Jan Resseger writes here about an important new book by sociologist Eve Ewing about the mass closure of 50 public schools in Chicago. This was Rahm Emanuel’s worst legacy. It is a stain on his reputation, unmatched in American history. No district or city or state ever closed 50 schools in one day. Emanuel believes, like Arne Duncan, that schools “fail,” when in fact it is society that fails when children come to school hungry and in need of smaller classes, medical care, and food.
She writes:
Eve Ewing’s new book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, explores the blindness, deafness, and heartlessness of technocratic, “portfolio school reform”* as it played out in 50 school closings in Chicago at the end of the school year in 2013. After months of hearings, the Chicago Public Schools didn’t even send formal letters to the teachers, parents and students in the schools finally chosen for closure. People learned which schools had finally been shut down when the list was announced on television.
Eve Ewing, a professor in the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and a former teacher in one of the closed schools, brings her training as a sociologist to explore this question: “But why do people care about these failing schools?” (p. 13) In four separate chapters, Ewing examines the question from different perspectives: (1) the meaning for the community of the closure of Dyett High School and the hunger strike that reopened the school; (2) the history of segregation in Chicago as part of the Great Migration, followed by the intensification of segregation in thousands of public housing units built and later demolished in the Bronzeville neighborhood; (3) the narratives of community members, teachers, parents and students about the meaning of their now-closed schools in contrast to the narrative of the portfolio school planners at Chicago Public Schools; and (4) the mourning that follows when important community institutions are destroyed.
We hear an English teacher describing the now-closed school where she had taught: “I never considered us as a failing school or failing teachers or failing students. I felt like pretty much everyone in that building was working really hard for those kids…. Trying to push them forward as far as they could go.” (p. 135)
And we hear Rayven Patrick, an eighth grader speaking about the importance of Mayo elementary school at the public hearing which preceded the school’s closure: “Most of my family have went to Mayo. My grandma attended. My mother, my aunt. I came from a big family. The Patricks are known in Mayo. Like, we have been going there for so long. Over the years I have watched lots of students graduate, and they were able to come back to their teachers and tell them how high school has been going. Most of them are in college now, and I see them come to the few teachers that are left at Mayo and tell them of their experience of college and high school. This year I will graduate. And most of the students at Mayo… They’re family to me. Little sisters and little brothers. I walk through the hallway, and every kid knows who I am. I’m able to speak to them, and I honestly, I wanna be able to watch them graduate.” (pp. 108-109)
Ewing also shares the justification for the 50 school closures by Barbara Byrd-Bennett, then Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s appointed school district CEO: “But for too long, children in certain parts of our city have been cheated out of the resources they need to succeed in the classroom because they are trapped in underutilized schools. These underutilized schools are also under-resourced.” (p. 4)
Throughout the book, teachers, students, parents, and grandparents point out the irony that Byrd-Bennett has criticized their now-closed school for being under-resourced. She is herself the person with enough power to have changed the funding formula that left some schools with ever-diminishing resources. Community members also complain again and again that at the same time neighborhood public schools are being shut down, the school district has been encouraging rapid growth in the number of charter schools.
Give credit (blame) where it is due: The Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington posited that the “portfolio model” would lead to success and efficiency. What they never considered was the consequences of their cold logic: lives and communities disrupted and damaged; grief; the harm to students and teachers caused by constant churn.
But no problem for CRPE: it will continue to be funded by the usual sources to damage more lives.
Arne Duncan also says that people “don’t care” which school their children attend as long as the school is high performing.
Ed reformers have seen this belief contradicted in so many places, yet Arne Duncan is still giving speeches and writing books and advising people on public schools.
It isn’t even true of their own schools! Many of the charters and private schools they prefer and promote are not “high performing” yet people still attend them and want them to remain open.
I think it comes from people who didn’t attend public schools so don’t understand how the schools function within communities.
Every so often we have a bold reformer parachute into the place I live and say we need to “consolidate” districts. It’s rural so some of the districts are tiny and it probably makes sense to consolidate them and start busing kids in to a central location. It ALWAYS fails. The rural communities ALWAYS want to keep their schools. They don’t care it if means they get AP courses or a football team. The schools are the centers of their community and they know if the school goes the community dies.
And from Duncan’s and DeVos’ experience and perspective schools ARE a consumer good, a service they purchase. Their parents looked at a menu of private schools and chose one. They never experienced the kind of thing where people feel they own the local public school and they have a shared history with it.
Here’s it actually generational- we have grandparents going to events at the same school they attended. That’s a negative to ed reformers. To most people that’s a positive.
My youngest gets a big kick out of adults at his school knowing his older siblings. I can tell he does. It’s a connection for him.
and that connection works so well for teachers and other school personnel: so many studies arguing that relationship is key, and yet so many like Duncan refusing to see their collusion in killing off not only schools but neighborhoods
Schools are often the hub of community life in a neighborhood. They have history and a culture. Closing a school tears apart a neighborhood. This may in fact be the goal if the mayor and developers collude to gentrify targeted areas. Government by numbers disregards the human investment in neighborhood schools,. I have seen school closures that consolidated students in one public school. Instead, Chicago opted to sell off its responsibility to educate many of its poor minority students causing chaos and duress on poor families. The Center for Reinventing Public Education sees this as more efficient. The major supporters of this group are the Gates Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation and the Arnold Foundation. It is easy for them to ignore the human cost of such trauma and disruption. It is also easy for Emanuel to accept the separate and unequal treatment of these black and brown students.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that crime in Chicago rose sky high after this concerted effort to close community schools.
You are correct, NYSPSP. & the CTU warned the CPS admins & board but, as usual, no one listened.
posted a link to the book review itself at , https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Stunning-New-Book-Contextu-in-Best_Web_OpEds-America_Book_Reviews_Books-Magazines_Educational-Crisis-181017-149.html
How sad. I wonder if some of the schools in Chicago that I substituted in were closed. I had my favorites and some that were having lots of difficulties. Still, they are/were anchors that held the society together.
I feel really bad for kids who have to walk through gang infested areas to get to the ‘new school’. That wasn’t considered as important when this disastrous decision was made.
Public Neighborhood Schools are JUST SO MUCH BETTER…community involvement. I guess this is what the deformers don’t want … community involvement. Easier to control when people are dispersed and not speaking to one another.
Rahm is a DFER. I have no use for DFERs.
What they never considered …
Seems to be matched with the notion that “they” are students.
Listen up Rahm, Arne, Betsy, or (fill in the blank), as if the cause of
our problems is “what” they DON’T know.
As if the balance of economic, political, or social power, is determined
by rulling class STUDENTS…
In “How Schools Work,” Arne Duncan states, on Page 41 (RE: Paul Vallas’ CPS leadership), “The upshot was that by 2001 he enjoyed a high & favorable public profile, which in the world of politics translates to opportunity. Hence, he set his sights on the governorship.” REALLY? “enjoyed a high & favorable public profile…in the world of politics
translates to opportunity.”
I would take that as someone (although Arne meant it to be flattering)–the someone being Vallas–acting purely in his own interests; that is, acting as an opportunist. Which is what Vallas & Duncan always do. Suffice it to say, Vallas lost the gubernatorial race to…Rod Blagojevich (currently in prison). Then, the one who “enjoyed a high & favorable public profile” (again, REALLY?!), having lost his great political “opportunity” ventured (& I do mean VENTUREd) forth to take advantage of the post-Katrina New Orleans public school system (best thing that happened to N.O. education, according to Arne), the Philadelphia public school system & attempted to do so to the Bridgeport, CT public school system. After getting bounced from Bridgeport, Vallas returned to…ILL-Annoy, having “enjoyed a high & favorable public profile” (REALLY?!), politically “translat(ing) to opportunity,” & he runs for…Lt. Governor (which is, in part, why the incumbent, Pat Quinn, lost (because his pick “enjoyed {such a} high & favorable public profile.”)
So, losing that, he goes to the financially-strapped Chicago State University–because he will save it!–acting as an unpaid financial consultant (however, as we knew would happen, he was appointed–by Republican Guv Rauner–to a paid position (& most likely a WELL-paid position; can you imagine Vallas working at a teacher-level salary?).
And–with all of this–Vallas cuts & runs…to run for mayor of Chicago.
&–guess what?–a large part of his posturing revolves (still does) around criticism of Rahm, & how he could do a much, much better job of running the city.
People, if you know voters in Chicago (if you’re a Chicago voter & reader of this blog, I can’t imagine that you’d support Vallas on any level), PLEASE inform them of his background: Chicago citizens (& the press, as well–on a progressive talk radio program today, the host defended Vallas {although he did say he “wasn’t necessarily voting for him,” but pointed out that he has seen that Vallas has “plans”–yesterday, our liberal newspaper, The Sun-Times [which this same host always calls “my beloved Sun-Times”] published a lengthy article RE: Vallas’ plans. Of course, the other conservative Republican paper, The Chicago Tribune, has a Page 2 columnist who, in fact, urged Paul to run, & writes glowing columns about Vallas. Bottom line:if Chicagoans are just reading & going by what’s in the papers, he might look good to them; there’s been nothing about what he’s done in N.O., Philly or Bridgeport. AND we have so very many people running for mayor, we could well have a Trump situation on our hands; w/so many running, someone with a %age in low #s could well take it to a run-off, & even win.
And that someone could be Paul Vallas.
Oh–& y’all–please don’t think I’m defending Emanuel. Not at all.
I’m just worried sick about Chicago’s future.
how does emanual rahm get the position of mayor. i mean this guy is really not an executive he is barbaric in his policy setting insanity….obama is indirectly responsible for the debacle in Chicago by hiring this goon rahm for a white house position just because he was his friend….obama has done more damage to this country then any other president in the history of the country and i am a democrat but the reality is obama was a snake in the grass to us all in public ed.
OBAMA AND RAHM: “…obama has done more damage to this country then any other president in the history of the country…”
Really? I agree that Obama was a disaster for public education but please don’t say he has done more damage to this country than any other president in the history of the country. I’m not a historian, but Trump isn’t doing anything good. How much damage can this one man do? I’m sure we’ll find out. He destroys people and alienates our allies. He lies and cons people who don’t know what is happening to our democracy. He picked a total looser for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Every person he picks is working to destroy the agency for which they are in charge. Obama worked to get a cleaner environment and did manage to pass a healthcare bill. Name ONE thing that Trump has done besides sign a bill to give the wealthy more money. Now the country has a huge deficit. Do you really think Trump would stop the GOP from getting rid of Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid?