Even as CPS opens more new schools, children with special needs have a tougher time finding options. Placements in private therapeutic schools are scarce, and some charters are reluctant to enroll them.
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Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
By: Alexander Russo / June 09, 2008
A June 5 email from Advance Illinois, the statewide education organization that's been forming over the past year, announced some new details about the organization's shape and membership, along with its first executive director, Robin Steans.
Steans has been a presence in school reform circles for many years, mostly through the Steans Foundation, which she helped run. She's also been a teacher, LSC member, and founder of several organizations, according to this email.
As head of Advance Illinois, she'll head what's intended to be an objective, independent advocacy organization working on statewide education issues. What that means, exactly, or how AE will coordinate with existing state reform organizations, remain to be seen. But this is a Gates-funded initiative, so you can guess that high school reform and workforce readiness will be a big part of the agenda.
Thanks to a reader for passing this along. Feel free to forward emails, memos, and announcements of interest to district299 at gmail dot com. I won't use your name without permission.
------ Forwarded Message
From: Advance Illinois <advanceillinois@advanceillinois.org>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 18:29:57 -0500
To: <advanceillinois@advanceillinois.org>
Conversation: Advance Illinois
Subject: Advance Illinois
Dear Colleagues:
We are writing to you as a leader who cares deeply about how prepared
Illinois' children are for the future, and who has worked with us in
efforts to improve the quality of public schools across the state. We
want to share with you some advance news about a new nonprofit
education policy organization we will launch this fall called Advance Illinois and to thank those of you who have helped us think things through over the past year.
Advance Illinois will be an independent, objective voice to
promote a public education system in Illinois that prepares all
students to be ready for work, college, and democratic citizenship.
Advance Illinois intends to provide objective research and data about
the state of education in Illinois, work in a bipartisan way to develop
a multi-issue policy agenda for change, partner with other groups and
leaders to build public support for key policy changes, and keep
student needs always at the center of its work.
Why a new education organization? Illinois is a cultural and economic
leader, but statewide education performance is, at best, mediocre. We
lag on nearly every important indicator of education quality,
achievement and attainment that matters – for example, elementary
school reading, high school mathematics and science, high school
graduation rates and college entrance and completion rates. In
addition, the achievement gaps between Illinois' highest and lowest
income students and between its majority and minority populations are
among the worst in the nation. At the same time, the state must
develop highly skilled workers across a broad range of fields. If
Illinois wants to bring in better, higher-paying jobs, it must turn out
better graduates. The state needs to raise its expectations and
strengthen its policies. This will create opportunity for all young
people and enhance the long-term well-being of Illlinois' civic life
and economy. Alongside existing organizations that address particular
educational issues or regions, Advance Illinois is committed to
addressing the comprehensive array of issues affecting students across
the state, and will do so by helping to drive change at the state
level.
In advance of the organization's fall launch, Advance Illinois is
pleased to announce that the organization has hired Robin M. Steans to
serve as its Executive Director.
Robin has significant experience in public school reform, and has led
efforts designed to develop and retain high quality teachers, support
intensive school-based instructional strategies, bring additional
social supports to students in at-risk neighborhoods, and increase
college-readiness and access. She has worked as a public school
teacher in Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco; served as a board member
of education policy organizations; and founded several start-up
organizations. We believe Robin's skills and track record - her
ability to unite individuals for common cause, her knowledge of
education policy and how it plays out at the school level, her
experience as a public school parent, teacher, Local School Council
member and activist, and her relentless passion for improving education
for all children - make her an outstanding captain of our team.
We hope to engage you in the coming months as we work to refine our
agenda and strategy. Robin will be spending her first few months on
the job ramping up for our fall launch, and would welcome your input
and an opportunity to tell you more about our work. Please look for
more information in coming months, and don't hesitate to get in touch
with Robin or us in the meantime. Robin can be reached at
rsteans@AdvanceIllinois.org or at (312) 235-4545. We look forward to
partnering with you on this critical issue.
Sincerely,
The Advance Illinois Board of Directors
Lewis Collens
Professor of Law and President Emeritus, Illinois Institute of Technology
William M. Daley
Chairman of the Midwest Region, JP Morgan Chase & Co.
Clerk Miguel del Valle
City Clerk of Chicago and former Chair of Illinois Senate Education Committee
Governor Jim Edgar
Former Governor of Illinois
Joseph Fatheree
2006-2007 Illinois Teacher of the Year, Effingham High School
Honorable J. Dennis Hastert
Former Speaker of the House, US House of Representatives
Dr. Timothy Knowles
Lewis-Sebring Director, Urban Education Institute, University of Chicago
Sylvia Puente
Director, Center for Metropolitan Chicago Initiatives, University of Notre Dame Institute for Latino Studies
Charles P. Rose
Founding Partner, Franczek Sullivan, P.C.
Edward B. Rust Jr.
Chairman and CEO, State Farm Insurance Companies
Patricia Watkins
Executive Director, TARGET Area Community Development Corporation
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Dear PTCS
You wrote amongst other pearls of wisdom:
“One more comment Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the worst crime teachers are agreeing to participate in--the medication of young people because they can't 'focus.' Or that they 'can't sit still and follow directions.'â€
How do you know what a kid is taking? When you write a story aimed at riling up those of us
Who teach every day please do not come across so transparently.
I wish I had the time to visit ONE school a semester let alone the hundreds you claim
Have been in. Also no teacher with any brain is going to talk in front of a stranger about
Students.
Finally Your story is a one I only answered you because of the medication claim.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Daley is in charge. He maintains the two class school system. If Daley wanted to support neighborhood schools in high poverty and/or high ELL populations he has had plenty of opportunity to do something positive instead of destroying them. The present union leadership does Daley's bidding. Problem is at the top.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Just to make it easy (I don't usually transmit URLs, by the way), you can find
"Advance Illinois in their own words... Complete Transcript of all speakers and remarks from the June 19, 2009 breakfast"
The transcript is in the second position, right column, at our June 2009 Home Page. Our organizational structure goes month-to-month both for Substance (print edition) and Substancenews.net (Web).
Their own words are worth reading.
Advance Illinois will provide some interesting stuff in the next few years. I doubt they're open to a full debate about the claims they're making in their teacher bashing research, but that's another story for another time.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
"...The unions have done wayyyy much more harm than good for the profession of teaching. I've visited hundreds of schools, and I can tell you, its plain to see the schools basically 'getting by,' and then the ones where educators are working instead of hanging out in the teachers lounge complaining they don't understand 'today's kids'..." ("Plain Talking" this morning...).
You know, this kind of nonsense discredits anonymous lies, liars, slanderers, and libelists.
Especially when dealing with the future of Advance Illinois. They are actually being forthright in their work, as opposed to that stuff you shoved in at this blog earlier today. Be a man! Stand up for your research and your beliefs.
At least the people from Advance Illinois speak in their own names and are as "transparent" as they demand others to be.
I requested their complete transcript from the June 19 breakfast with Arne Duncan. I covered several of the stories that unfolded that day (downstairs at the breakfast; on the sidewalk at the protests; ets.). Trouble was, photographing the event left me inadequate time to take notes from Arne and the other speakers (Robin Steans delivered a lengthy analysis; Duncan did both his stump speech and a Q & A). So I asked their press people for a copy of the transcript, and they provided it as soon as they got it. We posted it with only one change: We paragraphed it so that people wouldn't be stuck in four pages of Arneduncanspeak (for example). The original wasn't paragraphed.
But that's what was said at the breakfast, and now it's up. Advance Illinois was transparent; so were we with their help.
But you want to be murky. Why?
Although it took an extra couple of days, Advance Illinois provided the transcript, and we posted it on our site, along with the stories of the protests and other stories about their Duncan visit.
You can get to it at the May Home Page at www.substancenews.net.
This contrasts sharply with that silly nonsense you just shovelled up here.
If you are going to try and support Robin Steans and Advance Illinois, follow their example. Sign your own name and join the debate. The fig leaf is off anyway, "Straight", so why not just be yourself. What's to hide under there. If you've really spent those thousands of hours in those hundreds of schools, let's go over them one by one. Otherwise... What's really under that fig leaf?
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
PTCS: You go open a charter school just for ADD/ADHD students. Would love to see that.
One more comment
Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the worst crime teachers are agreeing to participate in--the medication of young people because they can't 'focus.' Or that they 'can't sit still and follow directions.'
The use of medication for ADD is evidence that schools are not doing their job when they condone or support teachers who are in agreement with a pill pushing doctor to subdue a young person's mind and body for the sole reason they are doing terribly in school. To me, this is a misguided practice and needs to really be stopped.
Imagine a school where kids, before they are put on medication that will affect their body for the rest of their lives, are given an alternative school program that would better meet the needs of the child? And if that doesn't work, then try a different instructional approach.
George Digested SourGrapes picked off the Union Tree
George, Advance Illinois will hopefully reform a system that could use some help. All excellent educators know that even when you've got a great program, there's always room for improvement. Change is the name of the game.
If the unions can possibly be busted up for education, maybe just maybe, teaching can become a profession instead of a 'hit and miss' proposition.
The unions have done wayyyy much more harm than good for the profession of teaching. I've visited hundreds of schools, and I can tell you, its plain to see the schools basically 'getting by,' and then the ones where educators are working instead of hanging out in the teachers lounge complaining they don't understand 'today's kids'
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
CPS and Education brass are unethical.
George for President!!
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
That's awesome. I'm excited to hear they actually have a teacher as one of the people involved in the process of education reform.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Dear to whom it may concern
I decided to start a committee to direct operating room procedures since
people still die on the table. It will have only one doctor on it however.
Since I am a non drinker I actually resent the union paying for drinks.
However I realize it is a legitimate entertainment expense.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Robin is a wonderful woman with a lot of family money. Her husband is a powerful AUSA. And her sisters can do whatever they please. So she can't be bought.
That said, why are charter schools allowed to hire spouses for high-paying jobs for which they would be unqualified if their wives weren't handling the budget? And why does YWLCS consider all funding "fungible"? Has anyone really taken a look at how our tax dollars are being wasted?
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
There is no room in my profession for people outside it. No one can do anything unless they are me. Drinks are on the union.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Ok
I will talk to anyone on that board who can show me one stitch
received in the line of duty. I will be happy to discuss 1979 with
any of those people who did not get paid for 6 weeks. For every
student they have had murdered they can have 10 minutes. For
every murderer they taught 5 min. If anyone tried assemble
a more useless group of people to talk about my world it
would be hard.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Cermack rd. is fundamentally correct. I would suggest George read the law.
Failure of a school to make AYP triggers requirements of Title I, Part A. If a school fails to make AYP for two consecutive years, it must be identified by the local educational agency for school improvement. 20 U.S.C. § 6316(b)(1)(A). Among other things, a school in improvement status must inform all of its students, including those who have been assessed as proficient, that they are permitted to transfer to any school within the district that has not been identified for school improvement. Id. § 6316(b)(1)(E)(i). The school must also develop a two-year plan setting forth extensive measures to improve student performance, including further education for teachers and possible before- or after-school instruction, or summer instruction. Id. §§ 6316(b)(3)(A)(iii), (ix). If a school does not make AYP after two full years of improvement status, it is “identif[ied] . . . for corrective action.†Id. § 6316(b)(7)(C)(iv). Corrective action involves significant changes, such as replacing teachers who are “relevant to the failure to make [AYP],†or instituting an entirely new curriculum. Id. If after a full year of corrective action a school has still not made AYP, the district must restructure the school entirely; options for restructuring include “[r]eopening the school as a public charter school,†replacing the majority of the staff, or letting the State’s department of education run the school directly. Id. § 6316(b)(8)(B).
So the CPS does have the option of closing the school replacing 51% of the teachers with other union teachers and reopening the school again as a traditional public school. This process could go on and on with public school opening closing and then reopening again under a new structure with replacing 51% of the staff with union teachers. Effectively this would have no effect on our union if CPS went this path.
There is nothing in the law that requires the closed school to reopened as a charter or even a contract school. So I would say Cermack road is correct that the law does not require the creation of public charters in schools closed for not making AYP. It is a CPS choice to do so.
Why CPS makes this choice comes down to politics, the complete lack of power of organized labor in Chicago, and the money being given to CPS by a number of different not for profit entities, including Gates Foundation, that ideologically support charters as part of a market choice approach to school reform.
Given that our union is in a state of collapse we are getting the union breaking option of NCLB's school closure provisions.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Maybe they are sticking their noses in because they think there are ways illinois could get further towards the goal 1:04 seems to espouse - educating everyone well. So, instead of knee jerk fatalism, what about going to talk to Robin Stains, email her, set up a meeting? Maybe find out how these people nosing around plan on learning from people who teach, from principals, from district people, and from parents. Declaring conspiracies seems a good strategy for doing nothing, remaining righteous, and getting nowhere.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Dear I see a teacher
Yes you are correct I do see a teacher on the board ONE teacher. The rest are all
not teachers. So perhaps my question should be why are these people sticking their political noses in this alleged problem? Remember that this country attempts to educates everyone. Not just the rich, famous, beautiful, or politically connected .The education community does not need any advice from all those sage people with such recent concerns for truth justice and the American way. My prediction about the real purpose of this group stands Time will tell I am correct
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
"...Chicago's response to these NCLB consequences has been to close public general schools and create public charter schools. But that is Chicago's response to NCLB, not a requirement of NCLB..." Cermak Road).
Yes it is. First, the privatization of supplementary services for "failing" schools. Then the privatization of schooling itself.
Heck, even Arne Duncan knows that (sort of). He just signed off on that national ad (New York Times, two days ago) that was signed by (among others) the same Susan Neuman who says (this week's Time magazine) that NCLB was designed to discredit public education so that privatization came next.
Neuman was one of the top people in the U.S. Department of Education when NCLB began when Rod Paige was Chief there. Her visits to Chicago were legendary back in the heady days when NCLB was starting. Now she's done a Scott McClellan and outed her former Education Department colleagues. Read the current Time magazine, then at least rethink your notion.
The reasons why George W. Bush and Margaret Spellings spend so much time in Chicago is that Mayor Daley is way out in front on the privatization parade. One of the other most interesting things about all this is that I can't remember a Spellings visit the past three years when she didn't go straight to a charter school (usually Noble Street, if memory serves), dissing all of the public schools, from "best" to "worst." Spellings, Bush and Daley are all in the privatization business.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Seems to be a teacher on the board of this outfit. Seems he won teacher of the year. But this is a conspiracy. This is code for privatization. Business. Political leaders. They are coming for us. Look out. Hastert introduced no child left behind. Oh. What? It was Kennedy. Well that doesn't matter. We better watch out. College, work readiness and democractic society. We better take cover.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Circle Jerk
I did not see any classroom teachers on the list. So the entire thing
is mute educationally. Anyone want to bet how this crew will come
Out on the new crisis of our pensions?
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
George is muddling up the Steans Sisters. There is a state senator. There is also a leader of Advance Illinois. As for this group, it is sorely needed. Anyone who can argue that Illinois has a logical state policy for schools or that having heavy hitters on a board of directors is a bad idea if you want to get something done has totally lost perspective on the condition of illinois schools (sure George there are good ones in some places, but perhaps Advance Illinois will actually do something for the places there aren't any) and the realities of how to get things done.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
More! More!
Next thing you know, you're going to tell me that Rust, Steans and Bill Daley are really, down deep, just "middle class" folks like the rest of us. This is another purchase of some quotations for the Testocracy. First Steans buys herself a perch in the General Assembly. Now she's teamed up with a bunch of corporate types and a handful of politicos and subsidized cheerleaders for corporate "school reform" to provide more "objective" support for the Business Roundtable's version of public education.
These things are toxic. I can't wait to begin reading the first quotes in the Tribune and Sun-Times from this latest example of "bipartisan" "objectivity."
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Karen Lewis,
But, the majority of high school graduates do not go on to college. There are jobs out there that they can do, and I would argue some more that currently require a degree could be opened up with more post high school training.
The reason we have a public education system is to prepare students for the rest of their lives. That will involve work, at some point in time for most of them. It will involve college for some of them and it will involve democratic participation by all of them (hopefully).
NCLB is villified as being 800 lb monster of education, but the fact is, NCLB did not create the problem of poor students doing worse in school than better off students. It didn't create the problem of disabled students doing worse than their non-disabled peers. Yes, it exposed these problems to a greater extent than they had been before. And it imposed consequences on failing to solve these problems.
Now, I grant you, it is unfair to put the burden of solving the achievement gap on the school when it is caused by wider societal problems that a school cannot solve, but then you see students who come from rough circumstances and shine academically, and you wonder, if this students can excel why can't those other students? Of course, if this were commonplace, there wouldn't be news stories about these students.
Chicago's response to these NCLB consequences has been to close public general schools and create public charter schools. But that is Chicago's response to NCLB, not a requirement of NCLB. It is Chicago's policy to sort students into academically excellent (Selective Enrollment), academically engaged (charter and/or military schools) and other (general high schools) schools.
I guess my point is are you sure your beef is with NCLB, and not Chicago's implementation of it and the Chicago education system?
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
If Advance Illinois is not in support of publicly funded public education, then they can call themselves whatever they want. According to the press release, Robin Steans is a former public school teacher. Brava! However, the idea that "[b]Advance Illinois will be an independent, objective voice to promote a public education system in Illinois that prepares all students to be ready for work, college, and democratic citizenship[/b]"...doesn't pass muster.
Dennis Hastert, one of the chief architects of the teacher bashing, "No Child Left [u][b]Standing[/b][/u] fiasco" doesn't have an independent molecule in his political being. Edgar, Rust, Rose, Del Valle et. al..? This is who we need to put on a Board?
School reform is an oxymoron. It is a code word for PRIVATIZATION. So let's put all the kids in uniform, have them engaged in test prep, narrow the curriculum to the subjects tested and tell them they're failures. Why do so many children hate school by the time they're only 8 or 9? Because instead of music, art, social studies and science these kids are inundated with reading, math, reading, math ALL DAY LONG!!! Some don't even get recess anymore. This so-called school reform has taken the [b]JOY[/b] out of learning and teaching.
Notice the priorities - work, college and democratic citizenship. The jobs for people who did not go to college and could sustain families do not exist any longer. By the time many of our students should be ready for college, they have been told they are failures because they didn't pass a test. What incentive is there to go to college, take more tests, and be told you are a failure yet again????
Promotion of democratic citizenship - if this were the case, the cornerstone of an education in Illinois would be social justice.
Let's be honest. Advance Illinois is [u][b]not[/b][/u] promoting [b]education[/b]. It is promoting [b]training[/b] and these require two very different mindsets. Education is fast becoming the luxury it was before the GI Bill after WWII. Education is life-enriching. Training is career preparation.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
Ditto to Doug! This isn't some right-wing conspiracy-- this is what we call "it's take a village . . . " Robin is a great pick for the leader and I am sure we will see great things from them-- great things for ALL children!
Great News Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
I am excited to hear about the launch of Advance Illinois. Every year, thousands of Illinois children fall behind and our high school graduation rates are terrible. Robin Steans is a terrific leader and will find a way to move the State in the right direction.
Steans To Run New Statewide Organization
"...We lag on nearly every important indicator of education quality, achievement and attainment that matters – for example, elementary school reading, high school mathematics and science, high school graduation rates and college entrance and completion rates..." (Advance Illinois founding statement).
Actually, this is not true.
If the poor (usually segregated; most often serving the state's most segregated black ghettos) schools in Illinois are subtracted, Illinois has some of the best public schools in the USA. This manifesto comes straight out of the same right wing corporate playbook that has been used for more than a decade to bash teachers, bust teacher unions, and privatize as much public school as possible before every profiteer and crooked charter school "entrepreneur" gets caught (and, hopefully, indicated and jailed) from here to Louisiana, and from Ohio to Arizona and California. These guys and gals have one thing in common: bashing urban public schools and busting unions.
What we have to face is that the massive racial and economic segregation are the problem, and the test scores that "prove" the "failure of public schools" are simply the hatchet hatchet men like these use to bash public schools.
"Advance Illinois" is not going to admit that.
The people on its Board of Directors are a bunch of corporate teacher bashing union busting privatization toadies. Including some of the supposedly "progressive" political leaders (who have long been way out front pushing charters).
What we have here is another highly funded right wing "objective" outfit that will continue to "report" along the lines in the paragraph I quoted above. This outfit is just going to be another amplifier in the echo chamber of right wing propaganda aimed at privatizing as much urban public education as possible. Rust has been in this business for a generation.
Migquel Del Valle, Mr. Aspira gets anything it wants forever?
Miguel DelValle never met a charter school he wouldn't promote in his part of town -- against the public schools there. Without Del Valle, Aspira's charter schools would have been investigated (and some people probably indicted) a long time ago. This kind of "progressive" cover is necessary if the kind of corporate "objectivity" Advance Illinois will tout is to get widespread circulation.
Jim Edgar -- Mr. Strip Black People of Democracy through the Amendatory Act and other racist attacks on Chicago? Edgar's people in the Illinois House and Senate used to use explicitly racist terms when discussing CPS back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Edgar himself sustained the Chicago School Finance Authority (enter, Mike Koldyke) and its version of corporate CPS strangulation into a second decade of existence, even after CPS buildings began crumbling thanks to Edgar's version of how to provide public education for the nation's poorest and most segregated black children.
Jim Edgar and his staff wrote the Amendatory Act (in partnership with Daley's people and Daley's "progressive" touts) in 1995 when he was governor, turning Chicago's public schools (but not those in his home town or out in Republican country) into a dictatorship.
Dennis Hastert was one of the main people behind No Child Left Behind. Against, Hastert and the Republican staff in Washington had to have "bipartisan" backing (and hundreds of right wing attacks on public schools) to close the deal.
Bill Daley -- Mr. NAFTA. Just what the Democratics need now that more than three-quarters of the people who've been paying attention in the primaries have rejected "free trade" as a way of destroying the lives of working people from the Andes through Toronto while enriching the handful of Finance people who've been building those McMansions up in Bill's far northwest side "community." Right. There's a guy -- private schooling, teacher bashing, union busting and privatization all the way -- who's going to promote public education in Chicago.
And Charley Rose just negotiated the CPS union contracts for the Daley machine. Second to Jim Franczek himself, Charley is one of the most sophisticated union busting lawyers in the Midwest, not just Chicago.