Know Your Enemy

I apologize for my scarcity around these parts.  Eventually, this blog will be back to a solid 4 or 5 days of content out of seven, but as many of you know, teaching is hard work.  With both my time and my energy reduced by returning back to school something had to give.   I did it for the second half of last year so I’m pretty sure I can do it this year too.

The main impetus for me returning to the blog was a few outstanding things I saw happening on the internet.  One was an article by the brilliant Edushyster who found a leaked TFA memo that showed plans for 50 new Chicago charter schools.  This plan was a slide from a January 2013 Board of Directors meeting. 

I once thought of TFA as being a nuisance and a waster of talent and passion.  They took people who cared about kids and had great college transcripts, gave them little training, and burned them out from ever being teachers for more than 2 years.  The mission of TFA has changed however, and they are now actively crushing teachers unions and forcing out experienced teachers in locations where there is no teacher shortage.  They are sabotaging public schools and I will go out of my way to expose any sponsors or financial supporters of this insidious organization.

Today was day 10 in the Chicago Public Schools.  There will be more layoffs coming at schools that were short of CPS projections for enrollment.  Every dozen students that charters raid from neighborhood schools is one experienced and certified teacher who will be out of a job.  The way that the rules of have been set up by the city, there is no mutual survival.  The only way that public education survives is if the current charter status quo is defeated.

Student Takes on Michelle Rhee

Back to high stakes testing. I don’t know a single student — I’m sorry, I have a lot of friends, and I have friends at other schools too — I don’t know a single student who says that they learned something from a high-stakes test, and the way that their school is structured. They should be given the freedom to learn what they want to learn, open curriculum, well-rounded, arts, music, humanities….

[Followup:  Here’s a further exchange between Hannah and Michelle Rhee]

How Do TIFs Work in Chicago?

This easy to followexplanation will leave you with plenty of TIF knowledge to impress your neighbors

 

So Many Stories So Little Time

There’s a lot going on in Chicago, Springfield, and Mackinac Island today.   I’m going to try and be concise, but a lot of this will really impact students, parents,and teachers alike.  I really recommend this Reuters article on the huge invasion of privacy that Illinois is only one of three states going along with.

School Database Loses Backers as Parents Balk Over Privacy

“Parents and civil liberties groups concerned about potential privacy breaches quickly began to sound the alarm and rallied opposition in social media.”

Illinois Senate Defeats House-Backed Pension Reform Bill

“The proposal pushed by House Speaker Michael Madigan failed Thursday evening, with 16 voting “yes” and 42 voting “no.” The vote left lawmakers without a solution to the pension issue with only one day left before the Legislature’s scheduled adjournment.”

Warning to Chicago Parents About Student Privacy

“Yet she also revealed that Illinois plans to expand inBloom data sharing and data mining to 35 districts serving half a million students starting in 2015.  http://shar.es/wbnTF”

Mayor Rahm’s Great Plan for Education: Bankrupt the Schools!

“Of course, an idea being dumb won’t stop Illinois state reps and senators from approving it, as they move heaven and earth to avoid receiving a profanity-laced late-night phone call from our tempestuous mayor.”

The Lunacy of DePaul’s New Basketball Arena

“Municipalities across the nation are suffering from the quixotic whimsy of their elected officials when it comes to publicly financed sports venues. When you mix in this particular city’s budget, this particular team’s fortunes and the way these numbers don’t seem to make any realistic sense at all, it’s understandable why people in Chicago are upset.”

Trumbull Parents Not Happy About Uptown Welcoming School

“My wife is saying ‘absolutely no’ [to McCutcheon] she doesn’t want our kids to go there at all,” Weisgard said. He added: “It’s in a bad neighborhood. We live in Uptown and we purposely take our kids out of Uptown to go to school.”

Enrollment Drive After Closing Shows Mixed Results

“But a breakdown of enrollment numbers by school shows wide variation among parents declaring where they will send their children in the fall. At King on the West Side and Parkman and Bontemps on the South Side, fewer than 10 percent of parents enrolled their children in new schools. At Stockton on the North Side, where the building is not closing but Courtenay’s staff is taking over Stockton’s building, nearly everyone enrolled, according to CPS data.  “

South Side CPS Parents Demand Enrollment at Wicker Park Magnet School

“Meanwhile, parents from three schools slated for closure are demanding their children be allowed to attend a Wicker Park magnet school.”

Eulogy for 50 Schools

“and i wondered if my old school was sad. if the classroom where Ms. Johnson read us books and showed us letters, was sad.
i wondered if my school didn’t understand. didn’t understand where everyone went.
i wondered if Lester was still there, with his mop and that big bucket when the bell rang.
i liked Lester. he always said hello to me. every single day.”

The Biggest Irony in Chicago’s Mass Closing of Schools

“As it turns out, according to WBEZ,  the three schools that Duncan first closed and revamped are all being “shaken up” as part of the newly announced closure of 50 public Chicago schools, the largest mass school closing in U.S. history.”

Day 2 on Mackinac Island

“If I had any doubts about the education reform movement, Michelle Rhee deftly erased them all.  She repeated her often used statistic that this would be the first generation in this country that was less educated than their parents.  As the number of  U.S. college graduates hit a record high in 2012, it’s clear that Ms. Rhee sees a very precipitous decline to get the numbers down from 30 percent to the 22 percent level of 1990. “

 

 

CPS Can’t Do Math

My Gosh! There is no way that you can possibly believe CPS is going to save money on these school closings.  It’s going to cost this city and it’s going to cost us millions.  The numbers are mind boggling.  CPS is issuing a $329 million dollar bond to pay for improvements at welcoming schools.  This is pure insanity that will only serve to destabilize this city even further.   Even the Tribune sees this.  Wow!

Better Schools?

“Fuller Elementary was a rising school when students from Donoghue were sent there in 2003, Wilson said. Achievement gains were reversed, and after five years on probation, the school was subjected to a “turnaround” last year.  Results from the latest intervention are not in yet.”

What Could Go Wrong?

“They haven’t demonstrated to us that they can close 100 or even 50 schools,” an unnamed commission source told the Sun-Times.  “They don’t have the expertise to accomplish that in such a short timeframe.  When they closed down as many as 12 schools, it was a disaster.”

For the Record: Paying for School Actions

“Should it be approved by the Board of Education, CPS will issue a $329 million bond to pay for improvements at welcoming schools, turnarounds, schools with co-locations and a few other special district projects, according to a supplemental capital budget released last weekend. Though the bond details haven’t been worked out yet, CPS spokesman David Miranda says the district is projecting debt service payments, including principal and interest, of about $25 million a year for 30 years, starting in 2015.”

Study: School Reform in 3 Major Cities Brings few Benefits, Some Harm

“Many people paying attention to corporate-based school reform in recent years will not be surprised by this, but a new study on the effects of this movement in Washington, D.C., New York City and Chicago concludes that little has been accomplished and some harm has been done to students, especially the underprivileged.”

Michelle Rhee’s Reign of Error

“This story is bound to remind old Washington hands of Watergate and Senator Howard Baker’s famous question, “What did the President know and when did he know it?” It has a memo that answers an echo of Baker’s question, “What did Michelle know, and when did she know it?” And the entire sordid story recalls the lesson of Watergate, “It’s not the crime; it’s the coverup.”

Nine Schools in 12 Years: One Teacher’s Tale of Life in the Chicago Public Schools

“That’s not his real name, of course. I’ve changed his name because the first thing you need to know about teaching in Chicago is that everything and anything you say can and will be used against you. If for no other reason than it’s good for students to learn from their teachers what happens to Chicagoans who question authority.”

Decisions in a Vacuum

I’ve had a little push back on my complaints about full day kindergarten coming to my school.  I don’t look at full day kindergarten as evil or anything.  The problem is, to have it at our school requires something else to go.  We need 4 more classrooms.  We could lose the music room and the art room.  I think the library gets saved because we have computers in there for testing and close it for 1/4 the year already.   The other thing we can do is increase class size and have one less teacher at every grade level.  This will drive classes up from 32 to 38 per room.   Either way, we lose something and that’s what I’m not happy about.

School Closure Guide

This guide was put out a few years ago by the Broad Foundation.  It’s the basic script that CPS is following to close schools.

Aspira Charter Expanding as One School Closes

“Even as CPS announced last week that it was phasing out ASPIRA’s Mirta Ramirez Computer Science High School campus for poor performance, plans were under way to approve a new campus for the charter operator.”

Michelle Rhee: Wrong Again

“For instance, at the behest of corporate education “reformers,” more and more cities are moving to eliminate the democratic process of electing school boards, effectively telling students, parents and the larger community that republican democracy cannot be trusted to manage fundamentally public institutions. Similarly, corporate “reformers” are constantly demonizing teachers’ unions, effectively telling students and parents that the major vestige of workplace democracy in schools must be crushed.”

Go Notre Dame!!

I’m a preoccupied.   I’m not that big of a fan of Notre Dame as a school and I can find their alumni as overblown and obnoxious as the next person, but I grew up rooting for them and I guess that transcends all.  I know their underdogs, but that’s why they play the games on the field.

Two different student organizations have released their state report cards and ranked Illinois about the same.   Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst has Illinois rated 29th.   The Satirical website Last Stand for Children First ranked states by such criteria as the cost of duct tape, how low teacher salaries are, and whether they aggressively pursue fraud cases.  Illinois came in 31st in that one. 

 

Michelle Rhee in Trouble

It’s amazing just how much I felt I needed a weekend after only two days back.   My students were great for the most part, but this job gets demanding and I feel it more this year with the longer day and year.

It hasn’t been a good week for Michelle Rhee.   She’s the subject of not one, but two different stories this week:

Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst Group Loses Top Democrats, Hires New President

“There were known to be some significant differences on political strategy and policy matters, especially in StudentsFirst’s approach toward unions and partisanship,” said a source close to the education reform community who declined to be named in order to preserve working relationships.”

Frontline Raises Questions About Test Score Tampering Under Rhee

“The hour-long program raises questions about whether District officials have adequately investigated persistent suspicions that public school employees may have tampered with tests during the tenure of former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.”

 

LOCAL

Chicago Gets Rid of Its Cops — Just Like Oakland

“Paying teachers less and getting fewer cops to do more enables Mayor Rahm to take the money he saves on salaries and hand it over to rich developers to build upscale skyscrapers in high-rent neighborhoods that are already bursting with development.”

New Supplemental Materials Posted by the Commission on School Utilization

The commission has posted a whole lot of new resources on their site for anybody following the school closings.

No Deal on Illinois Pension Fix, Talks to Continue

“A potential breakthrough on a pension fix surfaced on Friday when Quinn announced that Madigan had agreed to defer until a later date a measure to gradually shift state payments for teacher pensions onto local school districts. Republican lawmakers were concerned the move would lead to local property tax hikes.”