and student for the first time. And, apparently, they are listening for the first time. 

Schools that have been closed over the past few years when Board members simply rubber-stamped Arne Duncan's recommendations should demand a do-over.

Back to the future?

According to WBEZ, CPS Chief Administrator, Robert Runcie, CPS is leaning toward giving school communities more input into deciding how to fix a school before they move to intervene.

Hmmm. Sounds a lot like the remediation and probation process state law describes, where the LSC is supposed to be a partner with CPS in assessing a school's problems and coming up with solutions. You know, that part of the law that CPS ignores, and instead pushes the LSC aside so that CPS can single-handedly run the school into the ground and then close it due to "poor performance."

PURE and others have prepared a revision to the school reform law that clarifies the collaborative process the law intended for remediation and probation. The time seems right to move that amendment in Springfield, along with our proposal for independent training for LSCs.

This apparent change of heart is a very good sign. People around the nation need to hear about it and understand the implications for Race to the Top. Chicago has been a leader in ineffective turnarounds. If CPS is now having second thoughts and considering going back to a more inclusive process of community-based reform, why force schools around the country to waste years, billions of dollars, and children's educational futures by  repeating the failures Chicago is trying to move away from?

I was pretty surprised that the Tribune decided to print my editorial criticizing Mayor Daley's complaint that R2010 needs more time to prove itself.

I had sent it in about two weeks earlier, and they don't usually wait that long to print letters.  

Maybe this is more evidence of the Trib's recent enlightenment about the problems with R2010.  

It's gratifying to read the Sun-Times editorial supporting LSCs (and opposing Senator Meeks' bill). It's just icing on the cake that they also recommend independent LSC training, which I brought up in a conversation with Kate Grossman as she was preparing the editorial. Here's what she ended up writing:

"If the General Assembly wants to tinker with LSCs, we recommend considering an alternative. For years, parents have complained about poor training and support from CPS for LSC members. Advocates are working on a bill that aims to improve training, and that's worth a serious review. If Chicago is going to have LSCs -- which it should -- these elected bodies need support to do the job right."

She's referring to the LSC bill based on a PURE proposal which was updated after the LSC hearings held in 2008. Our legislation gets CPS out of the LSC training business -- at which they have failed miserably -- and requires them to send out RFPs for LSC training and support by independent groups.

We'll be sharing this proposal with Senator Meeks in the coming days. 

Yesterday, Senate Education Chair James Meeks filed  a bill, SB3063, that will make all LSCs advisory only. 

We got the heads up from Jim Broadway at State School News Service.

This is it, folks. We knew this fight would come sooner or later. It's time for all hands on deck.

So far, Sen,. Meeks is the only sponsor, The first thing you need to do is call your state senator and get a promise that he or she will not support this bill. Ask for it in writing, 

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, he 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! 

A new report by the Advancement Project details the relationship between high-stakes testing and zero tolerance, which they claim has contributed to an increased dropout rate since the beginning of NCLB. Here's an overview:

"In fact, zero tolerance and high-stakes testing both share the same ideological roots, and together they have combined to seriously damage the relationships between schools and the communities they serve throughout the country. Rather than helping to provide all students with enriching learn- ing experiences, zero tolerance and high-stakes testing lead to an impoverished education for many young people. Instead of supporting students who are struggling or in need, both needlessly punish young people and limit their opportunities to fulfill their potential and achieve their goals."

"The driving ideology behind both high-stakes testing and zero tolerance comes right out of the corporate playbook, as it is based on the notion that problems are solved and productivity is improved through rigorous competition, uncompromising discipline, constant assessment, performance-inducing incentives, and elimination of low performers.

"While these principles may work in the business world, they are simply a bad fit in the context of public education. They are based on faulty assumptions, fail to create real improvement in schools, ensure that large numbers of students will fail academically, and fall far short of the democratic purposes of our public education system. Nevertheless, zero tolerance and high-stakes testing have followed the same path on their way to being frequently – and inappropriately -- substituted for meaningful education reform."

"After the passage of NCLB, seventy-three of the 100 largest districts experienced declining graduation rates from 2002 to 2006. Seventeen of those districts experienced at least a double-digit drop in graduation rates."

RTTT simply expands testing and consequent push-outs under NCLB

During his six years as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, the architect of Race to the Top, Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan, quadrupled the out-of-school suspension rate while maintaining a student test-score-based retention rate of about 10,000 per year.

Co-director of the Advancement Project, Judith Browne-Dianis, lists some alternatives to testing and punishing, in a comment on RTTT: 

"We could be incentivizing programs aimed at keeping students engaged in school, we could be devoting funds to counselors and professional development, we could be rewarding programs like restorative justice that have been shown to build trust between students and school, we could be rewarding schools that lower suspension rates and raise graduation rates. We could be encouraging anything that would make school a safer, saner, better place for every student to learn. When you put that side by side with what we have got with RttT, it’s not hard to see why so many of us are opposed to it. "

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.