As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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In the News: CTU accuses CPS of 'grant fraud'
By: Cassandra West / June 01, 2012
While the Tribune was reporting that a $35 million federal grant to implement a pilot program for a form of merit pay in Chicago Public Schools is in jeopardy because the teachers union has refused to buy in, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis on Thursday asked CPS' inspector general to investigate why district officials accepted the grant two years ago requiring union collaboration that it did not receive.
CTU objected to the Teacher Incentive Fund proposal because its members are opposed to merit pay schemes that would link their salaries to standardized test, the union said in a news release issued Thursday evening. Here's more from the CTU release: In an email [Thursday] to CPS Chief Talent Officer Alicia Winkler, who oversaw the project, Lewis once again reiterated her objections to the TIF proposal upon learning CPS was aggressively pitching local reporters a misleading story suggesting she had somehow “caused the district to ‘lose millions of dollars.”’:
“Today I received several phone calls from reporters alleging that CPS is pitching a story about my involvement with the TIF grant,” Lewis wrote. “I am disheartened that CPS chose to go public with this matter, but since you have decided to be extremely disingenuous let us recap the entirety of this issue. This letter does not reflect the depth and breadth of our conversations. You knew when you submitted this grant in 2010, the newly-elected leadership of CTU was philosophically opposed to merit pay, performance pay or whatever euphemism currently in use."
CTU president Karen Lewis says the union told CPS from the get-go that it wouldn’t sign on to any form of merit pay. She said the district is committing "grant fraud," according to WBEZ.
Board members of Youth Connection Charter School have put off a decision to close or restructure Youth Connection Leadership Academy and Howard Area Leadership Academy campuses until the school can negotiate with CPS over performance requirements. (Catalyst)
The number of Chicago teachers retiring this year is getting close to a record-breaking level, WBEZ reports.
So far 1,954 Chicago teachers plan to retire. The Chicago Teachers Pension Fund estimates that number will hit 2,000 before summer ends. That would be a 40 percent jump over last year. The Chicago Principals and Administrators Association says 92 principals and 50 assistant principals also plan to retire this summer.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's star power within the Democratic Party has put a national spotlight on the fight over the future of public schools in Chicago and attracted support from education reform groups eager to see how much change can be effected in a pro-labor city, according to the Tribune.
IN THE STATE
The Illinois Senate narrowly voted Thursday to impose a 5 percent tax on satellite television providers to help public schools. (Sun-Times)
IN THE NATION
Pressure to improve teacher evaluations deepened Thursday, when two separate Los Angeles education groups endorsed the use of student test scores as one measure to review instructors — a controversial element that many unions have fought. (Los Angeles Times)
Inspector General, should inspect more Grants!
CPS has a history of taking money from grants.. to what purpose is not transparent.
Duncan and Ed Dept. pushing lousy policies instead of good ones
While the CPS propaganda department continues to expand and pour out talking points like sludge going into a sewage treatment plant, it's easy (and necessary) to call out each of the latest lies of Jean-Claude Brizard. Teachers didn't lose anything in this latest CPS/Arne Duncan scam. Merit pay failed when it was tried in Chicago, and proved one of the nastiest divisive thingies ever tried to get the game of "Good Teacher Bad Teacher" going at as many schools as possible. And the rotten root of the school based incentives (where everybody got some piece of the action) was that the reward came after everybody went through a ridiculous year or two of forced feeding of test prep, sort of like Foi Gras. Westcott, where Marilyn Stewart and Arne Duncan sang one another's praises in December 2008, was the silliest example, as I reported during that media event which featured Mayor Daley and Margaret Spellings (Arne's predecessor at the Ed Dept) giving out checks like the old "Queen for a Day" shows that exploited poor women during my earlier days.
Schools don't work that way, and when the "rewards" are based on raising test scores, perversion inevitably follows. The school is "incented" (to use one of Duncan's dumber coinings) to dump the "bad" kids and juke the test scores. At this point in history, every claim of a "miracle" from Atlanta to Washington D.C. has been proven to be a fraud. There is nothing more to say about a bankrupt policy, even if Jean-Claude Brizard will say it over and over and over and over for the next couple of days (before going back to repeating the words "Common Core" with religious solemnity...).
The U.S. Department of Education could provide these dollars for things like lowering class size or insuring that every school district has a library in every school for every child.
Instead, Duncan limits "choice" to those odious programs pushed by the "Atlas Shrugged" fan club and those who still blush erotically over notions like "Race to the top." And then Peter Cunningham does the apologetics for the latest nasty waste of federal dollars that could better be spent elsewhere.
One nice touch for this round of mendacity and deception, however, is that the Tribune managed to resurrect the dumb voice of former CTU President Marilyn Stewart, who presided over the kleptocracy inside the union's offices from 2004 through 2010. It was Stewart who had mindlessly pushed merit pay and teacher-incuded teacher bashing during her ridiculous second terms. (Without ever bringing either program to the House of Delegates, let alone to a democratic debate and vote).
Better to leave Marilyn Stewart alone with her six figure pension than to remind the members of the CTU that she is still out there. It's bad enough we have to periodically watch her caucus colleagues, led at times by the odious Marc Wigler, prancing around in their self-serving tee shirts while everyone else wears the union's colors. But to hear Stewart defending bellying up to the feds' gravy train is more than some can bear. But maybe there is poetic justice in that revival of distorted history: Wasn't Wigler the union staff person who was overseer of that misuse of federal dollars?
Can't you tell George was fired by Marilyn Stewart- Get over IT!
This is the kind of hate filled nonsense a union employee writes about the former president of the CTU Marilyn Stewart . George you're just angry because she FIRED YOU, HA HA! Now at the House of Delegates meeting, you'll be singing Solidarity Forever.
One nice touch for this round of mendacity and deception, however, is that the Tribune managed to resurrect the dumb voice of former CTU President Marilyn Stewart, who presided over the kleptocracy inside the union's offices from 2004 through 2010. It was Stewart who had mindlessly pushed merit pay and teacher-incuded teacher bashing during her ridiculous second terms. (Without ever bringing either program to the House of Delegates, let alone to a democratic debate and vote).
Better to leave Marilyn Stewart alone with her six figure pension than to remind the members of the CTU that she is still out there. It's bad enough we have to periodically watch her caucus colleagues, led at times by the odious Marc Wigler, prancing around in their self-serving tee shirts while everyone else wears the union's colors. But to hear Stewart defending bellying up to the feds' gravy train is more than some can bear. But maybe there is poetic justice in that revival of distorted history: Wasn't Wigler the union staff person who was overseer of that misuse of federal dollars?
Beware to the scam situations
Beware to the scam situations especially malaysia fraud because they are dangerous wise people to interrupt us.
Management Musical Chairs at CPS
It's a sad facts that Chicago reporting has declined this far since the days when Kurt Vonnegut and Mike Royko, fresh from reality in World War II and Korea, learned to report and respect facts at the old City New Bureau. Never, in those days, would even the right-wing Tribune have thought it OK to simply recycle the propaganda of the powerful into "news" stories.
And yet that's where we are today.
Instead of tracking the degeneration of the bureaucracy and leadership of the nation's third largest school system into a bizarre scriptology for the latest revisions of the Rituals of Rahm, we get a bit of hyperventilation about the demise of the latest iteration of Oliver Sicat, whose talents were mainly for self-promotion from the day he finished his undergraduate work at USC through last week.
One year ago, Sicat was rivaled only by Tim Cawley in feeding Power Point gibberish -- budget, "portfolio," school closings and tranformatioins, the eubject didn't matter -- to the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education appointed by Rahm. and the Board members in their turn asked carefully pre-scripted questions to the Power Pointers, as if that constituted review of policy and praxis.
So now Sicat is "news." As if "Portfolio" was not last year's iteration of the bizarre management theories promoted by the disciples churned out by the Broad Leadership Academy.
Oh, but "Portfolio" is so 2012. Like "Longer School Day"?
So now CPS imports another outsider (Oliver, remember, never taught a month in a real Chicago public school, but was imported to the CPS hierarchy from those frauds at the "Noble Network of Charter Schools)".
And this time, instead of "Portfolio," CPS has morphed to "Incubation."
And Sicat is no more at CPS. For those who care about the future of opportunism, someone who has been as attentive to self-promotion and the winds of corporate fashion as Sicat will land on his highly publicized feet. But this story is not about the soap operas of the formerly rich and powerful.
It's about the crazy manic and dysfunctional governance of the nation's third largest school system in the second year of the Reign of Rahm.
Last year, in a fit of pique (something that has been increasing), Rahm spoke, as usual falsely, to the Tribune about how he had "executive" experience -- and the reporters interviewing him didn't.
Rahm's fantasies brought CPS "Portfolio" a year ago, then erased that iteration of fantasy as if this whole thing -- managing Chicago's public schools -- could be erased and re-done by changing story boards.
That Hollywood nonsense should be left to one of the other Emanuels. Trouble is, Rahm's Board of Education continues with a straight face voting for each of the latest of the manic iterations of Rahm's fantasy life.
Less than one year ago, as the seven dwarfs might recall, they sat and listened to a Power Point presentation on why a bunch of schools should be screwed and closed. Standing before them at that time were four very well paid executives, not one of which had a minute's teaching experience in Chicago's public schools:
Tim Cawley.
Jean-Claude Brizard.
Jamiko Rose.
Oliver Sicat.
And the Board then voted to close and screw those schools, along with their thousands of students and hundreds of teachers and other staff.
Well, that was so 2012. So, February 2012 Board meeting.
Now, the only survivor of that carnage from the CPS bureaucracy is Tim Cawley.
Brizard, Rose and Sicat are gone.
And yet the reporting on this reality reads as if "CPS" was some crazy reality show, a "survivor." And we're supposed to take our versions of reality seriously. At least, when that "reality" is the first rough draft of history as spread on us, sort of like organic fertilizer on a locovore field, by this year's so-called "reporters."
Management Musical Chairs
Only 3 left at Cps. Carroll; Winkler and Cawley. They need to go too. They are the chief names on firing papers from Cps. Left behind because Winkler's name is going to be stamped on ever Cps employee who is going to be terminated. She has the heart to do so; with no remorse. After all; those are the best workers for Cps. The ones who doesn't care about messing up peoples careers and means of living. With all the change over the years; you would have thought people in place would stay in place. No what happens; they mess things up and then are sent to higher pastures. It is always going to be that way at Cps . Cps can't be fixed. A lot of the mess Cps schools got themselves into; stemmed down from Cps. Now the poor teachers are the blame. I am glad BBB is not bragging about Cps being the role model for the nation. When she came into Cps she saw a BIG mess. Huberman left there saying it was a mess. Watkins left there because it was a mess. And Principals who use to work down there and are Principals now; are exposed at their schools whereby they were exposed from coming from Cps into their schools with protection. Well BBB came in and put the fire under that mess; and those protected Principals who use to work downtown. No more protection now. Their friends down at Cps can't cover their wrongdoings to people and at schools anymore. It's open season. BBB has placed a team in there that is going to monitor; and correct the wrongdoings that some Principals have been doing at schools. Fibbing about enrollment and attendance. Fibbing about performance and data. Networks covering up discrepencies to make themselves look good; when the Principal leadership at some schools has caused those schools to fail. Now there will be no buddy system of protection of Principal friends coming from downtown. Winkler; Carroll; and Cawley are walking on thin ice. They will not be covering for their friends who used to work downtown; anymore. They can be replaced too. So now; BBB's team fix all this wrongdoing that has been done to teachers. This will be the justice for all of those poor teachers who lost their jobs from no fault of their own. Because Cps encourageed them to label them as Unsatisfactory and slam the door in their faces. Label them so that they could not continue on with their careers. Educated people have a bundle of wisdom to instill in students. No teacher should not be allowed to share that wisdom. A teacher will always be a teacher. The unsatisfactory mess should be renamed and minimized in terms of severity. Just let the teachers be free to go on to another job. That is one of the saddest thing that Cps could have ever done to teachers. Really sad. For all the cities and schools that honor your teachers. You are the role models of the nation's schools. Not Cps. It is not a place you would want to work; and fear for your job and career each day.
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