This is amazing. According to the Chicago education research journal Catalyst, the Chicago Public Schools received nearly half a million dollars from one of the nation’s most rightwing foundations to sponsor “community engagement” on school closings.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to close as many as 200 schools. He also wants to open more charters, which would be non-union and would mean another dramatic decline in the number of African-American teachers. Who better to facilitate the decimation of public education than the Walton Foundation, known for its love of voucher, charters, and privatization?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
http://www.loran.net/team_lori_sheehan.php
The team working to include parent voices.
CHICAGO wake up !
Why would WalMart care what is happening in Chicago schools? Could it be that they have plans to invest heavily in charter schools (or already have), since their store sales are beginning to sag? What happens when charter school begin to tank (like retail stores) and we’ve already closed too many public schools..what will we have left? We can’t just abandon what has taken so long to build (our great public school system) and build a new one like Walmart does again and again in every town they inhabit, can we?…No we can’t but they like to think we can.
Of course, the Waltons are BIG time charter school proponents
(Google them–Jim Walton, former Worldwide President of CNN–you know, the network responsible for promoting Michelle Rhee & the attempted ambush interview of Diane-?!).
Are you a Chicagoan, Chris? Chicagoans have been more than awake on this issue–Jitu Brown from KOCO just went to Washington, D.C.,on the Journey for Justice (see Diane’s earlier post{s}) to meet w/Arne Duncan on this very issue. Numerous Chicago parent groups & community organizations (read Mike Klonsky’s Small Talk Blog, Fred Klonsky’s Blog, & Tim Furman’s School Tech Connect blog, complete with calendar of such meetings, one of which is a viewing/discussion of “An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman” TONIGHT, at Sullivan H.S.)–in addition the all of what the CTU has been doing. HUNDREDS of people (students, parents, community activists,teachers, etc.)showed up at a recent CPS hearing (but, of course, there was nothing on that in mainstream media–they chose to broadcast the “Schools Choice” event, instead).
So, for up-to-date & complete info., do read the aforementioned blogs.
The William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia paid millions to the Boston Consulting Group to come up with a corporate plan which recommends…pretty much what you would expect. Other private foundations and businesses with a financial interest in the outcomes have paid to run community meetings.
These meetings are well planned to suppress real community dialogue. They ALWAYS break the audience into small groups. Then they ask BS questions and pretend that what people say actually means something.
If they go through with these meetings in Chicago, the people who go can do what we did here: refuse to adhere to the agenda. Get up and demand that they answer your questions. It worked for us.
This is called the Delphi Technique:
http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/acf001.htm
They DID just have one of these meetings in Chicago, and the community groups refused to go into break-out sessions with the
“facilitators!” (No press coverage, but great info,. pix & video on those blogs I mentioned earlier.You can see/read about all the push back that’s been occurring.)
Hey, we’re talking about CHICAGO here. You know, home of the CTU?!
Excellent.
Can you imagine the outcry from the business-types and “reformers” if an urban Superintendent included $500,000 in their budget request for “public engagement”. Ay yi yi!
Given that Walmart is the 3rd largest employer in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers) which gives them a huge incentive to drive their wages bill down.
… by creating an education system that provides a huge pool of people willing to work at Walmart.