Archives for category: Emanuel, Rahm
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Mike Klonsky: School-Killer Rahm Plans to Close More Schools in the African-American Community

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2017 //
8

If ever there is an award for the mayor who did the most to disrupt and destroy public education, it will go to Rahm Emanuel. His own children attend the highly resourced University of Chicago Lab School, but he spitefully closes public schools that he controls.

Mike Klonsky points out that the mass school closings have not saved money and have not improved student outcomes. They are part of Mayor Emanuel’s plan for gentrification.

From afar, it looks like spite work on the part of a mayor who doesn’t care about children that are not his own.

Rahm Emanuel is a textbook case in the failure of mayoral control to improve public schools. He is a textbook case in the use of mayoral control to destroy and privatize public education.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization

Peter Greene’s Take on Rahm’s Latest “Reform” Idea

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2017 //
32

I reported earlier today that Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to require all students to have specific plans or they won’t be allowed to graduate.

Here is Peter Greene’s take on the same proposal.

That’s it– Choose college, trade school, internship, or military, or else Rahm will hold your diploma hostage.

Janice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, pointed out that any student who graduates from CPS is automatically accepted into the City College community college program. So I suppose we could see this not as a draconian, one-size-fits-all intrusion on the lives of young adults and instead see it as a really, really aggressive recruiting program for the City Colleges.

Or maybe just an aggressive recruiting program for Chicagoland charter schools.

My mind is still reeling from trying to compile the full list of life paths that Rahm Emanuel has now declared Not Good Enough.

Steady job that’s not a trade? Working musician? Stay-at-home mom? Person who just needs to spend a year or two working at a crappy minimum wage job while they figure out what they want to do next? Manage the family business? All of that and more have passed through my classroom and gone on to successful, productive, happy lives. Are you telling me we shouldn’t have given them a diploma because they didn’t do what we wanted them to after graduation?

Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm, High School Graduation

Mike Klonsky: Earth to New York Times: Rahm Did NOT Fix the Chicago Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2017 //
27

Mike Klonsky, veteran activist in Chicago, was surprised to read in the New York Times that the public schools of Chicago were the fastest improving urban schools in the nation and that their improvement was due to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s wisdom in choosing principals. This ran counter to everything he knew.

He writes:

I’m not sure who in Rahm Emanuel’s oversized City Hall PR Dept. planted this story in the New York Times, but kudos to them for getting this piece of fluff past the fact checkers and custodians of common sense. Peter Cunningham swears it wasn’t him, but I congratulated him anyway.

The Op-ed by David Leonhardt, “Want to Fix Schools, Go to the Principal’s Office” focuses on Chicago and gives all the credit to the mayor and CPS super-principals for the district’s supposed “fastest in the nation” gains in student achievement, rising graduation rates and lower dropout rates.

Using cherry-picked data, he makes a case that Chicago is on or near the top of the nation’s public schools, even while 85% of its students continue to live in poverty and the entire district teeters on the brink of financial collapse.

In other words, Leonhardt is whistling past the graveyard. He’s over his head when it comes to writing about education in Chicago.

All this reminds me of the Arne Duncan, Chicago Miracle in 2008, when no success claim about turnaround schools was ludicrous enough to be challenged by a compliant media.

As for fewer dropouts and spiraling graduation rates, I’d love to believe the reports but don’t know how anybody can, given CPS’s history of deception in reporting such data.

Klonsky notes that these are difficult days for Chicago principals because of decisions made by the mayor, like privatizing custodial services:

Ironically, Leonhardt’s pat on the principal’s head comes at a time when Chicago principals are threatened with 30% budget cuts and are being hard hit by the board’s privatization scheme’s which have left their buildings in shambles, massive staff cuts and exploding class size. Not to mention the fact that CPS principals are rarely in a school long enough to lead any substantial school improvement effort.

Lest we forget, Mayor Rahm made history by closing 50 public schools in one day, a feat for which he will live in infamy. And activists led by Jitu Brown had to conduct a 34-day hunger strike to persuade the mayor to keep a community high school open.

In assessing the article’s claims, Klonsky interviews Troy LaRiverere, one of the city’s star principals, who was fired by Emanuel after LaRiviere criticized him. Troy is now president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. LaRivere said:

Chicago principals are working in a district that continues to make it far more difficult for them to do their jobs. They pull one resource after another. For example, if you’re a CPS principal now, you can’t have an assistant principal. If you really value the position as the article claims, then you invest in the position. The words don’t line up with deeds.
Finally, we’re all not making the gains we could be making if they invested in us and in the schools. The principals that are making gains are making them, not because of the system, but in spite of CPS.

Klonsky says that Chicago principals have learned how to do “more with less.” Meanwhile Mayor Rahm is looking for newbies to replace the veterans. And says Klonsky:

But to single them out over classroom and special-ed teachers, who have been steadfast, even while baring the brunt of cuts, losing their planning time while class sizes explode, is divisive and misleading at best.

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm, Principals, Privatization

Chicago: Charter Schools Do Not Outperform Public Schools, Despite Rahm’s Claims

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2016 //
11

Rahm Emanuel wrote an article in the Washington Post a few days ago, defending school choice (and putting him in the same camp as Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump). He gave the example of charter schools in Chicago to support his claim.

 

But a recent analysis of charter school performance in Chicago says that they do not measure up to the public schools, even though they get to choose their students and benefit from the extra money of philanthropists and hedge fund managers.

 

Here is the abstract of the study, by Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce.
Charter schools have become the cornerstone of school reform in Chicago and in many other large cities. Enrollments in Chicago charters increased by more than ten times between 2000 and 2014 and, with strong support from the current mayor and his administration, the system continues to grow. Indeed, although state law limits charter schools in Chicago to 75 schools, proponents have used a loophole that allows multiple campuses for some charters to bypass the limit and there are now more than 140 individual charter campuses in Chicago. This study uses comprehensive data for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years to show that, after controlling for the mix of students and challenges faced by individual schools, Chicago’s charter schools underperform their traditional counterparts in most measurable ways. Reading and math pass rates, reading and math growth rates, graduation rates, and average ACT scores (in one of the two years) are lower in charters all else equal, than in traditional neighborhood schools. The results for the two years also imply that the gap between charters and traditionals widened in the second year for most of the measures. The findings are strengthened by the fact that self-selection by parents and students into the charter system biases the results in favor of charter schools.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization

Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Be Afraid of School Choice

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2016 //
36

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel published an opinion article in the Washington Post saying something about how choice is a good thing when it is a good thing, so don’t get your knickers twisted against school choice just because Trump is for it. At least I think that is what he is saying. Read it and tell me why you think he (or someone wrote) wrote this article to get people to think well of school choice.

 

I think he is saying that when Democrats promote privatization by charter school, that is a good thing, and we must keep doing it even though Betsy DeVos wants to turn every school into a charter school and/or give every student a voucher to attend a religious school.

 

Sorry, but I have a hard time reading anything allegedly penned by Rahm about schools without thinking of the day of infamy when he closed 50 public schools at one fell swoop. He will be remembered for the brutal, disruptive, heedless closing of 50 community public schools. That, and the awful youth violence that continues to plague Chicago, promoted to some extent by the deliberate destruction of communities.

 

At the same time that Rahm and his hand-picked board of the city’s elite were closing public schools, they continued opening charter schools. Chicago is not an example of the success of school reform. To the extent that we use the federal NAEP scores as a measure, Chicago is still one of the lowest performing urban districts in the nation. It has some very good public schools, but it also has many very poorly resourced schools. Rahm will not be remembered as an education reformer.

 

In this article, he boasts again of Urban Prep Academy. This is the all-black, all-male school where 100% of the students who reach 12th grade graduate and go to college. This is a school that Gary Rubinstein researched and discovered its high attrition rate and its low test scores, lower than those of students in Chicago public schools. When I googled Urban Prep to find the links, I noticed that newspapers around the country still report the news of its “100% graduation rate” and “100% college acceptance rate.”

 

Knowing what Rahm has done to the Chicago public schools, I find it hard to understand why he thinks he is in a position to offer advice to the nation about school reform. The reality is that he is comfortable with Trump and DeVos and the privatization movement and has no qualms about continuing to implement it in Chicago.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization

Congratulations to the Dyett Hunger Strikers!

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2016 //
11

In Chicago, hunger strikers sat in front of Dyett High School, demanding that Mayor Emanuel keep the school open.

They wanted an open enrollment neighborhood high school, and Dyett was the last one in the city.

Not only is the school open, the city spent $14 million to renovate it. It reopened as an arts-themed neighborhood high school.

Total victory for our friend Jitu Brown and his steadfast, courageous allies.

Jitu would be the first to say that he does not deserve credit or recognition. But he was there every day. He led. The hunger strikers won.

Jitu Brown hereby joins the honor roll of this blog. I am happy to say that he is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.

Categories Chicago, Democracy, Emanuel, Rahm, Honor Roll, Network for Public Education, Resistance

Xian Franzinger Barrett, Chicago Teacher, Laid Off for the Third Time in Six Years

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2016 //
4

Xian Franzinger Barrett is a passionate teacher of middle school students in Chicago. He just received his layoff notice, the third in six years. He is one of more than 1,000 educators who were laid off. As a teacher, he does his best, but the people who run the school system–namely, Mayor Rahm Emanuel–seem to be incapable of stabilizing its finances. This doesn’t happen in affluent suburbs. It happens all too often in big-city districts, where the kids are mostly black and brown, and their parents lack political power.

Xian is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, and I have gotten to know him since we launched in 2012. I can attest to his love for his profession and his students. Mayor Emanuel wants to put a stop to that.

Friends tried to console him but Xian writes:

But oppression is not an accident; it is a centuries-long design.

That is the only explanation for a Chicago where my students who have already lost parents to Immigration and Customs Enforcement have to persevere through more cuts in school funding, and the mayor who covered up the murder of one of their peers before he was re-elected sits comfortably in office. It’s the only way to explain a Chicago where an eighteen-year-old lies dead and those who were paid to protect him revel in paid administrative leave.

Oppression is the only way to describe the reason why I sit jobless, surrounded by piles of published student work from brilliant teaching and learning in a class I was asked to teach, while those who mismanaged the funds of the district collect their checks and continue to wield power over our students. We can’t shrug this off and persevere. To paraphrase Angela Davis, we cannot continue to accept what we cannot change, we must change what we cannot accept.

Xian is a fighter. He won’t quit. He will be there long after Rahm Emanuel has gone and been forgotten.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm, Teachers

Mike Klonsky: This Is What Education Reform Looks Like, Chicago-Style: Mass Layoffs

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2016 //
27

Mike Klonsky updates readers on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s ongoing efforts to destroy public education in Chicago.

There is plenty of money for “network leaders,” who oversee principals. There is plenty of money for charter school expansion.

But the Mayor and his hand-picked board have ordered layoffs of 1,000 public school staff, including nearly 500 teachers, many of them tenured.

Last week, we learned that CPS chief Forrest Claypool was funneling big contracts to his Jenner & Block law firm pals.

On Wednesday, CPS announced it was maintaining and expanding it’s network of high-paid, mid-level regional managers called network chiefs. They’re the enforcers who give school principals marching orders and ride herd over clusters of neighborhood schools.

On Thursday, we learned that more privately run charter schools will be opening, including a new $27 million charter that’s part of the development around the newly-planned Obama Library in Kenwood. The goal is to give a boost to the real estate market and promote gentrification on the city’s south side.

Today, Rahm/Claypool pulled the trigger on nearly 1,000 CPS teachers and staff. That includes 494 teachers — including 256 tenured teachers. The layoffs broke down this way: 302 high school teachers and 192 elementary school teachers for a total of 494; and 352 high school support personnel and 140 elementary school support personnel, for a total of 492.

Obviously, charter schools are NOT public schools. Only teachers in public schools were laid off.

What a disgrace!

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm

Chicago: Principals Leaving Due to Budget Cuts, Loss of Authority Under Rahm Emanuel

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2016 //
15

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Chicago is experiencing an exodus of experienced principals.

Forty-two Chicago Public Schools principals resigned this year, the most since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office.

And 23 principals, out of about 515 total, decided to retire, a number somewhat higher than the last several years. The 65 school leaders departing this past school year saw more budget cuts, including unprecedented cuts midyear. Since 2011, the next highest number was 37 resignations in 2014. In 2012, only 13 departed, but 96 retired that year.

Mayor Emanuel has made his contempt for public schools clear, as well as his preference for privately managed, non-union charter schools.

CPS’ chief education officer Janice Jackson acknowledged the financial pressures, saying, “Our principals and teachers are leaving for jobs where their district doesn’t have to take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the classroom to fund their pensions.”

Ousted CPS principal Troy LaRaviere, who recently took office as head of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, said the pressure has been building for years.

“It’s the cumulative effects of being consistently under the weight of a district that finds one way after another to undermine the efforts [principals] put forth on behalf of their students,” he said. “Our ability to do our job depends on resources, and they take more of them away every year impairing our ability to do our job more and more.”

Until Thursday, when a temporary state budget was finally approved, principals were bracing themselves for cuts to their school budget of 26 percent on average. That was on top of cuts earlier in the school year to special education and warnings to stockpile cash so CPS could afford $676 million toward teacher pensions. They still don’t have budgets for September — and won’t for at least another week.

In recent years, the district privatized school cleaning, taking away principals’ power to manage janitors in their buildings. CPS shuttered a record 50 neighborhood schools. Budgets were cut sharply the same summer that former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett pushed a $20 million no-bid contract for principal training that participants immediately denounced as shoddy.

Mayor Emanuel is effectively driving the public schools and their personnel into the ground. He is a poor steward of public education. What public responsibility is greater than the education of the city’s children?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Principals, Privatization

Fred Klonsky: Juan Rangel of UNO Gets a Gentle Slap on the Wrist for Fraud

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2016 //
4

Juan Rangel, a political activist in Chicago, created the city’s largest charter chain, called UNO. Rangel was co-chairman of Rahm Emanuel’s mayoral campaign in 2011, when he first ran for mayor. UNO was an amazing cash cow. It collected $280 million over five years from the state. Governor Pat Quinn and House Speaker Mike Madigan took care of UNO, giving it a grant of $98 million to expand, a staggering amount for a single charter chain. Meanwhile, UNO fired its for-profit management firm and took charge of its operations, claiming 10% of all revenues for itself. None of UNO’s activities were monitored by anyone. Conflict of interest rules covered public schools, but not UNO.

Here is the ultimate nonpartisan article summing up the rise and fall of UNO and Juan Rangel. Here is my short summary of that brilliant article.

Once UNO won $98 million from the state, many friends and relatives got a piece of the action:

As the Sun-Times would reveal in February 2013, a long line of contractors, plumbers, electricians, security firms, and consultants tied to many of the VIPs on UNO’s organizational chart got a piece of the action. Rangel spelled out in tax documents and in later bond disclosures that the construction firm d’Escoto Inc.—owned by former UNO board member Federico d’Escoto, the brother of Miguel d’Escoto—was the owner’s representative on three projects funded by the grant. Another d’Escoto brother, Rodrigo, was paid $10 million for glass subcontracts for UNO’s two Soccer Academies and a third school in the Northwest Side neighborhood of Halewood.

The vendor lists were peppered with other familiar names: a $101,000 plumbing contract awarded to the sister of Victor Reyes, UNO’s lobbyist, who helped secure the state grant; a $1.7 million electrical contract given to a firm co-owned by one of Ed Burke’s precinct captains; tens of thousands in security contracts to Citywide Security, a firm that had given money to Danny Solis, and to Aguila Security, managed by the brother of Rep. Edward Acevedo, who voted for the $98 million for UNO.

As the scandals broke into public view, thanks to the enterprising reporting of the Chicago Sun-Times, Rangel resigned in December 2013.

Fred Klonsky writes about the consequences for Rangel. The SEC fined Rangel $10,000 while he admitted no wrong-doing. He is allowed to pay it off at $2,500 per quarter.

Klonsky writes in incredulity:

When he resigned from UNO he received a severance package of nearly a quarter million bucks.

$2500 a quarter?

That probably equals his lunch tab.

When Rangel ran UNO it was reported by the Sun-Times as having spent more than $60,000 for restaurants on his American Express “business platinum” card including thousand dollar tabs at Gene & Georgetti, the Chicago steak house.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, For-Profit, Fraud
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