A reader (Mom/Speducator) has an idea for President Obama. Instead of going to Mooresville, North Carolina, to talk up the high-tech classroom, she says, how about this:
“Shouldn’t he have instead traveled to Chicago to offer support to the thousands of families whose lives will be in upheaval in a matter of months.”
David Sirota sees the current disastrous era of school “reform” as a shell game that blames teachers and schools while diverting the gaze of the public from the root causes of poor academic performance.
Persist. This too shall pass.
Ellen Lubic of UCLA writes in response to an earlier post which asserted that the goal of corporate reform is gentrification, not education reform:
In support of what is being posited here, one only needs to review the landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2005 in the case of Kelo vs. City of New London. It is referred to as the “reverse Robin Hood case where land is taken from the poor and given to the rich.”
In this case a privately owned shopping center was taken by eminent domain and then sold by the city to a private corporation for redevelopment. This happened on the theory that the new development would bring more tax funding for the City.
Now this is extended by Chicago school closings, this appropriated property which indeed can be used for ostensible redevelopment…e.g. gentrification of the South Side.
Last night Charlie Rose interviewed Rahm Emanuel and the Mayor stressed his goals with his top priority being public education. He repeatedly spoke of how difficult it is to make change, but that his intention is to stick with it and keep his policy of school reform.
It is all very disheartening. Who can be trusted to work for The People…all The People?
Today, in Los Angeles, the LAUSD School Board is meeting to do budgeting, mainly of the huge new funding brought into the mix by the windfall of Prop. 30 which caused California taxes to be raised. Our Governor promised to focus distribution heavily in favor of inner city schools. The outcry from the suburbs is resounding. And now, Brown wants to spend the money mainly for implementing Common Core.
All over our county teachers and activists are beginning to emulate Chicago’s brave teachers, and committees and protest groups are being formed. It is a slow awakening in the second largest school district in the nation where Eli Broad has way too much voice and power…but I am hoping it will lead to a giant protest when our city realizes that we have the greatest amount of school closings in America, happening so quietly, fostered by Villaraigosa and Deasy, and leading to the highest number of charter schools .Putting facts before the public is difficult with so much controlled media and only one major newspaper, the LA Times, which Rupert Murdoch is intent on buying.
I know that Howard Blume reads this blog and I hope he will continue to focus on charter scams and Parent Revolution scams, all funded by the free market billionaires, Eli Broad, Rupert Murdoch, the Walton Family Foundation, etc. with the goal of making public education a free market opportunity.
TIME magazine put Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on its cover and praised him as a new kind of “pragmatic” Democrat, the kind that busts unions, ignores parents, and cultivates the approval of the business community. That is certainly a ne kind of Democrat.
For a critique of TIME’s fawning coverage, read the article by Peter Hart of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).
This is my favorite part of Hart’s critique, which shows the blatant bias in the magazine’s coverage:
“Time doesn’t dwell on criticisms of Emanuel’s policies; readers are told that “the Chicago Teachers Union, a power unto itself, loosed its heavy artillery”–which sounds menacing–and that some people “charged that the closures targeted majority-black schools with majority-black faculties.”
Could it be that people “charged” that because it was true? As the Chicago Sun-Times reported (3/6/13), “Nine out of 10 of the Chicago Public School students potentially affected by school closings this year are black.”
Two mothers meet at a rally to protest the school closings in Chicago. One mother shows the other her cell phone. It has pictures of children on it. It is a Facebook page.
The second mother explains, these children will be killed if they cross the line into another neighborhood. That’s my son’s picture. He has been marked to die.
She went to the police. They turned her away. She went to school authorities. No one could help her.
This journalist found himself in the men’s room with Mayor Emanuel, then listened to him give a speech about how his policies are improving the lives of Chicago’s poorest children.
This is what he thinks he is doing by closing dozens of neighborhood schools. Against the will of their parents, he is tearing apart their lives and communities.
Just doing what Duncan did, and it catapulted him to national office.
Will Rahm’s reforms work for him too?
Norm Scott, retired NYC teacher posted this on his website, Ed Notes Online:
We have Al Qaeda on the run but right now the biggest threat to our agenda is Karen Lewis and the Chicago Teachers Union,” said an Obama spokesperson.
“Our pal Rahm Emanuel has been forced to close 50 schools in retaliation for the strike led by Lewis and now suffers poll numbers so low they are getting close to the interest rate. He is actually being criticized for using money he saves by closing schools to put $100 million into building a new basketball arena where our president and Arne Duncan will be able to shoot hoops once their term in office is over. For that Rahm is being called the most loathsome politician in America? How dare they?”
“And some in the media have started ganging up on some of our allies like Michelle Rhee. And Arne Duncan’s poor record in running the Chicago schools for so many years has been re-examined due to the work of Karen Lewis’ union.
“And then to top it all our hand-picked crew to beat her in the election got only 20% of the vote despite being supported by our press pals at the Chicago Tribune, thus showing Chicago teachers will not go to the woodshed like the lambs being led by Randi Weingarten, our most important asset, who by the way we have supplied a military escort to protect, but let me point out that we are not using public money for Randi’s escort since Bill Gates is paying.”
“Getting Bin Laden was so much easier.”
Anthony Cody describes the campaign to put mayors in charge of school districts and the reasons behind it.
The biggest supporter of mayoral control is Arne Duncan. When mayoral control was up for renewal in Néw York City, he weighed in to support it. He lobbied against any effort to give the mayor’s appointees set terms; he insisted they should serve at the pleasure of the mayor to give his absolute authority over every decision.
That allowed the mayor to ignore protests against school closing and charters, both of which are priorities for Duncan.
Who else supports mayoral control? The Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation. The billionaires don’t like democracy.
Unfortunately, mayoral control hasn’t worked out so well for Néw York City, Chicago, and D.C., but why let evidence get in the way of a desire for total power?
Just saw this amazing interview and could not resist posting it in full:
*******************
An Interview with Paul Horton : What Goes on in Chicago—Should be exposed to the world?
[Paul Horton is a History teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory High School]
Posted by Michael Shaughnessy EducationViews Senior Columnist on May 18, 2013 in Commentaries, Daily, Editor’s Pick, Insights on Education, Teachers | 0 Comment
Michael F. Shaughnessy –
1) Paul briefly, what the hell is going on in Chicago?
54 schools are targeted for shut down and 90% are in African American communities within the city. As you may know, the public teachers in Chicago struck last year and made our mayor look bad. Most teachers think that this is payback now. Our County Commissioner, a former history teacher, just called the hearings to close the schools a charade. Our mayor has taken heavy campaign contributions from some people who are heavily invested in charter schools and they are starting to worry about the return on their investments.
Our Mayor is under heavy pressure to close schools if he wants to continue to raise money for his party and a possible future run for Illinois senator. Most political analysts are thinking that our mayor will run for President in the next cycle following a potential Clinton term.
He is very ambitious to make things happen to build a record of accomplishment. The problem is that his decisions about schools might not be the best for the kids of Chicago. He appoints Board Members for the city schools and he is their de facto dictator. He does his best to let his superintendent do the talking, though, to give the impression that he is not in charge.
The Superintendent, Barbara Byrd Bennett, is very good with handling the press. She has command of her Broad Foundation script, as she is a Broad Foundation Administrator School graduate, like her immediate predecessor and Arne Duncan. They are all well schooled in the Broad Foundation lingo:
Layered on top of this is a situation in the Woodlawn neighborhood (where I live) involving the encroachment of the University of Chicago into a neighborhood that it has an interest in gentrifying, located south of its campus. The University has purchased a lease on the best and biggest public school from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in the Woodlawn neighborhood, Wadsworth School.
The students from this school will be forced to attend a school five blocks to the southwest without a green space play area. The move will bring together students from three elementary schools and into a school packed as tight as sardines without adequate play space. The high school that the University is taking for its charter high school, on the other hand, has plenty of park space and several new playgrounds appropriate for elementary age kids. In another case, students will be asked to cross the most dangerous gang boundary in Chicago every morning and afternoon to accommodate a shutdown.
2) Tell us about the demonstration.
The demonstration bought together parents, teachers, and students from the neighborhood and all around the city. It was staged at a very busy intersection along the gang border where the kids next will have to cross next year to go to their new school. It was also staged after school and during the shift change of The University of Chicago Hospitals nearby. Thousands of people commute through this intersection to begin their after school commute. The apex of the protest involved students, teachers, and parents sitting down in the street with blood stained shirts to call attention to the violence potential at that intersection next year. Innocent people are often caught in gang gun battles in and around this intersection. A few months ago a two-month old child was shot and killed in gang crossfire in a child seat in a parked car near this intersection. We have a lot of worried parents who don’t like their kids crossing this intersection at any time.
3) Have you spoken off the record to any police—what do they have to say?
Most of the police I spoke to were very sympathetic to the protests because the mayor is hostile to unions in general. The only cop I talked to who did not share this opinion was the afternoon Grand Crossing Precinct Shift officer who responded with a “no comment.”
4) And our brave firefighters—what is Rahm Emmanuel proposing?
The firefighters I have talked to are upset that the safety corridor plan developed by the city to protect students making this and other commutes to new schools will move them away from their (fire) houses, and in some cases, trucks. They feel that this is a public safety issue and that it violates their contract. The firemen have suggested that the mayor hire more cops to take care of the safety corridors.
5) I heard you were interviewed. What happened?
I was picketing and representing my Union local, AFT 2063, at the protest and a TV reporter asked me for an interview, so I talked to him.
6) Do you have a link?
Here it is: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/8884241-police-arrest-demonstrators-protesting-school-closings/
7) What have I neglected to ask?
This is “the City of Broad Shoulders” and we aim to teach the Broad Foundation that they cannot steal our schools or harm our kids. The people of Chicago worked for a hundred years to build these buildings and the public needs to continue to invest in them. We don’t like the idea of private companies profiting from public property that we have invested in. We don’t like not having a say in how and why this happens. What we have here is classic machine politics. The aldermen will support the mayor because he controls who gets what and who doesn’t. The aldermen have been told to shut up, and with a few exceptions, they are shutting up.
Norm Scott, retired NYC teacher posted this on his website, Ed Notes Online:
We have Al Qaeda on the run but right now the biggest threat to our agenda is Karen Lewis and the Chicago Teachers Union,” said an Obama spokesperson.
“Our pal Rahm Emanuel has been forced to close 50 schools in retaliation for the strike led by Lewis and now suffers poll numbers so low they are getting close to the interest rate. He is actually being criticized for using money he saves by closing schools to put $100 million into building a new basketball arena where our president and Arne Duncan will be able to shoot hoops once their term in office is over. For that Rahm is being called the most loathsome politician in America? How dare they?”
“And some in the media have started ganging up on some of our allies like Michelle Rhee. And Arne Duncan’s poor record in running the Chicago schools for so many years has been re-examined due to the work of Karen Lewis’ union.
“And then to top it all our hand-picked crew to beat her in the election got only 20% of the vote despite being supported by our press pals at the Chicago Tribune, thus showing Chicago teachers will not go to the woodshed like the lambs being led by Randi Weingarten, our most important asset, who by the way we have supplied a military escort to protect, but let me point out that we are not using public money for Randi’s escort since Bill Gates is paying.”
“Getting Bin Laden was so much easier.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 