The best reporting on the historic closure of dozens of Chicago public schools was in the Sun-Times. It provided a human face to a public tragedy.
Most moving were the scenes at schools listed for closure.
The board voted enmasse. It didn’t even take time to name the schools it killed.
The decision was rendered unless time than it takes to boil an egg.
And there was this:
“One of the speakers lugged out of board chambers by CPS security was Erica Clark, a CPS parent and member Parents 4 Teachers. She used her two minutes time to recite, alphabetically, a litany of the schools on the chopping block: “Altgeld is my school, Armstrong is my school, Attucks is my school.”
“Her microphone was cut off as she reached “Pope”. She sat on the floor and continued: “Songhai is my school”. As security guards picked her up and carried her out, protesters called out with her: “Every school is my school.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Where are all these children going to go to school in the fall? I am appalled by this and am wondering why so many in power no longer remember the Golden Rule.
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Joan Ramseyer: the Golden Rule you and I know is not the one the edubullies live by.
Their version is a bit different: “He who has the gold, rules.”
I prefer our version.
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What a sad day for America, for generations of children, for the grand experiment
that has been an opportunity for equity and education for our patchwork quilt society.
What is being put in place has a cold and measured purpose behind it with no apparent
concern or conscious for the future or survival of the masses. It is a herding mechanism devoid of equity and is being claimed by a few. Somehow I believe it will come back to haunt everyone. It has pitted society against itself. Ugly!!! As my friends tell me “God doesn’t like ugly!!!” Ugly of purpose that ignores the rest, no matter what the elite tell themselves, is wrong!
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Chicago, you must set the agenda not Emmanuel and his destruction crew. You must take back control of Chicago and the School Board. There is nothing like a politician who gets the public mad as hell at them for change. In L.A. Monica Ratliff was elected with only $44,000 against more than a million and she never took a day off work and she drives a long way to her teaching job. If you have a good mayoral candidate the chances are good to get Emmanuel out and to elect sense again even if it has been a long time. Now is the time for Chicago to set the agenda in Chicago as you have been the shining example for the rest of the country concerning education and fighting for your children and society.
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George is right!!!! He is sending a message of hope at a time when little is to be found! An example well worth following is L.A. and Monica Ratliff. Go for it Chicago because you must and you can!!!!
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Fascist?
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Having covered Chicago’s school news for more than 30 years, I was really heartened to be part of the coverage of the current struggles here. But it’s important to note that The New York Times is pulling another “Judith Miller” in the way it is reporting the “news” from Chicago.
More about that later. I agree that the Sun-Times story (the lede is a classic, by the way) was one of the best coverages of the Chicago Board of Education meeting that we covered for Substance (www.substancenews.net) Wednesday (May 22, 2013). Substance is still continuing our coverage, because we have been facing problems with our site’s editing mode, but will have all of our stories up by Memorial Day.
Wednesday’s Chicago Board of Education meeting was record setting in every respect. There were more than 40 reporters, most with cameras, at the Board meeting on May 22. So it took an extreme effort for the officials of Chicago and Chicago’s public schools to try and stop the facts from getting out — and for the most part, they have failed. A two million dollar propaganda department (doubled in size since Rahm Emanuel took over the schools in May 2011, by the way, for those who want to believe CPS has “no money”) couldn’t keep the facts from the public.
For the most part, the official propagandists failed, but they did have help from a handful of reporters and media people. Most notably were The New York Times, a bit of Fox News, and Catalyst (which still proclaims itself as “independent reporting” although they are firmly in the tank with their billionaire donors and the money people.
Probably the worst reporting on the current situation in Chicago’s public schools is coming in The New York Times. As Diane has pointed out, the Times can’t even bring itself to admit that Rahm Emanuel has now ordered up the largest school closing in U.S. History. The comparable closings of public schools were in the South in the years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the racial dynamics are roughly the same. Massive segregation leads to the destruction of educational opportunities for Black children.
But the Times’s distortions go beyond that one inaccuracy. At every point, the Times is quoting official sources as “fact”. For example, the Times talks about the CPS “deficit” in the same terms as Rahm Emanuel’s talking points; ditto the “underutilization crisis.” Both lies have been refuted by union researchers and independents who have looked at the actual numbers. (I’m proud to have helped a little at the Chicago Teachers Union).
So there is now a huge danger. America’s “Newspaper of record”, The New York Times, is lying about one of the biggest education stories in history: the Chicago school struggles of 2012 – ??? Given the penchant of many educated people to quote The Times as if anything it published were factual, this is a problem to rival the ignominious days of Jayson Blair or Judith Miller. I have no idea how to set that record straight, because the Times has chosen to become, as during the Judith Miller days, the voice of official lies.
One of the bigger stories of the past ten days was the fact that Karen Lewis and CORE won re-election to the leadership of the 30,000 member Chicago Teachers Union with 80 percent of the vote. The May 17 voting in all Chicago schools was decisive. Even with the opposition (a group calling itself the “Coalition To Save Our Union” and representing the two groups that had preceded CORE in power in the CTU) getting front page and editorial page backing from the Chicago Tribune, they only carried three of the city’s high schools and a couple of dozen of the city’s elementary schools. Karen Lewis and CORE have a mandate for the next three years, but that, too, is unlikely to be “news” when we are facing “All the news that fits…”
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At last, there is some recognition of the orientation of the Times. Good for Karen Lewis.
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