This post describes an ad running in Chicago in which Mayor Rahm Emanuel talks about the new contract, while pictures of Chicago schoolrooms are on the screen.
The pictures show a teacher in a library with a class of six students. She is teaching math with an Ipad. They show an art class.
Read this post to learn the truth. Teachers fight for textbooks; they don’t have iPads. Class sizes are not 6 but multiples of 6. Many Chicago schools do not have libraries or arts teachers.
Was Rahm Emanuel dreaming about the schools he wants for Chicago? Wouldn’t that be great?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No, he wasn’t dreaming: he was lying.
LikeLike
Sometimes you just gotta laugh to keep from crying. It is so rich that the portrayal on his ad includes all those elements…one teacher with six children, iPad, media center, art class, etc. Maybe they filmed at Chicago Lab School.
Ok, I know I am a glutton for punishment but I am forcing myself to watch Jeb Bush on Morning Joe before getting the middle schooler out the door. Not sure if I can take more than a few minutes. Joe asked about how Florida is doing and Jeb says the learning gains have kind of flattened out but they are still looked at by rest of country in regard to how to narrow the achievement gap. He goes on to say that graduation rates go up every year for last 12 years straight so they are more or less at national average. He says, “but this is like comparing in the land of midgets…being slightly larger than the smallest guy. This is not what we should be focused on we should benchmark ourselves to the world. It is unacceptable really, this is a crisis that doesn’t have a…we need to somehow focus on how to make this a national focus…because only a third of our students, after we spend more per student than any country in the world graduate college and/or career ready from high school…just not acceptable.”
Then Mika asks him what he makes of the Chicago strike and he says, “Disappointing. Look, the union has every right to represent the economic interests of adults and the mayor has got a duty to balance his budget so it’s logical you’d have a fight over this because you have a structural problem there. But, where is the strategy to make sure poor kids gain the power of knowledge? Chicago’s results are abysmal. When you compare them to NY, for example, they are not cutting it. Or you compare them to Miami-Dade county where you have low income kids doing significantly better. The strategies of learning are separate from the strategies of negotiating higher pay and greater job protections.”
Joe then comments to mike that in Chicago they have some of the highest paid teachers in America and some of the worst results. Mike agrees and says that it gets to the point just alluded to…the cultural degree of difficulty from single parent homes, no parent homes, poor kids. Then, Jeb goes on about how we need to have higher expectations for everyone instead of creating a dual system…the idea that a kid in poverty can’t lean what is expected of them is damning.
Blah, blah, blah. Jeb isn’t done.
The transcription is helping me tolerate it but time for middle schooler to go!
LikeLike
This commerical just shows how delusional these guys are. What an Alice-in-Wonderland world they live in. Fellows-Please share what your consuming so that they rest of us may reside there too.
LikeLike
Not only just six kids, but six bright-eyed, healthy, well-fed, properly dressed, eager to learn kids. Something tells me none of those kids is sharing one coat with three siblings or slipping ketchup packages in their pockets so they have something to eat over the weekend.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Quarter Life Crisis News and commented:
My post on Chicago Now being talked about on another WordPress blog. 🙂
LikeLike
Oh how nice; the very elements of education that the rheeform movement is eliminating. Why are these rheeformers so oblivious of their own irony? Perhaps they should be tested for Aspberger’s ( quickly before special ed services have been totally elimnated).
LikeLike
Touche Alan!
LikeLike