Archives for the year of: 2013
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Mass Protest Rally in Chicago

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
16

The Chicago Teachers Union is planning a mass protest rally on Wednesday. The schools closings in Chicago are the largest in American history. Never has any district closed so many schools at the same time. Only since the passage of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top has the public been told that school closings are “reform.” They are not. They are an abandonment of responsibility by those at the top.

NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Stephanie Gadlin
March 25, 2013 312/329-6250
StephanieGadlin@ctulocal1.com

As Thousands Plan to Rally against School Closings downtown this Wednesday, the Board of Education erects barricades

CHICAGO—Apparently officials at the Board of Education (BOE) are getting the message: The parents, educators and clergy of more than 30,000 Chicago Public School (CPS) students do not want their schools closed.

Today, BOE security began erecting metal barricades around the building as thousands of people plan to rally this Wednesday in protest of CPS’ plan to shutter 50 schools and disrupt 50 others. Some have noted this is the largest school closing campaign in the history of the United States.

CPS officials and the mayor continue to spew confusing propaganda as justification for closing schools. School bureaucrats claim there is a $1 billion deficit while simultaneously promising incentives to 50 or more schools that will serve as receiving campuses for students displaced by school actions.

Using the district’s own financial metrics, these incentives such as new air-conditioning, libraries, counselors and social workers will cost over $700 million.

On Saturday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel tried to confuse the public even further by stating school closures would somehow benefit students academically. While admitting the city has failed its fiduciary responsibly to provide all of its students with an adequate education, the mayor stopped short of acknowledging the huge racial implications of these closures.

Thousands of parents have accused the schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and the mayor of lying about a pretend “underutilization crisis” in order to open more charter operations and privatize public education in the city. Most of the schools targeted for closure are in the African American community.

In the meantime, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) will join with other labor organizations, parent groups, churches and community-based organization in a mass march and rally on Wednesday, March 27 at 4 p.m.

People will gather at Daley Plaza at rush hour before heading to City Hall and BOE headquarters at 121 S. LaSalle Street.

Participants will include CTU Local 1 President Karen Lewis, SEIU Local 1 President Tom Balanoff, Unite HERE Local 1 President Henry Tamarin, parents, clergy, students, rank-and-file teachers, paraprofessionals, school clinicians, lunchroom and custodial workers, community activists, and others.

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The Chicago Teachers Union represents 30,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in the Chicago Public Schools and, by extension, the students and families they serve. CTU, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, is the third largest teachers local in the country and the largest local union in Illinois. For more information visit CTU’s website at http://www.ctunet.com
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Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Unions

An Astonishing Revelation

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
15

I earlier posted about the decision by Governor Christie to take control of the public schools of Camden, New Jersey. The state has controlled three other districts without “fixing” them. What will be different now? Or in those three other districts still under state control.

This teacher in Florida knows what should be done:

“I did my student teaching at woodrow wilson high school in camden, nj. those kids don’t need “a government” to run their schools. they need support. i had a boy in my class who was 17 and still in 9th grade, but b/c i took in under my wing and so did the rest of his teachers (all student teachers), he passed each class (mine with a solid C). children need to have someone who cares about teaching them, not someone who is fearful each day about losing his/her job b/c they state may come in and close the school. and schools need money, not bureaucrats who know nothing about education.”

Categories New Jersey, Teachers and Teaching

The Chalkface Interviews Karen Lewis

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
4

This just in:

We had an amazing interview with Karen Lewis last night. Powerful. If you didn’t have a chance to listen here is the link.

Karen Lewis stops by to talk to Shaun and Tim. Why? Because we’re good looking of course.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/chalkface/2013/03/24/at-the-chalk-face-progressive-edreform-talk

Tim Slekar

Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm

What Harry Truman Learned in the Library

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
3

After I posted this morning about libraries, I received the following from Will Fitzhugh, who is publisher of The Concord Review. The Concord Review has been publishing exemplary history papers by high school students for many years. You never know what students will get interested in, what they will pursue on their own, what passion they will develop.

 

David McCullough, Truman

New York: Touchstone, 1992, p. 58
 
 
He grew dutifully, conspicuously studious, spending long afternoons in the town library, watched over by a white plaster bust of Ben Franklin. Housed in two rooms adjacent to the high school, the library contained perhaps two thousand volumes. Harry and Charlie Ross vowed to read all of them, encyclopedias included, and both later claimed to have succeeded. Harry liked Mark Twain and Franklin’s Autobiography. He read Sir Walter Scott because Scott was Bessie Wallace’s favorite author. The fact that the town librarian, Carrie Wallace, was a cousin to Bessie may also have influenced the boy’s show of scholarly devotion.
 
“I don’t know anybody in the world ever read as much or as constantly as he did,” remembered Ethel Noland. “He was what you call a ‘book worm.’”
 
History became a passion, as he worked his way through a shelf of standard works on ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. “He had a real feeling for history,” Ethel said, “that it wasn’t something in a book, that it was part of life—a section of life or a former time, that it was of interest because it has to do with people.” He himself later said it was “true facts” that he wanted. “Reading history, to me, was far more than a romantic adventure. It was solid instruction and wise teaching which I somehow felt I wanted and needed.” He decided, he said, that men make history, otherwise there would be no history. History did not make the man, he was quite certain.
 
His list of heroes advanced. To Andrew Jackson, Hannibal, and Robert E. Lee were added Cincinnatus, Scipio, Cyrus the Great and Gustavus Adolphus, the seventeenth-century Swedish king. No Jeffersons or Lincolns or Leonardos were part of his pantheon as yet. Whatever it was that made other boys of turn-of-the-century America venerate Andrew Carnegie or Thomas Edison, he had none of it. The Great Men by his lights were still the great generals.
 
Few boys in town ever went to high school. The great majority went to work. High school, like piano lessons, was primarily for girls. In Harry’s class, largest yet at the new high school, there were thirty girls and just eleven boys. [Class of 1901]
Categories Education Reform

Do Schools Need Libraries?

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
89

Libraries and librarians are on the chopping block in some districts in Maryland.

This is personal for me.

I love libraries.

I always loved browsing the stacks and finding a new book, a new author, a new topic. For me, the library was a place of reverence, a place of quiet contemplation, a quiet place to read and think.

Yes, I know we have computers. But computers give you what you ask for. They may have all the information in the world, but you can’t browse a computer.

Please support school libraries and your public library.

This arrived in my email from a librarian I met last June at a conference in Annapolis:

Libraries Under Attack? Again?

“Why do the children need books? They will all have tablets…”

Here in one of Maryland’s largest school districts, our libraries may be on the chopping block and with them, more than 100 dedicated and hard-working teacher-librarians who are required to have certification in library media/instructional technology. According to current board policy librarians are considered teachers, and as such partner with classroom teachers to collaboratively teach information literacy and research strategies to students K-12. Our supervisor has been nationally recognized for her initiatives connecting librarians to curriculum and instruction. Parents are supportive of libraries because they see the relationship to increased student achievement. Does our new and quite young superintendent support libraries? Will he continue to support our roles?

First, let’s travel back in time. In the early 1990s a new superintendent, while cutting staffing, declared librarians optional and libraries soon fell into disrepair. Parent volunteers checked out books and the collections suffered without trained media specialists to maintain them. Students did not receive instruction in information literacy or literature. The district supervisor of Library Services lobbied hard to turn the trend around, successfully leading the movement to rebuild the sorely neglected collections and put trained librarians back into schools by influencing the district to set policy that mandated a librarian position in each school. Further, she worked tirelessly to secure 10.4 million dollars in funding to rebuild collections, and helped create an initiative with the local university that resulted in a “Library Media Cohort”, a partnership between the district and the local university that offered masters’ degrees in Library Media and Instructional Technology to teachers in the district. The commitment that the district made resulted in investing heavily in the rebuilding of our libraries. The cohort initiative is currently active and has produced to date more than 150 highly trained certificated library media specialists. In our rapidly urbanizing and large district, our library media specialists are trained to meet the needs of our diverse population of over 100,000 students.

When the funds were disbursed more than a decade ago, the county executive, who at the time saw the value of a quality library program, told the district administration, “Don’t let this happen again. Don’t come back asking for more money. Maintain the libraries.”

How quickly we forget our history. Once again, there is a new superintendent in town and libraries may be under attack. The BOE is about to strike language from the policy that defines the commitment to place libraries and media specialists’ roles as critical to student achievement. When this was presented at the February 19th BOE meeting no one from the Library Office was present because no one from that office was informed or invited. Since all BOE meetings are video recorded and archived on the public website, we were able to discover the proposed change by a BOE member who questioned the intent. The decision was tabled until the March 5th BOE meeting.

At an earlier BOE meeting, a reorganization was discussed which made clear that beginning next year libraries will fall under the auspices of the Technology department and no longer under Curriculum and Instruction. In the reorganization, the supervisor of the Library Office’s position has been eliminated. We will be losing our strongest advocate and most vocal supporter.

Saddest of all, rumor has it that someone very close to the top in the district’s administration made the comment, “Why do the children need books? They will all have tablets…”

Yes, the children need books and tablets too.

Categories Budget Cuts

How Closing Schools Blights Communities

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
9

This writer explains why closing schools blights communities and causes economic Decline.

Officials in Chicago assert that hey are saving money by closing 50+ schools,but the ripple effect of school closings will leave devastated communities behind, costing taxpayers far more than any allied savings.

Unfortunately, Chicago officials are looking on the schools as if they were chain stores that did not turn a profit. In fact, they are in most places the hub of the community.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools

Bad Timing for a Report Lauding Mayoral Control

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
32

The Center for American Progress is supposedly a liberal organization, but it is a cheerleader for corporate reform. It has published report after report endorsing the main ideas of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

It just released a new report that lauds mayoral control.

Those of us who live in cities under mayoral control know that the primary result is not to improve education or to help struggling children, but to stifle the voices of parents, students, teachers, and community members. Under mayoral control, governance is transferred to the mayor and the power elite, few of whom have children in public schools or even attended one. Mayoral control snuffs out democracy.

The timing of this report comes just as the mayor of Chicago unilaterally decided to close more than 50 public schools, decimating communities and stranding thousands of children. Is this “reform” of public schools? It also comes as the third term of Mayor Bloomberg winds down, and the authoritative Quinnipiac poll shows that only 18% want more of the same.

Mayoral control has a predictable result: it undermines democracy and allows the rich ad powerful to privatize public schools for fun and profit.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, New York City

Randi Weingarten and Gates’ Phillips on Teacher evaluation

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
95

Randi Weingarten and Vicki Phillips of the Gates Foundation have jointly written an article bout teacher evaluation.

At a time when teachers and the teaching profession and teachers’ unions are under attack in states across the nation, how important is teacher evaluation?

What do you think?

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Unions

Chicago Tribune Continues Its Assault on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
10

In an editorial today, the Chicago Tribune says it is time to “unchain the charters” because they have along waiting list.

The “waiting list” is sheer propaganda. No one knows if it exists. No one knows how many duplications there are. No one acknowledges that charters spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to generate demand and “waiting lists.” The lists are a marketing tool.

The Tribune wants to end public education in Chicago. Even if the charters got higher test scores than the public schools–and they don’t–this would be an abandonment of civic responsibility.

Suppose the Chicago Tribune did a poll and discovered that most of the parents in the CPS want more resources, smaller classes, arts programs, and social workers in their public schools? What if their poll showed that most parents prefer public schools, not corporate chain schools? Would they print that?

Don’t hold your breath.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago

The Most Brilliant Post of the Day

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2013 //
20

If you read nothing else today, read this post by the blogger who calls himself Crazy Crawfish.

In a blinding flash of insight, he sees the pattern on the rug of the corporate reform movement.

I won’t say anything more.

Just read it.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Louisiana
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