I didn’t find this very convincing on the part of CPS, but they did put six charter schools on an academic watch list for poor performance. I think this is more a result of angry parents complaining at school utilization hearings and fallout from the UNO scandal than it is due to CPS suddenly discovering a half dozen nonperforming charter schools. It’s amazing how much of an impact the CTU strike had on labor unions world wide. I found an article today from the Times of India.
UNO Charter Teachers and Students Deserve Better
“At UNO, I’ve heard of teachers working average of 10 hours a day with minimal preparatory periods and only three 25 minute duty-free lunches a week at pay that is 20% less than the average teacher in Chicago. They have few protections on the job and teachers have reported being fired for breathing a hint of criticism at UNO’s CEO Juan Rangel. He, in contrast, is paid many times his average teacher, making over $200,000 a year for running 13 schools, while Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett makes nearly as much for operating an entire district of over 600 schools.”
“What Emanuel had planned as his marquee accomplishment—corporate-style “school reform”—has been cracking like a pane of glass. His attempt to game state law to make it virtually impossible for Chicago public school teachers to strike backfired last year when they not only struck the hell out of him but ended up undermining the core rhetorical underpinning of the “reform movement”—that teachers unions are the enemies—when Chicago Public School parents sided overwhelmingly with the strikers. That hardly held back Phase Two of Emanuel’s scheme, set to roll out this year: planned massive school closings, based on dubious and opaque statistical arguments about “underutilized” buildings. Activists point out that the rationale for school closings shift from year to year, and never seem to accomplish the policy aims that supposedly justify them; so threadbare have the city’s explanations become by now,”
Why isn’t Closing 129 Chicago Public Schools National News
“It’s not news because school closings and school privatization, the end game of the bipartisan policies the Obama administration, Wall Street, the US Chamber of Commerce, a host of right wing foundations and deep pockets and hordes of politicians in both parties from the president down are pushing down the throats of communities across the country, are deeply unpopular. The American people, and especially the parents, teachers, grandparents, and other residents of poorer neighborhoods where closings and privatization are happening emphatically don’t want these things.“
CPS CHATTER 
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