This comment was posted in response to Richard Rothstein’s critique of Arne Duncan’s laissez faire approach to integration:
As a teacher in an extremely poverty-ridden neighborhood school in an urban district in CT and a parent who sent my children to an integrated school in Evanston, IL, (where white children were from generally affluent families and black/Hispanic children were from generally poor, single parent families), I feel qualified to weigh in on this debate.
My experience is this: if we want to raise children out of poverty, then we MUST not just talk about school reform, but we must develop policies that reform the culture of poverty that affect an entire family. The “Comer School” model does that and makes the school a community center where parents are welcomed for programs that deal with everything from pre-natal care to understanding how to apply for a job or get off drugs. The school becomes the wise, extended family that can actually change the trajectory of a dysfunctional family so that the same mistakes of drugs, gangs, prison, teen pregnancy, etc., etc. are not repeated generation after generation.
Aside from the kids who start out with very difficult personalities from abusive experiences (about 40%), I have seen time and again, students who come to me as happy 7th graders, and then inexplicably change into sullen, or angry kids who act out everyday, only to find out that they have witnessed some horrific event like a parent getting beaten by a boyfriend, or someone shot on the street. We have extremely limited social work resources, and no good Common Core lesson and testing, testing, testing, seem to ease their pain. (And since I had the audacity to try to reach them on a human level before I could teach them anything, I was put on probation and am in the process of being terminated because my test scores were not good enough!)
So, please, Arne Duncan and all the others, let’s shift some of the millions of dollars that are being spent on the “Emperor’s New Clothes” and figure out how to lift families out of poverty before we just blame the under performing teachers and schools as the root of the problem.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Unfortunately, the question with Duncan and other diehard reformers is not of what works but “What must we do to privatize American education?” There is a difference. the former is a purer motive; the latter, one of power, prestige, and money (especially money) no matter the contradictory evidence and collateral damage.
Duncan’s goal is to hand over American education to corporate America. Evidence of what works has nothing to do with it.
Exactly.
Right on post!
Spot on.
Yep.
Pioneer Institute: Boston
Study Calls on U.S. Dept. of Education to Stop Using Adoption of Common Core as Condition or Incentive for Receipt of Federal Funds and Waivers
In preface, Iowa’s U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley says education policy best made at level of government closest to students, parents
Diane, I am so honored to have you re-post my comments, but I just wanted to complete my thoughts on my experience in Evanston almost twenty years ago when my children attended an integrated elementary school. I was a great believer in the concept, but again, as I mentioned, the socio-economics of white vs. black students were so lopsided that it only served to make the minority students feel even more like “have-nots” no matter what we tried to do to be inclusive. Integration can be a “double-edged sword.”
Elementary aged minority children were understandably angry to see the advantages of their white classmates; moms dropping off their kids at school, the white kids happy and well-adjusted. I remember that after I had given the requisite hugs to my kindergartner and 3rd grader, I would get arms held out from their classmates for hugs which I gladly gave, invited kids to play at our house, volunteered in the classroom etc., etc., but still my kids were bullied, (once tied up on the playground) to the extent that I had to put my 3rd grader in therapy, and in the end had to put them in a private school.
I tried having meetings with administration to get the cooperation of the minority parent(s) on several occasions, but was appalled that in what I judged as an effort for political correctness, my concerns were brushed aside because I was told I just didn’t understand “black culture” which I thought was such an insult to my wonderful black friends and real black culture. In fact, middle class black families avoided our school system like the plague because they didn’t want their children exposed to the poor behavior of the black “under-class.”
And the real kicker was, and most likely still is, that test scores for minorities did not significantly improve, and there was a huge achievement gap even though integration had taken place 20 years before my sons attended the district.
Of course I am not saying that I think it is wrong to have integrated schools, but when the minority students are bussed into a white neighborhood that is significantly more affluent to achieve that integration, it is pretty hard for the minority kids not to notice what they don’t have. Again, let’s lift FAMILIES out of poverty so that we can have integrated neighborhoods because more African American and Hispanic families have realized the American dream of better lives through education, community support, and hard work, not the government hand-out system that I believe is patronizing to minorities and leaves them in isolation. Let’s mentor our young people of color (which I have done through the “I Have A Dream Foundation”) and make sure that they really connect their educational experience to being prepared for interesting careers by welcoming them into law firms, hospitals, offices, etc. for career days or short intern-type experiences when they are still in middle school. It isn’t rocket science to figure out that true integration doesn’t stop at the school door but must take place in every facet of a community in an authentic way.
Again, when will the government start throwing money at these types of programs that make so much more sense? Oh, but then they might not be able to blame teachers for every shortcoming!
What would the 1% do? BALK! After all, they don’t care and government is owned by them. Vote wisely and consider another party other than than the REPs and the DEMs.
The Education Party, the Smart Party, the Party That Can Not be Bought ?
Good luck finding one.
Perhaps Green, which is where this conservative will place his next vote.
Wouldn’t this involve going back to rewarding effort and giving children something to work for? We’ve turned the “trophy for everyone” self-esteem generation into poison for children today.
Absolutely. That and the middle school concept that became the “next best thing” in the late 80’s.
Teacher in CT – Dr. Comer was schooled in the community education concept and the schools that Ronald Edmonds studied as “effective schools” were in fact based on the community education concept. The modern day founders of the community school movement in the 30’s based it on the very things you are describing – “helping people to help themselves” …and it takes a community acting like a community to do so.
The concept was at one time written into law – it was the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The government did put money into it … but Vietnam and politics changed the law over time and not enough people understood the concept … standards and testing looked like an easier road, I guess.
This fight is not lost; it may just be beginning….if only more people understood what to ask for in the re-write of No Child Left Behind.
You get it.
It is disheartening that you came to feel there was no place for your children in the public school system. I hope it will be different for your grandchildren, no matter the school district they happen to live in.
I’m curious, teacher in CT–are you referring to Evanston, Illinois?
I’m sorry–you talked about this in your blog.
Strange school district, that (our child attended). Interesting case where the superintendent recently quit two weeks before the start of school.
teacher in CT: what you describe re your children was a profound failure of the elementary school’s leadership.
It’s an old story: an educrat is an educrat is an educrat. They don’t serve the community, the community serves them. Hence what you described was a problem that was best left unresolved in order to involve as little creativity, effort and responsibility on their part as possible.
Thank you for your posting.
🙂
well said!!
Deutsch hits it squarely, accurately, and in the present tense. Anyone who wants to appeal to the Czar to stop the cossacks from the pogroms can do so, just as some couldn’t believe that their dead children had been massacred on orders of their “little Czar” in 1905. Cleverly, Arne, a Trust Fund Baby remember, returned to Chicago after a few years of “professional” basketball in Australia to start a family and begin cashing in on the family heritage. Having no credentials to do anything, but a Harvard degree and a willingness to spout nonsense, he was hired for an empty-headed job in CPS, and then, when Paul Vallas finally exasperated Richard M. Daley, quickly heralded by the “school reform” community a brilliant choice to replace Vallas. That was in June and July 2001. Vallas had finally gotten all the wrong people angry at him at once, and so he had to go (although on the condition that people would take care of him, as they do at that level, if he kept his mouth shut about most of the nonsense he had been spouting as Chicago’s first “business” leader Chief Executive Officer of CPS).
So in the summer of 2001, everyone was shaking their heads and asking “Who is this guy?” Duncan had (a) no teaching experience, (b) no political experience, and (c) very little Chicago experience except growing up in that cocoon called Hyde Park (which was carved out of the South Side by an alliance of the clout of the University of Chicago and the city, to the expense of just about everyone else…). Arne knew in 2001 and 2002 that everyone in Chicago would laugh at him if he tried to claim he was from the “South Side” (as he does now while on the road where nobody knows Chicago demographics or political history). But he was ready to read a script and repeat nonsense for the ruling class and the corporate “reformers” with the talent of a true thespian.
I actually heard it unfolding late on afternoon at the CPS “Office Of Communication,” which was being run by Peter Cunningham. Arne had just given a press conference at which he had bumbled some explanations of the new “standards and accountability” stuff that CPS was shoveling out. I was waiting in the outside waiting area on the 6th floor, and apparently everybody had forgotten I was there. Peter’s office was right inside the door, and for a half hour (or more) I heard him training Arne on what to say and how to say it. Arne was Trilby; Peter Svengali. Peter had already been vetted by the corporate chieftains of Chicago, and Arne had all the credentials. He just had to repeat his lines, sign his Op Eds, memorize his remarks, and most of all not say anything stupid. That’s not difficult for someone who had made it through Harvard (“with honors” I hear).
Within a year after he was appointed CEO of CPS, by early 2002, Arne began the Big Test: Closing Schools with conviction, slowing eliminating real public schools in Chicago’s inner city, and replacing most of them with (a) charter schools or (b) AUSL “turnaround” schools. In early 2002, Arne wrote an Op Ed for the Chicago Sun-Times stating that it was time to show the “courage” to close “failing schools.” CPS policy wonks, meanwhile, created an ever-changing set of “Accountability” policies to rank and sort schools, all based, ultimately, on the scores on so-called “standardized” tests, with a few other things thrown in as critics demanded “multiple measures”.
He was hailed in the editorial pages and by the pundits as finally showing the “courage” necessary to do what was necessary to save the children from their “chronically failing” schools. Rarely was Arne asked a critical question at a press conference (he actually held them; they have stopped since Rahm Emanuel became mayor in 2011 at CPS), and when he did his answer invariably was “Fuck You!” er., excuse me: “I’ll get back to you on that.” And that Arne smile.
By June 2003, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club had issued its report (“Still Left Behind”) showing that ALL Chicago public schools were failures and ALL of them should be privatized. The zealots like R. Eden Martin and the corporate CEOs of the Civic Committee (you can read the list at their website; they pre-date the Business Roundtable by a hundred years…) knew that public schools, at least in the cities, were “failing.”
Well, that was a bit too much even for Chicago’s corporate chieftains.
So within a year, Mayor Daley, reading from a carefully modified script inspired by “Still Left Behind,” announced “Renaissance 2010 — 100 New Schools for Chicago!” Daley read that speech to the Civic Committee in June 2004, and it became law via a vote of the Board of Education (all appointed by Daley) a month later.
The mass closings (and general charterization and privatization) of Chicago’s public schools was on. A few of us fought it from the beginning, and within a couple of years (by 2007) CORE was formed. The earliest CORE tee shirts say (on the back) against Renaissance 2010. And the CORE activists protested each school closing, from the hearings to the school board meetings. By January 2008, CORE was strong enough to host that famous conference against the closing at Malcolm X College that drew hundreds during a blizzard. The issue was huge.
It didn’t even slow down Arne Duncan.
Month after month and year after year, Arne would oversee (and the concept of an overseer is historically appropriate) another Hit List of “failing” ghetto schools which had to be closed to “save the children.” Of course, as the list grew longer, it became clear that the salvationists hadn’t saved anything. After the initial bump in test scores ran out (they always dumped the “bad” kids when they did a “turnaround”, a kind of inventory control reminiscent of “Chainsaw Al Dunlap” who was one of their original inspirations), the schools that were actually serving the same community saw the schools regress to the median (or even worse in some cases, because the “new” schools dumped veteran teachers with roots in the community, replacing them with the ‘Buffies’ — the novices who all looked like Buffy Vampire Slayer.
Arne counted on the fact that most reporters would never go back and check to see if the “Sherman School of Excellence” (one of the first AUSL “turnaround” schools) or the “Urban Prep” charter school (much hyped) were actually serving the same population as the previous schools had. And those of us who looked (by 2008, including CORE people) always found the same thing: kids had been dumped. But that wasn’t enough. Chicago charters invented the “in the course of business” dumping as well. And it was a slick business model. They would wait until their enrollments had gotten them their year’s supply of public dollars (usually October) and then slowly grind down and push out the “bad” (I.e. likely to low scores) kids. Pushing out kids from charters didn’t begin with a kid wearing dreadlocks in Tulsa in 2013, but with dozens of pretexts in Chicago in 2007 2008, 2009 and later.
By then, Arne had mastered his lines, although Trilby still needed Svengali. Peter Cunningham (and a host of other “Chicago Boys,” although one or two of them were ladies) decamped to Washington, D.C. to become the U.S. Department of Education, and “Renaissance 2010” and the “Chicago Plan” became “Race To The Top.”
The Czar may no longer be Richard M. Daley, and the Cossacks may have spread to just about every state in the land, but the pogroms are still the same.
Sadly, there are some people (and we meet them here now and then) who believe because of Arne’s flat affect (I suspect it’s one of the symptoms of a sociopath, but others will have to share about that) that he really doesn’t “know” what he’s doing.
On the contrary, between his Harvard pedigree and his willingness to get blood on his hands by destroying schools, careers (teachers and principals) and lives (children and families), Arne was the man for these massive purges. And “Race To The Top” continues, just as “Renaissance 2010” — the massive closing and privatization of Chicago’s real public schools — didn’t end in 2010. But 2010 was a good year here in Chicago. While the USA was getting Arne Duncan, those of us in the Chicago Teachers Union worked very hard and elected CORE and Karen Lewis to run the union. And on the first anniversary of the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012, it’s even more heartening to say that was a good year and a good thing.
George,
Thanks for this detailed perspective, which deserves to be featured in a post of its own.
Arne “I’m-not-an-educator-but-I-play-one-on-TV” Duncan.
His picture should be next to “apparatchik” in the dictionary.
George, you have shared so many fascinating details–as Jon notes. I am amazed at your recall and/or note-taking abilities. I do hope that you are considering writing a book as you have such an interesting and “on-the-spot” perspective to bring to bear. Thank you for all that you have shared and for your continued emphasis on the racism inherent in all of these practices, especially in the “letting go” of teachers of color.
We must DUMP DUNCAN NOW! AND GET RID OF RAHM.
Wow, George, thank you for that history! Fascinating and depressing and uplifting all at once.
You folks in the Chicago Teachers Union are our inspiration here in LA. Here’s hoping United Teachers Los Angeles can likewise come together — before we have to endure a decade+ like yours. Our superintendent and his masters are doing their damnedest in LA to replicate Arne’s Chicago days, but at least we elect the School Board, thank God.
Happy Anniversary to all of CTU!
The school I am in does just what she describes. It is diverse and positive and a place where families have resources. I hope that does not get destroyed by the “wisdom” of school reform.
Joanna,
Did you notice that the poster’s children were bullied so badly (once tied up on the playground) that Teacher in CT had to seek therapy for her third grade student and felt the need to pull both children from the public school and send them to a private school? I am not sure that school was a very positive place.
Have to agree with you here, te, especially your last sentence.
I repeat (having a child who attended that district at the same time as her children)–strange school district. EVERYTHING about integration numbers & percents, and NOTHING about anything else.
And–sad to say–nothing much has changed for the better since our kids were in attendance.
I can’t go for this. Yes, I think it is laudable, but schools should not be the place to attempt to fix what a broken government and economy has produced.
Let’s keep the focus where it belongs – our politicians and billionaires. They are the ones that created this poverty mess, and they are the ones blaming us for it.
When we attempt to fix that which we didn’t break, we are almost taking an implied responsibility, as if we caused it.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t help people, but I am saying that if we are going to use these community centers, then we ought to be educating the masses about who exactly has done them wrong.
And how many could we possibly save? We don’t have the resources, and we don’t have the time.
Our politicians and billionaires should be ashamed of themselves.
ME–I disagree. I don’t think you can wait for people to confess, particularly if they don’t see it the way we do. Better to figure out a way to enhance communities despite billionaires and politicians. Chances are when they see a good thing going despite them, they will then want to capitalize on what is being done (like, hey? how did they stay happy even though we took away everything from them?). We can’t afford to wait on that. Let schools uplift communities. . .why not? Life is short. If a school becomes a rock for a community, that is a good thing. In fact, I think schools used to be more like that (I know in the small town where I grew up the high school auditorium was the auditorium—football games were the hot ticket on a Friday night). I don’t see anything wrong with that. I think anything that strengthens communities is a good thing.
We don’t really want all that billionaire money anyway. Money causes problems. Better to get some chickens, plant a garden, play a musical instrument, enjoy a good beer or glass of wine and say life is good. I am sure not waiting for any wealthy person to make my life better. We should model that for everyone.
George has it down. He missed the involvement of Obama and Michelle. Both privatizers in the Daley game of destruction since at least 1995. We at CORE-CA believe in one word “COMMUNITY.” Community is all it take to have one operate properly. Nothing stands on its own. This involves all areas including good jobs, healthcare, education, criminal justice and all other agencies and organizations that it takes to operate properly. The driving down of income is having their desired effect which the billionaires want and that is stress so they can do whatever they want. There is no accountability at all. Arts is what dramatically helps with the lack of self image which is what a lot of this anger is based on. This is a proven technique in high security prisons, youth authorities and in K-12 so the powers that be said “WE DON’T NEED THAT USELESS STUFF, SO GET RID OF IT.” And yet it is the least expensive with the most bang there is for self image and understanding with the highest production of critical thinkers and well rounded people who have a higher fulfillment of their lives. In California there is a group called Create California which is out to reinstate Arts in California Schools. CORE-CA is a part of that. Teachers, especially those in the arts, please contact them and join in reinstating arts in our schools.
So right!!
job stability(a living wage!)=family stability=children ready to learn. Yes, politicians and billionaires can’t let this happen because schools would be successful. Doe$n’t fit the me$$aging.
Isn’t this the philosophy of the Harlem Children’s Zone? I know this blog isn’t a fan of the charter school, but do the community resources help everyone (even those not enrolled in the charter school)? What are the results?
Jaded, very good equation.
First thing I am tired of blaming poverty as a reason why urban students are failing tests. I don’ t believe that black students are failing like the States claim. This was used for years to get extra money for title one now it is being used to sell urban schools and make them charter schools because cities lack a sound tax base. A lot of suburban public schools are hurting financially, just as Duncan and Pres. Obama allowed the destruction of urban public schools now they are coming after the suburban schools. You should have known it was coming. The NCLB was and still is destroying public education. Instead of funding public education the government is creating more programs that is adding to the mounting problem. Core Curículum Standards, Testing, and these new teacher observations are not the answer. Schools should be places where parents want to send their children, children want to go to and teachers want to teach. Public education has become a money making business for corporations. Instead of all of this testing why not use Project based learning. Project based learning helps students create, design, do research and think. Plus if we all would pray perhaps God would send a leader that would get rid of the NCLB, testing and return schools to the teachers and parents.