Rahm and Andrew backed off today. Or maybe they didn’t.
Rahm decided that Dyett High School re-open as an open-enrollment school. Cuomo said the Common Core and the testing were badly bungled by the State Education Department (John King), and he needs a commission to review the mess that he (Cuomo) made.
Bear in mind that Cuomo has no constitutional authority for education. He does not appoint the state Board of Regents (the legislature does) or the state commissioner (the Regents do).
Did Rahm really back down? Did Cuomo?
Ask the experts.
Here is Mike Klonsky in Chicago.
Here is Peter Greene, calling hoax.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mike and Peter got it right. Rahm and Cuomo have ceded none of their power. They must have been up very late at night trying to figure out how to appease the peasants without really giving them a true voice.
Totally agree with you.
What Rahm and Cuomo said is nothing to cheer about.
One more thing… Ruiz’s reply to future hunger striker Jitu Brown defies belief. He promulgates the whole idea that, with an appointed school board, you can save money—i.e. money incurred from the expenses that go with having elections.
(Notice how Jesse doesn’t address a single one of the facts or points that Brown makes… presumably conceding them.)
Instead, Jesse then counters Brown by saying that he doesn’t want Chiago’s CPS to be like (Los Angeles’) LAUSD, where it is expensive to run a board that manages lots of schools, and has a messy, expensive election process, with money outside the city coming in from New York billionaires. (Hey, I don’t like that either, but the fact remains that the pro-public education forces still beat the privatizers, despite all their spending… Mike Bloomberg alone wrote Steve Zimmer’s opponent a $1 million check.)
(31:42 – )
(31:42 – )
JESSE RUIZ: “If we want to be like Los Angeles (i.e. have an elected school board… Ruiz cites the negatives of money impacting elections)…I’d rather not see that happen for my city and our schools.”
(Jesse, a messy democracy is better than no democracy, which is what you have in Chicago. When the people in Los Angeles had a choice, the corporate privatization candidates lost, even though they outspent to pro-traditional schools candidates 3-to-1, or 5-to-1, or in one case 42-to-1.
Brief recap of LAUSD elections:
In 2011, 30-year teacher Bennett Kayser won, despite being outspent 5-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
In 2013, 17-year teacher Steve Zimmer won, despite being outspent 5-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
In 2013, 13-year teacher Monica Ratliff won, despite being outspent 42-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
In 2014, teacher & principal George McKenna won, despite being outspent 5-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
In 2015, teacher & principal Scott Schmerelson won, despite being outspent 5-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
Jesse knows that, just as they did in Los Angeles, that his side—the corporate privaters’ backed by money-motivated, predatory billionaires—would lose at the polls if the public had the opportunity to choose a school board.
SIDE NOTE: undaunted at all his candidates losing, Billionaire Eli Broad others announced that he was pumping $1 billion dollars into charter expansion in Los Angeles… even though the voters have vehemently rejected this:
Just like in Chicago, the arrogant attitude of Broad, Gates, the Waltons, etc. is… “We don’t give a sh#% what the citizens, the parents, and the taxpayers want. If we can’t buy control of the the board via the election process, we’re still gonna shove money-motivated privatization and charterization down the public’s throats whether they want it or not. So those unwashed masses should just shut up and accept it!”)
Back to Jesse Ruiz….
Corporate stooge Jesse Ruiz makes the laughable argument that an electoral system “costs millions” of dollars that “could be used to educate kids.” You could say the same exact thing about the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Reps, State Senates, State Assemblies… and multi-million-dollar elections for who would serve on them:
“Hey, think of the money that we could save if the President / Governor appointed the members of the Senate, or appointed the House of Reps, or the State Senate, or the State Assemblies. We could then use that money saved to go towards public works that benefit citizens.”
Asinine!!! Boy that argument really “un-pleases” me!!! (O.K., that was the last “un-pleases” joke)
Brown, no-dummy-he, fires back a Ruiz.
While noting the messiness of democracy, with unions and special interests participating, Brown cites LAUSD’s accomplishments:
(32:20 – 32-45)
(32:20 – 32-45)
JITU BROWN: “But what you CAN say is that Los Angeles (LAUSD’s school board) has passed some of the most progressive (school board) legislation in this country. Their ‘A-thru-G’ legislation that says that where that child goes to school, they have to have curriculum that prepares them for college…. They (LAUSD officials) have it, and are addressing it (college requirements). But (in Chicago), we (instead) are addressing it by closing schools, and by displacing families.”
It’s all about Rahms ego and defending the market position of his reformy friends. There’s no way Rahm could have given the hunger strikers what they want, which happens to be the best plan out there, without getting lots of egg on his own sides faces. The communities plan for Dyett, that the community is demanding that their choice be honored since it is real choice and actually far surpasses the sales pitch of “college and career ready” would be more than the reformy crowd in Chicago could handle since at this point there’s no way they could take credit for it. Imagine if you will an open enrollment public high school in a poor black neighborhood that prepares its graduates for careers in the green technology sector, a school that graduates future middle and upper middle class black people and positions them to pass that advantage on to their children. Without any reformer help, and in spite of their interference. Instead, Rahm/CPS has said it will be an arts and science school, a more vague sop to the chance of future professional employment that doesn’t specifically target a strong market sector like green tech does. Reminds me of the embarrassment Obama caused in right wing hearts when he offered them their own policy (in the form of the ACA) and did it better. They voted, repeatedly, against their own plan since they alone couldn’t take credit for it anymore and couldn’t stand the thought of a black man doing what they failed to do. Authoritarians absolutely hate it when ordinary people beat them at their own game and do it honestly.
We need to start standing together more, like the recent vote in Seattle, unanimous. If every public school parent and teacher in America started standing up for their own public schools and let their politicians know WE DON”T WANT OR NEED REFORM. That we can work with and modify the system we have already paid for to get what our children need. Sure it’s not a perfect system but we paid for the building, we paid to educate our teachers, we control our own school boards (ok..not you chicago), WE CAN FIX OUR OWN SYSTEMS with OUR TAX DOLLARS. That’s the part that gets me, these politician act like they are doing us a favor by giving us back our own tax dollars to support our own schools. These people, who went on a hunger strike, were only protecting a school, that they and people in their neighborhood had already paid for, with their own TAX dollars. The fox that was once in the hen house of manufacturing (now gone) is now in the hen house of public education….and we know how that ends…unless all the hens stand up and fight (but it will be a hard fight as these brave people have shown us).
In many states the governor and legislatures support charters so their policies include starving the public schools to make them fail. They are willing to harm thousands of students to forward their agendas, and they are supposed to be the stewards of the public schools!