catalyst-chicago.org

Great analysis

Thanks for this article. It's so upsetting that outsiders who know nothing about education or our students are having such a powerful influence on how schools will be run in Chicago. We need stronger independent LSC's in schools, we need an elected school board, we need a mayor and CPS CEO who understands what it's like to be a CPS student or at least what it's like to be a CPS parent.

There is so much damage being done in our schools because of hedge fund managers and other people who think that being rich gives them the right to tell poor people how to educate their kids.

I understand that some parents are starting to opt their kids out of standardized testing to protest these horrible "reforms" and protect their kids from the over-testing that's going on now. The teachers stood up to reforms the best they could, but state law does not allow teachers to strike about class size, funding, misuse of testing etc. It's time for REAL parents and students to stand up and fight... it's too bad real parents have to fight, not only Rahm and his board of CEOs and bankers, but there outside groups that are meddling in our children's future.

Corruption at the CPS

This essay on what's mainly wrong with education reform today and what was behind the Chicago Teachers Strike is at 1300 reads today. In just 10 days, that's pretty amazing...Take a read: http://www.scribd.com/doc/106337306/THE-CHICAGO-PUBLIC-SCHOOLS-ALLERGIC-...

Thank you Wendy

Thank you Wendy and thank to Raise Your Hand for being a voice of reason. How can the Mayor justify never meeting with your group? Have you approached Beth Swanson? Why are parents being shut out of key planning and decisions? If parents continue to be shut out, we may be forced to do something drastic - like a testing boycott. What would happen if NO ONE took the ISAT or PSAT this year???

Thanks, Wendy

Well written. The issue is this: are we going to allow the moneyed voice to overwhelm the individual voice in this country? All of us need to stand up to the onslaught of the moneyed voice which has the means to amplify its message above and beyond those who do not have the same financial wherewithal. Thanks to Raise Your Hand and other community groups, we, the people, can collectively say "no" to those who would destroy public education for profit and to squelch the power of the people who actually are part of the public school system in this country.

Those who rail against "public schools" are against community based institutions. Why are we listening to billionaires when it comes to our children? How is it that these privateers and profiteers can claim to know what is best for our children?

Profiteer vision for testing:

Quite simply it's this, All students from K-12 tested multiple times per year. Yes kindergarten, a time when kids are all over the map developmentally. Tests in every subject (eventually) multiple times a year, all to evaluate teachers and supposedly to "guide their practice" which testing actually has no capability to do at all. The testing drug pushers would have us believe that performance = effectiveness. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/on_performance/2011/10/performance_or_eff...
"To highlight the difference between performance and effectiveness, consider what it takes to be a high-performing sunglasses salesperson. The required characteristics are those that any good salesperson should possess: knowledge of the product line, an outgoing and friendly demeanor, and excellent interpersonal (e.g., instructing, social perceptiveness) and communication skills and abilities (e.g., active listening, oral expression). Possessing all of these characteristics, however, will NOT guarantee effectiveness, nor will their absence guarantee ineffectiveness! This is because effectiveness depends on factors extraneous to the person's behavior, such as location (selling sunglasses in Binghamton/Seattle as opposed to Miami/Las Vegas). Imagine that we know the Seattle salesperson to be a much higher performer (better knowledge of the product line, more outgoing and friendly, etc.) than the Miami salesperson. Despite this, the Seattle salesperson yields lower sales than the Miami salesperson. Thus, the Seattle salesperson is a better performing—but less effective—salesperson. "

Thank You

Thank You for a calm, thoughtful voice of reason in this mess. The teachers need you -- but most of all the children do. We all need to continue to put presure on the mayor to improve our schools in good and right ways!

Will the Real Parents Please Stand Up?

Those of us who were CPS teachers and still care have been appalled by the corporate thugs who yearn to take over, not only our schools, but all public services. I applaud Wendy Katten and all the others who are finally telling the truth about the motives of the so-called reformers (and, frankly, that includes the Gates' as well). Power to the people and the community! We also call on President Obama, who understands community organizing, to return to his roots. We need to support the current CTU as well as all other community organizations that represent true democracy. I plan to join Ms. Katten's organization, if possible.

Let's be completely real here

There is a difference between dissenting and "bashing". There is a difference between fact checking and shutting down opinions you don't like.

To refer to "real" CPS parents is not to "insinuate" that there are "fake" CPS parents. It is to state a simple fact. There ARE real CPS parents.

I, for instance, don't have children. Some people would not under any circumstances send their kids to a CPS public neighborhood school. A unicorn is not a CPS parent.

Does that mean that I, a unicorn or a non-CPS parent should have zero say in education? Absolutely not.

What it does mean is that a billionaire unicorn shouldn't have exponentially MORE voice in CPS policy that REAL CPS parents.

Even if the Duck is For Education Reform, Now.

Lets stop the spin

The REAL parents are from Chicago and have kids enrolled in CPS. The non-real parents are the hedge fund managers in NYC. Katten is asking why rich dudes in NYC are influencing policy that effects our kids.

She clearly states that RYH supports democracy in the system, meaning that they want all sides regardless of position, as long as it's coming from real Chicago stakeholders.

First focus, class size... Parents are now involved in contract.

One of the first focuses (foci?) for "real parents" (i.e., those of us with our own children in real public schools) might be to examine — now — the class size situation in every school. As people who have paid attention know, it's been nearly 20 years since the union's delegates have been able to file grievances on class size problems. For two decades, delegates (myself included) began each school year with a complete inventory of class sizes in our schools, and within a couple of weeks we could be enforcing those sizes contractually, school by school.

Mayoral control (the "Amendatory Act" of 1995) took away that power. As a result, across the city every year we hear of teachers being forced to take in "extra" students rather than CPS keeping class sizes as low as possible. The problem, as always, is greatest in those schools with the least empowered parents, and often the kids are forced into unconscionable classes for months, or even the entire year. Every negotiation, the CPS refuses to negotiate to return class size to the contract (it's a "discretionary" subject of bargaining, meaning that both sides have to agree to negotiate it and return enforcement power to the contract (i.e., the union delegate). CPS just refuses, cynically knowing that they can reduce teachers at will simply by doing so and seeing who complains). The record of that hypocrisy is now nearly two decades old.

But this year, in the CTU contract, parents (LSC members) have been included in the teams that investigate the class size problems at the local schools.

Here is the new language from the new union contract:

"28-3. CLASS SIZE MONITORING PROCESS. One or more joint BOARD-UNION panels shall be established to monitor concerns regarding class size brought to the attention of the UNION. Each panel shall be composed of up to two former teachers, up to two former principals, and a representative of the Office of Employee Relations and shall meet on a bi-weekly basis. When the panel investigates a referral from a school, the panel shall promptly notify the Local School Council and a parent representative chosen by the Local School Council may join the panel..." [That language appears on page 22 of the material that all CTU members received, and Article 28-3 goes on at some length about how to get all this done and every CTU member received a copy of the CONTRACT LANGUAGE document prior to voting on the contract on October 2, so there are many copies around. I'll post the entire Article, along with an explanation of the history of this, as a substancenews.net analysis if people reading this want it. Otherwise we have lots to do...].

This is pretty powerful stuff, although a lot of the work has to be done now, since any delay in reorganizing classes at schools disrupts the kids' education.

I have been very active on the class size thing for decades. When I was a union delegate (Tilden; Amundsen; Bowen) class size was always first on the annual calendar. After the Republicans (and Daley) ripped the power to enforce class sizes away from the union delegates, we had to work through these committees, and over the last couple of years I have served on those, too, both for local school investigations and at a "higher" level.

The trouble has always been the "big stall." CPS has bragged to the bond rating agencies for nearly two decades that it has "staffing flexibility" — meaning they can fire teachers at will (the pretexts have been an amazing display of Orwellian cynicism since Karen Lewis was elected in June 2010) and disrupt the kids' education over months and months. (My position for more than 30 years has been if it's good enough for Winnetka and Glen Ellyn, it's good enough for Chicago, and part of our investigations should be to compare the class sizes in those towns with ours...).

As the years of mayoral control and "CEO Rule" dragged on, CPS would intimidate teachers to keep them from complaining about oversized classes. Once there were documented complaints, CPS would stall the investigations of the class size team. The old team was two retired teachers and a retired principal; the new team is the old team plus a parent from the LSC and possibly an additional principal. I had fun on the teams I was on two years ago with our investigations of Schurz and Kelvyn Park high schools, but the trouble was that by the time we got the investigation completed the schools was well into first semester. The cynicism and hypocrisy at CPS had "worked" because we couldn't solve the problem (the solution was always to add teachers who should have been there in the first place) until the second semester.

Everyone knows that the contract negotiations that didn't end until the strike had begun in November, but not everyone knows how completely cynical the CPS version of negotiations was until the strike began. One example was class size (Article 28 of the contract).

Since Class Size is a discretionary item of bargaining (not mandatory, but not prohibited either), CPS could have negotiated class size back into the contract itself. That way, the people closest to the problem (the teachers, principals, and delegates) could solve the problem during the first four weeks of school. I did just that many times during the 1980s and 1990s when I was delegate from Amundsen. One time, we got a front page story in the (old) Sun-Times with the headline "High School on Hold" and a picture of more than a hundred kids bottled up in the library because CPS hadn't sent enough teachers. Between my power as union delegate and the Sun-Times expose, Amundsen got those teachers (who were supposedly "not available") within a couple of days. As a result, school was able to begin almost on time, instead of having to wait until late October or early November.

So if every real parent began now asking about the real class sizes at their school, and joined the teachers in making it a major agenda item on this week's LSC meeting, we could begin working to get enough teachers in every school now.

And please don't repeat that editorial board nonsense about the "deficit."

If parents go to the Board Reports ("Action" section at cps.edu) for the past six months, you'll learn that the Board managed to find the money to hire all kinds of six-figure people from out of town to fill positions that nobody knew existed before. We now have a "Chief Education Officer," but also a Chief Instruction Officer, and also a "Chief Early Childhood Officer," who are all aided and abetted by several other "Chief Offices" as well as some "Chiefs of Staff." And of course CPS (as the Sun-Times reported after the strike) has always found millions to pay outside lawyers, the most famous of whom now is James ("leave not footprints") Franczek.

This "We're broke..." stuff is as big a local lie as a number of those whoppers Romney blew past Barack Obama during the first debate.

Not only has the Board of Education voted to create those positions and hire all those people, but they have also, with a straight face, voted to pay virtually all of those out of town experts now lording over the real schools of Chicago "relocation" expenses — usually in the five-figure range.

The money is there. It's just not there for real public schools with real kids in real time. And class size and enough teachers are one of the most important things we can enforce to stop this rapacious treatment of our children.

That is, those of us who have real children in the city's real public schools.

Thanks for writing this up, Wendy.

And thanks to Catalyst for reposting it so that we can resume this thread about real stuff. Truth be told, I was actually getting bored with the synthetic parent discussion over there on the DFER thread.

re: Ok, Bruce Rauner aside

"They are valid Chicagoans and deserve voice even if you don't like it."

I already acknowledged this in my previous post. Democracy means all sides.

I acknowledged it in my post

I acknowledged it in my post as well. The point is not that voices should be silenced--it's that in contemporary America, often it's tragic which voices get privileged.

Who are the stakeholders?

I sincerely believe that if you pay property taxes in this city (directly or indirectly) you are a stakeholder in public education. Bruce Rauner I believe is not among us. I could be wrong. Perhaps the County Treasurer could tell us if a property tax bill was sent to him.

Rauner's rantings and the Tribune's editorial boys and girls

It may not matter that Bruce Rauner, like most of the rabid white boys (and a few girls) that he works with (e.g., the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, whose members' names I published last week at subnstancenews.net; the editorial board of the Tribune) pays Chicago taxes, in my opinion. What is delicious is that virtually all of them have been proponents of lower taxes for corporations and rich people like themselves and massive tax breaks and subsidies (TIFs foremost but not the only ones) for rich people and corporations like themselves. Not only are they paying the lowest possible taxes in history since the introduction of the Income Tax nearly 100 years ago, but they are grabbing tax dollars for their own benefit from guys like Rahm Emanuel (the ballet dancer who became a "relationship banker" for three years to "earn" $18 million thanks to his buddies) at every turn.

Eventually, after these guys (and some gals) have robbed the public treasury in every possible way using all of their powers, they turn around and tell us (through their mouthpiece, the Civic Federation, not to be confused with the Civic Committee) that this year the "deficit" is really really really real and therefore they will be closing (er, excuse me, their "Board of Education" will be closing) lots and lots of schools to "save money."

And, of course, once those school buildings are empty, Rauner and his buddies will be trying to do the biggest land grab since the railroads were built, either getting the building (and land) for their own private property (and use) or making sure that the buildings are utilized (at a lease rate of $1 per year) by charter schools.

This scam isn't that complex, but it goes a few steps farther (and further) than just local property taxes. It's an equation with several variables, not quite calculus, but not simply arithmetic either. They honestly believe they are smarter than the rest of us (watch Rauner's smug performance on Chicago Tonight if you don't believe me) when in fact they were pretty dumb. The only thing they could figure out how to do with their lives was make lots and lots of money, while the rest of us worked for a living at work that actually helped human beings — especially poor children — and were looking at more important realities until these guys came storming back with their relatively mindless CEO versions of reality.

CTU contract gives parents new power on class size!

There was so much in the contract negotiated by the CTU officers, lawyers, and "big negotiating team" (a group of teachers and others from all parts of the union, viz., the school system) that many of those who voted in favor of the contract didn't really have time to read, let alone consider, the importance of all that new stuff.

But for parents, one of the most important new powers is contained, as I mentioned earlier, in the new article.....

"28-3. CLASS SIZE MONITORING PROCESS. One or more joint BOARD-UNION panels shall be established to monitor concerns regarding class size brought to the attention of the UNION. Each panel shall be composed of up to two former teachers, up to two former principals, and a representative of the Office of Employee Relations and shall meet on a bi-weekly basis. When the panel investigates a referral from a school, the panel shall promptly notify the Local School Council and a parent representative chosen by the Local School Council may join the panel..." etc.

Please, while all this other stuff is being discussed, and debated, let's try and get every teacher at a school where class sizes are being supersized to complain NOW to the CTU so that these panels — hundreds if necessary — can be convened NOW. For nearly 20 years, CPS, as I discussed earlier, has been sabotaging Chicago class size maximums (most recently by refusing to negotiate the enforcement powers back into the contract, as I mentioned earlier in a couple of places).

But now, the real parents (i.e., parent members of the LSCs) and real teachers can push immediately to force CPS administration to stop sabotaging the schools through "tight staffing" (based on the "We ain't got no money, honey..." lie). While it is kind of cool that we are having these interesting conversations with the synthetic "parents" of DFER (and the unlimited supply of Astroturf groups abounding), hopefully we can also be documenting how CPS administration is, once again, sabotaging hundreds of schools and thousands of classrooms right now.

The paragraph above, thanks to the existence of the LSCs and the insights of the CTU and its allies, is now contractual power that parents and teachers can exercise together to force the schools to stop screwing thousands of kids during the early weeks of each semester.

Please spread the word to both parents and teachers (many of whom still don't know about this important right) so that we don't get the runaround and the stall between now and Thanksgiving. Like many of my colleagues (although I couldn't vote on the contract; retiree CTU members don't vote on contracts or strikes; an old and good policy), I read the entire contract, having watched the struggles unfold over ten months.

What impressed me the most was how completely the leadership cleaned up the "old" contract and got so many "new" powers in there. This hasn't happened in three or four decades, and was overdue. But now the challenges are going to be for the teachers at each school, in alliance with the real parents (the LSC parents are as good an indicator as I can think of...) begin to tackle these chronic problems now.