Never in U.S. history has a local school board–or any other board, appointed or elected–chosen to close 49 public schools.
Never.
That’s what the Chicago Public Schools did yesterday.
Thousands of parents, students, and teachers objected, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his puppet board didn’t care.
Yesterday was a day of infamy in Chicago and in the history of American education.
School boards exist to protect, improve, and support public schools, not to kill them.
The New York Times has written about this story and twice said that the school closings were the largest “in recent memory.” The Times wrote this despite my telling them–twice–that these were the largest mass closure ever. I wish the reporters would explain whose “memory” they were relying on. Just yesterday I explained in an email that no public school district had ever closed 49 schools at one time. On this issue, the “Times” is not the newspaper of record but the newspaper of “recent memory.”
Why does it matter? The phraseology removes the truly historic destruction that Rahm Emanuel is inflicting on children and schools in his city. He is wantonly destroying public education. He is punishing the teachers’ union for daring to strike last fall. He will open more charter schools, staffed by non-union teachers, to pick up the kids who lost their neighborhood schools. Some of them will be named for the equity investors who fund his campaigns.
Rahm and his friends will laugh about the way he displaced 40,000 kids.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you, Diane. It was truly a day of infamy yesterday here in Chicago. We will continue to fight the grotesque action of this unelected board. Anyone in or near Chicago, please come to our peaceful, family friendly event on Memorial Day: http://on.fb.me/10mPh41
Hey, why don’t those displaced teachers get together, form their own “charter” school — or even “private” school — go around to all the parents whose kids have been dumped, and take them in?
–Leslie < Fish
Thank you Diane. Yesterday was a debacle, a terrible miscarriage of justice. In the voting process with the Board, the schools were not even named. It is likely that Barbara Byrd Bennett will not easily be able to do this in a fourth city because now it is well known–even globally–that she comes in to close schools and follows the Broad Manual to the letter. On one of the protest walks I went on, Russian media were present.
Those friends Rahm is laughing with include Arne Duncan and Barack Obama.
Too true
These Neo-Dems in Chicago, LA, and NYC and are going to be the albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party as we go into 2014 and 2016.
It is important that you note that 40,000 students will be displaced. It is rarely easy for a child to,change schools, and families with more economic choices will often wait to relocate until a child has graduated from his/her school. Now 40,000 students in Chicago will be impacted by this misguided decision.
Chicago has experienced a 6% decline in enrollment since 2000 and has gone from 597 schools to 681 in the same time period. The school closings will bring the number of schools back to the number of schools it had around 2005.
How should a school district react to declining enrollment and excess capacity? My own town is dealing with the impact of enrollment declines and population changes that suggest one or more elementary schools be closed.
Not by closing 49 schools and opening 6 new charters in its place next year, with 40 more to come. Read this fact check on the talking points that Rahm used in this process. http://www.wbez.org/news/fact-check-chicago-school-closings-107216
There are no doubt many things that should not be done. My question concerns what should be done. Any thoughts?
The link you provided is where I learned of the 6% decline in students enrolled in CPS and the building boom in schools. Dr. Ravitch posted it some time ago.
So if you read the article you understand the misinformation that is being deliberately given to the public. How can I say what should be done if the information I am given is wrong? I can say what should not be done based on the reasons Rahm gives as closing schools. There is no deficit, the under enrollment doesnt exist to the extent of 49 schools, the savings wont be realized in the next year. It took 90 seconds for the board to weigh the evidence and to close 49 schools. I take longer to choose a tie
What would you do? So far the overall reduction in the school age population in Chicago has had a larger impact on the private schools. At some point CPS’s share of Chicago students will stabilize and CPS will face the full impact of these demographic changes.
Only a 6% decline? CPS previously told us something like 20%. Funny, that.
Also, I’d need to know how under or overcrowded schools were before they built the extra 84 schools. If schools were, say, 20% overcrowded and they built 15% more schools, after a loss of 6% of the populations, those 681 schools would be just about at capacity.
The higher figure seems to come from the decline in the number of school age children in Chicago. CPS is enrolling a larger percentage of the shrinking population of students. It must be coming from private schools.
It may well have been that schools were hideously overcrowded 1990-2000. This is all a bit murky when we are counting schools but not thinking about any changes in the number of classrooms in each school.
CPS defines “school age” as anyone 19 and under, including infants and toddlers.
That is one category used by the census. If you want to subtract out those under 5 for the census figures, you can do that using the tables provided in the link to WBEZ in this discussion.
It looks like the number of children between 0-5 in Chicago dropped by a little under 15% between 2000 and 2010 according to the census data. That should forecast a further decline in overall enrollment in the city over the next few years, though of course it is possible that all the decline could be in private schools.
To begin at the beginning, 2008, here’s what should never have been done, teachereconomist.
The President should never have continued the bail-out of Wall Street and then cut programs for the public good by misnaming austerity cuts ‘sequestration’ cuts.
Then perhaps school districts like Chicago Public Schools would not have consolidated schools in order to fire teachers and create much larger classrooms.
Second, CPS should never persistently lie.
It understated a school’s capacity to present the false idea that 140 schools are half-empty.
It devised a utilization formula that defines CPS classrooms as efficient when they hold 36 students.
It calls special needs students’ classrooms underutilized because they hold the recommended smaller number of students whose situation requires more individual attention.
Third, CPS should never spend one billion dollars to close 50 schools.
It floated a $329 mln tax exempt bond with interest payments of $25 mln for 30 years to pay for the consolidations — for a cost of over $1 billion.
Fourth, CPS forgot to prepare an academic plan to show how it will improve outcomes for the 30,000 children who have to move.
Now you are asking posters here if they have a better plan.
Your question seems to imply posters should “put-up or shut-up.”
But the Mayor, CEO and BoE are among hundreds of professionals with the resources and expertise to do honest research and to include the community in an honest way.
But they have not done so.
We the people attended the hearings. We offered well-documented objections and sincere concerns. And tried to hold the accountable.
Their vote yesterday didn’t even mention the names of the schools — they are so completely inconsiderate. They appear to be so above the fray. They are not the representatives of the citizens of Chicago.
Polls show 79% of CPS parents believe the mayor is on the wrong track with the largest number of school closing in US history.
He doesn’t care.
But it is not our lot to try and do the jobs they were appointed to do.
Closing schools is almost always one choice among many bad choices. To know what is the least bad choice, it is best to know what alternative choices are available. That is why I asked about alternatives to closing schools that are less bad.
CPS’ budget and enrollment crisis is completely trumped up. It is manufactured-disaster capitalism.
Their budget numbers are not in the least trustworthy:http://www.newstips.org/2013/02/fuzzy-math-the-cps-budget-crisis/
Even if they were, school closings, which have been happening across the country for the last decade, have not been shown to save money:http://www.createchicago.org/2013/03/create-releases-research-brief-on.html
In addition, CPS’s utilization calculations are just as flimsy as their budget numbers, and depend on things like a minimum of 24 students/class (above the average in the rest of IL public schools) and ignoring class size limits for special education students.
See the following for more info:
http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2013/05/07/mom-who-s-challenging-cps-its-data
http://ilraiseyourhand.org/content/apples-apples-release-underutilized-cps-elem-schools-overestimated-24-overcrowding-higher-re
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-06/news/ct-met-cps-school-closing-class-size-20130306_1_class-size-state-records-high-schools
At the U of C Lab School where Rahm sends his children, the maximum class size stipulated in the unionized faculty’s contract is 24.
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” –John Dewey
Chicago is not a poor city. Illinois is not a poor state. The US is not a poor country.
I am wondering about the claims re recent history and the closure of 49 public schools, because it is a matter of public record that, in 1959, Prince Edward County in Virginia closed its entire public school system
(Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academies )
How many schools were in that county’s public school syatem?
Kate, the schools were not really closed. That was a dodge to avoid desegregation. The schools were not killed.
I think the school closings were very real to black students. To the extent people condemn the Chicago School Closings for its disparate impact on Chicago’s minority students, they probably should see Prince Edward County’s school closures as a history lesson and not an aberration.
https://afsc.org/story/prince-edward-county-school-closings
@ TE, the issue is not just what is being done, but who is doing it. Chicago public schools have been badly managed for over a decade by people of the same ilk as the current crowd, each spewing the same bromides about doing what is best for kids while declaiming current conditions. They are all inept bunglers, Arne Duncan who was CEO for 8 years being not the least among them. Perhaps the system should be downsized, but people have been lied to and bullied so incessantly for over a decade, that nobody can, or should, trust these clowns to do it responsibly.
I can certainly understand mistrusting government officials.
If CPS was being grossly mismanaged when it expanded the number of schools and is being grossly mismanaged when it is contracting the number of schools, it is difficult to know how many schools a well managed CPS would have. Any thoughts?
Exactly, TE. Given that Chicago public schools have been grossly mismanaged, it is impossible (not just difficult) to know how many schools a well managed CPS would have. It is also irrelevant. To close even one school without public plans as to how the students, families, staff, and surrounding neighborhood will be affected shows a lack of leadership that doesn’t just border on incompetence.
I am sure that the 27 students at the Montefiore school (127 in 2000) and the 92 at the Duprey school (495 in 2000) might be negatively impacted by the closing of those schools. Keeping them open would also have an impact on those students and others in the system.
This is not the way to run a railroad.
Impeach Rahm.
“In recent memory.”
A lame attempt to pacify.
Same playbook as in Philadelphia. Here is a research brief on the lack of savings from closings and the negative impacts on students from closures in Philadelphia, Washington DC. NYC. Pittsburgh, and Chicago.
http://bit.ly/13CAUuN
This is awe inspiring.
When do their “rights” start, at conception or at birth?
Since rights are legal, social, or ethical principles, rights start when the normative law provides for them to start.
Constitutional rights? As in when they can speak freely, bear arms, etc.?
International human rights? http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
which the U.S. seems to support, at least theoretically.
negative rights or positive rights?
“Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms,” Brown v. Board of Education, 1954.
I think the impassioned nine-year-old speaker must have been referring to Brown v. Board of Education.
So, I guess you are saying that the “right to life” starts when Roe v. Wade says it starts. But is there any principle by which normative law can be judged? Or is normative law the only ethics? If so, then segregation was right. You don’t accept that. I don’t accept that. No one accepts that. The Universal Declaration is not a US document. I still wonder ethically how people can support abortion and then support education for everyone without disintegrating from centrifugal self-contradiction. Right to life is a negative right. “Don’t interfere with my life.” A right to an education is a positive right: “Someone has gotta teach me.” There’s a difference.
Actually, I was trying to keep the discussion on the issue of education by interpreting your question as a response to my post of the nine year-old speaker who spoke of his “right” to an education — which is why I posted the quote from Brown v. Board of Education… But you have guessed correctly, “right to life” at least for now begins with viability. As far as I know, laws are “judged” in courts of law – both civic and criminal. Of course words on a page (written laws) are not the only ethics. Ethics are determined by actions and most of us, at some time or another, make regrettable choices and suffer the consequences. Personally, I think the judgement of Solomon can only be applied on a case by case basis.
I can’t go back in time to determine how I would have acted given certain circumstances. If I lived during the times of our founding fathers I likely would have thought that segregation was right, just as growing up during the Vietnam war, if drafted I would have thought going to war was the “right” thing to do regardless of my pacifist tendencies. I think you are wrong when you imply that no one accepts segregation as right. If such were the case, the impassioned nine year-old speaker would not need to speak. Segregation is not just a racial term and using test scores to close school in poor neighborhoods shows a decided lack of true ethical character and judgement. It seems to have less to do with what is best for the student and more to do with what is best for educational profiteers, or perhaps political gerrymandering.
Are U.S documents better than international ones?
I still wonder why pro-life advocates haven’t adopted all the available babies. Why aren’t they waiting in line outside clinics to love, foster and educate unwed mothers until their babies are born? I wonder how a citizenry can allow officials to enforce capitol punishment and its government to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” and send drones to kill one terrorist and justify the collateral damage by saying it saved lives. Really?
For the record, I don’t support abortion any more than I support Roe v. Wade.
Thank God it’s not against the law to be poor or black. If that were the case our prisons would have an inordinate number of poor black people in relation to the general population.
Too often discussions revolve around false dilemmas.
Perhaps we really are “One nation underprivileged…”
What kind of society do we want for our progeny?
“A poor man shames us all.”
Sorry Diane, I’ll try to restrict my comments to education in the future.
Diane, I am a social worker in the Chicago Public Schools, I am not sure if you saw this amazing response to that horrible editorial in the Chicago Tribune. I read your blog all the time, and you are so inspiring and wonderful. I am not sure if you get responses to your blog by just responding to it through e-mail, as I am trying to do here, but here goes nothing!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/23/the-rev-john-thomas-no-act-of-god-caused-chicago-schools-closings/
Thank you for everything!
Best, Erin Hamblin
Sent from my iPad
I have scheduled it as a post. Thank you!
Whatever our theories of natural rights, we have to recognize that rights in theory have very little chance of becoming rights in practice unless there is a social compact that supports them.
As a practical matter, then, saying that persons have a right to something means there is a justification for their having it that is generally recognized as a matter of common sense or common consent in the context of a given society.
But what is the definition of a person?
As far as its initial conditions are concerned, we find general consent in our society that personhood begins no later than birth. We do not find general consent that it begins any earlier than that. That is just the way it stands at present.
Yes, Jon, that is the way it stands at present. Opinion is, however, subject to change, if rights are dependent on opinion, as your analysis seems to assume. Part of the extreme political divide is based on this lack of consensus on when personhood begins. People who think the “right to life” is negligible prior to the beginning of the third trimester have zero credibility with people who think it begins earlier. Who can trust someone who one sees as condoning infanticide, practically speaking. If unborn babies don’t have a right to life, I don’t see how anyone can claim that a born baby has a right to an education, yet that is the argument with which we are perpetually presented. A fetus in not a fingernail. It’s a lifelong commitment. If you make it, you support it. Don’t come to me. UNTIL individual responsibility becomes more common, there will be this political divide and those of us who think this way will look for ways to evade the unfair taxation. It’s like having distant relatives move in with you, eat up all your food, throw your house into chaos, and then claim they have a right to squat, and often refer to Jesus as their authorization. Maddening. Unfair.
What does one person owe another? If a person is starving, should I be required to feed that person? If a person requires a blood transfusion, must I provide it? Must i give an organ to someone who will die without it or is the requirement that I mearly lend them the organ for a time?
The key word here is “required”. All these acts are admirable, but should they be required of all individuals?
No one can doubt the disruption to the lives of children and parents from school closings, but what is the alternative when enrollments at a school decline and voters do not wish to pay more taxes? (This is not to dispute that a policy of closing a few schools each year for the last x years might not have been better than letting the problems fester and then closing 50 all at once.)
Unprecedented? Didn’t Detroit close almost half of their schools a few years ago? Wasn’t it the same person (Barbara Byrd Bennett) there as is now? Wasn’t that after Detroit’s school budget deficit grew out of control? It’s sooooo easy to criticize the cuts without saying where you would get the money from and who you would get hurt instead (and the commenters who claim “there is no budget deficit” are full of it). Note well that CTU head Karen Lewis didn’t make school closings an issue during the teacher strike last fall and in fact acknowledged there would be some closings – fine, it’s her job to focus on what’s best for her teachers – but then to start throwing the race bomb when the census backs up the closures, showing legions of African-Americans have left the city is deplorable.