Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation [img=/assets/blog/200712/fightthewar.gif F:R]Thanks to a reader who pointed me to [url=http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2007/11/radical-transofrmation-of-high-schools.html]this[/url] post about the High School Transformation effort that CPS is implementing (or was, anyway), I learned two valuable things: First, that depending on how you look at it the HST effort could be seen as a touchy-feely, wishy-washy progressive type thing rather than how I've heard it most described as a top-down accountability-oriented effort. Apparently the packages being offered to high schools are overly focused on inquiry, not hard facts, and don't include Earth Sciences. Second, I learned that Instructivist, a blogger I've read for quite a while now, is a teacher in Chicago. Who, obviously, doesn't like the HST effort.
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Tue Dec 4, 2007 at 10:58 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
My current school and my last school have HST. I don't teach a HST subject area (English, Math, Science). I sure would like to have an LCD projector (or even an overhead.) And the English teachers actually get to give each kid a book to read and take home. Programs come and go, and the support is never what is promised. However, the books, and the laptops and the projectors will be around for at least a while. These items shouldn't be unheard of luxuries, but in CPS general high schools they tend to be just that.
Wed Dec 5, 2007 at 6:20 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
I don't love everything about HST, but must correct a couple comments. Our science curriculum is a combination of Environmental Science and Earth Science for 9th graders. Prior to HST students had to choose one or the other and we averaged about 98% choosing Environmental. In other words, there is an increase in the amount of Earth Science our students are exposed to.
Secondly, isn't inquiry a higher order skill than recalling simple facts? I think the problem with the way many things have been taught in the past is that all the students had to do is regurgitate facts. Wouldn't we rather have them think?question? investigate?
No, it is not perfect...the coaching is definitely subpar from what was promised and of course it is top down (this is Chicago), but I think there are positives as well.
Secondly, isn't inquiry a higher order skill than recalling simple facts? I think the problem with the way many things have been taught in the past is that all the students had to do is regurgitate facts. Wouldn't we rather have them think?question? investigate?
No, it is not perfect...the coaching is definitely subpar from what was promised and of course it is top down (this is Chicago), but I think there are positives as well.
Wed Dec 5, 2007 at 11:28 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
I don't see the point of highlighting the hysterical anti-HST teacher's outburst. First of all, I don't know of any reasonable justification for promoting fact-memorization as a worthwhle, let alone successful, view of helping young people to lay the foundations for happy and productive lives.
Second of all, where does this person get their hatred of Constructivism? It's an attempt at describing mental development and the alternatives are all worse--something like Democracy in Churchill's famous quote. What is this person advocating as a philosophical approach to teaching in the public schools? This sort of shrieking about philosophy is something you'd expect from the Kansas Creationists, but at least they have a reason for it.
HST at my school is a program designed by Kaplan education. I use their materials as a menu from which I pick and choose. I create supplementary materials when needed and I create alternatives where I feel that the skill in question could be better taught to my students using a different path or set of materials.
I have a lot of AP/College Board training and I also teach AP (and, needless to say, appreciate the value of the AP curriculum and PD quite a bit). I have found that Kaplan HST program is pre-AP. It fits my own teaching style like a tailor-made glove; moreover, it fits most of my colleagues as well, and they have very different styles form me.
I can see how a school with a well-developed curriculum and the means to train new teachers in it might chafe at such a program; but you'd have to be off your meds for weeks to attack HST on its own merits as the blogger in question does.
Here I want to add something that might sound like I endorse the view of the teacher haters who run our district and who seem to feel that readers of this blog need to experience their hateful upchuck. At that risk, I think it could be said that HST is a much better alternative to the usual CPS approaches to instructional improvment--things like appointing illiterate cousins of corrupt AIOs as principals, or placing schools on probation supervised by illiterate cousins of corrupt AIOs, or you name it. I applaud Gates for putting their money into HST and I wark as hard as I can to promote it. I would like to work in a district where we have real professional learning communities, where I have colleagues who are seriously interested in discussing and working on really important practical instructional problems in a way that is informed by a larger view of what we're doing. The energy that is going into resisting HST is totally wasted. Totally. It's a teacher-driven framework. It's something worth putting your energy into. Again, there may be schools where the idiot cousin of the AIO is principal and has implemented HST in the wrong way. There are definitely schools where HST in English at least might actually be taking a step backwards--Curie could be considered such a school. But in general, this is a lifeline for teachers who are starving for ways to improve the professional environment we work in. It doesn't belong to the people downtown; they don't know how to spell Transformations. It belongs to teachers and I wish more would see the opportunities that are available to us if we embrace it.
Second of all, where does this person get their hatred of Constructivism? It's an attempt at describing mental development and the alternatives are all worse--something like Democracy in Churchill's famous quote. What is this person advocating as a philosophical approach to teaching in the public schools? This sort of shrieking about philosophy is something you'd expect from the Kansas Creationists, but at least they have a reason for it.
HST at my school is a program designed by Kaplan education. I use their materials as a menu from which I pick and choose. I create supplementary materials when needed and I create alternatives where I feel that the skill in question could be better taught to my students using a different path or set of materials.
I have a lot of AP/College Board training and I also teach AP (and, needless to say, appreciate the value of the AP curriculum and PD quite a bit). I have found that Kaplan HST program is pre-AP. It fits my own teaching style like a tailor-made glove; moreover, it fits most of my colleagues as well, and they have very different styles form me.
I can see how a school with a well-developed curriculum and the means to train new teachers in it might chafe at such a program; but you'd have to be off your meds for weeks to attack HST on its own merits as the blogger in question does.
Here I want to add something that might sound like I endorse the view of the teacher haters who run our district and who seem to feel that readers of this blog need to experience their hateful upchuck. At that risk, I think it could be said that HST is a much better alternative to the usual CPS approaches to instructional improvment--things like appointing illiterate cousins of corrupt AIOs as principals, or placing schools on probation supervised by illiterate cousins of corrupt AIOs, or you name it. I applaud Gates for putting their money into HST and I wark as hard as I can to promote it. I would like to work in a district where we have real professional learning communities, where I have colleagues who are seriously interested in discussing and working on really important practical instructional problems in a way that is informed by a larger view of what we're doing. The energy that is going into resisting HST is totally wasted. Totally. It's a teacher-driven framework. It's something worth putting your energy into. Again, there may be schools where the idiot cousin of the AIO is principal and has implemented HST in the wrong way. There are definitely schools where HST in English at least might actually be taking a step backwards--Curie could be considered such a school. But in general, this is a lifeline for teachers who are starving for ways to improve the professional environment we work in. It doesn't belong to the people downtown; they don't know how to spell Transformations. It belongs to teachers and I wish more would see the opportunities that are available to us if we embrace it.
Fri Dec 7, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
It was announced today that High School Transformation is going to implemented at my school. Apparently there was no "buy in" discussion this time, since the decision was made entirely by people downtown. Of course, that raises the question, if it is so beneficial for the students and teachers, why does it need to be imposed from above?
From what I can gather, it requires the school to spend $300 per student per year to be taken out of discretionary funds.
Any additional information on what I have to look forward to would definitely be welcome.
From what I can gather, it requires the school to spend $300 per student per year to be taken out of discretionary funds.
Any additional information on what I have to look forward to would definitely be welcome.
Fri Dec 7, 2007 at 5:41 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
"...At that risk, I think it could be said that HST is a much better alternative to the usual CPS approaches to instructional improvment--things like appointing illiterate cousins of corrupt AIOs as principals, or placing schools on probation supervised by illiterate cousins of corrupt AIOs, or you name it. I applaud Gates for putting their money into HST and I wark as hard as I can to promote it..."
I'd find these sentences much more interesting and believeable if you signed your name. As this puffery stands, it sounds like you're blogging in from either Kaplan or Gates to puff their stuff.
I'd find these sentences much more interesting and believeable if you signed your name. As this puffery stands, it sounds like you're blogging in from either Kaplan or Gates to puff their stuff.
Fri Dec 7, 2007 at 7:06 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
what school just got told to do HST, and was it part of a broader set of schools or just you?
Sat Dec 8, 2007 at 2:33 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
To Teacher -
Gates hands over 21 million to CPS to transform a handful of high schools and Central Office is shaking you down at the tune of 300 per child?
I sincerely hope someone thinks to check Arne & Co.'s collective pockets before they walk out the door.
Transformation indeed. I suspect the next CPS satellite office to pop up in Dubai...
Gates hands over 21 million to CPS to transform a handful of high schools and Central Office is shaking you down at the tune of 300 per child?
I sincerely hope someone thinks to check Arne & Co.'s collective pockets before they walk out the door.
Transformation indeed. I suspect the next CPS satellite office to pop up in Dubai...
Sat Dec 8, 2007 at 5:26 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
All of these questions could be answered with a little transparency. Doesn't "HST" have its own Website? If not, why not? Anything funded by Gates that doesn't have a Website is really strange. If CPS can have the best military website (for JROTC and the military academies), there should be a major website for HST. If not, why not?
My first question is how is this program different from the dozen or so other miraculous miracle cures for "high schools" that CPS has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the past 12 years? If every iteration of CPS genius was going to "solve" the high schools' "problem", why is "it" still here? Actually, of course, that's a "them" and let's remember it's/them's not for all high schools. Just the ones that aren't allowed into the Big Lottery that begins again in two weeks.
Somehow, I bet that Northside College Prep, Payton, Jones, Lindblom, King, Brooks, Lane Tech, Von Steuben, Lincoln Park and Whitney Young teachers don't have to worry about "High School Transformation" at this expensive a level. It's another hyped up attack on the schools that have to take the "leftover kids" to keep attention diverted from the real social and economic problems.
But since we've now been salvationed by
Reconstitution
Reengineering
Intervention
Small Schoolization
Charterization
and about a dozen (at least) lesser salvations, only in Chicago could these hyped up hoaxacious mythologiziings continue, amidst the ass kissing and cheerleading (and bullying off the public stage) that we've got with these guys.
You want to "transform" a high school? Chicago's done it since Mayor Daley took over in order to keep the mayor's neighbors with a "world class" high school or to insure that the gentrifying "Mid-South" was anchored with additional public dollars.
Jones Commercial High School was a perfectly good school serving a perfectly appropriate (and very cost effective) purpose. Then it was "transformed" into "Jones College Prep". The commercial kids were dumped out, and all new ones have to be screened. That's where Mayor Daley votes as a community member in LSC elections. It was his small way of underwriting the future real estate values of himself and his neighbors.
And King High School, once one of Chicago's "worst" (as measured by test scores) was transmuted (er, "transformed") into "King College Prep."
That's all been since Daley took over and the Age of Miracles began.
Those two schools were transformed and are no long in danger of Transformation, Charterization, or Small Schoolization.
All they had to do was get rid of all the leftover kids and make sure that none ever again got in. The low scoring King area kids are now at Phillips or (in a few cases) Kenwood. And the low scoring kids who would have attended Jones Commercial have been out of luck for the "choice" for nearly a decade now.
And the miracle goes on and on and on. Just ask Catalyst or the Tribune for the latest update from the devout.
My first question is how is this program different from the dozen or so other miraculous miracle cures for "high schools" that CPS has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the past 12 years? If every iteration of CPS genius was going to "solve" the high schools' "problem", why is "it" still here? Actually, of course, that's a "them" and let's remember it's/them's not for all high schools. Just the ones that aren't allowed into the Big Lottery that begins again in two weeks.
Somehow, I bet that Northside College Prep, Payton, Jones, Lindblom, King, Brooks, Lane Tech, Von Steuben, Lincoln Park and Whitney Young teachers don't have to worry about "High School Transformation" at this expensive a level. It's another hyped up attack on the schools that have to take the "leftover kids" to keep attention diverted from the real social and economic problems.
But since we've now been salvationed by
Reconstitution
Reengineering
Intervention
Small Schoolization
Charterization
and about a dozen (at least) lesser salvations, only in Chicago could these hyped up hoaxacious mythologiziings continue, amidst the ass kissing and cheerleading (and bullying off the public stage) that we've got with these guys.
You want to "transform" a high school? Chicago's done it since Mayor Daley took over in order to keep the mayor's neighbors with a "world class" high school or to insure that the gentrifying "Mid-South" was anchored with additional public dollars.
Jones Commercial High School was a perfectly good school serving a perfectly appropriate (and very cost effective) purpose. Then it was "transformed" into "Jones College Prep". The commercial kids were dumped out, and all new ones have to be screened. That's where Mayor Daley votes as a community member in LSC elections. It was his small way of underwriting the future real estate values of himself and his neighbors.
And King High School, once one of Chicago's "worst" (as measured by test scores) was transmuted (er, "transformed") into "King College Prep."
That's all been since Daley took over and the Age of Miracles began.
Those two schools were transformed and are no long in danger of Transformation, Charterization, or Small Schoolization.
All they had to do was get rid of all the leftover kids and make sure that none ever again got in. The low scoring King area kids are now at Phillips or (in a few cases) Kenwood. And the low scoring kids who would have attended Jones Commercial have been out of luck for the "choice" for nearly a decade now.
And the miracle goes on and on and on. Just ask Catalyst or the Tribune for the latest update from the devout.
Sat Dec 8, 2007 at 7:26 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
Jones
Jones Commercial High School was a truly unique place. All the girls had to wear
Business attire, including at one time gloves. Later all the men had to wear suites.
It was a Junior, Senior school where students learned how to work in the business world.
If a person wanted to work after high school Jones was the place to go. Since they had a
100% placement rate, kids worked in offices part of the day and I know managers who
fought over Jones Grads they were in so much demand.
Even selective enrollment schools like Simeon lost kids to Jones every year.
Jones did it’s job, fulfilled it’s mission, was in every sense a success. Then the
School was transformed. Today’s Jones Students don’t even have to step over the
Prostrate winos laying out side the Pacific Garden Mission next door
Jones Commercial High School was a truly unique place. All the girls had to wear
Business attire, including at one time gloves. Later all the men had to wear suites.
It was a Junior, Senior school where students learned how to work in the business world.
If a person wanted to work after high school Jones was the place to go. Since they had a
100% placement rate, kids worked in offices part of the day and I know managers who
fought over Jones Grads they were in so much demand.
Even selective enrollment schools like Simeon lost kids to Jones every year.
Jones did it’s job, fulfilled it’s mission, was in every sense a success. Then the
School was transformed. Today’s Jones Students don’t even have to step over the
Prostrate winos laying out side the Pacific Garden Mission next door
Mon Dec 10, 2007 at 3:49 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
Thanks for reminding us of the more than 50 years Jones Commercial served the working class and poorer young people of Chicago, before it was shut down by Paul Vallas, Richard M. Daley, and Cozette Buckney. Don't leave out Cozette; her betrayals were much more exotic and personel than those of the masters she served so well...
What I've recently reported is that the total Jones conversion will ultimately have cost around $100 million that shouldn't have been spent. The Jones building was meant to be expanded vertically, not horizontally, as an office complex. From the beginning, that space was never public school land for a four-year high school. The stupid decision (by Daley and Vallas) to morph Jones into "Jones College Prep" was fated to be one of the most expensive follies in CPS history, one that we're still in the middle of wasting money on.
If Mayor Daley's neighbors in the "Museum" and "Central Station" community wanted a public private high school, that high should have been built, from scratch, on that empty land to the west and south of Jones. Jones Commercial should have remained a commercial high school, serving kids from as far north as Amundsen and Senn and as far south as Simeon and beyond.
Instead, one of the first acts of tyranny, cynicism, greed, and mendacity during the Daley years was the rape of Jones. Had it been done in any other town, someone besides me (and my colleagues here) would have tracked, year after year, the total cost to the public of (a) that land north of Jones that once contained that Burger King that CPS paid for, then morphed over to a developer and (b) the total cost of the Pacific Garden battle, relocation, purchase, demolition, and reconstruction.
Like I said: $100 million to give Daley's backyard a public private school. Not pretty, but loaded with facts.
What I've recently reported is that the total Jones conversion will ultimately have cost around $100 million that shouldn't have been spent. The Jones building was meant to be expanded vertically, not horizontally, as an office complex. From the beginning, that space was never public school land for a four-year high school. The stupid decision (by Daley and Vallas) to morph Jones into "Jones College Prep" was fated to be one of the most expensive follies in CPS history, one that we're still in the middle of wasting money on.
If Mayor Daley's neighbors in the "Museum" and "Central Station" community wanted a public private high school, that high should have been built, from scratch, on that empty land to the west and south of Jones. Jones Commercial should have remained a commercial high school, serving kids from as far north as Amundsen and Senn and as far south as Simeon and beyond.
Instead, one of the first acts of tyranny, cynicism, greed, and mendacity during the Daley years was the rape of Jones. Had it been done in any other town, someone besides me (and my colleagues here) would have tracked, year after year, the total cost to the public of (a) that land north of Jones that once contained that Burger King that CPS paid for, then morphed over to a developer and (b) the total cost of the Pacific Garden battle, relocation, purchase, demolition, and reconstruction.
Like I said: $100 million to give Daley's backyard a public private school. Not pretty, but loaded with facts.
Sat Mar 1, 2008 at 10:01 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
Stewart sold the CTU.She must be outsted
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 2:09 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
HEY! Who's monitoring this thread!?! That's over the line, buddy. Argue your point in a reasonable manner, or take your 'remarks' elsewhere.
Alexander, you need harder math problems for your spam filter.
Alexander, you need harder math problems for your spam filter.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 7:20 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
Hello Nick.Recognize you.It is very nice to protect your boss.
By the way do you know who paid $8,000.00 for her trip abroad?
Union is $4millions in debt plus undisclosed loans........
She must go and stop selling us .Our members have to pay bills ,too.
Sorry for comments above.Have a nice ,productive weekend.
By the way do you know who paid $8,000.00 for her trip abroad?
Union is $4millions in debt plus undisclosed loans........
She must go and stop selling us .Our members have to pay bills ,too.
Sorry for comments above.Have a nice ,productive weekend.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 7:23 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
Nick thank you for your protection of your boss.Who paid for her trip abroad?We are already in $4millions debt.Sorry for the comments above.Apologize.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 8:08 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
thanks, folks --
let's keep the comments on topic.
let's keep the comments on topic.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 9:18 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
I apologize for saying that Stewart will be soon with her deceased mother.It was my big mistake -I apologize again.Her mother was a great person.So the locations will be different.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 11:04 AM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
Can't be too harsh Stewart; the vast majority of CTU members couldn't wait to give her four more years and then sit back and collect on all of her emptypromises. It's "Waiting for Gordo" - not going to happen. Stewart is clearly inadequate for the position - so now what?
Where/who/when will a petition to have her recalled be started? Let cut our loses.
Where/who/when will a petition to have her recalled be started? Let cut our loses.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 3:44 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
Hello Mark Ochoa ,Mary Mc Guire you are a decent people.Leave the individual.She will quit or will be removed.You do not like to be a subject of the federal investigation.Take care of the Union -talk to Ted Dallas not to the person who betrayed the Union.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 3:50 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
You are really a M(my )F(friend).Hows your mother doing?
I wish you full exploration.
I wish you full exploration.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
Hello Nick.you are so quiet .You better pack your bags.Direction 2700and California.Do you want to be a VP?Dream about it.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 7:55 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
The least you could have done, Nick, is send me some of those photographs you and Mark Ochoa were taking on Halsted St. outside the Parthenon last Thursday, when Marilyn sent you to spy on the UPC meeting. The Chicago Teachers Union used to be a sign of the strength of teachers. With that Spy Versus Spy Mad Magazine you and the financial secretary tried to pull (on company time, no less) the day after the Board voted to whack the largest number of teachers in the history of school closings, you should at least have found somewhere else to be and something else to do.
But now it's part of a long and dismal record. It's only a question of whether satire will do justice to how ridiculous the last eight days of UPC history are. From the debacle at PUSH on February 23 to that stupid press conference on February 25 to the downright stupidity of the CTU presentation at the Board on February 27, this was a real triumph of dumb. As we walked out of 125 S. Clark St. after the Board voted to screw all those schools (none of you bothered to stay, although many parents and some reporters did), we really couldn't think of how you could top the Dumb List with anything more that week.
Then on February 28 you decided the most important thing you guys could do was stand out there playing tough guy games with those big fancy cameras you really don't know how to use. Is it true they were issued to you by John Ostenberg out of the inventory CTU uses to take pictures for the Chicago Union Teacher? If that's the case (and it's easy enough to learn), then you'd better find a way to publish those pictures in the March Union Teacher. It's getting to the point where even your buddies at the IFT and AFT won't be able to keep the pressure off forever.
But now it's part of a long and dismal record. It's only a question of whether satire will do justice to how ridiculous the last eight days of UPC history are. From the debacle at PUSH on February 23 to that stupid press conference on February 25 to the downright stupidity of the CTU presentation at the Board on February 27, this was a real triumph of dumb. As we walked out of 125 S. Clark St. after the Board voted to screw all those schools (none of you bothered to stay, although many parents and some reporters did), we really couldn't think of how you could top the Dumb List with anything more that week.
Then on February 28 you decided the most important thing you guys could do was stand out there playing tough guy games with those big fancy cameras you really don't know how to use. Is it true they were issued to you by John Ostenberg out of the inventory CTU uses to take pictures for the Chicago Union Teacher? If that's the case (and it's easy enough to learn), then you'd better find a way to publish those pictures in the March Union Teacher. It's getting to the point where even your buddies at the IFT and AFT won't be able to keep the pressure off forever.
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 8:12 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
do i get a copy of my pic?
Hmmm. CTU equipment for internal political purposes.
You guys left too early we awnted a group shot.
HiHo
Hmmm. CTU equipment for internal political purposes.
You guys left too early we awnted a group shot.
HiHo
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 8:30 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
If you really wanted a picture, you just had to fork over some of your hard earned cash. Those guys would have taken it right away. In fact, that's what they do best.
HiHo
HiHo
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 9:53 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
Maybe you should follow what I do. At the next Union meeting Conella and Ochoa can put up a big board with all the 8 x 10 glossies and charge the members $ for the pics. Maybe this would help the S.S. Union to cut some of that deficit. S.O.S our ship is sinking fast and the life preservers are nowhere to be found!!!!
Sun Mar 2, 2008 at 10:49 PM
Chicago Blogger Critiques High School Transformation
That is so pathetic! But why is that not surprising??
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