Marshall High and other turnaround high schools, in Chicago and nationally, face a thorny dilemma. Higher-performing students are being siphoned off through competition, driving down enrollment and raising tough policy questions about the future of these schools.
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Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
By: Alexander Russo / September 23, 2008
A
piece in today's Wall Street Journal digs deep into the history of the
Chicago Annenberg Challenge to try and figure out how close was the
association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, and indeed unearths
some new documentation that no one else has gotten to (ie, minutes and
records from CAC board meetings).
But the paper's findings don't seem to me to be so startling or upsetting as the paper would make it seem (Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism on Schools).
We already know that Obama and Ayers overlapped working on the
project. We already know what the CAC did: hand money out to
community and education groups.
Sure, the Obama campaign may have downplayed the association. Shame
on them. But nothing "radical" came of the Chicago Annenberg
Challenge. The Challenge gave money to education and community groups
but failed to transform CPS in any wide or lasting way. For my 2001
chapter on how the Challenge evolved in Chicago, click here: From Frontline Leader to Rearguard Action (Fordham Foundation).
Cross-posted from TWIE
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
I'm voting for "that one"!
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
Chicago Public School is TERRIBLE!... I couldn't afford to send my kids to Chicago Lab school and refuse send them to the public school there... so I left. Hopefully the parents there were able to do something about the neighborhood school. Obviously, we couldn't wait for the gov't to do anything about it... even if it's in their neighborhood.
I've read post w/a Chicagoan saying "you don't want Obama to bring Chicago politics to the U.S". Oh I soooo concur. I've learned to be quite living in Chicago, I guess living in Obama's friends and Mayor Daley didn't help me much as I am a republican... and our voices do not matter to them. Democratic Chicago politics are basically "god" and controls everything. I just wish the people would rise up and say "no more".
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
"...If you are a small school administrator, start looking for a new job! Other administators in small schools have already began their search and have new positions. Even if you have a contract, when they close your school, your contract will be null and void! If they like you, they will let you work in the area office, with full pay for a little while!..." (Principal, yesterday morning).
One other thing, small schools people.
Don't leave home without a copy of every scrap of paper they ever gave you because when Arne Duncan and company go after you, they also try and slander your reputation. It's part of the same procedure that involves "hearing officers" (who always rule in Arne's favor) and legions of lawyers (who have been ordered to represent their "client" by Patrick Rocks, no matter how complex the case may be, or what the law and ethnics may require).
You've got to keep your own boxes of evidence, just in case, two years from now (like the teachers at dozens of schools, from Williams and Dodge to Orr and Harper) you hear about what a terrible "failure" you always were and how Arne had to step in like the "hero" he is and shut you down to stop the suffering you were inflicting on those poor children.
Etc.
Etc.
Blah blah blah.
If you want to tell your story on the record as this evolves, you know how to reach me. We just spent over a year providing ourselves with one of the most powerful Websites (and server backup) available in this town, and we're going to be filling it.
Just because you drank the Kool Aid and survived doesn't mean they're not coming after you a second time. The truth will help, but there are obviously a vast number of reasons for people to sit on the sidelines, cowardly but safe, while all this is done.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
The Chicago High School Redesign Intiative (CHSRI) layed off all of its employees last Monday who were working with small schools. CHSRI managed the Bill Gates grants that help fund additional money to the small school movement. This will be the last school year that there will be a small school AIO. Next school year the small schools will return to the area offices AIO's or to the turnaround school AIO. CPS will be closing small schools and turning them back to "one" whole school. Small schools cost too much money because of higher administrative costs and CPS will be able to save money by going back to one principal instead of three or four principals per building. In a small school you must have at least 600 students per school, for the staffing formulas to work economically P.S.- If you are a small school administrator, start looking for a new job! Other administators in small schools have already began their search and have new positions. Even if you have a contract, when they close your school, your contract will be null and void! If they like you, they will let you work in the area office, with full pay for a little while!
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
"...I know, I know, I am not using my â€real name†name so you will likely ignore this post as you often do..." (Educator, Thursday).
Austin is one of the best examples, and will be a feature in the discussion about segregation in court in January. Since September 2004, Arne Duncan's administration has deprived the high school age students of the Austin community of a general high school that anyone can attend. While any high school age student west of Austin Blvd. can attend the community's high school (Oak Park, River Forest) the students east of Austin Blvd. are told to travel as far east as Manley and Marshall (now their "neighborhood schools") while Duncan -- for five years! -- has been allowed to conduct a massive experiment on the children of Austin.
Back to the list of high schools that have been flipped (privatized) in the past three years. Collins now hosts "North Lawndale Charter". Englewood is Urban Prep. Calumet is owned and operated by Perspectives, Inc. And Austin gets "entreprenuership" thanks to all the clout Mike Bakalis had going (even before he was given effective title to turn the Austin building into an exclusive franchise for American Quality Schools).
Show me one suburb where that kind of attack on public education has taken place. The history of what's been done since the Daley takeover will provide many chapters for the study of segregation when they are written. Meanwhile, CPS is (again) spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers to try and get out from under any "desegregation" rules.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
George,
Can you point to any evidence that “small schools†are more “segregationist†that any of the large non-selective high schools in Chicago? To use your example: Is the Austin campus more segregated now in its “small school†form than it was before when it was one large high school?
How do small schools “bust unions�
What evidence do you have that large comprehensive general high schools, such as you find in the “white, wealthier†suburbs, work for low-income, minority children? Can you find even one in the city of Chicago?
Why are you mislabeling Austin Business and Entrepreneurship Academy as a charter school? (It is a “contract†school.) Also, why are you further mislabeling it as a “scab charter school� Have teachers crossed a picket line during a strike? That is the only proper use of the term “scab†that I know of.
I know, I know, I am not using my â€real name†name so you will likely ignore this post as you often do, but I just wanted to point out just some of the ways that you state your opinion and misinformation as fact when it is clearly not a “proven case†as you say.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
You've got that right. I was there when Arne Duncan murdered the Orrs, and we have friends documenting what's been happening since. I asked Daley about it at his press conference at Sherman last January -- and his handlers shut down the press conference rather than even risking having him mumble through an answer. Ditto Gates, which had just announced $9 million for "Turnaround" but wouldn't explain what happened when "small schools" became yesterday's news (after a lot of millions of Gates dollars behind Chicago's "small schools").
And...
This is one of the funnier parts...
Officially, CPS is still promoting "small schools" (that's the policy) while promoting large schools and turnarounding without regard to the official policy. (Which, of course, is nothing new, since policies in CPS are only to use to bash teachers, not to be followed by visionary executives...).
So here's an offer:
Someone write a coherent piece about how Chicago murdered "small schools" (while leaving in the fact that it's still Chicago policy) and I guarantee at least one place it will be published, print and on the Web.
Takers?
Meanwhile, who's betting that Bowen and South Shore will be the next to be garrotted by Arne Duncan is another frenzy of OHMYGODLOOKWHATHAPPENED!!! hysterical virgin nonsense by, say, December 2008 or January 2009. Hearing in February. The usual hypocrisies all around after the Board votes without attending any of the hearings or even reading the reports.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
I have seen the small schools concept work effectively in another district.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
Retired Principal,
You got that right.
Mike
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
George and Mike, the small school movement is dead in CPS!
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
"So Schmidt "doesn't like Bill Ayers" and blames his firing from Bowen and his "blacklisting" on Bill Ayers and the left..." (Klonsky, yesterday).
Mike's been doing this kind of reductio ad absurd for decades now. Anyone can read my contribution to this thread above and see that I never said Bill had anything to do with my firing (that was the work of their buddy Paul Vallas and his successor, on orders from their master). What I reported was that at Bowen, Bill was finally demanding that "bad" teachers be "fired" as part of the external partner process. We resisted that, successfully.
This is a big enough story to spend some time on, because if we don't understand the history of the past 13 years, we certainly can't avoid some of the bigger mistakes from those years. Our position has been -- in the face of all the heart rending narratives, cooked data sets, and unfootnoted claims -- that "small schools" are a segregationist (and often union busting) attack on urban public schools, the teachers in them, and the unions that represent us. The handiwork of "small schools" (launched in New York City in miniature and then cloned to Chicago) has damaged public schools and unions from New York to Oakland over the past 12 years, with Chicago as the epicenter.
My main point yesterday was that the WSJ piece was a hatchet job in the opinion pages, not reporting. I never said that Ayers helped get me fired out of Bowen. Paul Vallas did that. Klonsky, who was chairman of Catalyst's Board at the time, simply provided some cheerleading for what Vallas was doing. Specifically, Klonsky wrote a memorable letter praising Vallas and slandering me just as we were beginning our fight over the CASE tests. Back then, when he and Bill were still getting large numbers of CPS dollars as "external partners", they offered no critique of the misuse of high-stakes secret multiple choice so-called "standardized" tests. In fact, they were as avid as anyone on judging schools based on test scores (in those, days, the ridiculous use of the ITBS and TAP tests).
Mike's critique of the abuse of test scores only took intense form (see that "Ownership society..." thingy) after George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind took hold.
"Small Schools Workshop" received hundreds of thousands of dollars from CPS (and nobody knows how much from other places; sounds like some questions need to be asked about Annenberg) during the Vallas years. Since the whole "External Partners" thing was a teacher bashing patronage scam all along (and a prelude to the current outsourcing of many more functions, some mandated by NCLB and some locally brewed), that case is already proven. "External Partners" were the outside experts who came into schools (like Bowen) to tell us how to do the jobs we had been doing for years (or decades) and never asked us what we thought the school needed.
That's enough for one morning. The nice thing about these facts, "going forward" as they say in corporate America and its media, is that they are now part of the various historical records. Our critique of the union busting and privatization that began with Mayor Daley's takeover of CPS in 1995 is a clear fact of history. Ditto our intense commitment to unionism.
Mike (Klonsky) and Bill (Ayers) did quite well for a time in the "External Partners" business (which included some union busting forays, as I reported yesterday regarding Bowen). Only they can tell you how much "Small Schools Workshop" got from CPS during the early years of the Daley dictatorship, but it was at least a half million dollars. CPS money. Annenberg would have been another pot of gold. Needless to say, they were far from critical of what Daley and Vallas were doing in those days.
Then, as now, we've insisted that the problems are not with the unionized teachers and other staffs in the schools. By selling "Small Schools" as the "urban" (read, for minority children) panacea, the "Small Schools Workshop" guys and gals were aiding and abetting the union busting that has flowed from that, as well as the separate but equal approach that is a part of it. Not once, then or now, have they explained why "Small Schools" are the way for places like South Shore, Bowen, Orr, and others to go, while for the (white; wealthier) suburbs there is no demand to change those huge comprehensive general high schools.
For my money in 2008, the monuments to the "Small Schools" era should be the remnants of Orr High School and the Austin area tragedy. This month (and school year) Orr has once again replaced its entire staff, only now the flavor-of-the-month corporate "reform" is "Turnaround." It was teacher bashing when "Small Schools" at the Orr Campus replaced the old general high school called Orr, and its teacher bashing this month with Orr having been (again) decimated in favor of Turnaround.
Austin is a bigger tragedy for an entire community.
Since the first "Small Schools" (Mike Bakalis's clout heavy "Entrepreneurship" charter school) school was put inside the Austin building in 2004 (as Arne Duncan began destroying Austin) thousands of kids from the Austin community have been deprived of a general high schools. Now that the Austin building has a couple of smaller schools (Entrepreneurship; Polytech), some union (Polytech) some not (Bakalis's scab charter school) with more coming, the real question has been how the "left" or anyone else could have tolerated the deprivation of a general high school to the children of the Austin community over the past five school years.
Again, flavor of the month; trendiness; separate but equal.
By the way, any time these guys want to schedule a community forum on the history we're discussing here, based on facts, using maps and other information from the public record, I'm more than glad to share equal time with them on their record and their relationships to corporate "school reform" over the past 13 years, in Chicago and elsewhere.
You see, "Small Schools Workshop" (and its various outposts) proved itself not only in Chicago. My friends from Oakland still tell stories about how the Chicago Boys and Girls arrived in Oakland to "reform" the Oakland schools (most notably Castlemont High School), but that's another story for another time. This problem, thanks to the legs the narratives got out of Chicago, has hurt other cities as well.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
I was not clear that George was arguing that Bill helped CPS fire him. I am unclear also exactly what George meant by "blacklisting." One meaning of it could be that he blames Bill and his progressive educational milieu for marginalizing both him and Substance within that milieu. If he means that Bill, Mike, or others on the educational "left" explictedly attempted to purge him from education I think he needs to produce some evidence.
The critical difference here is the fundamental deal with the devil that Bill and the small schools milieu cut with Paul Vallas directly and Mayor Daley somewhat indirectly to become paid consultants. The workshop was along with DePaul University the first of the CPS turn around consultants. Duncan and apparently Daley believed these efforts were ineffective and clearly dumped the workshop and to some degree DePaul too.
It is my opinion and the opinion of some others in various CTU opposition cacuses who have worked with George over the years that he and editorially Substance to some degree misread the small school reform effort. It is my opinion that the workshop was dumped because it was not anti-union and that where Daley's school reform effort fundamentatlly was heading was toward breaking the CTU. The workshop's efforts objectively are at least as successful, or unsuccessful as those of AUSL, but the workshop and people like Bill and Mike could not be trusted to break unions or turn them into company unions like AUSL is attempting to do.
To the credit of Bill, Mike, and others in that milieu they never signed on to the full union breaking efforts of the Daley school board. I do know that teachers were interviewed for rehiring the first time Orr was turned around and that to some degree the workshop was involved in that process. I and others do not believe the workshop should have been involved in that process. I do not know what took place at Bowen and George should explain it since he raised the issue.
In all honesty many of us have disagreements with Bill's educational arguments, made in books, articles, and in person, that ossified and pedagogically backward teachers unions were part of the problem with urban education. Many of us believed Bill, Mike, and others should have never partnered with the Daley school board and that the fact the CPS turned on the workshop was really no suprise in the least.
Bill's relationship with Obama is fundamentally toxic, as was Rev Wright's relationship with Obama. In both cases from what I know, which is limited, it was Obama that sought those links or relationships. Being the fundemental opportunist that he is at one point he wanted to be able to protray himself as a "progressive," possibly to run against Bobby Rush or whatever. Obama at one point was more than happy to count both Bill and Rev Wright as "friends," "allies," or whatever. Now they are toxic. Obama is an opportunist, who has perfected the art of opportunism on which the Democratic Party is built on.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
So Schmidt "doesn't like Bill Ayers" and blames his firing from Bowen and his "blacklisting" on Bill Ayers and the left. I always thought he was fired by Paul Vallas (not the left) because he published stolen tests. Talk about being "sanctimonious."
And what's with this gossip that Ayers "suggested they prove their power by getting rid of a few -- any few -- "bad teachers." Suggested to whom? What bad teachers? Where was this "suggesting done? And why is he bringing it up now?
First of all, Ayers never was involved with Bowen. Neither was the "Small Schools Network" (it was the Small Schools Workshop who was chosen by the school to be the school's external partner). The Small Schools Network was, as the name implies, a policy-oriented group which included the CTU, Debbie Lynch and the union's Quest Center.
Sounds like Schmidt is making use of the WSJ Obama/Ayers "distraction" to slander Bill and settle old scores. But facts are stubborn fellows.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
So Schmidt "doesn't like Bill Ayers" and blames his firing from Bowen and his "blacklisting" on Bill Ayers and the left. I always thought he was fired by Paul Vallas (not the left) because he published stolen tests. Talk about being "sanctimonious."
And what's with this gossip that Ayers "suggested they prove their power by getting rid of a few -- any few -- "bad teachers." Suggested to whom? What bad teachers? Where was this "suggesting done? And why is he bringing it up now?
First of all, Ayers never was involved with Bowen. Neither was the "Small Schools Network" (it was the Small Schools Workshop who was chosen by the school to be the school's external partner). The Small Schools Network was, as the name implies, a policy-oriented group which included the CTU, Debbie Lynch and the union's Quest Center.
Sounds like Schmidt is making use of the WSJ Obama/Ayers "distraction" to slander Bill and settle old scores. But facts are stubborn fellows.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
To see where the various candidates stand on public education I suggest that we look at where they send their own children to school.
McCain Xavier college Prep(private) and Brophy College Prep(private), although his son Jack is currently at the Naval Academy in Annapolis and he's donated over $500,000 to those schools WOW.
Obama University of Chicago Lab School(private $11,442 for half day Nursery school, WOW)
Biden Archmere Acadamy(private) but apparently the private school kids there can take public school buses to get there.
Palin Iditarod Elementary A public school in Wasilla.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
You are judged by the company you keep. If a presidential candidate had close ties the likes of David Duke and Timothy McVeigh what would you think of that candidate.
Would you tend to be dismissive about it or would you want to find out all you could and question their judgment and ultimately their ability to make good decisions?
Lets keep in mind that Ayers participated in the bombings of NY City Police Headquarters in 1970, The Capitol building in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972 and held the ideology of "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents." If you want some insight into his mind read "Fugitive Days".
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
I don't like Bill Ayers, disagreed with the "Small Schools Network" (including when they were "external partner" to Bowen while I was CTU delegate, and Bill suggested they prove their power by getting rid of a few -- any few -- "bad teachers"), and have always made my disagreements clear and up front. (It's one of the reasons I'm blacklisted; we didn't follow the sanctimonious nostrums of the rest of the "Left").
That said, Alexander, yesterday's Wall Street Journal piece is clearly labeled "Opinion" and is a right wing hatchet job.
The Wall Street Journal is quite capable of putting enormous resources behind a story they want to get to the bottom of, whether it's the murder of their reporter Daniel Perl after 9/11 or finding out what I was up to when I published the CASE tests here in 1999 (their Page One story, the result of three months' work by a very good reporter, ran on May 25, 2001).
When the WSJ decides to publish an "Opinion" that smells like a smear, everybody's at least got to know it for what it is.
Barack Obama should have been more forthright about a lot of things, but the fact is he's running against a couple of people whose stories are so nasty (and covered up; when will the world get to read that heroic "confession" by John McCain or all the back stories -- not just library bullying -- from Sarah Palin) that even sober Republicans are trembling.
And don't tell me, in defense of McCain, that "nobody" could have stood up to what was done to him. There were many men who did. McCain was not one of them. If there is a "Sixties" story that needs to be told before this election is history, it's the real story of Barack Obama's opponent as November 4 draws near.
Why not share that, Alexander? The latest version appears near the end of Sidney Schanberg's piece (in the Nation) about McCain's strange relationship to the entire POW story since 1975 -- and especially since McCain became a senator.
Barack Obama deserves better than this kind of stuff. He's made his positions on education clear.
John McCain is hoping that a dozen of his various stories are covered up by his media buddies until it's too late for us to evaluate the man or the myth.
And yesterday The Wall Street Journal helped him by distracting attention back to that silly and largely irrelevant Bill Ayers corner of the Obama reality.
Obama, Ayers, & "Radical" Education Reform
I don't think the issue is whether or not reform in the way Ayers and Obama wanted it, happened or not. the type of reform and education which they advocated for, and the way they went about doing it (and the organizations involved) is the story.