School Tech Connect

Arne Duncan's Genie

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 03:41:00 +0000

This is the thing he let out of the bottle with Race to the Top. It's the bureaucratic expression of America's worst impulses. And, as has been pointed out over and over, you'll notice that none of the private schools where the elites send their kids are doing anything like this, including the elite private school where Rahm Emanuel sends his own children.

It's not the teaching. I've spent a third of my career in private schools: the teaching runs the same range as it does everywhere else. There are experienced people and new people. There are naturally gifted teachers and those who work at it. As with lawyers and physicians, some are better than others.

It's the decisions made by policy-makers that are destroying public education. What we need is regularly scheduled G-8 style protest, French-style national strikes, and test subversion on a national basis. The Republicans don't even need to keep pushing vouchers to take down the system; the Democrats are doing it for them with abandon.

I regret missing out on PURE's call for input on Illinois' NCLB waiver request, which is basically a call for testing in every subject matter. I'm not exactly sure what the consequences are for a student whose parents wisely pull him/her from standardized testing, but it needs to be codified into law that this is legal and appropriate, particularly now that testing has moved more definitively into the mission of teacher evaluation.

I think we really ought to look more closely at this strategy, particularly in organized, energized communities that are facing the next round of closings. You don't want them to close your school down? Don't give them their precious data. What have you got to lose? Even if your entire community shows up to protest, they're going to close your school anyway. There's nothing to lose anymore. What are they going to do? Arrest the children for skipping the tests?

The Crane Deal's A Crock

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 04:22:00 +0000

I started to regret saying anything positive about the Crane “deal” the instant I heard that Rahm had praised it. In the very same nanosecond, I started to worry that the deal won't be what it seems, that it would be steeped in patronage, and that it would somehow turn out to be a disaster for the neighborhood Crane serves and the teachers who work there. That's just how things roll under Rahm.

Of course, I could be wrong, but in the cold light of day this is what I started to realize. Let me list these things as predictions.

Prediction One

Starting in 2013, the building formerly known as Crane High School will contain three schools: a charter, a selective enrollment health sciences-themed school, and the doomed-by-policy Crane, housing some of the kids that Crane works with now: neighborhood kids, minus freshmen, who are wholly out of luck in this scenario. You can imagine what it will be like for the still in-house Crane kids, to be in the dying school that our leaders basically gave up on. And if you don't think the health sciences school will be selective enrollment, you're a dreamer. That's why people like you. You dream.

Prediction Two

The health sciences high school will be staffed with non-veteran teachers. When Crane finally winds down in 2017-2018, not one of those teachers will be be assigned to the health sciences high school. Where they will go is anyone's guess, but my guess is they will just be gone.

Prediction Three

The building will eventually house a selective enrollment high school and a charter school, and none, or very, very few, of the Crane neighborhood kids will go there. They will be scattered hither and yon, as is the tradition with the kids who have the most baggage. Nobody will track how this particular population is doing test-wise or mental health-wise, or safety-wise.

In other words, phase-out completed, and all anyone will remember is that Rahm made some kind of compromise, when in fact no compromise existed. And of course, the community that Crane now serves will not be written about by anyone.

The only unanswered question here is who, exactly, is benefitting from the new selective enrollment in that building? I'd have to guess that there's someone out there with some real estate in the area who can only see the plus side of dispersing those Crane people. And it also seems likely to me--- with the health sciences theme--- that this very same individual needs Malcom X's health sciences program to flourish--- with a feeder program. I have no idea who it might be, but you can bet your bottom dollar that someone connected to Malcom X, to the property in the area, and to Rahm has very recently shouted, "ka-ching!"

The main thing to remember is that not only did Rahm get exactly what he wanted, but he managed to do so in a way that fooled everyone into thinking he gives a damn.

Things That Will Never Be Addressed

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 03:36:00 +0000

For example, this matter.

We are concerned that not all children will receive a well-rounded education, especially kids who are in schools with a high achievement gap and high drop-out rate. We do not believe that extending the day to include only more core subjects will address the achievement gap that separates too many of our city’s children.

Here's what's going to happen. There will be news articles about how wonderful recess, art music, and PE are and how quality, not just quantity is the new plan. Then, down the road, you'll start reading in non-corporate media that in fact, the schools with the most at-risk kids are really just getting more seat time in reading and math. Then Rahm will somehow get everyone to believe that he tried to get a higher quality day, but the union somehow prevented it.

The only upside is that with the longer school day and the traffic cameras, Rahm will have pissed off the 23% of registered voters -- like my Republican friends--- who voted for him.

No Big Surprises

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:50:00 +0000

No big surprises at the CPS Board meeting tonight. If anyone thought they weren't going to vote in lockstep agreement on the "turnarounds," then that person was seriously deluded. Dissent is not the role of an appointed board.

Mayor ~~Adrian Fenty~~ Rahm Emanuel

I will say this much-- I've been awakened by this experience. I feel like I've been sleepwalking through the entire disaster that has descended upon my profession over the past ten years, like I knew about it intellectually but never felt it. Now I feel it. And it's not all bad, either. I feel like I've finally met, in one form or another, the people who will influence the next part of my own life-- a part that will be more important and less self-centered, less trivial.

You can't really see the forest when you're grading papers until midnight and planning lessons and calling parents and sponsoring clubs and going to meetings and getting yelled at and reacting to yet another new curriculum, mandate, system, trend, fad, or the swinging of a pendulum, or if you're trying to get your curriculum map done before the deadline, even though nobody will ever, ever consult it for any productive reason. You see a lot of trees.... but no forest.

These school closings? They're the symptom of the cancer that's growing in our nation. Remember when a cancer was growing on the presidency? Well, it's back and it's spread across the land, and as far as I can tell, it's related to something that's gone very, very wrong inside the DNA of the Democratic party. It's as if our political immune system no longer recognizes a bad idea and can't fight one off.

Anyway, props to all of the great, great people leading the struggle. They lost a terrible battle tonight, but not for lack of trying.

The Prescience of Rev. Calvin Morris

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:59:00 +0000

Just to review...

The administration came up with a plan to "turnaround" x number of neighborhood schools. They had a series of hearings marked by overwhelming opposition. Today, the board is going to approve all but one of those "turnarounds," and the one exception is still a very vague concept, and even it scatters an entire class of freshmen in a school where freshman applications are on a steep rise.

Let us look back to what Rev. Calvin Morris warned about last year when the mayor announced that Jean Claude Brizard would be the new CEO.

I'm afraid he was right.

The Crane Deal

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:14:00 +0000

Very mixed feelings about the apparent deal to keep Crane as a neighborhood high school. The one thing I know for sure is that I have faith in the Crane Coalition's judgment.

I guess my questions are these: is it still a neighborhood school for kids who aren't interested in health careers? If I'm a poet or an astronomer, will those doors still be open to me? And what does it mean to be focused on health careers in the age of the Common Core Standards? Isn't a great deal of the curriculum already set by David Coleman? If I'm a health-careers high school, am I still going to be measured morning, noon, and night on every microgain or loss on reading and math scores?

The other question I always ask is this: if they turned New Trier into a health career high school, how would that fly in Winnetka? Are comprehensive high schools the domain of the suburbs and the selective enrollments now? I wish I knew.

Anyway, God bless the Crane community. These young people have important things to contribute-- we should invest in them, not shut their school down.

Crane Students at the Malcom X College

Update: I've thought about it a little longer. I'm actually thrilled for Crane now---this development is a testimony to the power of a tightly knit, organized community. However, I'm perplexed about why the health careers/medical plan has to preclude the SLI plan-- I feel like the two can co-exist and complement each other.

Let's face it, Crane needs to move the needle on the "meets and exceeds" or they're going to face the Wrath of Rahm again in two years. I'm pretty sure that SLI can help them meet this objective, even if it's in the context of a specialized high school. The health career thing alone? Not sure it's going to help kids make a 3-month gain in reading scores over two years, which is the new metric for inducing spasms of ed reform ecstasy, as you can see by watching Noemi Donoso on Chicago Tonight, It's a great idea, the medical high school--- it's a face-saving compromise for the clearly in-the-wrong CPS bureaucracy, and it makes the politicians feel like they saved the day, and it does capitalize on potential synergy with Malcom X--- but the Crane Coalition actually had a pretty good plan in place. There's room for both.

And with that, I leave Crane to its future. Good luck!

Okay, I can't resist. One more comment.. The 2013 pause in enrollment is a bad part of a good concept. If Crane could partner with SLI, then 2013 could be an SLI-driven "transition" year including freshmen, and the medical curriculum could start phasing in during 2014. The more I think about it, I'm sure this is the way to go.

Save Our Schools

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:39:00 +0000

I was unable to stay for the protest going on over at the mayor's house tonight, but I did spend some time with the protestors gathering at Lakeview High School. Weird how everyone there knew the issues, could identify with a specific school, and didn't have to be paid by a corrupt Rahm insider.

I was looking through my camera for a shot that sort of encapsulated the moment, and I've decided to roll with the one below. I didn't ask the young man his name or what school he attends. I was thinking about the lessons young people learn from the adults around them.

This young man is about to learn a lesson about being silenced, about being dispersed, and about being a checkmark on someone's political agenda. Where ever he winds up, I hope there are people there to build up his future rather than fine him for any little infraction. I hope he knows he's much, much more than a test score, and that he didn't fail, his teachers didn't fail, and that his vote will count as much as anyone's, someday soon.

Our Classy Mayor

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:58:00 +0000

So much to catch up on here..

This is the week where the appointed school board votes on the school closures. Out of this whole season, I think this video little clip from the Crane community hearing is my favorite: paid protestors who don't realize they're on camera. The clip captures the level of integrity that the mayor's political operation has brought to the table.

I hope the mayor is proud of himself and his team.

Occupy #twill

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 01:09:00 +0000

I've been in the suburbs all day, at the fabulously managed Students in Technology Conference at Stephenson High School in Lincolnshire. Let me just say two things: first, I work with some of the brightest, most articulate and involved students that I've known in lo these past 27 years. They blow me away. Second, my feet are on strike. They're apparently not going to let me stand up again until I agree to their terms, which evidently include staying off my feet all day. I'm going to have to bring in Pinkerton's and some permanent replacement feet. But first, I'm bashing my feet in the press.

Meanwhile, back in my hometown, where parents have to commit civil disobedience to get very, very basic things, there's been a sit-in, and it met its initial objective. Congratulations to the heroic parents of Brian Piccolo Elementary, who declared victory after a short sit-in. Note to other schools: these things work. I wish I could have helped on this particular school. If they occupy their school again, I'll be there.

It looks like the next event is Monday, and I'll be at that.

I wonder if we could get any momentum around an social media occupation in the next few days. In my last post, I embedded CTU's recent report The Schools Chicago's Students Deserve. As I read through the report, time and again I come across a fact, and my jaw drops and I think You gotta be friggn kidding me. For example, check out this graf on the counselor situation in CPS:

I talked to one of my counselor colleagues; he says his caseload is 260 students, and he runs around day and night for those kids, 30% of whom are low income. Can you imagine a caseload of 360 with almost 100% poverty?

Anyway, we should take over Twitter for a few days with extracts from this excellent report. We should load up the #twill hashtag, the #edreform hashtag, and we should mention all of our Illinois legislators in each tweet. Like this, taken from my Tweetdeck:

Whaddya think, can we occupy some Twitter hashtags with this for a day or two or three?

The Schools Chicago's Children Deserve

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:51:00 +0000

CTU has release a comprehensive vision of The Schools Chicago's Students Deserve. It is all of these things: precise, honest, optimistic, heartbreaking. In the past, Democratic policymakers would rally around such report; in the dismal present, they are likely to ignore it, run from it, or denounce it. The report is filled with descriptions of phenomena that would never happen in the suburbs, where people have political power. It's also filled with simple solutions to systemic problems--- solutions that involve a heck of a lot more than crowd dispersal and behavior taxes.

Open publication - Free publishing - More chicago

Update: It is indeed true that good schools cost money: that's why people in the suburbs tax themselves to pay for what their democratically elected school boards decide is appropriate for children. So, before you go and believe the "sea of red ink" narrative, please have a look at this.

What the country needs, in my opinion, is a new kind of journalism degree: journalism +forensic accounting. There's simply nobody doing that kind of work as far as I can tell (except George, of course).

Here's the relevant page of the balance sheet that George is referring to: (in thousands)

As for seas of red ink, please, do a little digging, media.

According to the latest CAFR (which went to the Board of Education in December 2011 and has been available on line since January at cps.edu), CPS began fiscal 2011 claiming one of those "seas" of red ink. Yet somehow by the end of fiscal 2001 (June 30, 2011), CPS had found an extra half billion dollars, which flowed into its bottom line as cash.

Yes, that's what any reporter or member of the public will find on page 44 of the FY 2011 CAFR. There, the "variance" between what CPS said was going to happen and what did happen during that fiscal year turned out to be $560,365,000. That "variance" left CPS at the end of FY 2011 with a "Fiscal Year Actual" fund balance of $740,380,000. That's more than three quarters of a billion dollars of money in the bank, Catalyst, not a "sea of red ink."

Now Hiring

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:10:00 +0000

Is this in the Common Core?

No. There is nothing in the current direction of Arne Duncanism that will lead to a rebirth of technical education--- the kinds of shops that were largely shut down during Duncan's reign here in the City That Used To Work.

On the other hand, when I read this...

He said he may be forced to hire people who are not fully skilled, and then train them.

I think, yes, you occasionally have to train your employees.

The Tribune is So Stupid... It Hurts The Brain!

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:19:00 +0000

The Tribune editorial page is so idiotic. I won't link to it. Julie Woestehoff has been stepping on some very sensitive toes indeed to merit her own editorial.

By the way, the straw man here that the Trib has created is the idea the critic's of Noble's discipline tax are opposed to school discipline.

What sanctimonious a*sholes they are!

Nobody is opposed to orderly schools, particularly and especially the public school teachers at open-to-all neighborhood schools that are rightfully forbidden from taxing and driving away the difficult-to-teach. What people are opposed to is idea that this tactic is some kind of "secret sauce." People are opposed to the idea that if you open a school that makes it very, very difficult to enroll the very, very difficult, that you'll be lauded as some kind of educational guru.

If you want to be an educational guru, then teach the kids that have the most baggage. We have a city full of those kids. But don't just disperse them with a tax program and call yourself a genius.

I don't get it, as Barbara Flynn Currie would say. Rahm is the mayor; he appoints the Board of Education. He runs the schools from whichever trendy restaurant he's at at the moment. With the snap of a finger, he could command the entire system to adopt the fines-for-giggling system.

Why doesn't he? Is it because it's illegal? Unethical? Unsustainable? It's the secret sauce, after all. Scale it up!

As Ohio Goes..

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:01:00 +0000

...so goes the nation..

This is one of the saddest stories I've read in a long time-- it's Diane Ravitch recapping the charter situation in Ohio, where I once worked. Really, read the whole thing, but here's part of the conclusion.

Ohio is pretty much a public education catastrophe, but it's not alone. This is the genie that Arne Duncan let out of the bottle, I'm sorry to say.

But Arne Duncan is not alone, either. I've been reading some Twitter traffic that evidently the reformy chartery people are making headway in Iowa. For my nontechy colleagues, Iowa is one of capitals of the tech transformed education movement. If you want to find a place where people have figured out the value of student-centered, project-based learning enhanced by deeply embedded tech, you go to Iowa.

The trouble is, as I have long said, that the rhetoric around ed tech is frankly poisonous. If you want to hear scathing, over-the-top criticism of American teaching, just look on the Youtubes at any of the many, many videos about how terrible teachers are because they're not using technology. They're torturing the children. Modern kids expect things to be computer-based, and if you're standing there teaching algebra in front of the class, you're basically committing malpractice. It's pervasive negative messaging, the kind of thing that comes home to roost. Read the tech blogs; read the transcripts of an Edchat on Twitter.

It's all dog-whistle to the privatization camp and the vulture charter movement and the conservative rump of the Republican party and their know-nothing twins in the anti-public education wing Duncan/Emanuel wing of the Democratic party. None of these people understand what they're talking about over there in Iowa--- all they hear is how lousy schools are and how ripe the situation is for charter chains.

I'm going to do some digging about what's going on over there in the Hawkeye State if I can find some extra time. Tonight's busy--- there's a rally against the school closings here in Chicago, and I'd like to attend it. Get ready for school closings, Iowa. That's all part of the fun.

Sign of the Times

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:33:00 +0000

Can you imagine a conversation with less first-hand information than this one?

A public relations guy talking to Jeb Bush about education reform. I'm sure it was all very Arne Duncany/Rahm Emanuelish.

Meets and Exceeds

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:15:00 +0000

The ISAT scores are totally awesome and telling. Except when they don't support the mayor's narrative. Then they're just noise.

Emanuel and the new CPS leadership team have repeatedly said the most closely watched category—the one tabulating the percentage of students who “meets and exceeds standards”—is not a good measure. CPS sought to address the issue earlier this year by switching to new school report cards that do not include ISAT scores. Rather, the new report cards show how students perform on one of two national assessments designed to measure growth.

Even so, on the day the Consortium released its report, district officials quickly cited the dramatic gains made by turnaround schools on the ISAT “meets and exceeds” standard. A fact sheet sent to reporters from the district’s communications office touted results from the privately run Academy for Urban School Leadership. “Eight of the ten (AUSL-run turnaround) schools have seen the largest growth on the ISAT meets/exceeds since it began the turnaround when compared to other schools in their area,” the release stated

Really, any time Noemi Donoso opens her mouth, something political and dishonest comes out. She's all about the "meets and exceeds" number on the ISAT now that the research has found a very, very, very small effect in the AUSL schools.

Basically, the line of defense here is that the AUSL schools were able to move a lot of kids into "meets and exceeds." Even I, as a former testing person, know that you can do this by prepping for the test so that the kids answer 1-2 more questions correctly. I used to tell my teachers, "Walk around with a clipboard during the test. It makes them take it more seriously." (I got nailed for a testing violation that year. You can't tell teachers to walk around with a clipboard.) So, when you look at the "meets and exceeds," Noemi Donoso looks like she's saying something worth half a damn. But when you look at the actual improvements the kids are making, it's 1-2, possibly 3 more correct questions. She's full of shit, I'm sorry to say. These gains are a very expensive much-ado over nothing.

Which is why she's working for Rahm. The entire underlying premise of urban education reform is that if you separate the kids away from the really, really tough kids, you can produce these minimal gains that look like a miracle of teaching magic with a little story-telling. We should just introduce a caste system here and be done with it. In Rahm's Chicago, "meets and exceeds" is meaningless when your goal is to shut a school down; when your goal is to prop one up, it's the gold standard.

In any event, if Rahm doesn't announce tomorrow that the new district-wide CPS policy is that kids have to pay cash for discipline infractions or leave the system, then he's not just a nasty little tyrant with surveillance cameras on every block; he's a full-blown, to-the-core hypocrite on the issue of things good for the goose being also good for the gander.

And by the way, I think that would be a terrible discipline policy. But I think Rahm's 23%-of-registered-voters would probably approve of it.

Get on the Horn, People

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:32:00 +0000

It's Virtual Lobby Day. You should get your colleagues to spend five fewer minutes being stressed out over their ten thousand observations or whatever, and shepherd them over to a phone or a computer. They need to do something important.

I really like my current representative, although I'm so jittery about going out and campaigning or canvassing. I'd hate to get behind someone who turns out to be stealth reformy, or stealth anti-labor, or stealth attack-the-pensions, and it's just so hard to know what the term "Democrat" means in the age of Rahm-- particularly when it comes to public education. Kelly Cassidy is doing a good job in the 14th district; the IFT has endorsed her. I'd like to hear more from her, or more from IPACE or the CTU about why there was no endorsement from those organizations in the 14th district.

Anyway... drag a colleague to the phone. You can bet Ty Fahner is calling someone as we speak, ranting and raving about how broke we are and how the only solution is more tax cuts.

Baby Steps From Apple

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:50:00 +0000

Concur.

Apple is making baby steps in the right direction, but there's a lot more to do. And that's pretty impressive given that Americans, including evidently the late co-founder of Apple, by and large don't give a sh*t about any of this.

The fact of the matter is that we're living in a world where manufacturing has moved behind an iron curtain, where people have little chance of organizing. As long as that's okay with everyone --- and it's not even a fringe position here in the USA, then it's a race to the bottom.

Why Is Your Name Not On This?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:27:00 +0000

I'm on top at DumpDuncan.

Actually, I'm # 2,155. Go sign on!

My only regret is that I did not sign up in time to be # 2, 132, right after Savanna Bumpus and Clemency Wings.

The Clarion Whisper of Alarm

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 03:12:00 +0000

I saw this tweet over at Small Talk.

Remember when Cher slapped Nicholas Cage and told him to snap out of it? I always feel that way about the president of my national federation*. In my view, she's always speaking in these muted terms instead of letting people know that the house is burning down.

There is no mystery. The NCLB waivers require, mandate, and guarantee a test-based culture. This needs to be said as loudly and clearly as possible. It should be as clear as when Randi said, "I thought you were leaving!" to the dissenters at the Bill Gates lecture at the AFT convention.

*I am talking about metaphoric slapping only. No actual slapping!

The Other Learning Problem

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 02:53:00 +0000

Go read this, including the comments.

I agree. Incidentally, technology is not going to change the fact that we have a nation full of kids who are strangely not looped into the fact that k-12 education is now the frontline of national security and economic prosperity. It's not even going to make a dent in the problem, as long as we have standardization and ever-mounting pressure on test scores, even if all the pressure is on the teachers alone.

By the way, back when I interviewed at one of the city's charter schools, it became clear to me that the entire educational theory of the place was based on regimentation-- silence in the halls, straight lines, correct learning postures, and that this was all very popular with the Latino working-in-poverty families that sent their kids there. As for the teaching, there was not much new or inspiring going on there. It was all very Madeline Hunter, circa whenever. If you just give people order, or the semblance of it, and you keep out the vilde chaya children from three blocks away, well, people won't even notice that the program itself is pretty threadbare.

Actually, when I was a young teacher, before I started to morph into someone who could actually help young people think more intelligently about their own writing, those Madeline Hunter videos really helped me out. Those, and Wanda Phillips' Easy Grammar. I trained an entire generation of kids how to identify and cross out prepositional phrases long, long before it was sexy. There was absolutely no thinking going on but, man, was it orderly.

There's just a hell of a lot more going on here than is going to be changed by new standards or more testing or dinging more teachers on more evaluations, or project-based learning, or flipped classrooms, or any of these things. We have to talk openly and honestly about kind of kids we're raising and the kind of people we are, and the kind of nation we're going to be.

Does This Make Me Sophomoric?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:43:00 +0000

My blog is written at a 10th grade reading level. Because reading levels are real. All 10th graders should be able to answer comprehension questions on my blog by 2014. Or they will be dispersed to distant neighborhood blogs or whatever charter blogs will accept them.

"Shills and Cruel Jokes"

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:25:00 +0000

Feeling kind of wobbly here but on the mend. I'll be flopping around in no time. Meanwhile, here's Labor Beat's review of the CPS show trials. I'll only say this--- I work in the suburbs with people who mostly live in the suburbs. One of my colleagues was recently reading in the Trib about the NCLB waivers and he told me that it sounded like a good idea.

I guess it does sound like a good thing if you're not paying very, very close attention or if you get your information from one of the two big teacher unions. And that's the whole thing. People have no idea about the massive increase in testing that is just around the corner, and they have no idea that the schools where very, very poor people send their kids are still going to be closed down, and those kids are going to be dispersed all over the various cities where they reside.

Here's George.

The Time Is Now For Crane

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:40:00 +0000

...to hit the phones.
1-713-553-1500

Ask for Jean Claude Brizard. Tell him to read the hearing officer's report, and keep Crane open. And get over to the feeder schools as well, because Crane belongs to them, too.

Don't forget Ayodeji Griffin's words at the community hearing:

A couple of years ago, I questioned an elementary counselor who attended our articulation breakfast and asked her why did she always send her students with stanine scores of four, five, and six to Crane.

Simply put, she stated, "Because I know that Crane will graciously receive our students, will educate them, and make sure that they graduate and attend college."

After thinking about it, I said to myself, "Well, isn't that our claim to fame? If I don't know this, then no one else knows--- we will accept any student no matter how low their test scores are. We educate and we graduate.

This notion of welcoming students no matter who they are--- it's something we need to fight for. It's an idea that's going away, as everyone knows, with schools now competing for higher test-data producing students, and policy-makers dispersing everyone else with the bureaucratic equivalent of a fire hose.

It's not very effective. It has been a disaster for black kids.

Here's what the Crane hearing officer, Judge David H. Coar, actually said at the end of his report:

You can quote those last two sentences when you call Mr. Brizard. You can also learn more about SLI, because it sounds like this is the direction the actual teachers at the school want to go.

Of course, if by "educational experts," Judge Coar is referring to people like Noemi Donoso, there's going to be a learning curve, to say the least. Did you see this?

CPS Chief Education Officer Noemi Donoso said the fact that the turnaround schools did better, regardless of how much better, was enough for her.

“The alternative is the status quo,” she said. “If the choice is between flat-lining and closing the gap, I would rather close the gap.”

But education experts consider the statistical figure of average yearly growth by turnarounds cited in the study as evidence of improvement to be relatively small.

“0.07 is a pretty small effect,” said Dan McCaffrey, a statistician at the Rand Corporation, a not-for-profit research and analysis organization. “It doesn’t mean that it is not meaningful, but it is small."

Anyone who tells you the alternative to her plan is "the status quo" is lying. Anyone who tells you that these micro-gains on reading and math tests is "closing the gap" is an ideologue and lying . I hate to say it, but there it is. These people have so many tests for reading and math; it seems strange that they haven't come up with a misery metric for communities that get robbed of a local high school serving local kids.

Anyway, it's time to hit the phones. And, to Alderman Smith (773-533-0900): you said you'd take the fight where ever you had to take it. Well, now you've got Judge Coar's report. Do something with it. Help these people organize calling committees, at the very least.

Here's all I know. I usually fight a different battle-- I'm usually involved in fighting to get the pension systems funded or fighting off those who would privatize the entire system. In those battles, what we do is we get on the phone, over and over and over, and we call the people who make the decisions. And then we get our friends to call. And their friends. And we don't stop calling until it's over.

And this ain't over.

That's where you have to stay mentally until you win. Keep calling.

Buying Public Policy

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:39:00 +0000

The Edelman Effect

Translation: It’s going to bankroll candidates who are willing to cross labor unions and vote to reduce pension benefits and/or require workers to pay more for them.

Insiders say the goal is to emulate what school reform forces did in the last election — putting hundreds of thousands of dollars behind legislative candidates who promised to be independent of the teachers union. That strategy worked when the unions came to the table and agreed to things such as a longer school day and year.

The good news is that a massive, organized ground game still trumps gobs of money. The bad news is that a massive, organized ground game requires bold, dynamic leadership, and people who are willing to do more than just sign on to a fax.

More Fun With The Illinois Constitution

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:21:00 +0000

ARTICLE X
SECTION 1.  GOAL - FREE SCHOOLS

 The State has the primary responsibility for financing
the system of public education  until they just decide it's a local thing.
ARTICLE XIII
SECTION 5. PENSION AND RETIREMENT RIGHTS
    Membership in any pension or retirement system of the
State, any unit of local government or school district, or
any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an
enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which
shall not be diminished or impaired . unless we just transfer this responsibility to someone else. 


ARTICLE IX
SECTION 1. STATE REVENUE POWER
    The General Assembly has the exclusive power to raise
revenue by law except as limited or otherwise provided in
this Constitution. The power of taxation shall not be
surrendered (except to the Civic Committee), suspended, or contracted away.