Zoe is in the sixth grade in North Carolina. She decided to opt out of the state tests.her parents supported her. At first, the school told her there would be no repercussions. But when testing day came, her family got a letter warning that she would not be allowed to come back to school unless she took the test. Zoe and her dad started the Blue Hat Movement.
You can read about it here.
Zoe refused to take the test and was asked to leave the building. She is a straight A student.
This article argues that Chicago needs an elected school board.
Rahm’s school board sounds like the Politburo, all voting in unison to do what is unconscionable.
One protester said, “Every school is my school.”
This is the saddest comment of all:
“In between the dramatic scenes of angry audience members refusing to leave the podium, there were so many speakers who raised such thoughtful issues about why it made no sense for their school to be closed that it would have given anyone pause. But there was to be no pause.
“The time is always right to do what is right,” Byrd-Bennett would later say of the 50 schools being closed, using a quotation from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to defend a policy decision that I can’t imagine King would have favored.
King would have been more likely to lead a campaign for an elected school board.”
Howard Blume has a terrific article
explaining how Monica Ratliff beat Antonio Sanchez and his multi-million $$$ campaign fund.
Sanchez had millions of dollars, a large staff, the endorsement of the LA Democratic Party (thanks, Mayor Villarigosa), and major labor unions.
Monica raised $52,000, had no paid staff, and taught her class every day. She never told her students that she was running for office.
Howard neglected to mention the contributions that came to Monica from teachers across America–in denominations of $10, $25, $50, and the endorsement by the Network for Public Education.
The Chicago Tribune would have advised American troops to lay down their arms when defeat seemed certain. They would have advised appeasement in the 1930s. This is an editorial board that cares not a whit for 40,000 children (not their children, after all) or for public education.
The Chicago Tribune editorial board is composed of Quislings. This is their advice to teachers:
**************************
May 22, 2013
When a vast tornado ripped into an Oklahoma elementary school, some teachers threw themselves on top of their students to shield them. They put their students’ lives before their own.
Some quick-thinking teachers huddled children into a bathroom. Though the roof blew off the school, the kids survived.
Some teachers were the first rescuers to pull surviving kids from the rubble, to comfort them, to keep them safe.
We’re sure we’ll hear more stirring stories about Oklahoma teachers who kept calm and protected their students during Monday’s tragedy. Guiding and protecting children is what teachers do. Not just in Oklahoma. Everywhere.
Parents who send their kids off to school every morning take a leap of faith: They trust that a teacher will care for their child with passion, with dedication, with patience and love. Parents place great value on their teachers, and with good reason.
We point this out on a day when the Chicago public school system will make a gut-wrenching decision. The school board is set to vote Wednesday on whether to close 53 elementary schools. Chicago teachers and parents have been protesting, trying to save those schools.
No one revels in closing a school. Chicago faces this decision because of some undeniable facts. The number of students has declined. That decline has been concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods. Chicago has a school infrastructure designed to support more students than it has enrolled. Chicago has to put its money toward the education of students in full, thriving schools. Money spent to light, heat and maintain half-empty school buildings is not money focused on educating children.
After months of planning, months of debate, the school board members will make a tough, emotional decision Wednesday.
They may spare a handful of the schools, based on the reports of arbitrators who questioned the efficacy of closing some schools. But barring a last-minute change of direction, most of the schools will be closed. That will be the right decision. Students won’t be served by pushing off these decisions, by continuing to misdirect education dollars.
And that brings us back to the teachers.
They have fought intensely against these closings. They’ll continue to challenge the board’s decision in federal court.
But their complete cooperation in the months ahead will be essential to ensuring a safe, successful transition for their students. Many teachers will follow kids to new buildings. Those charged with shepherding kids safely to school will depend on teachers to help, to speak up if they see dangers.
The teachers may not agree with every closing or any closing. But it will be up to them to make this work.
And far beyond that: The teachers will be key to restoring Chicago’s focus on building a much better public school system, on graduating students who are prepared to succeed in college and the workplace.
That can’t be achieved if Chicago’s teachers fight every effort at reform, if they are in a perpetual war against those who lead Chicago’s public schools.
Teachers, be heroes.
Copyright © 2013 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC
This is a brilliant, stunning analysis by a reader, who explores the goals of corporate reformers–using the template of Schumpeter’s ideas–and contrast them to the ethics of educators. She says that the market reformers and educators are necessarily at odds because their basic values are in conflict.
Read the whole post, not just my excerpts.
I wish I had written this. I am glad I had the opportunity to read it, you should too. You will come away with a deeper understanding of the appeal and the danger of market-based reforms.
Here are some excerpts:
.
“The corporate reform movement is an attempt by a group of wealthy philanthropists to impose market forces where there had previously been none or had protections against them. The policy instruments they support are: data-driven management designed to weed out undesirable employees and reward superstars; school choice models(1) designed to foster competition for student enrollment and their tax dollars to bring down costs and improve customer satisfaction(2); weakening teacher unions to allow for greater labor market flexibility(3).
“This tribe of reformers resolves that market-oriented reforms will offer a better, more varied and customer-pleasing product. Or, it will deliver at least the same quality of product for less money. And, in doing so, these reforms will yield a more equitable education for children in low-income households because parents will not be forced to send their kids to the substandard schools available in their neighborhood…
“The argument that such reforms will be disruptive, lead to job loss, would cause total havoc to the education system as a whole falls on deaf ears. One of the staggering capabilities of markets is their capacity for creative destruction, a term popularized by the economist Joseph Schumpeter. Because of the efficiency of markets to adapt to consumer demands, the products, services, and firms of one era will almost certainly fall prey to the changing needs of the markets. One company rises (Microsoft), another falls (IBM). An innovation captures the imaginations of millions one generation only to crumble mere decades later (Polaroid). This is good for us because we reap the benefits of this relentless creative thrust. Things get better, faster, and cheaper, and our lives are made easier and more fun.
“For market-based reformers, the destruction of public education is not a bug; it’s a feature. Like a phoenix out of the ashes, a new, robust, monetized educational system is something to be desired so that — finally — schools can harness the awesome power of private markets.
“In order for markets to work and not descend into some corporatist public-private hybrid, the role of the entrepreneur is essential. They are the risk-takers. They strategically gamble on the novelty of their ideas, on the notion that there is a group of people out there who want what they can provide and that no one else is providing what they’ve got. In the last half-century, these are the Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerbergs of the world, risking the security of a sure-thing job at an established firm for the possibility of striking gold on your own. This risk is what makes innovation possible and is what drives the dynamism of markets.
My question is this: are the roles of educator and entrepreneur mutually compatible? Can one be both risk-taker and caretaker?…..
“The market doesn’t care about equity, period. The market responds to the demands of its consumers….Contrary to the theoretical model put forth by free-market ideologues, markets do not yield more equitable results. The gulf between the “good” and “bad” schools widens because of the inherent segregating properties of market forces…..
“Let’s think about what is lost in this creative destruction.
“First and foremost, kids lose. Since charters are not public schools, they will lose their constitutional rights. Many more kids will lose art, physical education, music, journalism, debate, dance, creative writing, a variety of foreign languages, and any other class that is not tested, not considered “essential.” Students will profound special needs will be further segregated from non-disabled peers because so few schools will want to take on the additional responsibility. Students with language needs will languish trying to find a school that will take them and meet their needs appropriately.
“Parents lose their voice. They are granted a voice as customers, but this is illusory. They are subject to the availability of what the market provides. If they are dissatisfied, they move to another school. This is rough on the kid and on the parents who now have to shop for this other school, possibly in a neighborhood they or their child can’t get to easily. If the school is not satisfied with the student, the student can be booted out in spite of parental protest.
“Teachers lose their voice. As labor participants, we are given a choice of where we want to work, but without organized labor to speak on behalf of workers, the market will dictate wages and hours. The private school, either for-profit or not, will have incentive to remain competitive, trimming the fat wherever possible. The bulk of a school’s operating cost goes to personnel. This means teachers get their salaries cut and their hours extended. And when that happens, it’s our fault because these are the schools we chose to work in. This is what we signed up for….
“I don’t want to suggest that no one would gain from such a system. Parents of certain religious inclinations would now have government funds to send their children to parochial schools, and market reforms would certainly aid those parents who wish to include a spiritual element to their child’s curriculum. However, there’s the whole separation of church and state thing to worry about, not to mention the lunatics who teach creationism as science. With vouchers, parents who already send their kids to private schools now have a subsidy to do so. So it’s regressively redistributive, but hey, rich people get harangued all the time, isn’t it time they got a break? And, let’s not forget the windfall of business opportunities for-profit endeavors would have access to(7)….
“The risks are too great to pursue the destructive ends a market will wreak. The stakes are far too high to pursue anything less than equity for our kids.”
Never in U.S. history has a local school board–or any other board, appointed or elected–chosen to close 49 public schools.
Never.
That’s what the Chicago Public Schools did yesterday.
Thousands of parents, students, and teachers objected, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his puppet board didn’t care.
Yesterday was a day of infamy in Chicago and in the history of American education.
School boards exist to protect, improve, and support public schools, not to kill them.
The New York Times has written about this story and twice said that the school closings were the largest “in recent memory.” The Times wrote this despite my telling them–twice–that these were the largest mass closure ever. I wish the reporters would explain whose “memory” they were relying on. Just yesterday I explained in an email that no public school district had ever closed 49 schools at one time. On this issue, the “Times” is not the newspaper of record but the newspaper of “recent memory.”
Why does it matter? The phraseology removes the truly historic destruction that Rahm Emanuel is inflicting on children and schools in his city. He is wantonly destroying public education. He is punishing the teachers’ union for daring to strike last fall. He will open more charter schools, staffed by non-union teachers, to pick up the kids who lost their neighborhood schools. Some of them will be named for the equity investors who fund his campaigns.
Rahm and his friends will laugh about the way he displaced 40,000 kids.
A few years ago, a study released by the American Enterprise Institute concluded that teachers are overpaid.
Not so, writes CNN contributor LZ Granderson. In this wonderful article, he shows the every day courage of teachers–most recently demonstrated when a devastating tornado hit an elementary school in Moore, Oklahoma, and last December when teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, died shielding their students.
Here is the AP story about the Oklahoma tornado, showing how quickly teachers protected their children.
When the think tank desk jockeys have long been forgotten, we will still remember our teachers.
Author William Doyle has been observing the current “reform movement” promoted by people like Arne Duncan, Michael Bloomberg, Bobby Jindal, Rick Snyder, Rick Scott, and Michelle Rhee, and he has developed a theory about its true nature. Doyle thinks that the current movement is Soviet-style, with unrealistic targets and top-down control. What struck me as amazing is that I read an article in the Teachers College Record and blogged about it a year ago, in which the author argued that the current model of “education reform” is Stalinist. At the time, I thought this was perhaps extreme. I am not so sure anymore.
Doyle writes:
The currently dominant theories of education reform are being mis-labeled as “market-driven education reforms” or “corporate education reforms.”
Most of these theories would not last 5 minutes in a truly free market; or a profitable corporation; successful hedge fund or private equity firm, since the results have been so poor.
These sham reforms – – including turning schools over to political cronies and education amateurs and cyber-charters, the flagrant abuse and misuse of standardized tests, spending tens of billions of dollars on unproven reforms, unproven technologies and unproven testing schemes – – are actually the opposite of the free market or corporate models – – they are Soviet-style sham reforms.
Like Soviet models, they are based on top-down, rigid command and control; ideological orthodoxy and one-party thought; flagrant disregard for evidence; the brutalization of human capital; the disembowlement of unions; the crushing of dissent; and the massive misapplication of resources and data; all of which create massive inefficiencies and inevitably poor results.
They also rely on cults of personality created for false idols; and the creation of false miracles and Potemkin success stories.
In the closing days of the Texas legislative session, an effort to create a so-called “recovery school district” or “achievement district” failed to pass. However, its sponsors tucked it into another bill, and its ultimate fate is uncertain. The article notes that the bill has the support of some of the state’s wealthiest lobbyists, including former Enron trader John Arnold, a staunch supporter of market-based school “reform.”
As always, it is important to read between the lines. The new district, under state control, would take control of low-performing schools, hand them over to private charter operators, and been free to hire uncertified teachers and create its own disciplinary rules. Proponents point to similar state-controlled districts in Louisiana and Tennessee, but neither has achieved notable improvements. The Recovery School District in Louisiana has been much hyped but has failed to deliver results; the Achievement District in Tennessee is relatively new, and as yet has no track record, certainly no notable success worthy of emulation.
The most certain result of these districts is to transfer control to private, unaccountable charter operators who have the power to kick out students they don’t want and who count on low-wage inexperienced teachers. To call this “educational reform” is a bad joke.
What these schools need is smaller classes, highly experienced staff, and the excellent wraparound services that support children and families.
Let’s hope that good sense prevails and Texas passes up the chance to privatize the schools whose students have the highest needs, it was the right decision.
Karen Lewis reacts to Chicago school board’s decision:
Karen Lewis Reaction to Chicago Board of Education’s Vote to Close the Largest
Number of Schools in an Urban School District in U.S. History
CHICAGO – Today, Chicago Teachers Union Karen Lewis released the following statement on the largest school closings in U.S. history:
“Today is a day of mourning for the children of Chicago. Their education has been hijacked by an unrepresentative, unelected corporate school board, acting at the behest of a mayor who has no vision for improving the education of our children. Closing schools is not an education plan. It is a scorched earth policy. Evidence shows that the underutilization crisis has been manufactured. Their own evidence also shows the school district will not garner any significant savings from closing these schools.
“This is bad governance. CPS has consistently undermined school communities and sabotaged teachers and parents. Their actions have had a horrible domino effect. More than 40,000 students will lose at least three to six months of learning because of the Board’s actions. Because many of them will now have to travel into new neighborhoods to continue their schooling, some will be victims of bullying, physical assault and other forms of violence. Board members are wishing for a world that does not exist and have ignored the reality of the world we live in today. Who on the Board will be held responsible? Who at City Hall will be held responsible?
“Members of the Board of Education, the school CEO, the mayor and their corporate backers are on the wrong side of history. History will judge them for the tragedy they have inflicted upon our students; and it will not be kind.
“Our fight for education justice has now moved to the courts, but it must eventually move to the ballot box. The parents are amazing leaders in their school communities and because of this administration’s actions we have all become closer and more united. We must resist this neoliberal savagery masquerading as school reform. We must resist racism in all of its forms as well as the escalating attacks on the working –class and the poor. Our movement will continue.”
