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Grading Rahm Emanuel

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2013 //
19

NPR says Rahm Emanuel gets a “mixed” grade at midterm.

On education, his grade is not mixed.

It is a big fat F.

He will remembered long after his term ends as the mayor who closed 50 public schools.

He will be remembered as the mayor who showed callous indifference to the children of Chicago.

He will be remembered for putting Rich Investors First.

He will be remembered for his contribution to the destruction and privatization of public education in Chicago.

He will be remembered because he did not fight so that all children had the opportunities available to his own.

Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization

Chicago’s UNO Charter Chain in Big Legal Trouble Again

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2013 //
8

There is no charter chain in Chicago with stronger political connections than UNO, whose founder Juan Rangel served as a campaign co-chair for the election of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Rangel is widely viewed as a leading figure–if not THE leading figure–in the Hispanic community, the guy whose blessing delivers votes. 

Naturally, he runs one of the largest charter chains in the city, and the state and local school budget supplies his every need.

Unfortunately, investigators learned that the $98 million grant that the legislature gave him to build  new charter schools was going to relatives of high-level officials at UNO. Governor Pat Quinn temporarily suspended payment on the balance the state had promised to UNO, giving Rangel time to clean up his operation. Rangel fired the high-level officials who had given multimillion dollar contracts to family members, and the grants were restored.

But then the SEC came in and launched an investigation about whether UNO had violated federal laws as it raised millions of dollars from private lenders using state bonds. 

Now, Governor Quinn has frozen the remaining $15 million of UNO’s $98 million grant for new school construction.

Will Juan Rangel’s political connections save UNO once again?

As the Chicago Sun-Times reports:

“UNO officials had hoped to build two more schools with the remaining $15 million and with another $35.2 million they asked state lawmakers to provide earlier this year.

Last month, Chicago businessman Martin Cabrera Jr. — whose appointment as UNO chairman was cited by Quinn as an important reform — resigned.

The governor has attended UNO events, including the ground-breaking for the UNO Soccer Academy High School, and signed the legislation awarding the grant to UNO. Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) sponsored the grant, which is believed to be the largest government subsidy in the country for charter schools.

UNO also has close ties to Ald. Edward Burke, a major Quinn fund-raiser. The alderman had urged the governor to reverse the initial suspension of the grant.

The new high school is in Burke’s 14th Ward, and his daughter-in-law has worked for UNO. Contractors with close Burke ties also have done work for the charter operator.

Founded in the 1980s as a Hispanic community activist group, UNO went into the charter business in the late 1990s, and its network has grown to include 16 schools across Chicago with more than 7,600 students.

While the massive state grant and more than $70 million in private loans have helped the charter network expand rapidly, most of its operating budget — as well as the money to repay the loans — comes from the Chicago Public Schools, which gives UNO tens of millions of dollars a year.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry

Why Does the Chicago Tribune Want Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2013 //
8

Paul Horton, a history teacher at the University of Chicago Lab School, is a strong supporter of public education. Surprisingly, the Lab School is private but has a teachers’ union. That is the school where the children of Barack Obama and Arne Duncan were enrolled, as are the children of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Horton here tries to figure out why the Chicago Tribune is so eager to promote vouchers in Chicago and Illinois. The Tribune printed an opinion piece by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal extolling vouchers in his state, though they are so new that they have produced no results as yet, and only 2% of eligible students applied for one, and several of the voucher schools teach creationism and other subjects from a Biblical point of view.

Horton might have added that vouchers have been ineffective wherever they have been tried; not only in Milwaukee, but in Cleveland and D.C. Those who push for them don’t care about evidence. They consider it irrelevant to their ideological crusade.

The Chicago Tribune is Whole Hog on Vouchers

Most hog farmers in the Midwest say that when you go “whole hog” on something there is no turning back.

Many Midwestern farmers also have a hatred of the Chicago Tribune because it has historically represented the interests of the infamous Chicago Board of Trade, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century equivalent of Wall Street in the Midwest.

In the last week, the Tribune, not to be satisfied with “yellow caking” support for the Chicago school shutdowns by rolling out an Augean stable’s worth of misinformation from the Joyce Foundation, is returning to its former unabashed support of speculative free enterprise when it comes to schools.

In the last week, the Tribune has rolled out three pieces on its editorial pages in support of Bobby Jindal and vouchers.

On September 8, the Tribune reprinted an Op-Ed originally published in the Washington Post that called the Obama Department of Justice and the Obama administration out on prosecuting the disparate racial impact of Louisiana’s voucher laws. This piece is hilarious reading that describes the defense of vouchers as the Civil Rights issue of our time that Martin Luther King would have clearly supported. It is almost as though Jindal was channeling King through Michelle Rhee who has recently given such speeches in Birmingham, among other places.

Yesterday, again on the editorial page, a very long human-interest piece (“In Search of an Education”) about a young student looking for a decent education was published. The story, written by a paid libertarian policy wonk from the newly formed Illinois Policy Institute (http://illinoispolicy.org/news/article.asp?ArticleSource=6316), could have been taken straight from a late nineteenth century “Ragged Dick to Horatio Alger” story. A young Chicagoan from a poor Chicago community could not find a decent education within the Chicago Public School system where drop out and college admission rates always fell below fifty per cent even at the best schools available. But this young person, who lives only a few miles from Indiana and the Educational freedom of the most open voucher system in the country, faces a three hour commute every day to get a decent education among students who are more likely to go to college at a private charter.

Of course this article fails to mention that the private charter routinely weeds out students with learning challenges and students with any academic or disciplinary issues.

And the article also fails to mention that the most comprehensive and thorough study ever done on voucher programs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin found that there were no appreciable performance differences among public, public charters, and private charters in the city.

Nor did the piece mention that the Board of the Illinois Policy Institute is heavily invested in charter school chains.

Today (Saturday), the lead editorial is “The United States vs. Minority Children.” We can only assume that the piece is written by Paul Weingarten, the Tribune’s Education and Health issues editorial writer, who uncritically published Joyce Foundation polling information this spring that vastly overrepresented the number of white parents of Chicago public school students on the day that the school closing lists were first announced. Prewritten editorials that supported the first were rolled out in the following days, almost as though they had been coordinated with the Mayor’s office and CPS announcements.

You can probably guess what the editorial says. It pretty much repeats what Jindal said about vouchers as a critique of Obama administration’s prosecution of corrupt private charters. There is nothing here about the context of huge Obama and Duncan support of private charters in Louisiana, and, of course, nothing about the stench of incomprehensible levels of corruption in those private charters that smells worse than southern Louisiana paper mills. Indeed, we in Illinois should take heart that there is one state that produces more corruption than we do!

We can expect more of the same in the next few days. Aside from the obvious tack to the right away from identification with Mr. Emanuel and the Obama administration that these editorials represent, the Tribune seems to be trying to steer potential Republican candidates for governor and other state offices away from criticisms of the Common Core Curriculum and loss of local control in Education and more toward a less divisive focus on vouchers. The Illinois Tea Party is all over CCS and loss of local control. These editorials attempt to heal the rift on the right on education.

The Tribune also faces issues with its circulation and income. Because the Sun-Times and local blogs are being read and viewed more in the city because they are more sensitive to communities impacted by the mayor’s draconian education policies, the Tribune is obviously trying to build more circulation in the suburbs and semi-rural areas that might be more sympathetic to harder conservative editorial stances. To do so they must tack harder to the right to compete with the Arlington Heights Daily Herald.

And finally, and most importantly, the Tribune’s publishers are trying to sell their paper to remain solvent. As we know, the Koch brothers could not get the deal that they wanted, or decided that the Tribune was not worth any risk. Potential buyers of the Tribune Company that includes the LA Times include a group lead by Eli Broad, whose foundation has supported school privatization all over the country. The LA Times has published a few pieces critical of the Corporate Education Reform movement. Even though other potential suitors include Warren Buffet, the group that owns The Chicago Sun-Times, and Rupert Murdoch, my money is on the group lead by Eli Broad to buy the Tribune Company.

This might go a long way to explain this new embrace of vouchers by the Tribune, and it would not be too big of a leap to speculate that the Illinois Policy Institute that is feeding the Editorial Board all of the voucher stuff gets a huge chunk of change form the Eli Broad Foundation.

The irony is, of course, that the Broad Foundation is “whole hog” on both voucher’s and Arne Duncan, whose career and policies are defined by the Broad Foundation. Just follow the money and the Democrats and Republicans are no different when it comes to education policy.

Paul Horton is the product of public schools and has spent half of his thirty-year career teaching in public schools. He is a member of AFT Local 2063 of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools that stands in solidarity with the Chicago Teachers Union

Categories Chicago, Vouchers

Can Anyone from Chicago Explain Mayor Emanuel’s Spending Spree?

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2013 //
18

How many times have we read stories that Chicago faces a huge deficit? I can’t recall it was $600 million, or some other figure.

But the huge deficit, plus “underutilization,” gave Mayor Rahm Emanuel the change to make history:

He closed the largest number of public schools in history, at one fell swoop (50).

But now he is going on a spending spree, building new schools and pledging to spend at least $90 million for new construction and upgrades.

What happened to the budget crisis? Did the deficit disappear?

Were the schools really underutilized?

There must be a simple explanation.

Maybe a reader from Chicago can translate what this means.

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago

Photo-Essay on the First Day of School in Chicago

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2013 //
9

A Korean camera crew showed this photo-essay to me. I think they had a hard time understanding the number of police officers that created “safe passage” for students on their way to school in Chicago.

They came to interview me about how money affects the politics of education in the United States. The producer had a copy of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, translated into Korean. I gave him a copy of Reign of Error to take back to Korea. I asked whether there were any charter schools or vouchers in Korea. He said, “No. But there are alternative schools. The alternative schools are for children who misbehave.”

He asked me again and again to explain why political leaders were closing public schools. He found this concept incomprehensible.

Korea is one of the highest performing nations on international tests. It has the highest proportion of college graduates of any nation in the OECD.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, International

George Schmidt: How to Manufacture a Budget Crisis and Impose Harsh Remedies

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2013 //
24

George Schmidt, who taught for many years in the Chicago Public Schools but was fired by Paul Vallas for releasing test questions, edits Substance News. Here is his analysis of Chicago’s perennial budget crisis:

Sorry this is very long, but I have a hunch that many people will want to know how the “austerity” lies that feed all those “necessary school closings” and teacher layoffs are created in the fictional propaganda offices of school districts across the USA — not just Washington D.C.

The “deficit” claims have to be reported (and accepted) as “fact” in order for the liars who are operating the “school reform” offices get away with all these attacks.

But: Let’s not give Michelle Rhee credit where she was only following a script that was previously written and perfected in — you’ll never guess — Chicago. As long ago as when Michelle Rhee was failing as a Teacher for America “teacher” and using masking (or duct) tape to maintain order in her classes, Chicago had perfected the process of “eternal austerity” in its education budgets. Every year (except one) during Arne Duncan’s term as “CEO” (2001 – 2008), Duncan held a press conference to announce that CPS was facing an enormous “deficit.” Duncan’s predecessors had been doing the same for a decade, concocting a “deficit” using what the former Board Secretary told me was their “magic number.”

That’s right — a “magic number.” According to Tom Corcoran, who first laid out the plan for me after his retirement, CPS officials would meet and decide what was needed to have a certain “deficit” (the “magic number”) and then arrange the preliminary numbers in the next year’s budget to create that “deficit.” Throughout the 1990s, the “magic number” every year was “$300 million!” That number then became a headline across the top of the front page of the Chicago Tribune, and was repeated endlessly until it was believed by everyone who was paying attention to the official version of reality.

Anyone familiar with a budget process knows how easily a “deficit” can be created in a future budge:

Overestimate expenses.

Underestimate revenues.

And this was the “Chicago Plan” from the days when MIchelle Rhee was still learning to “pass” her literature classes in high school thanks to Cliffs Notes.

Because the Chicago budget is projected for the next fiscal year, it’s difficult to challenge the magic number except based on history. The audited financial statements of Chicago’s public schools do not come out until six months after the end of the fiscal year, and that has been the first time the city has an accurate accounting of its school finances, since the lying about the magic number has been going on now for more than two decades.

Anyone interested can read the CAFR (the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) of Chicago Public Schools, because they are public (by law) in December of each year. Unfortunately for the truth, the CAFR for a fiscal year comes out nearly two years after the BIG LIE of each magic number is created and spun to the public. Therefore, the CAFR for the current fiscal year we’re in in Chicago won’t be available until December (when it’s presented to the Board of Education members) and January (when we squeeze it out of CPS using the Freedom of Information Act). The FY 2013 CAFR will be available in December 2013, but FY 2013 ended two months ago, on June 30, 2013. And the Magic Number (another billion) was lied around and picked up by the corporate media in Chicago during the early months of 2012, during the first year of Rahm Emanuel’s Board of Education.

“Everyone” knows that Chicago’s public schools were facing a “billion dollar” deficit for the current fiscal year (FY 2014, July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014). Everybody can read hundreds of stories from the past eight months in Chicago’s corporate media citing that figure. The New York Times repeatedly cited it, so, as most intelligent people knew, it HAD to be true.

BS.

The “Billion Dollar Deficit” was concocted the same way it always was, and then repeated over and over propaganda style in a way that would have been approved by the tyrants of the 20th Century.

One of the features of that “Billion Dollar Deficit” was that Chicago had “zeroed out” its “reserves.” That part of the big lie was part of the story told by Penny Pritzker and others on Rahm’s Board during that first year (leading up to the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012). “Everyone” knew that CPS was facing a “Billion Dollar Deficit!” just by reading the newspapers and the quotes, from the Chicago Tribune through The New York Times. Blach Blachhhh Blahhhhhhh…

Suddenly, on July 24, 2013, CPS announced that its proposed budget had eliminated that Billion Dollar Deficit! — partly by “finding” more than $600 million in “reserves” it didn’t have. Of course, the July 24 report to the Board took place after Barbara Byrd Bennett and the Board had ordered the closing of 49 of the city’s real public schools (because of the need to save money because of that “Billion Dollar Deficit!”) and fired about 3,000 school workers (most of them, teachers) because everyone knew CPS was facing a “Billion Dollar Deficit!”

Anyone who wants to read the Power Point that shows how CPS “balanced” its new budget after telling the latest version of Magic Numbers for six months, with the help of the city’s (and nation’s) corporate media can go to the CPS Website:

http://www.cpsboe.org/meetings/meeting-videos/15

where there are videos of the presentations of the Board meetings.

In the third video, national readers can witness Tim Cawley, who currently serves as “Chief Administrative Officer” for CPS, and Barbara Byrd Bennett, who was brought to Chicago after helping destroy the public schools of Detroit, do a Power Point about that FY 2014 proposed budget. The public can also download that Power Point to have while watching the video of Cawley reading carefully from his scripts.

Cawley is just the latest in a long line of CPS officials who have presented the Magic Numbers with a straight face to an uncritical public.

Not one of the city’s corporate media noticed that a “reserve” that had been “zeroed out” supposedly 13 months earlier had not only fattened up, but reached a historic high — more than $600 million. And “everyone” who was reading the papers (including as I’ve said, The New York Times) knew that CPS had been facing a “Billion Dollar Deficit!”

The difference this year is that leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union began studying how CPS budgets in the room from which I’m writing this five years ago. We began, not with news clippings or CPS “Proposed Budget”, but with the CAFRs. Each year, we were able to track the same lies.

This year, as everyone read on the front page of The New York Times, the reason for the “Billion Dollar Deficit!” is the teacher pensions! And just in case The New York Times missed it, Tim Cawley repeated that over and over and over in his presentation the you can view on line.

But just so people reading this know, the New York Times reporters who did that front page story about the CPS “pension crisis” never called the Chicago Teachers Union or the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund to check the facts they were reporting — as “news” — from Rahm Emanuel and his allies and minions.

While it would be nice to say that Michelle Rhee was responsible for the “austerity” nonsense that drives all those teacher layoffs (and not, “pension reform”) and other “reforms” (close 49 “underutilized” schools, as in Chicago), as a matter of historical fact, one of the place that invented this whole scam was Chicago. Back when Michelle Rhee was honing her mendacity skills in elementary and high school.

Again:

All you need to reach a “Magic Number” for a “deficit” is to:

First: Underestimate revenues and

Second: Overestimate expenses…

And…

MOST IMPORTANTLY:Enjoy the services of a corporate media trained to treat a quote from an authoritative “source” (Michelle Rhee; Tim Cawley; Jean-Claude Brizard; Barbara Byrd Bennett) as if it were a “fact” even when the facts contradict the words oozing out of the mouth of the latest talking heads of “school reform.”

But you don’t have to believe me. Just read that front page story in The New York Times from a month ago about how Chicago’s schools will be broke because of the high price of all those teacher pensions. Here we go again…

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago

Chicago Bombshell! TFA Plans to Staff 52 New Charters as 50 Public Schools Die

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2013 //
50

Edushyster obtained internal planning documents from Teach for America in Chicago.

The document displayed on her website shows plans for 52 new privately-managed charters that will open over the next five years.

These charters will be staffed largely by TFA’s young recruits, with five weeks of training.

Just weeks ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 public schools, claiming they were “underutilized.” But the school closures presented an opportunity to expand the charter sector.

EduShyster notes that the plan is symbolic of TFA’s new role:

“TFA has largely abandoned its earlier mission of staffing hard-to-fill positions in public schools, serving instead as a placement agency for urban charters. In Chicago, however, TFA’s role appears to go far beyond providing labor for the fast-growing charter sector. An internal TFA document indicates that the organization has a plan to dramatically expand the number of charter schools in the city.”

TFA has become the handmaiden of the privatization movement. Without TFA’s ready supply of eager and inexperienced young college graduates, willing to work long hours without a union and with meager wages, it would be impossible to expand these private-sector schools at such a rapid clip.

Since the projected hiring of many more TFA corps members coincides with the layoff of large numbers of Chicago public school teachers, it is safe to say that TFA is helping not only to privatize the Chicago public schools but to bust the union.

This may fit right in with the far-right ideals of the Walton Family Foundation, which gifted TFA with $50 million, but it somehow does not sound all that idealistic.

Imagine the new TFA recruiting poster: Join TFA and Privatize America’s Public Schools! Bust the Teachers’ Unions!

Categories Chicago, Teach for America TFA

Chicago Parents Say: Follow the Money

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
15

Chicago Public Schools say they are out of money, but look where they are spending money freely.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Representatives available for print or broadcast media interviews

Contact:
Amy Smolensky, 312-485-0053

Parent Group, Raise Your Hand Blasts CPS for Budget Priorities –

Cuts Disproportionately Hit District Run Schools while Charter and Central Office Spending Increases

CHICAGO, AUGUST 21 2013 — With just days left until school starts, parent group Raise Your Hand is calling on the city and CPS to stop the attack on district-run schools and restore funding so that children can start school with a dignified school day.

After reviewing the budget, Raise Your Hand is alarmed to find many areas of increased and spending to Central Office including:

· $8.8 million for Family and Community Engagement Department – increased from last year
· $50.4 million for Office of Innovation and Incubation – $22.2 million increase
· $41 million for new school development (after CPS closed 50 schools due to a “utilization crisis”)
· $68 million for Talent office – $22 million increase
· $20 million for no-bid SUPES contract
· $19 million Strategy Management Office – $10 million increase
· $14 million Accountability Office –same as last year despite claims that CPS is making significant reductions in standardized testing

Cuts to traditional district run schools are at $162 million while charters got an overall increase of $85 million dollars.

“CPS says they have no alternatives but to make these school-based cuts,” says parent Jeff Karova of Darwin Elementary. “Clearly CPS has chosen to increase spending in certain areas very far away from the classroom while cutting essential programs critical to the development and learning of our children.”

*Raise Your Hand has analyzed cuts to programs across the district and has found:
At the elementary level:
· 68 schools lost an art position
· 47 schools lost a music position
· 19 schools lost a performing arts position
· 51 schools lost a librarian position
· 22 schools lost a technology position
· 77 schools lost a reduced class size position

At the High School Level, cuts include:
· 90 English positions
· 28 Music positions
· 14 Art positions
· 37 History positions
· 28 Librarian positions
· 22 Social Studies positions
· 21 Biology positions
· 6 Chemistry positions
· 3 Physics positions
· 50 Math positions

130 bilingual positions at the elementary and high school level and 530 special education positions.

*The above is not a comprehensive list. There are other program areas impacted by budget cuts. RYH found these cuts on the cps budget site under “Budget by Program/Instruction/School”

“The ‘full’ school day is full of rhetoric,” says Wendy Katten, Executive Director of Raise Your Hand. “It is unclear how CPS and the mayor plan to have the children of Chicago college and career ready, let alone fully engaged in school with these kinds of devastating cuts. We have called on the mayor to restore some of the TIF surplus all summer but after seeing the amount of money spent in extraneous areas, we feel the mayor has more than one option for restoring these cuts.”

Raise Your Hand recognizes that a long term solution for revenue is critical and the pension holiday that CPS took for 3 years has impacted the deficit, yet the group insists that the problem can and must be minimized for the 2013-14 School Year and can be addressed before school starts.

The following parent/Raise Your Hand Representatives are available for interviews:
Wendy Katten -773-704-0336
Dwayne Truss – 773-879-5216
Jeff Karova – 312-316-8054
Cassie Creswell – 716-536-9313

About Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education: Raise Your Hand is a growing coalition of Chicago and Illinois public school parents, teachers and concerned citizens advocating for equitable and sustainable education funding, quality programs and instruction for all students and an increased parent voice in policy-making around education. http://www.ilraiseyourhand.org.

Amy Smolensky
amysmolensky@comcast.net
312-485-0053

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools

Bitter Conflict in Chicago as Rahm Tears Down Community Center

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2013 //
21

This is copied from Norm Scott’s Ed Notes Online.

Norm writes:

Reports all day coming in from Substance on this open warfare by the ed deformer/neo-liberals on the community. You can follow events on the Substance web site.

Two years ago at our last meetings in Chicago we went to La Casita for a few hours to talk to people – George Schmidt gave us a tour. I will hunt down that video and post it tomorrow.

We are at war. It has been declared on us. We are in middle of a field without cover (of our union especially) and they are using every weapon they can throw at us and somehow the real reformers are still standing – and fighting back with pea shooters (and Ravitch) against drones, tanks, mortars, cluster bombs, etc.

Here are links to reports in reverse order.
THEY TORE IT DOWN BEFORE OUR EYES!’ CPS contractor begins to destroy La Casita despite library treasures and supposed ‘asbestos danger’

By Kati Gilson – August 17th, 2013 | 2 comments
LA CASITA IS NO MORE. By a little after ten o’clock in the morning, Board of Education contractors had leveled the library that had been created by the demands of a community that did not . . .
La Casita protests continue through the night of August 16 – August 17, 2013 after police arrest three people… Chicago Public Schools blocked trying to demolish iconic ‘La Casita’ community center

By Kati Gilson – August 17th, 2013 | 1 comment
It all started when a 6:45 dance class at La Casita was about to start. At 6:30, a community meeting was being held within the building called “La Casita,” the “Little House” adjacent to Whittier . . .

Rahm sends police to protect crew sent to destroy historic community center… Rahm, Barbara Byrd Bennett order destruction of ‘La Casita’

By John Kugler – August 17th, 2013 | 1 comment
In a brazen move reminiscent of the midnight destruction of Meigs Field by his predecessor, Richard M. Daley, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his handpicked schools “Chief Executive Officer” Barbara Byrd Bennett dispatched the Chicago . . .

—
Posted By ed notes online to Ed Notes Online at 8/17/2013 03:58:00 PM

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normsco@gmail.com
917-992-3734

On Twitter: @normscott1

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ednotesonline.blogspot.com/

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Categories Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Emanuel, Rahm

Jan Resseger: Is School Closure About “Underutilization” or Punishment?

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
9

Jan Resseger here examines the shifting rationales for school closures. Please be sure to read her blog.

School closures are a signature issue of the corporate reform movement.

When schools close, the students are dispersed, usually to equally low-performing schools.

When schools close, communities are shattered.

Closing schools is a classic strategy of corporate reform, because it is disruptive, innovative, and transformational, though not in good ways.

The ideology of school closings is rooted in the business model, the belief that the school board owns a “portfolio” of schools, like a stock portfolio, and that it can kill off the losers (by closing them) and end up with a better portfolio.

The portfolio strategy, also known as the diverse provider model, is inappropriate for schools, which serve communities and which should be strengthened and supported, not destroyed.

There is no evidence that school closures have any relationship to better education for students.

Jan Resseger writes:

School Closure: Is the Issue Underutilization or Punishment?

We have been watching a wave of school closures in Chicago and Philadelphia and other big cities.  Officials justify the need for school closures by pointing to “underutilized” buildings and cost savings.

Here are two pieces that question the conventional rationale for school closure. The Opportunity to Learn Campaign just released a new info-graphic Debunking the Myths of School Closures.  “You can’t improve schools by closing them,” declares this resource, as it provides data to demonstrate that: “Most students won’t go to better schools.”  “Closures won’t save the district big bucks.” “These aren’t empty schools.” “Closures do have a big impact on everyone.”

Writing for Catalyst-Chicago, Sara Karp investigates the black-box of the Chicago school district budget, where she is unable to document claims of budget savings, this time from purported cuts to central office expenditures.  Karp reports that one part of the central office budget has exploded from $5 million in 2011 to $88 million in 2013: the Office of Portfolio that authorizes and manages new schools.

Chicago is a major practitioner of the “portfolio school reform” theory being actively promoted by the Gates Foundation and its partner, the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington.  This is the idea that a district should manage its schools like a business portfolio with constant churn as high-scoring schools are rewarded and so-called “failing” schools are closed.

One must always ask whether the district prepared the school for “failure” by moving out students, teachers, and important programs to prepare for the closure.  And one must be sure to remember that school closure is one of the so-called turnaround models being prescribed by the U.S Department of Education for low-scoring schools.  Because standardized test scores are, more than anything, a wealth indicator, we see a mass of school closures these days in communities where poverty is concentrated.

Our society’s most urgent national educational priority must be to invest in improving the public schools in our urban communities rather than punishing them, punishing their teachers, closing the schools or privatizing them. 

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Philadelphia
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