Veronica Vasquez found a letter that her 12-year-old daughter Paula wrote.
Paula is a student in a Chicago public school that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is closing.
““I have one question to ask,” it begins, in Paula’s girlish printing.
“Do you have any idea what your doing to us … our school … even to me? We all have tried and tried everything to keep our school open. How can people like you have no mercy on us?”
“Paula wrote that she is heartbroken. She called CPS decision-makers “cold hearted,” and their decision “barbaric.” And she closed the letter by writing, “I just don’t get it, I don’t get it at all.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I clicked on the link in your post to read the article. Sad to say there was an ad for K12 Schools right there in the middle of the article. Has anyone actually entered their name and email in the K12 home page form? I am tempted, just because I am curious about what is behind the curtain, but I guess I really already know and it isn’t a wizard.
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I spoke to a mother of a first grader in the Chicago Public Schools. She felt fortunate that her daughter’s school was not one of those to be closed, but she was totally disconnected from what is happening. Her daughter is in a school that parents are anxious to have their children attend. Her daughter’s classroom has 37 students. To this mother that was normal and not at all shocking. I commented that that number of students was far above the average class size in surrounding suburbs. Her daughter is below average in reading (by standardized test) but she had been told by the teacher (and her mother) that it was okay because children develop at different rates (thank goodness!). When she asked what to do, I told her to read with her child everyday this summer and to get books her daughter could read from the library. She took the advice quite seriously as if no one had ever suggested it.
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Perhaps no one has. It is good that you were able to tell the mother what to do and that she took you seriously.
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