Mike Klonsky reports that Chicago Public Schools is cutting special education.
“Our autocrat at City Hall appears bent on dismembering special education in Chicago by a thousand cuts. SpEd took its first major deep cut over the summer eliminating 500 positions at CPS. More cuts announced late Friday mean approximately 160 schools would lose special education teachers, while 184 would lose aides.”
Let the lawsuits begin. There is a federal law to protect children with disabilities.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just when you thought rahm couldn’t get any slimier! These fake Democratic politicians make me want to renounce my formerly populist, for the working man party. We have the same DEFR, neo-liberal pond scum in Denver too unfortunately. I do believe the rheeformsters know that the Opt Out movement can and will take them down, so they must do their devils work of charterization, privatization, profitization to OUR public schools by foisting their corporate, wall street agenda with reckless abandon. The real only answer:
http://unitedoptout.com/
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I am an Occupational Therapist who supports kids at CPS who have disabilities and this is my 15th year doing so. These cuts are extremely unethical and based upon completely inaccurate information. Both of my schools that I support have seen rises in students whose IEPs specify special ed learning resource minutes and both have received cuts even when enrollment has increased.
In addition, I would love for you, Diane, crusader of truth and justice to cover more of the really problematic alignment of Hillary Clinton with our mayor, actual head of the privately appointed public school board here. She claims to want to support labor unions and people with disabilities and her support and alignment with our mayor speaks to the exact opposite. The American People are counting on people with integrity, like yourself Diane, to hold both accountable for their choices.
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Kirstie, I know about Obama’s alignment with Rahm. What alignment has Hillary Clinton had with him?
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Root of the Education Crisis: Teachers Were Never the Problem
By David Sirota, In These Times
29 September 15
google the phrase “education crisis” and you’ll be hit with a glut of articles, blog posts and think tank reports claiming the entire American school system is facing an emergency. Much of this agitprop additionally asserts that teachers unions are the primary cause of the alleged problem. Not surprisingly, the fabulists pushing these narratives are often backed by anti-public school conservatives and anti-union plutocrats. But a little-noticed study released last week provides yet more confirmation that neither the “education crisis” meme or the “evil teachers’ union” narrative is accurate.
Before looking at that study, consider some of the ways we already know that the dominant storyline about education is, indeed, baseless propaganda.
As I’ve reported before, we know that American public school students from wealthy districts generate some of the best test scores in the world. This proves that the education system’s problems are not universal–the crisis is isolated primarily in the parts of the system that operate in high poverty areas. It also proves that while the structure of the traditional public school system is hardly perfect, it is not the big problem in America’s K-12 education system. If it was the problem, then traditional public schools in rich neighborhoods would not perform as well as they do.
Similarly, we know that many of the high-performing public schools in America’s wealthy locales are unionized. We also know that one of the best school systems in the world—Finland’s—is fully unionized. These facts prove that teachers’ unions are not the root cause of the education problem, either. After all, if unions were the problem, then unionized public schools in wealthy areas and Finland would be failing.
So what is the problem? That brings us to the new study from the Southern Education Foundation. Cross-referencing and education data, researchers found that that a majority of all public school students in one third of America’s states now come from low-income families.
How much does this have to do with educational outcomes? A lot. Social science research over the last few decades has shown that two thirds of student achievement is a product of out-of-school factors–and among the most powerful of those is economic status. That’s hardly shocking: kids who experience destitution and all the problems that come with it have enough trouble just surviving, much less succeeding in school.
All of this leads to an obvious conclusion: If America was serious about fixing the troubled parts of its education system, then we would be having a fundamentally different conversation.
We wouldn’t be talking about budget austerity—we would be talking about raising public revenues to fund special tutoring, child care, basic health programs and other so-called wrap-around services at low-income schools.
We wouldn’t only be looking to make sure that schools in high-poverty districts finally receive the same amount of public money as schools in wealthy neighborhoods—we would make sure high-poverty districts actually receive more funds than rich districts because combating poverty is such a resource-intensive endeavor.
More broadly, we wouldn’t be discussing cuts to social safety net programs—we would instead be working to expand those programs and, further, to challenge both parties’ anti-tax, anti-regulation, pro-austerity agenda that has increased poverty and economic inequality.
In short, if we were serious about education, then our education discussion wouldn’t be focused on demonizing teachers and coming up with radical schemes to undermine traditional public schools. It would instead be focused on mounting a new war on poverty and thus directly addressing the biggest education problem of all.
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The cuts are probably being made in the poorest communities where the resources to fight back are likely to be slim. Of course, they are also the communities that could use the support the most. I wouldn’t be surprised if the counselors and social workers are already gone. They are still advertising for special education teachers although most of the jobs are with charters.
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If he’s going to do stupid things like this, let’s hope parents are smart enough to sue! Of course, with the new IL State Board, they’ll probably be able to push through removing all caps in special ed class sizes and percentages of included students in gen ed classes…something that’s been on the state board’s agenda for the past 2 years! As a spec ed teacher, that’s very concerning in terms of being able to meet student needs.
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Humm….I’m wondering if the change in teacher certification to mandate that all teachers, not just ESE certified teachers, have ESE training is a nation wide move to facilitate the change in how students with IEPs are educated. The pendulum swings back the other way now with more mainstreaming not to help students but to help prevent us becoming another Greece. IEPs don’t seem to carry much importance anyway because if one look at how teachers are evaluated and the observations tools used, at least in my state, Florida, it’s not measured. In fact, all the custodial care the most severely challenged students need isn’t measured.
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What happened to the IDEA laws? Do they think they can bully the differences out of them? Maybe Emanuel doesn’t care. He figures these kids have less potential in many cases so we won’t invest in them. This seems to be the mentality of “reformers” about all public education. Charter partiality is sickening.
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Don’t worry, those kids were never going to amount to anything anyway. At least, so says Rahm Emanuel and we know what a beacon of truth and justice he is.
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Since you wrote this @8:15 AM 9/30, & it’s now 1:51 AM 10/1 (all comments here are ET), you might not see this, Dienne, but I hope you do (I always look back at the Chicago & ILL-Annoy posts for anything new/informative). We all know, of course, who’s going to take the fall for this, don’t we? He should’ve listened to Karen Lewis when she cleverly told him, “Run, Forrest, run!”
Myself, I renamed it the J.C.B. You all know…that last “fall guy” (couldn’t really call Triple B a “fall guy,” esp. if she gets off).
Anyway, there is NO wrath like sp.ed. parents scorned–the law is on the side of their kids, & this just won’t stand. No money for sp.ed.?
How about that $55 million for the DePaul arena?
Perhaps someone should tell the Pope.
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I am not a religious person but this quote sprang to mind when I heard about these cuts: ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
We lose more of our humanity every day with these types of cuts (and you know I don’t mean ‘we’ as in ‘us” but ‘we’ as in ‘them’)
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Cary444, your mention of the losing of our humanity brought to mind metaphorically the Hindenburg crashing to the ground taking our humanity with it. We certainly seem to be crashing and burning in the educating and nurturing of our nation’s children.
“Oh the humanity and all the passengers screaming around here.’
Herbert O. Morrison
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Rahm is one of the meanest people aroud. I bet he’s proud of this fact.
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Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
I sincerely hope that they get their pants sued off.
The original Public Law 94-142, now known, after a numerous tweaks and amendments, as the Iindividuals With Disabilities Education Act, was signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1975. It guaranteed a free, appropriate (note the word “appropriate”) education for all disabled children.
Is is more expensive to educate most of these children? Of course. But every disabled child deserves to reach his or her full potential.
But it seems as though, with the rush to cut funding to public schools, and transfer funding to less-publicly-accountable charter schools, people like Rahm Emanuel have decided that it’s simply too expensive to fully educate these children.
Shame on him, and shame on all of us if this is allowed to go on.
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Isn’t IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) a piece of civil rights legislation that guarantees struggling students access to the least restrictive environment while receiving the necessary supports to help them learn in a public institution? How is Mayor Emanuel’s maneuver not a violation of the 14th Amendment, and therefore unconstitutional? Am I missing something here?
If I am, can someone edify me?
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You are correct, Mark. Read Mike’s brother–Fred Klonsky’s Blog (Google it)–& the post by Beverley Holden Johns, a world renowned expert in special education. Federal law supercedes the local. Hell has no fury like special ed. parents scorned–just wait for all the lawsuits (or a big, fat juicy class action)!
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Thanks Retired–I can’t think of a more deserving target for litigation than Chicago school officials. Let’s have a large helping of disgrace and infamy for all!
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