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Clinton "Jihad" Against Vouchers How fun that the Presidential race is close, involves two people with Chicago connections, and at least occasionally includes education issues. For example:
Thanks to an eagle-eyed reader for pointing out the crazy comment from Senator Clinton that closes Elizabeth Green's Obama recent voucher story (Obama Open to Private School Vouchers):
"Asked the same voucher question by the Milwaukee paper, Senator Clinton had a strong response, saying she opposes vouchers because they hurt public schools and could also open up the possibility of using taxpayer dollars to finance dangerous schools including training grounds for "jihad."
Here's Green's source: Clinton covers range of subjects. However, this view from Clinton may not be new.Here's a reference going back to 2006.
Now I'm no legal expert, but this outcome seems a pretty unlikely or at least preventable outcome. Clinton sounds like she's just really upset that Constitutional arguments against vouchers have been undermined and wants us to know of the evils of not separating church and state. Or she's just reminding folks that Obama went to a madrassa as a child (joke!).
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Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 3:46 PM
Clinton "Jihad" Against Vouchers
The end is near now we need some more to show what REN2010 and the CPS reorganization is not helping but hurting students!
Good work UT at Austin. Give those grad students an A.
Study: Texas school system fosters low graduation rates
A study by Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin shows that Texas' public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act, directly contributes to lower graduation rates.
By analyzing data from more than 271,000 students, the study found that 60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of English-as-a-second language students did not graduate within five years.
Each year, Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation. Researchers found an overall graduation rate of only 33 percent.
The exit of low-achieving students created the appearance of rising test scores and of a narrowing of the achievement gap between white and minority students, thus increasing the schools' ratings, the study showed.
What's more, the study indicated that the higher the stakes and the longer such an accountability system governs schools, the more school personnel view students not as children to educate but as potential liabilities or assets for their school's performance indicators, their own careers or their school's funding.
Among other findings, the study showed a relationship between the increasing number of dropouts and schools' rising accountability ratings, finding that the accountability system allows principals to hold back students who are deemed at risk of reducing school scores -- but a high proportion of students retained this way end up dropping out.
we should do the same here in Chicago
Lets get some data together and publish a report to show what really is happening.
Send email
Good work UT at Austin. Give those grad students an A.
Study: Texas school system fosters low graduation rates
A study by Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin shows that Texas' public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act, directly contributes to lower graduation rates.
By analyzing data from more than 271,000 students, the study found that 60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of English-as-a-second language students did not graduate within five years.
Each year, Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation. Researchers found an overall graduation rate of only 33 percent.
The exit of low-achieving students created the appearance of rising test scores and of a narrowing of the achievement gap between white and minority students, thus increasing the schools' ratings, the study showed.
What's more, the study indicated that the higher the stakes and the longer such an accountability system governs schools, the more school personnel view students not as children to educate but as potential liabilities or assets for their school's performance indicators, their own careers or their school's funding.
Among other findings, the study showed a relationship between the increasing number of dropouts and schools' rising accountability ratings, finding that the accountability system allows principals to hold back students who are deemed at risk of reducing school scores -- but a high proportion of students retained this way end up dropping out.
we should do the same here in Chicago
Lets get some data together and publish a report to show what really is happening.
Send email
Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 5:51 PM
NCLB
The new information from Rice and University of Texas is a good first step in finally putting to rest the fact that these policies do not work. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to analyze the statistics (graduation rate etc) from the last five years in CPS to see if the Texas findings are not isolated.
Positive changes are put in motion by directly-involved people taking action. Of late, it looks like we (district-wide) are showing the strength of our vested interest.
On a lighter note, did anyone receive either their MA or M.Ed from Loyola or Northwestern? I am attempting to get information on these programs from past graduates. Thanks for reading.
Positive changes are put in motion by directly-involved people taking action. Of late, it looks like we (district-wide) are showing the strength of our vested interest.
On a lighter note, did anyone receive either their MA or M.Ed from Loyola or Northwestern? I am attempting to get information on these programs from past graduates. Thanks for reading.
Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 6:15 PM
Clinton "Jihad" Against Vouchers
Very funny, Alexander.
How about vouchers for flight school, one that teaches aspirants to fly, but not necessarily land a plane?
School for Wiccans? They could call it Hogwarts, and every kids under 13 in the district would be lining up around the block to apply.
Weight Watchers could charge the government for their program by calling it the Big Losers School of Weight Management.
Do you understand what is being said, or are you just obtuse? Just as schools leave themselves open for wingnut elements coming into the schools demanding meeting space if prayer meetings are allowed on campuses, so the voucher programs can handily be set up to fund every kind of idiotic initiative that has nothing to do with education.
This is above and beyond draining dollars from real public schools.
Sorry, I don't find that amusing, nor do I think attempts to derail and deliberately misconstue the statements of actual supporters of public schools are very funny either.
Family Circus is funnier than that.
How about vouchers for flight school, one that teaches aspirants to fly, but not necessarily land a plane?
School for Wiccans? They could call it Hogwarts, and every kids under 13 in the district would be lining up around the block to apply.
Weight Watchers could charge the government for their program by calling it the Big Losers School of Weight Management.
Do you understand what is being said, or are you just obtuse? Just as schools leave themselves open for wingnut elements coming into the schools demanding meeting space if prayer meetings are allowed on campuses, so the voucher programs can handily be set up to fund every kind of idiotic initiative that has nothing to do with education.
This is above and beyond draining dollars from real public schools.
Sorry, I don't find that amusing, nor do I think attempts to derail and deliberately misconstue the statements of actual supporters of public schools are very funny either.
Family Circus is funnier than that.
Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 6:28 PM
Clinton "Jihad" Against Vouchers
Dear Being Counter
While I appreciate your sarcastic response it is sore of scary to realize
Some things you mention could occur.
Why not clown college?
While I appreciate your sarcastic response it is sore of scary to realize
Some things you mention could occur.
Why not clown college?
Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Clinton "Jihad" Against Vouchers
it seems highly unlikely that this would happen.
remember that government agencies already give out lots of money to nonpublic entities -- nonprofits, colleges and universities, hospitals, individuals -- largely without problems like those described above. there are occasional scandals but nothing that makes folks want to end the programs, by and large.
sure, there would be issues -- the feds still struggle about how to avoid giving money to degree mills, for example, without making legitimate outfits ineligible.
it's just not, to my knowledge, a really legitimate concern for clinton to raise. she can oppose vouchers all she wants, but she's going to have to come up with better reasons, i think.
-- alexander
remember that government agencies already give out lots of money to nonpublic entities -- nonprofits, colleges and universities, hospitals, individuals -- largely without problems like those described above. there are occasional scandals but nothing that makes folks want to end the programs, by and large.
sure, there would be issues -- the feds still struggle about how to avoid giving money to degree mills, for example, without making legitimate outfits ineligible.
it's just not, to my knowledge, a really legitimate concern for clinton to raise. she can oppose vouchers all she wants, but she's going to have to come up with better reasons, i think.
-- alexander
Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 8:51 PM
Clinton "Jihad" Against Vouchers
Wow, never thought I'd see the day that left-wing Fascists team up with right-wing Nationalists. Let's keep the fear mongering going....George Bush would be proud! I suppose, in the end, you're all a bunch of irrational knee-jerks, refusing to allow any conversation or even consideration of topics you have deemed oppositional to your political agenda. Way to go! Keep those minds closed tight!
Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 10:01 PM
dropouts not necessarily a bad thing
In my high school there are many students who are just taking up space, doing virtually no work. Many of them would benefit from being kicked out, because it would force them to grow up faster.
Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 10:01 PM
dropouts not necessarily a bad thing
In my high school there are many students who are just taking up space, doing virtually no work. Many of them would benefit from being kicked out, because it would force them to grow up faster.
Tue Feb 19, 2008 at 1:39 AM
Clinton "Jihad" Against Vouchers
"...remember that government agencies already give out lots of money to nonpublic entities -- nonprofits, colleges and universities, hospitals, individuals -- largely without problems like those described above. there are occasional scandals but nothing that makes folks want to end the programs, by and large..." (Alexander)
"Occasional scandals..."?
The bottomless pits that privatization has created over the past decade or more will never be cleaned out completely, and the audits and inspections are as underfunded as the oversight of those Chinese fish farms that have forced a lot of us to change our diets after taking a closer look. The only reason there are "occasional scandals", colleagues and friends, is that the press corps (real reporters, as opposed to propaganda flacks) has been decimated and the investigative and regulatory oversight from the feds all the way to the states and locals gutted.
Double my staff and I'll serve you up one a month.
Triple my staff and give me subpoena power and you'll get two a month.
At that point -- and not before -- we'll be able to discuss the "occasional scandal". Instead, we get a bunch of amateurs hyper ventilating about the magnet school lottery "scandal" while the Sun-Times ignores the testimony of hundreds of parents, teachers and principals at 14 of the 16 hearings that were held during the past 15 days in February 2008. That corporate agenda setting for you. Fire a mopey school clerk. Create another paper mache "hero". And try to distract the public from what's going on from Devon and Harlem (Edison) all the way out to 133rd and Ellis (the Carvers).
The old Chicago reporters' maxim was "If your mother says she loves you, check it out!"
The new rule seems to be "Of course your mother loves you. She just had an important business meeting at the Empress Casino. Why do you have issues with your mother? Do you need anger management maybe? Who would think of asking such an insensitive question?"
What Chicago has needed for the past ten years, as deregulation and privatization sucked the life out of the public school budget, is a Henry Waxman in City Council or the Illinois General Assembly. Instead, we got adulation for the mayoral miracle myth and boilerplate.
But in addition to a Henry Waxman -- a lot of staff spade work and patience as the lies are slowly peeled away.
Take a small scenario:
Waxman: Mr. Duncan, why did your staff report that the "capacity" of Gladstone Elementary School was nearly 40 percent greater than the actual capacity of the school? Some parents and even the former principal are suggesting that you are looking for a pretext to close another school in what people are calling the "Riis school DMZ". Can you explain how this difference became policy in your administration?
Duncan: I had a moral obligation to the taxpayers to close underperforming schools and we thought that Gladstone was underperforming.
Waxman: And it had nothing to do with several developers who had contributed to both the mayor and the local alderman along that section of Roosevelt Road and a half mile north of there at the site of the old Riis Elementary School?
Duncan: What's a developer?
Etc.
At this point, one of the reasons there are few scandals is that there is little of nor oversight of privatization, few inspections, and virtually no audits, Alexander.
Privatization has been based on its second "leg" -- deregulation -- and the little stool is made complete when the third leg is in place (corporate media dedicated to singing the corporate song rather than reporting).
Whether exempting private contractors from judicial oversight or the UCMJ in Baghdad (recently, we learned that even rape can't be procsecuted if the rapists are employees of Haliburton of one of the other major Iraq War profiteers) or exempting Chicago charter schools from even the flimsiest reporting of key financial information, the story is and has been the same since the jihad against public schools began.
Before you ask rhetorical questions, why not ask some of the questions a reporter might wants answers to?
No one but two of us (Substance and the Cross City Campaign) complained in Chicago when charter schools were lumped in the budget under "Contractual and Other Services" without any breakout. Chicago charter schools are still disaggregated in the CPS budget -- three years after the first query. Only in 2008, CPS has assigned a lawyer full-time to write the "F--- You" letter to anyone who makes a Freedom of Information request.
Get real. The "occasional scandal" doesn't happen with those imported fish if nobody is doing a bacteria count. But I strongly suggest that you avoid sushi for the next few years. Ditto, don't let you kid chew on those imported Thomas the Tank Engine trains or swallow the magnets from those neat Magnetix toys (that are still, by the way, on the shelves despite that brilliant and heartbreaking Tribune investigation more than a year ago).
No one is complaining in Chicago when charter schools are exempted from oversight by the Inspector General. Whiule the IG was chasing down (and then trumpeting) a penny ante problem involving one poor school clerk, Aspira alone was racking up some stuff that would rock the socks in any other city.
Instead of even the "occasional scandal", in Chicago we get lurid diversionary tabloid stories about penny ante "scandals" in the magnet school lottery to keep everyone breathless and looking in the opposite direction from dozens of major predations and a couple of dozen official lies (like, just about every "demographic" report that was presented to the recent school closing hearings; it was a hoot, but only the parents and teachers heard it and nobody thought it was a joke).
During the past two weeks, the beginning of every hearing on every school closing began with a bunch of very important legal boilerplate -- including the fact that charter schools are exempt from oversight for "underutilization" -- that basically created three classes of schools and gave the Daley administration the power to close schools on the basis of any pretext they could package and sell to the public (amid the complacency or complicity of most of what's left of the Chicago press corps).
So, you can have Arne Duncan (through the kinky research of his "Demographics" people) proclaiming that a school like Gladstone or Andersen is "underutilized" while a "public school" less than a mile away (but a charter) is less than half "utilized" by any of the same measures.
This is all going on in real time right in front of everyone's eyes.
Deregulation and privatization go hand-in-hand from Baghdad (Haliburton) to Chicago (dozens of the charter schools) and everyone is supposed to sit around in the naive faith that someday someone will take a close legal look at where all those "Contractual and other Services" dollars are being poured -- and have been?
Chicago charters are massively deregulated.
And massively unaudited.
And please don't tell me that those reviews CPS talks about (to ones that include cooking the books about the "comparison school average" (apples -- the charters which require applications and can kick children out -- definitely, compared with shriveled prunes -- the real public school down the street that has to take the kids who live nearby and anyone the charters can dump for not following those complex performance contracts they require -- to the benefit of the apples.
It would take a couple of auditors and some forensic specialists a few months to dig through the mess (and waste, and muck) in the Aspira charter schools alone, but instead what Chicago gets is fairy tale data, cooking the books, and quickies like the move of Mirta Ramirez from 2435 N. Western to Moos last summer (before the rats -- as in rodents, not administrators -- at Mirta Ramirez's 2435 N. Western Ave. building, which Aspira had allowed to fester, got big enough to start carrying out the students).
"Occasional scandals..."?
The bottomless pits that privatization has created over the past decade or more will never be cleaned out completely, and the audits and inspections are as underfunded as the oversight of those Chinese fish farms that have forced a lot of us to change our diets after taking a closer look. The only reason there are "occasional scandals", colleagues and friends, is that the press corps (real reporters, as opposed to propaganda flacks) has been decimated and the investigative and regulatory oversight from the feds all the way to the states and locals gutted.
Double my staff and I'll serve you up one a month.
Triple my staff and give me subpoena power and you'll get two a month.
At that point -- and not before -- we'll be able to discuss the "occasional scandal". Instead, we get a bunch of amateurs hyper ventilating about the magnet school lottery "scandal" while the Sun-Times ignores the testimony of hundreds of parents, teachers and principals at 14 of the 16 hearings that were held during the past 15 days in February 2008. That corporate agenda setting for you. Fire a mopey school clerk. Create another paper mache "hero". And try to distract the public from what's going on from Devon and Harlem (Edison) all the way out to 133rd and Ellis (the Carvers).
The old Chicago reporters' maxim was "If your mother says she loves you, check it out!"
The new rule seems to be "Of course your mother loves you. She just had an important business meeting at the Empress Casino. Why do you have issues with your mother? Do you need anger management maybe? Who would think of asking such an insensitive question?"
What Chicago has needed for the past ten years, as deregulation and privatization sucked the life out of the public school budget, is a Henry Waxman in City Council or the Illinois General Assembly. Instead, we got adulation for the mayoral miracle myth and boilerplate.
But in addition to a Henry Waxman -- a lot of staff spade work and patience as the lies are slowly peeled away.
Take a small scenario:
Waxman: Mr. Duncan, why did your staff report that the "capacity" of Gladstone Elementary School was nearly 40 percent greater than the actual capacity of the school? Some parents and even the former principal are suggesting that you are looking for a pretext to close another school in what people are calling the "Riis school DMZ". Can you explain how this difference became policy in your administration?
Duncan: I had a moral obligation to the taxpayers to close underperforming schools and we thought that Gladstone was underperforming.
Waxman: And it had nothing to do with several developers who had contributed to both the mayor and the local alderman along that section of Roosevelt Road and a half mile north of there at the site of the old Riis Elementary School?
Duncan: What's a developer?
Etc.
At this point, one of the reasons there are few scandals is that there is little of nor oversight of privatization, few inspections, and virtually no audits, Alexander.
Privatization has been based on its second "leg" -- deregulation -- and the little stool is made complete when the third leg is in place (corporate media dedicated to singing the corporate song rather than reporting).
Whether exempting private contractors from judicial oversight or the UCMJ in Baghdad (recently, we learned that even rape can't be procsecuted if the rapists are employees of Haliburton of one of the other major Iraq War profiteers) or exempting Chicago charter schools from even the flimsiest reporting of key financial information, the story is and has been the same since the jihad against public schools began.
Before you ask rhetorical questions, why not ask some of the questions a reporter might wants answers to?
No one but two of us (Substance and the Cross City Campaign) complained in Chicago when charter schools were lumped in the budget under "Contractual and Other Services" without any breakout. Chicago charter schools are still disaggregated in the CPS budget -- three years after the first query. Only in 2008, CPS has assigned a lawyer full-time to write the "F--- You" letter to anyone who makes a Freedom of Information request.
Get real. The "occasional scandal" doesn't happen with those imported fish if nobody is doing a bacteria count. But I strongly suggest that you avoid sushi for the next few years. Ditto, don't let you kid chew on those imported Thomas the Tank Engine trains or swallow the magnets from those neat Magnetix toys (that are still, by the way, on the shelves despite that brilliant and heartbreaking Tribune investigation more than a year ago).
No one is complaining in Chicago when charter schools are exempted from oversight by the Inspector General. Whiule the IG was chasing down (and then trumpeting) a penny ante problem involving one poor school clerk, Aspira alone was racking up some stuff that would rock the socks in any other city.
Instead of even the "occasional scandal", in Chicago we get lurid diversionary tabloid stories about penny ante "scandals" in the magnet school lottery to keep everyone breathless and looking in the opposite direction from dozens of major predations and a couple of dozen official lies (like, just about every "demographic" report that was presented to the recent school closing hearings; it was a hoot, but only the parents and teachers heard it and nobody thought it was a joke).
During the past two weeks, the beginning of every hearing on every school closing began with a bunch of very important legal boilerplate -- including the fact that charter schools are exempt from oversight for "underutilization" -- that basically created three classes of schools and gave the Daley administration the power to close schools on the basis of any pretext they could package and sell to the public (amid the complacency or complicity of most of what's left of the Chicago press corps).
So, you can have Arne Duncan (through the kinky research of his "Demographics" people) proclaiming that a school like Gladstone or Andersen is "underutilized" while a "public school" less than a mile away (but a charter) is less than half "utilized" by any of the same measures.
This is all going on in real time right in front of everyone's eyes.
Deregulation and privatization go hand-in-hand from Baghdad (Haliburton) to Chicago (dozens of the charter schools) and everyone is supposed to sit around in the naive faith that someday someone will take a close legal look at where all those "Contractual and other Services" dollars are being poured -- and have been?
Chicago charters are massively deregulated.
And massively unaudited.
And please don't tell me that those reviews CPS talks about (to ones that include cooking the books about the "comparison school average" (apples -- the charters which require applications and can kick children out -- definitely, compared with shriveled prunes -- the real public school down the street that has to take the kids who live nearby and anyone the charters can dump for not following those complex performance contracts they require -- to the benefit of the apples.
It would take a couple of auditors and some forensic specialists a few months to dig through the mess (and waste, and muck) in the Aspira charter schools alone, but instead what Chicago gets is fairy tale data, cooking the books, and quickies like the move of Mirta Ramirez from 2435 N. Western to Moos last summer (before the rats -- as in rodents, not administrators -- at Mirta Ramirez's 2435 N. Western Ave. building, which Aspira had allowed to fester, got big enough to start carrying out the students).
Tue Feb 19, 2008 at 10:28 AM
Clinton "Jihad" Against Vouchers
My brain turned to mush while trying to read George's last post. I have nothing else to say.
Wed Feb 20, 2008 at 12:14 AM
Clinton "Jihad" Against Vouchers
Comrade Schmidt, maybe you should get your own blog instead of hijaking someone else's blog, it is a breach of protocol. Oh wait, you have a site that no one goes to, which is why you blather on in here. I'm all for free speech, but be reasonable in the length of your posts, it's selfish to consume so much space. Maybe you could link people to evidence at your own site? Or your own blog perhaps?
