An article in the Guardian, a British newspaper, sympathetically explains the plight of students, parents, and communities that are adversely affected by the mass closings of dozens of elementary schools in Chicago.
One of the schools to be closed is Mahalia Jackson, which has a program for hearing-impaired children. When the school is closed, students will be sent to a school that is more than an hour’s walk away.
The school also has a program for autistic students. What will happen to them?
Why is it that a magazine in the U.K. portrays the plight of some 40,000 mostly minority children in Chicago with more understanding and sympathy than the Chicago press?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I remember a quote, something like “the field cannot be seen from within the field.” I am glad for the UK’s coverage.
Or, as David Foster Wallace put it, Ask a fish, “How’s the water,” and she will say, ‘What water?’
The Guardian is actually a newspaper. The U.S. only has propaganda outlets.
YUP
Can you say “Pravda” of the USSR? Yes, the good ol USA needs a “Truth” newspaper.
People truly believe that the majority of schools are dysfunctional from media hype and political propaganda. Many of them have not been in a school since they left school themselves. If you want to judge schools volunteer in different school settings for at least 6 months then we can talk
Curious, who owns The Guardian?
According to Wikipedia, it has long been owned by a charitable organization, The Scott Trust, which has made a mission of preserving the paper’s editorial independence. The article also says that the paper conducts “an annual social, ethical, and environmental audit” of “its own behaviour as a company.” Unfortunately, the newspaper has long been losing money for a long time, which raises questions about its prospects for survival.
To the Editors at The Guardian and Others:
I have always thought of public schools as THE way to level the playing field and remove inquality from society. CPS have attempted to do this, but they have failed at it, and through little to no fault of their own. Therefore, we should be looking at the genesis of the real failure.
Public schools are a reflection of the equality in society; they are not the sole or even main generator of such equality. But in theory and in practice, they are supposed to, as a public trust, remain on as ONE of the major players in generating and sustaining equality. They can, they have, and they should.
Great schools with great teachers under a non-high stakes testing environment can absolutely teach low income children well, and the learning there is resplendent, but this is only done up to a certain threshold with enough resources. Beyond such a threshold and without more wrap-around services, the school alone can almost never go any further.
One of the reasons why other country’s schools are faring better is that their child poverty rates are dramatically lower than that in the United States. This is something Washington DC refuses to absorb and take seriously in their bought-and-paid for, unfounded fear of what they deem to be “socialism”.
But with today’s junk science reforms, starving of school budgets with the tax-subsidized wealth of big corporations and uber-rich individuals, and the utter sheer corruption of teachers unions (save for the CTU and Karen Lewis), schools can no longer be considered much of any kind of player in improving inequality.
The policy makers, most of whom have no background in education, are boh misguided and intentional in determining the education of children for purposes that not only have little or nothing to do with education, but that work against the civil, social, fiscal, and cognitive rights of such children and their families.
There is hope, and the hope is growing with more and more political backlash from parents who vote pay taxes.
But this will prove to be a very long, protracted and drawn out fight to restore and improve what we once had, and forces outside the school system used to mitigate poverty will have to come into play, such as reforming our military campaigns, our tax codes, and our healthcare system.
It will have to get worse, if that is imaginable, to get better.
Well said and sadly the truth. It will get worse before it becomes different. Better will not be for everyone. For many it will be the bitter and for others the better. For the learning disabled it will be the bitter betrayal of a country that had risen to unimagined ideals of equity and promise for all it’s children through the laws of the land. They will fall back to the charible mentality of giving if we have it and abandoned if we don’t, or choose to redirect to funds to those perceived as the value-added worker of tomorrow for the profit purposes of the global industrial mindset.
I am curious if the plan for Urban Shrinkage has started or is in the process of redevelopment and redistribution of populations and resources in London and other urban centers in the UK? The complexity of how to enact such a plan has been skillfully crafted and whether a large country or small the execution is the same. Technology and global wealth are the key and the partners. Has the Guardian paved the way to make ready the Brits for what will be their fate as well? Germany is the architect of the plan and has already embarked on the movement for regaining ownership of urban sites
by the wealthy.
I taught at Mahalia Jackson some years back. When I was there it contained a variety of special needs children. I was extremely saddened to learn of its closing because I have fond memories of the students I taught. Maybe current and former teachers from this school can get together to tell the stories of how this school made a difference in the lives of so many children especially those with special needs.
I taught at Mahalia Jackson some years back. I have fond memories of the special needs children I taught and was therefore saddened to hear that this school which had made a difference in the lives of so many children was to close. Maybe current and former teachers can get together and tell their stories of what Mahalia Jackson meant to these children.
According to the edudeformers the children with “special needs” only count as an impediment to improving the bottom line so the best strategy is to not enroll them in the first place.
Duane Swacker: quite so. Or “counsel” them out through a combination of veiled threats and bribes.
Since for many charters the two highest priorities are getting big numbers on the Holy Metrics of Standardized Tests and having obedient ‘customers’ so that these Compliance Centres can give the appearance of ‘teaching like champions,’ in the interests of truth in advertising they should have a plaque above their front doors that reads: “Score suppressors and independent thinkers not welcome here.”
Take on all comers? Pfft! That’s for those outmoded “dropout factories” and “factories of despair” aka “public schools.”
I may be presuming, but I have a sneaky suspicion you are a non-believer in the Holy Metrics and don’t buy into the charterite/privatizer nonsense. Okay, I’ll go out on a limb here. I bet we could agree that when it comes to the edubullies
“Foolishness is indeed the sister of wickedness.” [Sophocles]
🙂
[For viewers who judge restaurants by their menus and not their food: SATIRE ALERT!]
I am not a happy person today in Arizona. Our public schools are selling out to charters instead of fighting charters. Please see: http://www.azcentral.com//community/scottsdale/articles/20130604charter-school-transition-funding.html?source=nletter-
Comments, please.
From the article:
““My charters are very concerned,” Sigmund [charter association CEO] said. “The additional assistance was originally intended to help charters make up for buckets of funding that they did not have access to.”
Public-school districts with charters in Arizona can still hold elections for bonds and overrides, and if approved, can use money from those bonds and overrides toward their district-sponsored charters.
Sigmund said a quality education can come in many different forms, but her group wants to ensure that state-sponsored charters have an equal playing field.
“The bottom line is that our 33-year-old system of finance is broken, and people are looking for any legal ways to get more dollars for their students,” she said. “If there is an ability and autonomy for the school leaders to be able to meet what that community and that student needs, then yeah, we agree with it. But that’s not what we’re seeing.”
Vail Superintendent Baker disagrees.
“It’s a little bit of semantics, maybe, maybe not,” he said. “We’re very careful to note that when we go to a charter school, we are accepting a market-driven model.”
Like state-sponsored charters, district-sponsored charters cannot require attendance by students who live in the nearby area.
If a district-sponsored charter fails, for whatever reason, it could lead to overcrowding in surrounding district schools.
Furthermore, if a district converts a charter school back to non-charter status, it must return all additional funds received as a charter back to the state — in one lump-sum payment.
But the incentives to convert schools to charters outweighed the risks, Baker said.
“We are changing our educational behavior, our educational structure, because that is the incentive that has been provided by the Legislature,” he said. “If I hold out an incentive to teachers and say to them, ‘If you become National Board-certified, then we will give you additional money,’ (then) if the teacher becomes National Board-certified, people don’t say, ‘Oh, she’s just doing it for the money.’ She’s responding to the incentive.”
What’s that old saying: “If you play with fire you’re gonna get burned”.
Those districts that choose this “competitive” model will get burned, mark my words!! (But then again at the beginning of each spring I say that the Cardinals will win the World Series that year and I’ve only been right 5 out of about 50 years on that one-ha ha!)
It’s business plain and simple. The one thing Education should NOT be. Our Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves. The basic right of representation at the neighborhood level (school boards) is being taken away.
The press, indeed all media in the U.S. is only interested in $$$$$. Where’s the press that brought home Viet Nan and challenged politicians and corporations ?
Oh yes, it’s owned by politicians and corporations.
Diane: “Why is it that a magazine in the U.K. portrays the plight of some 40,000 mostly minority children in Chicago with more understanding and sympathy than the Chicago press?”
Perhaps The Guardian doesn’t have to pay for 40.000 mostly minority children in Chicago so it is willing to show the travesty of those children’s situation. Let’s face it, our media relys on sponsors and big money would not be happy with doom and gloom about one of our largest cities and their paltry 40,000 poor and mostly minority children (poor + children = no spending).
Think back to WWII. Did we go to war in Europe to save the Jews or to end the Depression? I am not a scholar of history but I do have an opinion and I am more than a little bit jaded. It’s all about the money.
Your right on the Truth. It is follow the money and history have shown us this kind of betrayal of the masses time and time again. Most people will romantize war after the fact. Your reading of history and why we went to Europe and have other wars is absolutely wrapped around economic incentive. After millions upon millions of deaths of the disposable populations as seen by the Germans, then we and others stepped in and fought what we now call the good war.
Is this matter of the unraveling of our public school system a life and death question? You bet and when it is respected enough in the diabolical betrayal that it is, then maybe their will be coast to coast uprising. Some of this is beginning to happen. It can’t be fast enough!
It was the Soviet Union that essentially beat the Nazi juggernaut not the supposed vaunted US role. The US role was made easier by the sacrifices made by the Russians and more difficult by one of the Nazi’s main financiers. From the Guardian UK:
“George Bush’s grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The Guardian also published Glen Greenwald’s exposé on the NSA public spying debacle.
Great paper!
I regularly read the Guardian and watch Russia Today and Al Jazeera. If you only read and watch Amerikan Pablum you will know nothing. If you have a correction factor like these press then you can really understand. I usually go even furthur into Asia also. You have to not only know education but the local scene and how they look at the world. We are not the only ones here and the only ones who know anything. After all, they have been around a lot longer than we have. Look at the new finds in Cambodia and how far back man goes and where he went when. It was not here. England has its academies which here we call charter schools and here in the small schools game the small schools within a school are sometime called academies. The Guardian does great reporting worldwide on all subjects as does Russia Today and Al Jazeera. Larry King is now on Russia Today doing interviews again. Russia Today has 250,000,000 viewers a day. That is 8% of every person on the planet. Think about it. How about getting them to do some stories. They already have done some on LAUSD. How about on these other issues? How about one on Badass Teachers and its rapid growth? How about the story of the fight in Chicago? Worldwide, that is what the Guardian did for Chicago in print. Only because they are a real news organization.
Interestingly, I read through several articles from the American press (including some articles from the Chicago Tribune) that discussed Chicago Public School System’s decision to close schools, but it was the article from The Guardian that seemed to give a face and voice to the students and communities within Chicago. In truth, most of the articles I read seemed to be political in nature (e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/30/the-biggest-irony-in-chicagos-mass-closing-of-schools) and did not connect the reader to the difficult realities that students and families will face as a result of closing more than 50 schools serving over 35,000 students. That being said, as many other bloggers have already mentioned, money (or the lack thereof) could be a key factor in determining what, how, and when news is shared within the press. However, as with the oppressive nature of having those in a position of authority make drastic decisions without valuing the voice of students, families, and communities, the American media (including press) can also perpetuate oppressive practices within American society.
the guardian story may be admirable but i[‘m not sure what you’re talking about, DR — the chicago media have portrayed the cuts and closings with great vigor.
I don’t always agree with Alexander, but in this case I think he’s quite right – the Tribune and Sun Times had numerous in-depth articles examining CPS claims on underutilization and overcrowding, on moving students to ‘better schools,’ on safety concerns; WBEZ provided lots of coverage; and the local TV stations covered the protests pretty consistently.
oh, and btw — that school the guardian wrote about? it was granted a reprieve and will open again next year
Where’s Ravitch’s Research? http://ow.ly/mAuD6