George Schmidt was a high school teacher in Chicago who was fired by Paul Vallas for releasing the contents of a standardized test that he was required to administer to his students. Here he responds to a post called “In Defense of Paul Vallas,” written by Diane Fager, who was on Vallas’ staff in Chicago.
Schmidt writes:
By the middle of the 20th Century, reporters were trained to check for accuracy, not to simplify reality into “two sides to every story” stuff.
“If your mother says she loves you, check it out!” was a motto of reporting that came out of Chicago.
It’s a compliment to Diane Ravitch’s blog that Paul Vallas dispatches one of his former minions to blow smoke into the eyes of people taking a closer look at the actual Vallas record.
Diane Fager’s versions of the wonders of the Paul Vallas record typifies the way in which Vallas has always tried to manipulate the media. He does it by working directly himself or through surrogates, often former subordinates like Fager. When I read the original anonymous testimonial, I thought it came from Cozette Buckney; Phil Hansen is no longer available to sing Vallas’s praises because he’s dead… The Vallas fan club has been around (and usually well compensated) for a long long time.
One of the wonderful things about the educational leadership career of Paul Vallas was how intensely he worked the press.
From the day he was announced as the mayor’s choice (because of his “business acumen” ????) to head Chicago’s schools (Vallas’s actual private sector business experience had been at his family’s suburban restaurant; his other work was overseeing patronage as Chicago’s Mayor’s Budget Director, the job he had before he became the Business Roundtable’s choice for the first CPS CEO), Vallas was intense about his publicity stuff.
Reporters who wrote (or spoke) even a line that wasn’t to Vallas’s liking would either hear from him directly (often in late night phone calls) or from a well-paid surrogate (as in the present case). Those who asked him impertinent questions (or who laughed at the absurdity of his claims and hypeactive posings) usually got the “I’ll get back to you on that…” stumper that was patented here in Chicago. Those of us who actually published the facts about Vallas’s regime (most famously for me, the actual content of the CASE tests Vallas had spent millions of dollars on in Chicago) could expect enormous pressure (in my case, a million dollar “copyright infringement” lawsuit and termination for “copyright infringement…”) and usually (as in the case of Grady Jordan, who wrote about Vallas’s racism) slanders or worse.
One day, the Paul Vallas event will become a case study for reporters to study in school, just as the Harvard Business School uses case studies. But for now the whole spin cycle is still spinning, so we’ll have to continue adding to the portfolio now that the Connecticut courts have added a new chapter.
For the rest of the USA, Paul Vallas is the first reason to quarantine anything or anyone emerging from Chicago as a “school reformer.”
But there is a fine history to all this…
And since Diane Ravitch is a historian first, it’s fun to do the history here in the present tense.
Paul Vallas became “Chief Executive Officer” of Chicago’s public schools in 1995, as soon as the (Republican majority) Illinois General Assembly had passed the “Amendatory Act of 1995” beginning “Mayoral Control” of large, largely minority urban school systems. The Amendatory Act was the beginning of it all, and Paul Vallas was the first of the non-educators to get the top job of reforming public education.
Even before Vallas took over the public schools of Chicago, he was spinning his narrative with the help of certain reporters who had opted for good storytelling over accuracy and boringly checked-out facts.
I remember the Chicago Sun-Times, in an early “Who is Paul Vallas?” story, quoting Vallas’s Mom — yes, his mother — about how hard he worked at high school football because our humble hero was not very talented but always substituted hard work and grit for whatever… That motherly endorsement came as if that, for some reason, was why he should, with no education experience (but with a long record as a Democratic Party and City Hall hack), become the head of the nation’s third largest school system.
This episode is just the latest in one version of the Vallas Spin. Testimonials.
The other (which has probably happened, but Our Pal Paul is too humble — and/or too busy busy busy — to go directly to Diane Ravitch…) is to call the person making the original report.
By the time Vallas’s star was rising in Chicago, the media were in decline. Chicago’s City New Bureau (for decades the training ground for reporters in Chicago) was terminated. No longer would reporters (from famous ones like Mike Royko and Kurt Vonnegut to the average street reporter) be taught that reporting began and ended with accuracy under the famous motto: “If your mother says she loves you, Check it Out!” No, by the time Vallas was creating his clip files, a reporter could quote Vallas’s mother with a straight face and not have an editor send her back to basic training! By the time Vallas was finally dumped by Mayor Daley in May – June 2001, even the Vallas media manipulation machine had worn out its welcome and Vallas’s frenetic phone calls to favored reporters weren’t taken as a good thing any longer. Also, some of the reporters who had done Vallas’s dirty work (based on “inside” dirt against Vallas’s enemies) were also leaving the business. (I go once a year to spit on the monument to one of those guys, a reporter who turned pundit and ended his career disgraced by the number of times he ran Vallas’s slanders as his own words in the Sun-Times…).
Vallas was out in Chicago in July 2001. He told the press he was going to relax and spend some time with the kids, maybe play a little baseball blah blah blah. At the time, I told people it was really sad for Vallas to pull that one on his own kids, since it was clear he was already looking to make a political bed for himself in Illinois or Chicago. Sure enough, within a few months, Paul Vallas was running for the Democratic Party nomination for Governor of Illinois. During that time, we published an extensive refutation of just about every claim Vallas was making, including a resume padding (he claimed “teaching” experience he never had and that stuff about eye glasses) and some typical tall tales (nobody ever saw that “600 page…” thingy Vallas supposedly authored, for example, just as nobody has ever seen evidence of this claim by Vallas’s person here that Paul was a “historian”)…
Anyway, we’ve reprinted some of those old articles at http://www.substancenews.net this week just so readers in 2013 could note that had people been paying attention to the accuracy of the facts in 2002 (and before, as we published them in Substance) maybe Philadelphia, New Orleans, and now Bridgeport would not have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) on the Vallas Hoax. But the method hasn’t changed, as we can see here. A humble saint Paul Vallas is, whose entire life has been dedicated to the children, Paul Vallas’s has. Often in history these kinds of versions of reality get treated unkindly in fiction. I’m thinking of Gradgrind in “Hard Times” or so many of the others satirized by Charles Dickens. But Paul Vallas and his Vallasizations of reality (as well as the “Vallas Method”, most recently exemplified here) are still costing public school districts dollars and time. So it’s worth returning to a story about which the facts have long been clear.
“If your mother says she loves you, check it out!” still holds.
Wow! Unbelievable the hoax has lasted so long. Your full length expose should be national news….a must read for all:
VALLAS FACTS: ‘The Paul Vallas Hoax’ in the March 2002 Substance exposed every lie, half-truth, and self serving utteration of Vallas… But it took other places a decade to check out Vallas’s nonsense and try to stop his ‘school reform’ nonsense
George N. Schmidt – July 03, 2013
[Editor’s Note: Substance had the story first, with all the facts. Paul Vallas was a fraud ten and fifteen years ago, in 1998 or 2002, just as he has been exposed to be in 2013 in Connecticut. But the facts were ignored for more than a decade. And during those years Paul G. Vallas (and at times his so-called “team”) cavorted around the country, pushing the toxic sludge of corporate “school reform” across the USA (and even into other nations). How did it happen? Basically, the majority of reporters (and school board members) simply recycled Vallas’s own versions of reality, carefully selected from a pile of news clippings from Chicago. The contrary evidence was ignored, while members of the Business Roundtable and other plutocrats pushed Vallas on one school district after another.
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=4370§ion=Article
And a local op-Ed in the CT Post:
Hugh Bailey: The miracle turnaround specialist is a myth, closing and link:
Vallas, in a conversation with a Chicago reporter last week, said he expected to be in Bridgeport long enough to negotiate the next collective bargaining agreement. This explains both why he signed a new contract and, considering he made this comment after a judge ruled that he needs to step down, that his supreme self-confidence is undiminished.
Miracle turnaround specialists are mythical, but hard-line negotiators are not.
As for what comes next, that will depend on an appeal. But should Vallas’ ouster stand, the city will look back at a move he made last year to close a budget deficit. The state-appointed school board — which, it can’t be restated enough, was ruled illegitimate by the state Supreme Court — on June 26, 2012, accepted a $3.5 million “forgivable” loan from the state of Connecticut. One of the conditions of the loan was that the state commissioner of education, for the duration of the three-year loan, was given the right to approve finalists for a new superintendent once Vallas leaves.
If there’s one thing Bridgeport has had enough of, it’s the helping hand of Stefan Pryor.
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Hugh-Bailey-The-miracle-turnaround-specialist-is-4649167.php
“For the rest of the USA, Paul Vallas is the first reason to quarantine anything or anyone emerging from Chicago as a “school reformer.”
Boy, that list is growing ever longer!!
Thank you, George. from a long time, grateful Chicago follower …….
As a CPS teacher in the golden oldies days, I fell for the hype in the beginning. I admired that he got the press to say good things about us. Proof positive that beauty is skin deep, that he was using make-up to cover a sore. And the damage left behind has only exacerbated as one after another people have been placed to run the school system in such ways that our wounds are worsened and our whole community suffers. There no longer is make-up to cover. Though slow, understanding of reality is coming, I believe and I hope.
(It is hard work being retired. Never thought my retirement would be a continuation of advocating for public school education and educators — and my pension. Had anticipated continuing to support children and teachers with more pleasurable activities, like being a school volunteer …….)
Thanks to Diane, to BAT, to NPE, to Fred Klonsky, …… to all who are participating.
Mary, I quite agree with your next-to-last paragraph. Reminds me of a sign a senior held at the March 27th CTU/Community March for the Schools on March 27th– “You mean it’s 2013 and we’re still protesting the same @#$*?!”
Definitely Retired & Re-Fired (Up)!
Wow. We’ve talked about ed “reform” being aimed at “other people’s children.” Apparently Mr. Vallas believes that honesty and ethical behavior should only be required in other people’s work lives.
Being of suapicious mind, my first thought when I read Diane Fager’s piece defending Paul Vallas’ “wonders” was she was put up to it. And probably heavily compensated in some way or another. This is such valuable (new to us in CT) information. Let’s hope he’s given his final walking papers when the court next meets!
Who, what, why, where, when, how is the old time game. Now in journalism school, ha, ha, ha, they teach them sensationalism is important. Never even believe your mother until the proof is put up is the only real way to report. Long gone in the U.S. on local, national and international news. There was better reporting on Chicago sometimes in the Guardian and they are in England but a real news paper with real news. Imagine that. Thank you Bill Clinton for the end of the Free Press.
Economics from the University of Chicago is a tragedy, what is happening at the city and schools is a tragedy. Did selling those assets work out there? One thing is for sure Emmanuel has met more than his match in Karen Lewis and her supporters. They will not be intimidated.
Vallas and his puppetmasters have destroyed everything they have touched and he has done a good job for them only now he has met a retired judge who knows exactly what to do and has what it takes to do it on a solid legal point to stop the “Madness of Vallas.”
Schools are easy to fix if your Job #1 is the students. That is what is supposed to be #1 and when they know that they perform. Always the same story either way, good or bad.
Let us not forget that Paul Vallas put 100 schools on “probation” a punitive term that allowed his successors to destroy those schools. He dismantled career and tech education in the neighborhood schools, insisting that college prep for all was the way to go. He has been a disaster everywhere he goes.
When Paul went to Philly, I attended a conference at which he was invited to attend. I told anyone who would listen, that he would be a nightmare. I admit, I even booed him, but as my grandmother used to say, “I can show you better than I can tell you”. He was welcomed with open arms.
What got Paul fired was his ego in a one-ego town. His right-hand man, Arne Duncan made sure he never tried to match egos which is why he is still the secretary of education.
In 1995 Paul Vallas became the first head of Chicago Public Schools who was not a superintendent. He did not have the credentials. He was a Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
He began by implementing a program for reading and arithmetic called DISTAR, Direct Instruction. It was a rote learning program for preschool through second grade in which children repeated what the teacher said to learn vocabulary, and learned phonics by following the teacher’s hand as she moved her hand from front to back to read a word. It was a total phonics program – no comprehension.The program does not need an educated and trained teacher. It only needs someone who can read a script.
The Chicago Tribune announced that the Chicago White Sox were going to fund the Direct Instruction training for us poor teachers. At that time i was a teacher in Chicago and co-chair of a committee of the Chicago early childhood professional organization. We had obtained long-term research of work by the High Scope Educational Research Foundation that examined three curricula – a traditional nursery school curriculum, a Direct Instruction curriculum, and the High Scope curriculum. (High Scope is the research organization whose work is quoted on the benefits of preschool saving seven times the amount of money spent later for special educaiton, welfare, unemployment, and prisons.)
The research on the different curricula showed that over a period of twenty years the children in the Direct Instruction program had three times the number of felony arrests as the children in the other programs.And the arrests were for assault with a deadly weapon ! ! !
My co-chair and I sent Mr. Vallas a letter and enclosed a six page summary of the research. He did not answer us directly. Instead he had the head of the Early Childhood Department send us a wishy-washy letter. So at the next ChIcago Board of Education budget hearing in the summer of 1996 we spoke about several issues including the High Scope research. Mr. Vallas’s Chief Education Officer and his Chief Accountability Officer were stunned when we spoke of the research. They had not been lookikng at us and after we spoke they just stared at us. (They evidently had not been notified of the research by Mr. Vallas.) There was no more talk of implementing Direct Instruction. Instead there was pressure put on principals to quietly implement the program. I learned this from a principal I knew. This is an issue of Mr. Vallas’ integrity and his lack of professional conduct. Catalyst, the reform magazine for public education in Chicago long before the current “reform” began, wrote an article on this in their September 1996 issue.
In thinking about the research, it might seem difficult to see the relationship between a curriculum and children growing up to assault and kill others. But if preschool and kindergarten children spend twenty minutes of the time in play and a hour sitting and reciting words, they do not have the time to develop social skills which is a major development at this age.
As I write this, I am wondering if the children of 1995 who had this program and who are now in their twenties are the ones who are today engaged in the viiolence we read about in Chicago..
Marie: I think Mark Twain had this sort of person in mind when he wrote in 1887 that
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure.”
Although I think we might agree with Albert Einstein about what Twain might have meant by “Success”:
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
Keeping in mind, lest we forget, that this is one of the leading lights of the self-styled “new civil rights movement.”
😦
This explains why I saw DISTAR on the shelf in the teacher’s room of a CPS Child-Parent center a few years ago. I wondered when it had been implemented and why, since that is not the program attributed to the strong research base on Child-Parent centers. The sad thing is that, even though DISTAR was not being implemented when I was there, I observed teachers who did a lot of drill for skill with 3 and 4 year olds, so the heavy focus on direct instruction remained.
Some info on Paul Vallas’ suing Substance News in 1999:
http://www.substancenews.com/archive/legalintro.htm
All of this diatribe against Paul Vallas ignores the fact that he was an improvement over his predecessors. Yes, they had credentials, but for the most part they were not education friendly either. As a teacher in a probationary school under Vallas, I experienced the teachers pulling together to improve and the students taking education and standards seriously. It took us two years to get off probation, and it was two years of hard work, but it resulted in a better teaching environment than previously.
I have much to criticize about Vallas” tenure, but there were many positives in my experience.
Is that why public education in Chicago was all fixed by Vallas and didn’t need to be fixed again by Duncan –or by everyone else who came after them? So there is really no need for Rahm et al. to starve schools of resources, claim they are under-utilized, shut them down in record numbers and give them away to privatizers today?
I guess we should all be thanking Vallas for bringing high-stakes testing to Chicago and for the 86% increase in elementary school dropouts during his watch, so we can continue to be fixed by non-educators who see standardized test scores as the be-all of education and just cause for blaming teachers.
I think something is very wrong when a teacher believes that it took a top-down non-educator bureaucrat cracking the whip for teachers at their school to do their jobs. Where was your principal and why were you all MIA? Maybe you and your colleagues should have taken advantage of the autonomy you had before mayoral control, like I voluntarily chose to do when I implemented the CPS standards (even before they were called frameworks and standards) in my private school classroom. Claiming you needed externally imposed sanctions to achieve school success does not speak well to your commitment to student learning, unless you were dealing with children in poverty.
Personally, I would rather see politicians and their crony appointees addressing the out-of-school factors impacting poor children, which teachers have no control over, rather than dictating what teachers do in their classrooms.
Public education is experiencing the “fix of the bureaucrats.” Now is getting to you all what the rest of us in the private sector have been fighting for years, top-down regulation by government. You bought it; they are breaking it.
Did you not read that my classroom teaching experience is as a private school teacher, or are you looking blame and pick a fight with anyone? Never mind. I know the answer is the latter, since that’s your well established pattern here.
The privatization of schools, as Vallas and Duncan have been promoting, is no “fix” for public education. It is a boon for profiteers and elites. Look at what Milton Friedman’s neo-liberal privatization of public education model did to Chile. Students there have been protesting and demanding free public schools because, 30 years after privatization, “…socioeconomic background is still a determinant of educational outcomes… which adds to schooling and geographic segregation… Neoliberal policies have been unable to overcome inequalities; rather, they have intensified them” http://academia.edu/1836169/Neoliberal_Education_and_Student_Movements_in_Chile_Inequalities_and_malaise
As an educator who spent most of my career teaching unfettered in private schools, I was very fortunate to have had so much laterality in my classroom. I’ve spent the better part of the last two decades working with public school teachers though and I have nothing but respect for those teachers, who are constantly facing constraining demands imposed by non-educators who know nothing about children, learning and teaching. If anyone has failed it’s the politicians and their lackeys who use telling educators how to do their jobs and teacher-bashing as ways to divert attention away from dealing with the primary issue so many public school teachers encounter, children in poverty.
The sad truth is that politicians know very well that their demands on public school teachers are ridiculous, which is precisely why they created charter schools and don’t impose the same rules there. This alone tells us that charters are pampered darlings because they are a means to an end, the privatization of public education, a la Milton Friedman’s failed neo-liberal model implemented in Chile.
The Superior Court Judicial District of Fairfield at Bridgeport decision of June 28, 2013 says,
“Before his arrival, Vallas served as a school teacher in the 1970s and later was an instructor at a military academy run by the United States National Guard” http://www.scribd.com/doc/150609033/Vallas-Bridgeport-Decision (All of that was news to me.)
If this information is what Vallas tendered to the court and it’s a fabrication, it would be perjury.
Isn’t it incumbent upon the Bridgeport Board of Ed, the CT DoE, the state legislature, the Supreme Court , SOMEONE to check out and verify these “credentials”?????
Your comment is so clearly brilliant–an example of what I call overlooking the obvious because it is often too hard to see. I never thought of perjury and one of the reasons is that I have become too accustomed to his “lies.” Thank you for returning to this part of the testimony and raising these questions.