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Cory Booker and Rahm Emanuel: Two Tigers Trying to Change Their History

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2019 //
70

By chance, two articles came to my attention today about two leading figures in the Reform movement who don’t want to be seen as Reformers any more. Have they really changed? Frankly, I am waiting for each of them to call a press conference and declare their support for public schools and renounce their past error in supporting charters (and in Booker’s case) vouchers. Even then, I would be dubious because both of them have motives that are politically expedient.

Cory Booker, as we know, was closely associated with Betsy DeVos. He was on school choice boards with her, attended her events, was feted as keynote speaker at the conservative Manhattan Institute, and has a long history demeaning public schools and unions. Just days ago, he attended a charter school rally in New Orleans. Just a few days ago is past history, right? But an article in Mother Jones suggests he may have changed his mind. What really burns me is that the writer compares Booker’s possible (but not sure) change of mind to my own change. I would like to point out that I had nothing to gain and everything to lose by publicly changing my views. I gave up a cushy position at the Hoover Institution and lost a lot of friends, as well as income, when I changed sides. I left the gravy train and took a stand with no assurance of any reward. Booker, on the other hand, has to change his views or face the wrath of the teachers, the unions, and parents who prefer public schools to corporate chains. You can’t run for president with the support of the parents of the 6% of kids in charter schools and expect to win.

Did Booker support vouchers? Of course he did. Education Week wrote an article on February 1, 2019, describing him thus:

Cory Booker, School Choice Fan and Ex-DeVos Ally, Is Running for President

By Andrew Ujifusa on February 1, 2019 8:43 AM
A politician with a long track record of supporting vouchers and other forms of school choice will seek the White House in 2020—on the Democratic ticket.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., announced Friday that he will seek the presidency. When it comes to education policy, Booker has an interesting and perhaps unique track record among the Democrats who will fight to take on President Donald Trump. Although much of that record was established before he was elected to the Senate in 2013, how he talks about that record, and how teachers’ unions react to his candidacy, will be worth watching.

Before coming to Congress, Booker was the mayor of Newark, N.J., from 2006 to 2013. During that time, he made his support for various forms of choice one of the key issues of his administration. In 2012, for example, we highlighted Booker as an example of how vouchers had gained a political foothold among Democrats at the state and local level. That year, he gave a speech to the American Federation for Children, a group formerly led by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (more on her in a moment) that supports vouchers, in which he said that many children “by law are locked into schools that fail their genius.” And he co-founded a group, Excellent Education for Everyone, that backed charters and vouchers in New Jersey but fell short of its goals.

During his early political career, Booker also garnered support from Wall Street donors who took an interest in education policy. That group of donors eventually helped start Democrats for Education Reform, a group that supports charters and other forms of public school choice—Booker has served on its advisory board. However, some in the education community are suspicious of Booker’s Wall Street ties.

Then there is Rahm Emanuel. He says he used to prefer charters. But then he became Mayor of Chicago and learned that charters don’t hold all the answers. Now he says he likes all high-quality schools. Can we take the word of a man who says he has learned his lesson, that he now likes any kind of school as long as it produces high test scores? Why did he forget to mention that he closed 50 schools in one day? He was Mayor in 2013 when he did that. I imagine his tombstone: Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago who closed 50 schools in a day, a historic and shameful legacy. Maybe he is running for Secretary of Education in the next Democratic administration. Then he can revive Race to the Top and close even more schools in search of those “high-quality seats.”

Color me skeptical.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Newark, Privatization, School Choice

Chicago: CTU on Meaning of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day Today

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2019 //
7

STATEMENT:
For Immediate Release| ctulocal1.org
CONTACT: Chris Geovanis, 312-329-6250, 312-446-4939 (m), ChrisGeovanis@ctulocal1.org
CTU calls on Mayor, CPS to honor MLK by ending educational apartheid

50 years after Dr. King died defending human rights for Black workers and youth, CPS still perpetuates separate and unequal public schools for Black and Brown students, charges CTU.

CHICAGO, January 21, 2019—CTU President Jesse Sharkey released the following statement today marking MLK Day – and the ongoing movement to make Dr. King’s life’s mission of peace with justice a reality.

“50 years after Dr. King died defending human rights for Black workers and youth, we are still battling separate and unequal public schools for Black and Brown students, and separate and unequal neighborhoods for Chicago’s Black and Latinx families.”

“Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis defending the rights of striking workers – and working to expand his Poor People’s Campaign. At the heart of his work was the demand for economic and social justice for Blacks and other oppressed people in this nation. He would be horrified by the treatment of Chicago’s Black and Brown students and their families today – segregated into under-resourced public schools, embedded in neighborhoods neglected by generations of disinvestment and economic starvation.

“We saw a glimpse of the consequences of that negligence and dispossession just this weekend, when CPS quietly disclosed that nearly a thousand schoolchildren will be denied entry into the high schools they ‘chose’, in a school district that the mayor and his CPS bureaucrats claim offers ‘choice’. What they really offer is strangled opportunities, limited options and separate and unequal schools in a system of educational hunger games that leaves working class and low income families – particularly Black and Latinx families – in the lurch.

“Yet Dr. King’s mission lives on, in every Chicago student, parent, educator, neighborhood resident and community activist who continues to fight to affirm Dr. King’s demands for equity, dignity and respect for working class families – particularly Black and Latinx families who have been abandoned by the elites who run this city. These people, including CTU educators, are the leading edge of this battle, in our classrooms, our school communities, our unions and our city.

“True peace is not the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice,” wrote Dr. King in 1955, when he was accused of ‘disturbing the peace’ during his organizing around the Montgomery bus boycott. And Chicagoans continue to ‘disturb the peace’ in our struggles for justice in education, housing, living wage work and neighborhood safety. Our work in the CTU has exposed the hypocrisy of a mayoral-controlled school district, and set the stage for contract fights for more equity and dignity for our students.

“Dr. King embraced and lifted up the power of the picket line, the boycott and the organizing that built a mass movement for racial and economic equity. The Chicago Teachers Union has embraced Dr. King’s strategy, which is as vital today as it was decades ago. His strategy is embedded in our civic movement for educational justice in Chicago, and has swept the nation in grassroots struggles for police accountability, educational equity, affordable housing and living wage work. Now, more than ever, people understand the forces that are arrayed against real justice for working class families. This city’s residents stand with our struggle as we take aim at the very infrastructure of institutional racism and inequity in Chicago.

“Today, we renew our commitment to organize, mobilize and agitate for real justice – the movement for justice that Dr. King led, and the movement that will shatter the discrimination and disenfranchisement that continues to plague our neighborhoods.”

Categories Chicago, Civil Rights, Equity

Chicago Teachers Union Blasts Duncan for His Criticism of UTLA

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2019 //
27

This statement was released today by the Chicago Teachers Unuon, the pioneers of #RedForEd in 2012.

Now is a good time to remember CTU President Karen Lewis and her inspirational leadership of the 2012 strike.


Duncan take on LA educators’ strike shows he knows nothing of real student needs

CTU blasts former U.S. education secretary for arguing Los Angeles teachers’ should back off demands in face of ‘lack of resources’ in state with fifth largest economy in the world.

CHICAGO, January 15, 2019—

Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey issued the following statement today in response to public pronouncements – including in The Hill – by former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Los Angeles educators, who began a strike on Monday.

“Arne Duncan has never taught a day in his life. He sent his children to an elite private school with small class sizes and great resources. He landed his job as CEO of Chicago Public Schools through insider ties – where he pushed policies that hurt our public school students’ access to the very same resources his own children had. He’s pushed endlessly for school privatization, and he’s been a national proponent of the teacher blame game as a way to dodge the real need for more resources for public education. Now he wants to silence Los Angeles teachers who are demanding the very supports for their students that Duncan’s children received. That’s the height of hypocrisy.

“LA teachers know what their students need: smaller class sizes, more staff for special education and bilingual education, and the resources and wrap-around supports that allow low-income students of color to thrive as life-long learners and productive adults. Duncan has instead promoted the opposite, by starving neighborhood public schools, promoting privatization and austerity, and purging Black educators from our classrooms. Public education is a right. Duncan has treated it like an afterthought, and has zero credibility with the parents, educators and community residents who care about equity for ALL public students.

“When he’s shilling for management, nowhere does Duncan mention the toxic impact of right wing tax policy on Los Angeles’ Black and Latinx students. He conveniently fails to mention Eli Broad or the Broad Foundation and their scheme to orchestrate the mass privatization of Los Angeles public schools. Instead, Duncan says the union should ‘cooperate’ more with the very management that is seeking to undercut public schools through mass charter expansion. That mirrors his statement almost a decade ago that the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was the ‘best thing’ to happen to New Orleans’ public schools, because it opened the ground for mass charter privatization. As in Chicago under Duncan and his successors, privatization in New Orleans has slashed the number of Black teachers, and more than ten years on, New Orleans’ Black working class parents, students and residents charge that the experiment has failed them. Duncan’s policies profit private operators – and undermine parent voice, public accountability and the educational needs of students.

“Just as Duncan regularly shortchanged CPS by refusing to identify and raise progressive sources of revenue that our schools need, he massively expanded selective enrollment schools for well-off white students. He continued those policies as education czar, to the detriment of school districts across the nation.

“The educational policies he put in motion in Chicago and pushed in Washington have helped drive out thousands of Black families from Chicago, families who struggled to find stable schools for their children at the same time they confronted racist, classist city policies in housing, policing and economic development. As a principal architect of Chicago’s disastrous school closure experiment, Duncan was CEO during the first wave of massive charter expansion in Chicago – forcing neighborhood public schools that had been under-resourced for decades into brutal educational hunger games that have left neighborhood schools starved for resources. As US Education Secretary, he promoted the misnamed ‘Race to the Top’, publicly blaming teachers for the dire consequences of racist school funding practices and endless austerity. He’s dismissed class size as an issue – an excuse to purge thousands of Black public educators in Chicago, at a time when a growing body of research shows that our schoolchildren need more, not fewer, educators of color.

“We need the opposite of what Duncan brought to the table in Chicago and what he proposes in LA. We need smaller class sizes, respect for veteran teachers of color, progressive forms of revenue to adequately support public school students, adequate staffing for special education and bilingual education, and a school nurse in every school. We need an end to the failed school privatization experiment. And we need respect for the voices of parents and educators who are sick of being shortchanged by the political elites that Duncan serves. Instead of asking Los Angeles teachers to shut up and accept less for their students, Duncan should be denouncing the very policies he implemented that have so profoundly harmed public education across the nation.”

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Class size, Duncan, Arne, Funding, Los Angeles, Unions

Chicago: Major Rally On Friday!

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2019 //
6

Contact:

Wendy Katten

773-704-0336

MEDIA ADVISORY: FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 9:45 AM – CITY HALL, 10TH FLOOR

Community Organizations call on CPS, Other Agencies to Reject Two Massive New TIFs

Deliver Open Letter to Taxing Bodies at Friday’s TIF Joint Review Board meeting

What: Parents and community leaders will rally and deliver letters to the leaders of local government agencies, urging them to hold off on approving two massive new TIF Districts that would divert $2.4 billion in future revenue from the Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, the City Colleges of Chicago and other agencies that depend on local property taxes.

Where: City Hall, 10th floor

When: Friday, January 11, 2019, at 9:45 AM

Why: In an open letter to the Joint Review Board, 15 prominent community organizations are calling for city agencies to keep their signatures off a $2.4B dollar plan that would create tax increment financing (TIF) districts in some of the wealthiest and most congested areas of the city — and, in the process, divert funds from the operating budgets of key local agencies. The organizations say these TIFs can only be legitimately vetted by the new Mayor and City Council taking office in May. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has fast-tracked both TIFs for approval by April, before Emanuel steps down.

Representatives of several of the organizations will gather Friday at 9:45 AM Friday on the 10th floor of City Hall for a brief press conference and to deliver the letter to the Joint Review Board, which meets at 10 AM in Room 1003A.

“I’ve been attending school with my son since September 2017 to ensure his medical needs are met — because CPS has not been able to provide a nurse since then,” parent Guiller Bosqued of Wildwood Elementary said. “Why is CPS foregoing millions in tax dollars when they can’t fund the schools?”

The proposed Roosevelt/Clark TIF would fund $700 in infrastructure envisioned by developers of The 78 along the south branch of the Chicago River. Meanwhile, the Cortland/Chicago River TIF would encompass the proposed Lincoln Yards development along the river’s north branch.

On Tuesday, Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) announced several major changes in the plans for Lincoln Yards, but Hopkins did call for any pause in the creation of the TIF that developer Sterling Bay wants. Ultimately, community leaders noted, families across Chicago will have to pay higher property taxes to offset the funds held in these TIF accounts over the next 23 years.

“My neighborhood public school has experienced significant budget cuts over the past few years,” said parent Estela Diaz of Davis Elementary. “I can’t believe that CPS leadership and the Mayor can give away hundreds of millions of dollars to help develop luxury housing for the wealthy. We need more counselors, case managers and sped teachers in my school. We need afterschool programs to keep our kids learning and safe. Those should be the priorities for our property tax dollars.”

“Massive corruption is being unearthed in the City Council Finance Committee,” noted Cassie Creswell of Raise Your Hand Action. “What other shoe is waiting to drop from eight months of wiretaps? This is the very worst time to fast-track these deals.”

The full letter can be read here. It has been emailed to all the taxing bodies, and will be delivered in person on Friday.

To Local Taxing Bodies, Members of the Joint Review Board

This Friday at the Joint Review Board meeting, the Chicago Board of Education will be asked to sign off on two TIF districts at the cost of $2.4 billion to the taxpayers of Chicago. That’s based on figures included in the Redevelopment Area Project and Plan for each TIF, which were made public on December 12th, 2018.

Chicago is at a critical juncture. The long-standing chair of the finance committee has just been charged with extortion, and there’s a municipal election in less than 50 days. The citizens of Chicago deserve the opportunity for transparent and accountable government. This is not the time to fast-track massive projects that would include major subsidies for private corporations with huge implications for our schools, housing and transit equity, local business, etc. The creation of a TIF district impacts the revenue stream of our city and county and school district for twenty-three years; this is not something to be rushed through.

As a leader of one of the taxing bodies which are also impacted by the implementation of any new TIF districts, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your constituents to put this on hold until a newly elected city council and mayor can take the time needed to vet — via public scrutiny, deliberation and debate — both of these proposed districts and ensure that they represent balanced and equitable development.

Thank you for your consideration,

Jackee Pruitt, Action Now

Caroline Gaete, Blocks Together

Patrick Brosnan, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council

Patricia Fron, Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance

Robert Gomez and Katie Tuten, Chicago Independent Venue League

Angela Hurlock, Claretian Associates

Rocio Garcia, Enlace Chicago

Amisha Patel, Grassroots Collaborative

Juan Carlos Linares, Latin United Community Housing Association (LUCHA)

Nancy Aardema, Logan Square Neighborhood Association

Juanita Irizarry, Friends of the Parks

Rev. Liala Beukema, LakeView Lutheran Church

Marc Kaplan, Northside Action for Justice

James Rudyk, Northwest Side Housing Center

Jennifer Ritter, Organizing Neighbors for Equality Northside (ONE Northside)

Joy Clendenning, Raise Your Hand for IL Public Education

Cassie Creswell and Wendy Katten, Raise Your Hand Action

Categories Chicago, Education Reform, Funding, Resistance

How Are the Walton Billionaires Like Putin and the Russians?

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2018 //
23

All over the nation, Walton money is flowing into state and local elections to help candidates who will privatize public schools.

Now, as I reported previously, and as Mercedes Schneider writes about here, the Waltons are spreading their wings and buying “grassroots” support (doesn’t the purchase of support mean it is not grassroots?). As Mercedes puts it, just “sell the idea” and “leave the funding to us.”

But the Waltons are not merely funding advocates and research and media. They are actively intervening and interfering into the democratic process (as Putin did in 2016 in our presidential election), sinking the hopes of home-grown candidates who can’t match their funding. Putin did it by stealth and social media, the Waltons do their dirty work in the open, using the sheer force of money.

The Waltons as a family are hereby enrolled on this blog’s Wall of Shame, for their persistent attack on democracy and the electoral process, which should be determined by the voters, uninfluenced by billionaires from out of state.

They are meddling with elections in hopes of electing state and local school boards, mayors, governors, and members of Congress who will share their dream of opening more charter schools and eliminating teachers’ unions. They have poured millions into charter referenda in Massachusetts and Washington State, as well as statewide elections in California.

The latest example: Chicago, where none of the Waltons live.

With major financial help from the billionaire heirs of the Arkansas-based Walmart fortune, the PACs related to the Illinois Network of Charter Schools are aiming to become a political force in the upcoming Chicago mayoral and aldermanic campaigns.

The children and grandchildren of Helen and Sam Walton, founders of the Walton Family Foundation and Walmart, are donors to the nonprofit Illinois Network of Charter Schools and its two allied political action committees, either from the family foundation or individual contributions, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis revealed…

Members of the Walton family, one of the wealthiest in the U.S., are active nationally in bankrolling pro-charter organizations, causes and candidates supporting school choice.

Chicago is home to 122 charter schools with about 60,000 students, Broy said.

The publicly funded, privately operated charter school movement in Chicago may be at a crossroads, fighting to not lose political ground and retain enrollments in a period of slowing growth.

A charter school champion, the anti-public union Gov. Bruce Rauner lost his re-election bid; another supporter, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is stepping down, and the race to replace him is wide open, with the powerful Chicago Teachers Union backing Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

Let us celebrate every time a Walton-funded candidate loses, because democracy should not be for sale to the highest bidder.

Categories Billionaires, Chicago, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

Eve L. Ewing Explains the Racist Purpose of School Closings

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2018 //
8

Eve Ewing has a fabulous bio, as author, academic, playwright, poet, and comic book hero.

She is also the author of the recent book about Rahm Emanuel’s historic closing of 50 schools in a single day, called “Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side.” I reviewed it here. It was the first book to my knowledge that tells the story of school closings from the perspective of the students, families, teachers, and communities.

Here she appears on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Speaking of ghosts, she will haunt Rahm Emanuel forever. Her book will be remembered long after he is forgotten.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Racism

CTU Celebrates Successful Strike Against UNO/Acero Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2018 //
5

The billionaire backers of charter schools must be furious. The teachers at one of Chicago’s biggest charter chains organized a union and negotiated successfully for higher pay, smaller classes, and protection of their students from ICE. The main reason the billionaires support charter schools is to snuff out unions and their demands. “How outrageous!,” they are surely thinking, as the butler pours their morning coffee.

Chicago Teachers Union

NEWS RELEASE:

For Immediate Release| ctulocal1.org
CONTACT: Chris Geovanis, 312-329-6250, 312-446-4939 (m), ChrisGeovanis@ctulocal1.org
CTU members overwhelmingly ratify UNO/Acero tentative agreement

CTU rank and file at 15 charter schools vote overwhelmingly to approve contract in wake of first strike of charter operator in U.S. history.

CHICAGO—CTU teachers and paraprofessionals in the Acero/Uno charter network have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new contract that will dramatically improve teaching and learning conditions in the charter network’s 15 campuses across Chicago. The wins were achieved after a historic five-day strike that saw hundreds of union educators and para-professionals take to the streets to demand a fair contract, joined by parents, students and allies calling for change at schools run by Acero. Growing numbers of elected officials joined in the call for a fair contract and accountability from charter executives.

CTU members employed by Acero approved the agreement Friday, with 98 percent voting in favor. Of 485 votes cast, 474 union members voted yes. Voting took place by secret ballot in Acero’s 15 schools. The new contract mandates equal pay for equal work by matching CPS teacher salaries, class size reductions, new special education safeguards and sanctuary school protections for the charter’s majority Latinx student population.

As the first strike of a charter operator in the nation, the walkout is a warning call to other charter companies in Chicago and across the country: teachers will take to the streets to stop the shortchanging of their students and ensure that public dollars are directed to classrooms, not board rooms.

“We said from day one that this strike was about educational justice for our students and their families, and the contract our members overwhelmingly approved advances that cause,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey. “But we’ve also shown Chicago and the nation that the collective power of teachers, paraprofessionals, students and communities can transform not just our classrooms but an entire industry.”

The contract ratified by Acero/CTU educators and paraprofessionals includes:

Enforceable class size reductions and management penalties for class size violations.
Management commitments to comply with special ed laws and staffing levels, which have been a chronic problem in both CPS charter and district schools, protecting resources for the schools’ most vulnerable students.

Equal pay for equal work with CPS educators, who teach the same students but whose compensation has been significantly higher than those working for private charter operators.

Sanctuary school protections, including language enshrined in the contract that bars schools from asking students about their family’s immigration status, and that bans ICE from school property or access to student records without a legal mandate.

“I’m so proud of our teachers and paraprofessionals and all the parents and students who walked the picket lines with us in the cold each morning,” said Martha Baumgarten, a 5th grade teacher and member of the bargaining team. “This is what democracy and community looks like. This is what a movement looks like. ”

The strike drew national attention from educators and labor leaders who recognized the historic significance of challenging the influential business interests and corporate elites who promote charters as a cornerstone of their school privatization agenda. It also comes as Chicago’s charter industry is losing one of its biggest backers, outgoing Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.

“This is a victory for every educator who sees children getting short-changed by privatization and charter operators putting their business models over the needs of our students,” said Chris Baehrend, Chair of the CTU Charter Division. “With this strike, CTU members have demonstrated their resolve to do what it takes to hold the charter industry accountable and put public dollars where they belong—into the classrooms and educations of our students.”

Acero’s board of directors is expected to ratify the contract in the coming days. CTU members are currently bargaining for new contracts with ten other charter operators, and educators at four CICS charter schools have voted to authorize a strike. CTU members at CPS district schools expect to begin bargaining a new contract in January.

###

The Chicago Teachers Union represents nearly 25,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in schools funded by City of Chicago School District 299, and by extension, the nearly 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third-largest teachers local in the United States. For more information please visit the CTU website at http://www.ctunet.com.

Categories Chicago, Class size, Teacher Pay

Chicago: A Happy Ending to the Charter Teachers Strike

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2018 //
8

Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect writes about the first charter chain strike in the nation:

Meyerson on TAP

Another Teacher Strike Story with a Happy Ending. If you listen to the champions of charter schools, their chief concern is the welfare of their disproportionately poor and minority students, while those dastardly teachers unions are just out for themselves.

Well—at the risk of injecting actual facts into this discussion, please check out the new contract that the roughly 530 members of the Chicago Teachers Union just struck with their employer, the Acero chain of 15 inner-city Chicago charter schools. As a conclusion of their five-day strike—the nation’s first at charter schools—the teachers not only secured raises for themselves but also a groundbreaking provision to protect their students, whom the union’s attorney described as “overwhelmingly low-income Latino,” from the agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE). Acero acceded to the teachers’ demand that the schools not collect or share information on the immigration status of students and their families, and not permit ICE agents on campus unless they have a court order.

Of course, Acero could have put such a policy in place all by itself in the years since it opened its schools. It didn’t. It took those self-centered teachers walking out to get the company to agree to protect its students and their families from a federal police agency run amok. Kudos to those selfish teachers for expanding the boundaries of bargaining for the common good—and for common decency, too. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Privatization, Students, Teacher Pay, Unions

Chicago: The (Non) Miracle of Urban Prep Academy Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2018 //
19

A reader asked for evidence that Urban Prep (the subject of Gary Rubinstein’s expose) actually boasted of a 100% high school graduation rate and a 100% college acceptance rate.

Thirty seconds of googling produced this press release.


Urban Prep Academy’s faculty and family were joined by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday afternoon to celebrate their 167 seniors who are all college-bound.

On Thursday, the last seven of the 167 young scholars underwent the rites of passage and were handed their new ties. This moment solidified Chicago Urban Academy’s fourth consecutive year in graduating 100 percent of their all African-American male student body and sending them to college.

The Chicago academy has a tradition of changing their students’ red ties to red and gold striped ties to symbolize that they have received college acceptance letters, according to the Chicago Sun Times:

“At Urban Prep, college is not a dream, it’s a reality,” co-founder and CEO Tim King said. “College acceptance is the new black.”

Indeed, the combined senior class of 167 racked up a total of $6 million in grants and scholarships to some 125 unique colleges. Two students were accepted to 20 schools each. Two others account for more than $600,000 each in scholarship offers from all of the schools they got into.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago

Gary Rubinstein: How Can a School with a 100% College Acceptance Rate Be a Failing School?

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2018 //
19

Gary Rubinstein began his career in Teach for America but became a career math teacher in New York City. He also writes a blog, where he has achieved fame and notoriety as the nation’s ultimate fact-checker of “miracle schools” whose claims are too good to be true.

As he explains in this post, he first entered the arena of miracle-School mythbusting when he heard Arne Duncan boast about a charter school in Chicago that had once been a low performing public school. That charter, Urban Prep, Duncan said, now had a 100% graduation rate and a 100% college acceptance rate. Rubinstein checked the data and found that the school had high attrition and low pass rates on state tests, lower than Chicago public schools.

“Urban Prep Charter School in Chicago is the original ‘miracle school.’ Seven years ago at the Teach For America 20th anniversary alumni summit, I heard Arne Duncan talk about how they had 100% of their senior class graduate and how 100% of them went on to college after they shut down the public school in that building and replaced it with a charter school.”

He was roundly criticized by charter trolls on Twitter but he was unfazed.

Now he finds this charter, with its miraculous outcomes, has expanded to a chain of three, all boasting the same 100% college acceptance rates. But the city may close one of them for low performance.

Rubinstein checked the data. See what he found.

It is astonishing. All three campuses perform worse than the Chicago public schools. The real miracle is that they still have a 100% college acceptance rate.

Where is the New York Times?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Education Reform, Lies, Privatization, Testing
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