The Chicago mayoral election is February 28. Nine candidates are running. If no candidate wins a majority, there will be a runoff on April 4. You can read about the candidates here.
One of the candidates who is faring well in the polls is Paul Vallas. He is of interest to parents and educators because most of his professional career has been spent as a leader of school districts, although he is not an educator. He introduced a bold experiment in privatization in Philadelphia, which failed. After Vallas left Philly, the district was taken over by the state. He lost his position as superintendent in Bridgeport, Connecticut, because of his lack of credentials. If Vallas should win, the charter crowd would descend on Chicago to reap their rewards.
Julie Vassilatos is the parent of two students who graduated from the Chicago Public Schools in 2017 and 2021. She was outraged that the Chicago Tribune endorsed Vallas. (The tribune is behind a paywall.) She wrote a response to the editorial. The Tribune was impressed by Vallas’ long resume, but Julie writes that he left behind chaos and budget deficits wherever he was in charge of a school district.
She writes:
It’s unclear to me exactly what motivated the members of the Chicago Tribune editorial board to endorse Paul Vallas for mayor in our upcoming election.
Vallas has run for mayor before. In 2018 I wrote about why he was not a good candidate, and these reasons all hold true today. I could simply re-run that piece today on its own and that would be nearly sufficient as a response to the Tribune’s endorsement. (Notably, they didn’t endorse him last time around.) But there are specifics in Sunday’s editorial that require a response, so I will do that here, with the former piece, from my now-disappeared blog “Chicago Public Fools,” appended below.
The Tribune editorial board gave their reasons. But they’re poor reasons at best, and at worst, wrong or disingenuous. Let’s go through their claims.
I. First, the Tribune editorial highlights Vallas’s “expertise in city financing, policing, and public education.” Expertise can mean, I suppose, “someone did a thing, maybe a lot.” But doing it well and successfully should be inherent in the word. “Expertise” in this case is absurdly unsupported by facts. Cities he’s worked in—rapidly, and left rapidly—were left with complicated budget problems, vast deficits, and controversy. He was superintendent of schools in Philadelphia for 5 years (ousted after causing ballooning budget deficits, OR he resigned in order to gallop to New Orleans, you pick), New Orleans for 4 (he left in order to run unsuccessfully for Cook County Board President), and Bridgeport, CT for 2 (ousted because he did not meet the job qualification of being an educator, OR he resigned to run unsuccessfully with IL gubernatorial candidate Pat Quinn, you pick). A quick recap of each stint:
In Philadelphia
Vallas’s record here is complicated. From The Notebook in 2007:
One thing is certain – Paul Vallas certainly shook up the Philadelphia School District.
Full of energy and confident that he could solve any problem, Vallas’s five-year tenure was a whirlwind of bold initiatives and dramatic changes in policy.
At the same time, he is leaving a district in tumult, with the same deep financial problems that he inherited – running a large deficit, and still without stable, reliable funding that meets the extraordinary needs of the city’s students.
His legacy here has much to do with the Broad Institute’s brand of “reformers.” Recapping the history of “reform” in Philadelphia, Thomas Ultican writes of Vallas in 2018’s “Philadelphia Story: Another School Choice Failure”:
He also opened the door for billionaire Eli Broad to infest Philadelphia with administrators trained at his unaccredited Broad Academy.
Broad believes that leaders of school district need financial and business management skills but require little or no experience in education. He also says that the best way to reform education is through competition and market forces.
Vallas is an example of the kind of school leader Broad sought to foster. He was someone who had little to no experience in education but understood finance.
We have some experience of the Broad Academy here in Chicago. You remember. Barbara Byrd-Bennett was a Broadie. [She was convicted of taking kickbacks and sent to prison.]
In New Orleans:
Even those who accept the rising test scores narrative know there are vast problems in New Orleans post Vallas, as recounted in a 2015 New York Times article. “The rhetoric of reform often fails to match reality.” Privatization here, as elsewhere, hurts the most disadvantaged students.
“We don’t want to replicate a lot of the things that took place to get here,” said Andre Perry, who was one of the few black charter-school leaders in the city. “There were some pretty nefarious things done in the pursuit of academic gain,” Mr. Perry acknowledged, including “suspensions, pushouts, skimming, counseling out, and not handling special needs kids well.”
Privatization, writes teacher, scholar, and author Mercedes Schneider, was not a better way to run schools. Schneider has researched and written substantially on this topic, speaking of expertise; if you have any interest in the long-term effects of school privatization, do yourself a favor and learn from her.
Has Vallas’s brand of reform been sustainable in New Orleans? In a 2008 piece in nola.com, a principal presciently considered this question:
Cheryllyn Branche, the principal of Bannecker Elementary School, wonders about sustainability. ‘I have a vested interest in this community. No matter what, it will always be home,’ she said. ‘If we don’t have people who have a commitment to this place in the long term, it won’t come back.’
‘Sometimes I want to ask him, “What happens when you are gone?”’
In Bridgeport CT:
Vallas was hired shortly after the state takeover of Bridgeport, CT public schools, subject to his fulfilling CT law that he be trained as an educator. A special condition was created just for him, non-trained-educator that he was: that he complete an educational leadership program. Instead of doing this he took a single independent study course that was later deemed not to fulfill the special condition. The whole thing ended in a tangled lawsuit, explained in this 2013 piece in the Stamford (CT) Advocate:
[I]t is a case study about the arrogance and abuse of power that have become the hallmark of the so-called reform movement.
The Vallas saga is the story of how an infamous reformer broke the law — a law written expressly for him — and how senior officials put personal and political connections above the law and welfare of Bridgeport’s children.
The court ruled against Vallas, but later reversed the decision in an appeal; Vallas had already left to join Pat Quinn’s IL campaign for governor. His short tenure in Bridgeport was largely colored by this controversy.
It’s clear that the expertise the Tribune touts, based largely on his school district leadership, is fraught with complications and possibly wildly overrated. The parts that worry me in this history include the rapid fire breaking and destruction coupled with simultaneous rapid spending and rapid budget slashing. The failure to listen to constituents. The repeated disadvantaging of already-disadvantaged children.
I know reformers like Vallas do not see that the upshot of their work turns out to be racist. But oddly, districts subjected to the Vallas type of reform somehow get a whole lot whiter—from administrators, through teachers, and on down to students. Saying “choice is the civil rights issue of our time” over and over like a magic spell does not make it true. School choice has never, and will never, increase equity in a school district. School choice originates in the racist response to Brown v. Board of Education and the creation of schools not subject to federal oversight. Today choice is instrumental in breaking down democracy in our communities. [These claims were the subject of my blog that ran for 7 years; though I want to go on and on about this, we’ve got to keep moving or I’ll never get through this post!]
Just on a practical level, Vallas’s plans for keeping schools open on nights and weekends baffle me. How does he propose to pay for all that staffing? Our schools don’t even have libraries. They have hardly any extracurriculars. Some of them are lacking in utter basics. What is he talking about? I can’t even imagine the epic Godzilla versus Mothra battles that would ensue between him and the CTU over this.
No, Chicago Tribune. No. No to someone who is a serial privatizer. No to someone who set corporate ed reform in motion in Chicago decades ago. No to someone who blows things up and leaves. No to someone who’s left increased racial inequity in his wake. We don’t need a mayor who has this kind of proven track record on education.
II. Next, the Tribune loves that Vallas “has the ear of rank and file police officers on the street.”What they mean by this is that he is very cozy—one could say uncomfortably cozy—with FOP president and disgraced cop John Catanzara. Last month the FOP endorsed Vallas; this week Vallas spoke at an FOP event for retired police officers alongside Catanzara; and he recently accepted a $5K donation from a retired policeman involved in the Laquan McDonald murder. When WBEZ reported on that connection, his campaign acknowledged that, and rather than returning the money, they gave $10K to Parents for Peace and Justice.
His public safety plan is full of dog whistles, like so: “Our city has been surrendered to a rogue element who act with seeming impunity in treating unsuspecting, innocent people as prey.” Kicking CPD Superintendent David Brown to the curb is Job One. Bypassing Kim Foxx when necessary is key. And adding thousands of police officers is a priority, so that CPD is staffed “like it was under Rahm Emanuel.” Said new cops would be recruited from military bases (?!), the fire department, retirees, and private security forces; residency requirements would be waived (but wait, didn’t he say having cops from the local community was best?). Every CTA station would be staffed with cops. In a just and good world, these are not inherently problematic proposals. In the world we live in, with out of control, hostile, already overly militarized cops, these ideas would implement a semi-privatized dystopian police state with watchful cops on every corner trying to snatch the city back from the rogue element. Of course rank and file cops like these ideas.
The Tribune is hopeful that Vallas would use the trust of the police “to improve police conduct.” Again with the saying it/wishing it connection. I think the next mayor needs more concrete proposals about improving police conduct than we see in Vallas’s plan.
III. In discussing some of Vallas’s challengers, the Tribune is “troubled by [their] associations”(in this case, Chuy Garcia’s connection to Madigan). But how can the editorial board overlook Vallas’s own troubling associations? Let me detail a few.
He spoke at an Awake IL event this past summer. Days later, after he was roundly criticized for joining forces with the group, he walked back his connection with them, assuring folks that he, himself, is not in any way homophobic or racist. It would have taken a 5 second internet search to see that Awake IL has a history of being unhinged about covid restrictions, threatens trans people regularly, refers to the governor as a “groomer,” was instrumental in the vandalism of UpRising Bakery, and is connected to the Proud Boys. But Vallas didn’t make a 5 second internet search when he was invited to serve on a panel that Awake IL leader Shannon Adcock called “the Continental Congress of school choice.”
He received a $7.5K donation from disgraced former CPS Board of Ed member Deborah Quazzo, whose notoriety derives chiefly but not solely from the large profits she secured as a result of contracts obtained while serving on the Board of Ed. Her husband threw in another $10K for good measure. Interestingly, in his last at-bat for mayor, Vallas received a much smaller donation from Quazzo, then returned it after he was asked about it by WBEZ. Time heals all wounds, apparently. Vallas now says, 4 years ago there were allegations being made about her that didn’t seem great, and his campaign was wary. Now he thinks “nothing came of those investigations” into what Quazzo did on the Board, and besides, “She has a reputation for being very active in school reform.” (Again, a 5 second internet search would yield the CPS Inspector General’s report on all matters Quazzo. Allegations sustained.)
I’ve already mentioned the deeply problematic John Catenzara. At least the $5K donation of the Laquan McDonald-involved cop, Richard Hagen, did cause a twinge of conscience.
Disgraced Barbara Byrd-Bennett partner in crime Gary Solomon was also an associate of Vallas’s—for years. Solomon went with Vallas to Philadelphia, then New Orleans. “In a series of letters to Louisiana officials who oversaw the New Orleans district, Vallas vouched for Synesi Associates,” Gary Solomon’s education consulting firm. “Synesi landed two no-bid contracts worth nearly $893,000 in New Orleans during Vallas’ time running the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.” Solomon’s prison term for his involvement in the Barbara Byrd-Bennett kickback scandal ended early because of covid. He’ll be released from home confinement in October.
Vallas owes one of his jobs to yet another shady connection, former governor Bruce Rauner, who set him up as Chief Administrative Officer of Chicago State University, in hopes of turning it around. This scenario didn’t end well—CSU cut ties with Vallas when he announced his run for mayor in the middle of his tenure. “I find it unfortunate that he would attempt to use Chicago State University as a platform to run for the mayor of the city of Chicago,” [Board Vice President Nicholas] Gowen said. “It is not the role of Mr. Vallas to try to use Chicago State University to try to bolster his bona fides to the black community.”
IV. The Tribune touts the need for “turnaround specialists” like Vallas and hopes others join him. But what is this? Do we want this? What does a turnaround actually do beyond slash-and-burn destruction of communities and gentrification outcomes that turn out looking quite racist? Educator and author Larry Cuban asks if turnaround “experts” are what struggling school districts (and presumably by extension, cities) really require.
Vallas is (or was) the premier “turnaround specialist.” Whether, indeed, Vallas turned around Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans is contested. Supporters point to more charter schools, fresh faces in the classroom, new buildings, and slowly rising test scores; critics point to abysmal graduation rates for black and Latino students, enormous budget deficits, and implementation failures.
“Turnarounds” as a school strategy have been notorious, and notoriously ineffective. On the school level, a turnaround means every staff member of a school is fired, down to the last lunch lady, and replaced with new staff members. These supposedly higher quality (and perplexingly, usually way whiter) staff members are supposed to fix everything. Break it all fast. Rebuild it fast. Voila! It is fixed. On the district level, it means replacing traditional public schools with charters, lots of firing, much slashing of budgets. Poof! District is fixed, and it is a miracle! Until said turnaround experts leave town with the district and city holding the bag—and the bag is usually empty.
What in the world does a “turnaround expert” do in charge of a whole city? What parts are going to be dismantled? What parts remade? What parts gentrified? What budgets slashed and burned?
I can’t picture it. More significantly, Vallas hasn’t really articulated it.
The Tribune lauds Vallas for his expertise in education—which is questionable—and his rapport with CPD—which is dubious. It overlooks some super sketchy connections and wants to bring down the cursed turnaround upon Chicago. You know, and I know, that Paul Vallas is not the mayor we Chicagoans need—not in 2019 and not now.
If you want to read the author’s appraisal of Vallas in 2018, when he captured a little more than 5% of the vote, open the link. It follows this post.
Not sure what tea these folks are drinking, but Vallas would be detrimental to Chicago.
There is a reason he lost his previous campaigns. There is a reason he was shipped out of those various jobs. Never Vallas !
(disclosure: I am a retired CPS teacher who remembers his fiasco of questionable leadership.)
Vallas was a disaster in Bridgeport, he hired a team of retirees from elsewhere, spent $$ on prepackaged curriculum, confusion ruled, skilled on press releases, he inherited a stumbling district and left a dysfunctional district…
One of the few things I don’t miss about Chicago. The Tribune editorial page.
These deformers have a habit of falling upward despite repeated failures. They are hired by those that want to harm public schools, not improve them. Parents are going to have to organize and be prepared to defend the right of their children to a free public education. Citizens can no longer afford to take public education for granted. Privatizers funded by billionaires would like to undermine and destroy the public schools that helped build this nation and turn education into a commodity that benefits the rich.
“Paul Vallas…his kids attend Catholic schools.” 7-17-2003-Chicago Tribune
When I lived there, everyone who could sent their kids to Catholic schools.
A follow-up question, jsr-
If it’s well known that lots of people who have students in Catholic schools, want the voucher money for those schools, why don’t the learned, public school defenders tell the public about the money grab by the Catholic Church?
When I lived there the parents wanted a decent education and safety. The public schools were utter chaos and had totally beaten down teachers. The two most miserable people I knew were CPS teachers. The public schools were essentially places to recruit new gang members.
I’d like to think that’s changed. What I read and what I hear tells me it hasn’t. Which is depressing, because I consider Chicago to be the best big city we have.
In Philadelphia, Vallas, didn’t even bother to find out what resources the SDP already had and then work to enhance them. Some had to be saved by non-profits, not his administration. He brought in his buddies who were ridiculously self-righteous, they knew it all, but obviously couldn’t last a minute in a classroom. He even brought in Kaplan “experts” to tell teachers what they were doing wrong. Kaplan has cram courses for people to take cram tests so they can get licensed in the financial industry as registered representatives. In our school they sent a young lady who taught for three years in Atlanta but was very evasive about about her experience there. She had to face a very experienced and dedicated faculty. I felt sorry for her being dumped into an untenable situation. Business requires these cram tests and some actually believe they mean something, most are realistic. A guy like Vallas. in his ignorance, thinks that Kaplan with its high pass rate for cramming, is actually doing something meaningful.
It isn’t easy for ALEC, the Walton Family Foundation, and their allies to find enough easy to buy, greedy, autocratic loving, theofascists to run for office, and that forces them to keep repeatedly running people like Paul Vallas and maybe also outspending the competition until they finally win.
The beauty of public education is that you can spend $20K-$40K per student and end up with zero (0) students achieving proficiency in math, as at these fifty-three (53) Illinois schools. Clearly the answer is to spend $100K per student. Surely that will do the trick. Say, how much does Utah spend per student anyway?
https://wirepoints.org/not-a-single-student-can-do-math-at-grade-level-in-53-illinois-schools-for-reading-its-30-schools-wirepoints/
Thank you, Julie, for sending this to re-post. For all from Chicago/surrounding suburbs who can, PLEASE write letters to the editor (Chgo. Trib.–they MAY print it: they already published 1 letter critical of PV & another that was ?ing of his abilities {of course, 1 was a glowing letter, but it may have come from someone who had been disbarred/in trouble!}) AND, OF COURSE, to the Chgo. Sun-Times {yes, they’re a non-partisan, 501-3C now, but they’ll STILL publish all kinds of opinion letters/op-eds {they always run a disclaimer for op-eds, that these are the opinions of the op-ed author & not of the paper/editorial board}). Write OFTEN. &, also, send both this post & Diane’s re-post from Mercedes Schneider {from Feb.6th) to EVERYONE you know eligible to vote for Chicago mayor. Unfortunately, the msm is ignoring the true background of Vallas, not doing their homework.
Remember, the silence (& the lack of doing their jobs as investigators & reporters of the truth)of the press is EXACTLY how Anthony Devolder (a.k.a. George Santos) was elected in NY for the U.S. House of Representatives. (Only a small, local publication exposed this fraudulent liar but, alas, not enough people read it, or at least not in time.)
& to those criticizing CPS–well, remember who was in charge when Daley was mayor, when Duncan was Ed.Sec., had connections to Leadership Academy (remember Barbara Byrd Bennett & Gary Solomon?), & was involved in Renaissance (Chicago’s own mini Race to the Top)* & who is “100% for privatization,” completely privatized the New Orleans Schools…& we all know how well that turned out. Also, in IL, we are trying to have the Invest in Kids (voucher program for privates, which was supposed to last 5 yrs. then sunset, but has been ongoing: it has diverted “up to $75 million in annual state tax revenue to fund K-12 private school tuition.” Vallas is all for voucher programs. finally (but not really), Mayor Rahm’s closing of 50+ CP Schools while closing most of Chicago’s mental health clinics was a death blow for kids. All of you teachers (& parents!) know that teachers & other school personnel are in loco parenti, &, in losing their community schools, kids not only lost their friends, but their daytime (& after school) families–maybe the only families they’d known. As studies have shown, gang members become family to kids w/o theirs, maybe the only family they know.
So–stop blaming the schools–blame the people who purportedly run the schools, make the decisions (the bad ones).
& what Lloyd & bpollock42 said above. This mayoral candidate is in for the grab (as he has been SO many times in his past)…NOT for the good.
Spread the word to Chicago!!
I recall that CATALYST, a Chicago education publication, published a study of what happened to kids whose schools were closed. Nothing good.
I was a Chicago Public School teacher during Paul Vallas’ time as CEO so my question is simply, if he could not effectively run CPS, then how can he
do so as mayor of Chicago? During his time as CEO, student test scores decreased system-wide.
He also failed to create necessary guidelines or training for newly-hired principals. One such fiasco
occurred when a new principal had a school & communuity-created mural completely painted over with white paint before the schoolyear even began. This work of art had been the longtime vision of many and had been funded with a grant written by one of the teachers at the school. The mural had been designed by the entire student body who had been asked which African or African
American S/Heroes they wished to have included in it. The late Dr. Margaret Burroughs, founder of the DuSable Museum & a frequent visitor & former graduate of the school, volunteered to served as a
consultant on the project which was funded by Urban Gateways, an organization created by the
late Mrs. Maggie Daley. Months later, after both students & community members designed & painted the way to its completion, it was done.
Sadly this beautiful piece of art which spanned the entire hallway in the school’s main corridor & included images of Dr. King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Michael Jackson & the Middle Passage & many other depictions, was completely destroyed
by a new principal who had no respect for what was meant to be a legacy for generations to come.
Necessary principal training which included being mentored by effective & seasoned principals for a mandatory timeframe was instituted after Paul Vallas left.
What a horrifying story! It should be widely known but isn’t.