An article that appeared in “In These Times” describes the school where Mayor Rahm Emanuel sends his children. It is the University of Chicago Lab School. President Obama chose it for his girls when he lived in Chicago. Arne Duncan is a graduate.
It is a wonderful progressive school, originally founded by John Dewey. It has small classes, a broad and rich curriculum, wonderful facilities, a beautiful library, seven full-time arts teachers for a student body of 1,700 students, and a lovely campus.
This is from the article:
The conditions at the University of Chicago Lab Schools are dramatically different than those at Chicago Public Schools, which are currently closed with teachers engaged in a high-profile strike. The Lab School has seven full-time art teachers to serve a student population of 1,700. By contrast, only 25% of Chicago’s “neighborhood elementary schools” have both a full-time art and music instructor. The Lab School has three different libraries, while 160 Chicago public elementary schools do not have a library.
“Physical education, world languages, libraries and the arts are not frills. They are an essential piece of a well-rounded education,” wrote University of Chicago Lab School Director David Magill on the school’s website in February 2009.
Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis agrees with Magill, and believes what works for Mayor Emanuel’s kids should be a prescription for the rest of the city.
“I’m actually glad that he did [send his kids to Lab School] because it gave me an opportunity to look at how the Lab school functions,” Lewis told Chicago magazine in November 2011. “I thought he gave us a wonderful pathway to seeing what a good education looks like, and I think he’s absolutely right, and so we love that model. We would love to see that model throughout.”
One of the key sticking points in union negotiations is that Emanuel wants to use standardized tests scores to count for 40 percent of the basis of teacher evaluations. Earlier this year, more than 80 researchers from 16 Chicago-area universities signed an open letter to Emanuel, criticizing the use of standardized test scores for this purpose. “The new evaluation system for teachers and principals centers on misconceptions about student growth, with potentially negative impact on the education of Chicago’s children,” they wrote.
CTU claims that nearly 30% of its members could be dismissed within one to two years if the proposed evaluation process is put into effect and has opposed using tests scores as the basis of evaluation. They’re joined in their opposition to using testing in evaulations by Magill.
Writing on the University of Chicago’s Lab School website two years ago, Magill noted, “Measuring outcomes through standardized testing and referring to those results as the evidence of learning and the bottom line is, in my opinion, misguided and, unfortunately, continues to be advocated under a new name and supported by the current [Obama] administration.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Having taught in the CPS some time back, I know that many of the problems we see today go back several years. Some of the past mayors controlled the CPS with an iron hand and educating children was not their number one goal. Politics and power ruled our school system. I think that good will come out of the strike and the discussions being had at this time. I see it as an opportunity to make the CPS a positive role model for other urban schools throughout this country because we have the teachers and students to make it happen.
Test scores would count for only 40% for Chicago teachers? In Tennessee, teacher evaluations (and that includes all certified personnel) have 50% of their annual evaluation based on student scores (15% achievement and 35% value added). Tennessee is a right to work state, and any concerns or objections to this practice were ignored. By golly, we EARNED that Race to the Top money!!!
You’re not kidding, barbide.
…And so the saga continues regarding education of the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. Teachers in the U.S.A., we need a BLUEPRINT to redefine education for the United States, according to OUR standards which we need to fine tune. There really isn’t any comparison between public and private schooling because the ‘playing field’ is not the same. When are we going to wake up and see things as they really are and stop trying to compare apples to oranges? I think that all the legislators, CEOs, directors of the new reform movement and anyone else who schools their child(ren) via the private sector need to be exposed for who they really are, because they surely are not walking the talk, in my opinion. The lip service is getting older, while our education profession is being washed down the tubes, but you know what, this is only shaping the future with regard to
the election of people who say they represent ‘the people.’…..
Great article, all across the country the supporters behind the reforms don’t send their children to the public schools being subjected to the ill fated policies. It not good for their kids but its good for children in mostly poor and urban school districts.
Today, on the picket line, I gave a short interview with a local newspaper. I told them about how I was lucky enough to have a great public school education from K-8. I then told them that I was also lucky enough to get a scholarship and attend…you guessed it…the Lab Schools for high school. I proceeded to tell them why I was striking, which is because I know what my students at a neighborhood school are missing out on and what Rahm Emanuel’s students are getting. I know this because I got it for four years: a great arts education, ZERO standardized testing (the only standardized test I took were my AP exams), and small classes (around 15 people, gym classes were slightly larger, around 20 – my graduating class was 120 people, which was a larger class size than other grade levels). I also had an infinite amount of resources at my disposal: computer labs with up to date and working technology, technology in the classroom, language labs, even a film editing room! I was taught to think creatively and was taught to be college-ready, NOT test-ready.
The way I am forced to teach nowadays sickens me because it goes against my own experience. Rahm is right, the Lab Schools are phenomenal and his children will benefit from their education there. However, we, the teachers, are just as right to demand that same sort of education for our children and students. If Mayor Emanuel truly cared about our students, he would fix our tax laws so that TIFs no longer robbed schools of their rightful funds. He would model education in public schools after the Lab Schools, and then perhaps, by the time his students needed to go to high school, he wouldn’t have to send them to the Lab Schools. : )
Is it true that Lab School teachers’ evaluations are not based on test scores, or standardized test growth? If so, that should be broadcast loud and clear. I have several friends who got the same teacher education degree as I from the same college, but they teach in more privileged districts or at private schools. They are not put under the same pressure as I or my colleagues at schools with more
challenging populations.
The laws and regs differ from state to state, but private schools like the Lab School in Chicago don’t take state tests, don’t give standardized tests.
In some states, charters are exempt from the teacher evaluation requirements
The late Gerald Bracey wrote about the same thing three years ago concerning the daughters of another neoliberal Democrat, President Barack Obama. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/shouldnt-obama-and-duncan_b_251958.html
When I posted the article yesterday, I chose the first paragraph you have posted. It stuck out like a sore thumb.