Obviously, Marshall’s long-standing academic failings weren’t lost on Tamoura, who went on to say that she “wasn’t even supposed to be here.” Marshall was her last option. Her family couldn’t afford the private school that was her first choice, and she wasn’t offered a slot at Raby, one of the newer high schools sprouting up on the West Side.  

Tamoura was one of the Marshall freshmen profiled in “Class of 2011,” the award-winning issue of Catalyst In Depth that examined the challenges of High School Transformation. (The issue was published in February 2008 and is available online at www.catalyst-chicago.org.) As Tamoura entered 9th grade, Marshall had just begun the initiative. The goal was to make rigorous coursework the foundation of high school improvement—an idea tailor-made to suit studious teenagers like Tamoura.

Discussions about the many academic and social ills of urban high schools tend to give scant attention to the Tamouras at these schools. In other words, the kids who don’t get into trouble, who show up to school regularly, whose parents support their education but lack financial resources. These teens, like Tamoura, are savvy enough to know that their best option for getting into a good college is to bypass the neighborhood high school.

As one researcher said, “What are you doing about all the smart kids?”

Last year, the district embarked on a turnaround at Marshall, sinking millions into campus renovations and bringing in a new principal and mostly new teachers and staff. The success of turnarounds, at Marshall and other struggling high schools, is of national as well as local importance: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made the strategy a key part of federal education efforts.

For this issue of Catalyst In Depth, Deputy Editor Sarah Karp visited Marshall regularly during its first year in the turnaround program. From her reporting, it’s clear that the school is making progress. The climate is calmer, the special education department no longer faces state sanctions, and teachers have begun to collaborate regularly and focus on good instruction.

Marshall, of course, still faces big hurdles. For one, school leaders must balance the need to keep enrollment up—or face losing staff, as Marshall did eventually—with the challenge to improve academics. Nationally, other urban districts are in similar straits, trying to figure out how to handle the challenge of reforming large, failing neighborhood high schools. That’s a very tough job when a school is expected to take virtually any student who walks through the door, from the one who is ready for accelerated classes to the student who wants to transfer in but has a transcript filled with F’s—and a bad attitude to boot.  

Part of the answer is to focus on serving the good students, the Tamouras of the world, first.

That idea will undoubtedly anger some reformers, who will view it as a call to abandon at-risk teens. It’s not. Society—not just schools—has to figure out how to help youth who are on the road to dropping out.  When students like Tamoura show up, they’ve already made a critical leap. They’re motivated to learn, and they need the adults around them to respond to that motivation.

For the neighborhood high school to survive, individually and as a larger concept, academics have to improve. Schools have to offer honors and Advanced Placement classes, for one. And teachers need students who, even if they aren’t quite ready for it, are at least motivated to tackle high school-level work.

Donald Fraynd, a former principal of Jones College Prep who now heads the CPS turnaround initiative, says that big neighborhood high schools still have a role to play in the district. The turnaround high schools are “getting better and better at catching students up,” with more students achieving higher-than-average growth in reading skills and recovering credits toward graduation.

These accomplishments are heartening signs that the turnaround program may, finally, put long-failing neighborhood high schools back on track. And they’re a sign that, while poverty and social ills can be significant barriers to learning, they are not insurmountable.

Chicago’s high schools still have a long way to go, although at Catalyst press time, a new report from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research showed that high schools are, in fact, doing better academically than many observers believed to be the case.

At Marshall, there’s another small but encouraging sign that academics are on an upward trajectory.

In her senior year, Tamoura finally started getting more than 15 minutes’ worth of daily homework.

The only visible signs of change were the front lawns in the neighborhood, now less well-kept than in the past.  Drive through the neighborhood today and you will see men standing on the corner of my block, where they have stood for years. But what you will not see is the blood that has been shed on that same corner, of men and women, young people to old.  Yet the men continue to stand on that corner, where some of their own friends have lost their lives over the years. 

I started searching for answers to these killings in 2008 when my neighbor’s son was killed on that very corner.  My search led me to discover the concept of social-emotional learning and I am eternally grateful. I believe with all of my being that it gives hope to my community and can help stem the tide of violence in my neighborhood and others. 

When my neighbor knocked on my door that fateful morning to let me know that her son had been killed, gunned down one block from our homes, it is hard to explain the depth of my feelings.  When I finally could breathe, what I did was to evaluate myself and how I may have contributed to the senseless killing. I realized that not only didn’t I know my neighbor’s son, who had been killed--but I really didn’t know her or the other eight children she was raising as a single mother. 

Yes, I had spoken to her and her children in passing, but that was on the surface. Why hadn’t I gotten to know them beneath the surface?  I had been too busy with my own family, work, friends, etc., to get to know my neighbors.  How did my block become a killing field, nicknamed ‘Beirut,’ I later learned--and how do we work to stop it?  How did we get here? 

In a sense, I had been asleep.

Now that I was awake, I had to decide what to do next.  All this personal reflection was taking place around the same time our new president, Barack Obama, was elected.  On January 19, 2009 he asked all of us to volunteer for a day.  So I decided to look for an agency or organization my family could spend the day volunteering with, in my community or somewhere on the Southeast Side of Chicago. 

When I checked the website the president’s group had published, not one Southeast Side organization was listed. I cried, because it seemed nobody cared about the children in my neighborhood.  I called up my local park district and asked if I could volunteer. I started going to meetings

Fast-forward to the fall of 2013, when I was introduced to the concept of social-emotional learning and, for the first time, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.  CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, defines the concept as a process through which children and adults learn how to effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.  In an ideal world, social-emotional learning would be a part of every school curriculum in the nation. 

In the quest to stop the killings in our community, my neighbors and I started a movement to have social-emotional learning whole-heartedly implemented in the schools in our community.  In our research, we found that no elementary school in our area teaches social-emotional skills in any measurable way. 

We believe that if children are taught sound decision-making, relationship-building, conflict management and other valuable life skills from pre-school through 12^th grade, more of them will choose to go to college or the work force instead of joining gangs and participating in negative activity that will only land them in jail before they begin their lives. 

Like President Obama has said, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time.  We are the one’s we’ve been waiting for.  We are the change we seek.” 

When I woke up, I realized that I had to actively participate in leading my community out of Beirut. 

Laura Rabb Morgan

Founder and servant leader, South Chicago Block Club Coalition SEL Grassroots Movement

The switch happened not just to me, but to 67 other juniors in my school who were told we did not have enough credits. However, in my case and many others, we had between 11 and 14.5 credits, which is enough to be a junior and qualify to take the test. Some students did not have enough credits to be juniors in the first place, but that still does not explain why they were promoted to junior year in the fall and then demoted to sophomore status right before the Prairie State test.

Under so much pressure to raise its Prairie State test scores, the administration tried to take advantage of the promotion policy and demote a third of the junior class, just to keep us from taking the test and bringing down the school’s scores. I was having challenges at school but the last thing I would have expected is that my school system would demote me instead of supporting me.

This is not what school systems are supposed to do to students. They are supposed to provide extra support to students like me who don’t do well on tests or who might fall behind. But instead, they tried to make us disappear.

I care about my education. I want to go to college and to study music engineering. But when the future of a school rests on its test scores, students like me get demoted or pushed out. That’s why I joined the more than 100 juniors who boycotted the second day of the PSAE. We boycotted school, and the test, to send a message to Mayor Rahm Emanuel: School closings and student push-out, driven by high-stakes testing, must end.

Many adults disagreed with us, including CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Byrd-Bennett even tried to threaten and intimidate us, sending out a parent letter that insinuated that students who didn’t take the test on Wednesday would not be promoted to senior year.

This was a scare tactic that seemed designed to mislead parents. It did not give any information about the state-required make-up test in May or the established CPS practice of promoting juniors who sit for just one of the two days of the test. And what CPS didn’t realize was that these threats had actually already happened to me. CPS was threatening to withhold our promotion to senior year, but I had already been demoted in March as a direct result of Mayor Emanuel’s pressure on schools to raise test scores or face closure.

When these scare tactics did not prevent us from boycotting, CEO Byrd-Bennett scolded us, saying that “the only place that students should be during the school day is in the classroom with their teachers getting the education they need to be successful in life.” I agree with this statement, but does Mayor Emanuel? CPS pressure on schools to raise test scores actually leads to students getting pushed out of school. Many of the juniors who were demoted at my school started talking about dropping out because it was such a discouraging experience.

If CEO Byrd-Bennett and her boss, Mayor Emanuel, actually want every student to receive a good education every day, they should limit high-stakes tests, not use them to justify school closings in mainly African-American communities. The announcement that they are ending just one of a number of CPS tests given to kindergarteners is like the promise to give air-conditioning to students whose schools get closed. It’s a token effort given to us in the hopes that we will go away.

We want our boycott to be a wake-up call to Mayor Emanuel and CPS. We demand and end to testing-driven school closings, under-resourced schools, and student push-out. And we’re not going away.

Timothy Anderson is a student leader with Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS) and Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE).

We find that capital costs used to justify closing North Lawndale schools have been inflated up to 3 times. Moreover, no capital projects are now in progress at the schools slated to be closed, and they are in excellent condition. We have also found, consistently, that CPS has misrepresented the amenities of the closing schools. In most instances, the closing schools have greater amenities than the receiving schools. For example, CPS has said that Pope and Henson don't have computer labs. Yet Henson has two technology labs, a library and a computer in every classroom, and Pope has a technology lab and a media center.

(Catalyst Chicago reported on the impact of closings in North Lawndale in the spring issue of Catalyst In Depth. Independent hearing officers have recommended against closing about a dozen schools, but none of those targeted in North Lawndale.)

Community residents have questioned whether the proposed school closings are providing cover for the Academy for Urban School Leadership, which operates turnaround schools, to consolidate its interests in North Lawndale. Bethune, an AUSL school, will close before being completely turned around. This will free capacity for AUSL to take over Chalmers, situated across the street from the northeast corner of Douglas Park. Pope, situated across the street from the southwest corner of Douglas Park, will close, and Johnson, which is an AUSL school, will assume its attendance boundaries. Johnson is situated across the street from Douglas Park on 14th Street. AUSL controls Collins High School, situated inside the park. After the dust settles, AUSL will control essentially every school in or around Douglas Park.

In addition, while Henson’s receiving school is Hughes, the new attendance boundaries are drawn such that the lion's share of Henson students will go to Herzl, another AUSL school. There are also connections to the current CPS leadership. Board President Vitale is the former board president of AUSL. CPS’ Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley is a former managing director of AUSL.

While we believe schools should be improved rather than closed, it should be noted that AUSL schools do not necessarily present better options. AUSL schools in North Lawndale have historically under-performed the North Lawndale Average.

More segregation?

School closings will also “re-segregate” the African American and Latino communities around Paderewski, and will not provide better opportunities for African American students. Currently, Paderewski is the only North Lawndale school whose attendance boundaries include North Lawndale and Little Village. Paderewski’s student population is 82% African American and 18% Latino. African American students generally live in Lawndale, north of Cermak Road, while the Latino students generally live in Little Village, south of Cermak Road.

Even though CPS has designated Cardenas and Castellanos as receiving schools for Paderewski, the new attendance boundaries for Cardenas and Castellanos are drawn such that the northern boundary is Cermak Road. Likewise, the southern boundary for Penn and Crown is Cermak. Effectively, Latino students will be sent to Cardenas or Castellanos, which are higher-performing, while African American students will go to Penn or Crown, both lower-achieving. Cardenas is Level 1 and Castellanos is Level 2, and both are nearly filled to capacity. Paderewski, Crown and Penn are all Level 3 schools, and Paderewski is the strongest of the three.

We ask that CPS put a moratorium on school closures until they can complete their master facilities planning process, mitigate any conflicts of interest and change any plans that could compound segregation.

Valerie F. Leonard

Co-Founder, Lawndale Alliance

 So it should be no surprise that our failure to keep up with the rest of the world on matters of education poses dire consequences for our economy and national prestige.

Here are some important statistics: the U.S. ranks 14^th in global college completion and by 2020, an estimated two-thirds of all jobs will require an education beyond high school.

We have seen a troubling trend for low-income and minority students — students who, in the past, have been left to fend for themselves.  This is particularly true for Latinos — who represent the fastest-growing, youngest demographic in the country. Thousands of Latino students, who have with the smarts and skills to succeed in college, aren’t even applying.  Increasing degree attainment among this particular demographic is essential, considering our nation’s goal to re-establish our place as the world’s leader with the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020.  As the U.S. strives for global competitiveness, training a new generation of workers is increasingly critical.

As a young man who grew up on the streets of the South Side of Chicago and today is a successful businessman, I have a particular appreciation for the importance of a well-educated, diverse workforce. I have seen the devastating effects of repeated cycles of poverty on those who can’t break it.  That’s why I feel so strongly that all students who are academically prepared for the intellectual demands of college — no matter their location, background or socioeconomic status — have a right to fulfill their potential.

I have known many Latino students, in particular, who have the academic potential to succeed in college but lack role models and resources. They need support and guidance. They need parents, teachers and schools that foster a college-going culture in the earliest grades.

If you work on behalf of students or feel your expertise could help to support traditionally underserved students, I strongly recommend that you attend “Prepárate™: Educating Latinos for the Future of America” from May 1 to 2, 2013 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago. Hosted by the College Board, the conference will convene the voices and best practices of some of America’s most respected educators and advocates to improve academic success and opportunity for Latino students.  Teachers, counselors and administrators from high schools and colleges will address critical issues within Latino education and focus on successful strategies that include: creating opportunities for students to experience challenging high school course work that prepares them for college; strengthening students in math and science for STEM careers; and ensuring high school graduation and improving timely college graduation rates.  To register and for more information, please visit http://preparate.collegeboard.org.

We face, in no uncertain terms, a crisis that threatens our nation’s long-term health and prosperity; America’s success in the 20th century was achieved not only through the might of our arms but the dexterity of our minds.

It is our responsibility as parents, elected officials, administrators and business leaders to support each and every one of our students. We must be advocates and we must keep pushing our students to achieve greatness above and beyond even their own expectations. If we fail, our failure will become theirs. If we succeed, our success will echo for generations.

Martin Cabrera, Jr.

Founder, CEO

Cabrera Capital Markets

Recently, Chicago Public Schools announced a formal Instructional Materials Adoption Plan, starting with Literacy and Language materials for the 2013-2014 school year.   As a third-year teacher in the district, I value the autonomy I have in making curricular decisions.  Teachers should have the ability to design and create classroom curricula fitted to the unique needs and interests of their students.

Recently, our class has been engaged in a massive project to create a 40-inch by 60-inch, 3D map of the damage caused by the Great Chicago Fire.  The areas burned in the fire have orange buildings, and buildings that went untouched are green.  Roads are made from Popsicle sticks, as streets at the time were made of wood. Important historical sites are labeled.  Most importantly, the project was completely designed and created by the students and me, with students doing the majority of the work—I acted largely as the facilitator. 

Is the project messy?  Yes.  Have I wanted to pull my hair out because tape and construction paper are everywhere?  Of course.  But, have my students learned to work together? Are they learning material that is applicable to their lives? And have they begged me to work on the project every day since we began? Absolutely.    

The project does not just fulfill social studies goals. It also integrates a range of topics, as students read about the fire, write expository essays about the fire, write as though they are citizens during that time, record video explaining the project, and use a grid system to locate points on the map.  It is an all-encompassing learning experience. It is possible because of the freedom we currently have to plan curricula that is relevant to our interests.  It is also just the kind of curricula that could be used to meet the Common Core State Standards in my classroom.

Narrow choices 

I worry about what mandates will be placed on teachers with the new Instructional Materials Adoption Plan.  From what I have read, curriculum adoption will be universal across the district with only narrow choice options.  While new materials are being purchased to accommodate the Common Core, I wonder how teachers will have time to adequately learn a new curriculum for the 2013-2014 school year if many do not even know that new materials are being purchased and no dates have been given for their arrival or for trainings.

Recently CPS sent out an email inviting teachers to be a part of a committee to help identify Literacy and Language Instructional Materials.  I couldn’t wait to sign up.  I quickly emailed my principal to ask for permission to participate (yes, principal approval is mandatory), only to realize that the meetings were scheduled over spring break.  Like most teachers, I have already made plans for the week.  Spring break was just two weeks away when we received the initial email.

Teachers are professional educators who know how to design, plan, modify, and implement curriculum that works best for our students.  In fact, according to Domain 1 in the new Framework for Teaching, the framework used to evaluate teacher performance, teachers should be able to plan and prepare effective instructional outcomes, assessments, and instruction that demonstrate knowledge of content, pedagogy, and students.   I am uncertain about the flexibility teachers will have to demonstrate this skill or the ability administrators will have to evaluate it if curriculum is mandated. 

Teachers should play an integral role in the adoption and implementation of all new materials.  We are professionals who know our students and know our craft.  The new Framework for Teaching presents an opportunity for CPS to identify teachers who are particularly effective at designing innovative curricula, and target those teachers to advise the district or even coach colleagues.  Let us ensure life continues to be good for students and teachers alike, that they have a choice and play an active role in the learning and instruction in their classrooms.

Paige Nilson is a teacher at Hamilton Elementary and a member of Teach Plus, an organization that supports teachers in urban schools.

This ethos, which has shaped the American experience from the inception of our nation, explains why we’ve devoted so much time, attention and energy to public education over the last 40 years.  After all, an individual’s chances of gaining employment—especially high wage, good benefit employment—are more closely correlated with educational attainment now than ever before.  So it’s no surprise polling data consistently shows Americans believe every child should receive a good public education. 

Yet despite this broadly shared belief, America’s public education system fails to provide each child with a meaningful educational opportunity.  While there are many reasons for this failure, one core barrier stands out: the way our nation funds schools.  It is this very issue that motivated Congressmen Mike Honda of California and Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania, to work with the Obama Administration and create the Equity and Excellence Commission under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education.  I had the distinct honor of serving on this Commission from its inception on February 2, 2011, through issuance of our final report “For Each and Every Child” two years later, on February 2, 2013.

The commission’s charter challenged us to take the education funding issue head on, and in meaningful new ways. For instance, while states currently have the primary obligation to fund schools, the commission was charged with delineating “how the federal government can increase educational opportunity by improving school funding equity.”  In addition to rethinking the federal role, the commission was tasked with making “recommendations for restructuring school finance systems to achieve equity in the distribution of educational resources and further student performance, especially for students at the lower end of the achievement gap.” 

This meant the commission had to identify: (1) what educational resources and other services are needed to provide a meaningful educational opportunity to all children, with a particular focus on children who have traditionally struggled to achieve academically, like those who live in poverty or are English language learners; and (2) how to pay for it.  This focus on ensuring adequate capacity to educate at-risk children was challenging, but also the absolute right thing to do.

That’s because public education in America is “broken” not because it fails to educate all children well, but because it is under-resourced to provide every child—regardless of race, ethnicity or income class—with a quality education.  Indeed, in most communities where resources are abundant and available, the public education delivered is competitive with the best performing systems in the world.

The Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, measures how students in different Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries stack up in reading, math, and science. When the 2009 scores were released last year, the overall U.S. tally of 500 was middling.  But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Poverty, unequal resources 

A study that divided U.S. schools into cohorts based on poverty found that non-poor U.S. children performed quite well. Indeed, American schools with less than 10 percent of students living in poverty scored 551 on the PISA, best in the world for nations with a similar poverty profile, with Finland coming in second at 536. American schools with poverty levels between 10 percent and 24.9 percent also placed first when measured against nations with similar poverty profiles. In fact, PISA scores of American schoolchildren did not start plummeting until poverty concentrations climbed to significant levels.  

This puts the real problem in stark relief: America isn’t broadly failing to educate all children, but it is failing poor and low-income children.  And a big reason for that is resources—or the lack thereof.  See, we know quite a bit about the educational practices and resources that have been proven to enhance student achievement over time.  We just don’t have a national finance system that can cover the cost of providing them in poor and low-income communities.  Too often, a state’s funding of public education is tied to what decision-makers believe that state’s fiscal system can afford, rather than the actual cost of educating each child.  This encourages an over-reliance on local property taxes to fund schools, which in turn results in significant, meaningful disparities in the resources available among wealthy, middle-income and poor communities. 

The net result: American children receive qualitatively different educations simply based on the state in which they were born, the district in which they are enrolled, and the school to which they are assigned.

To address this clear inequity, our commission issued numerous recommendations for how state governments should determine what it will take to provide each child with a meaningful education, including how to pay for it in a fair, sustainable way.  But we didn’t stop there.  We also recommended that the federal government take a substantially greater role in covering the cost of educating our nation’s at-risk students.  This is especially important given the widely varying fiscal capacities and demographics of the 50 states. 

It was incredibly difficult reaching consensus on these contentious issues.  Indeed, the very composition of the commission itself made it doubtful that any agreement on school funding equity could be reached.  Not only were a broad array of world-views represented, the commission included members who literally were on opposing sides in education funding lawsuits.  Yet despite all that, we voted unanimously to endorse the final recommendations contained in the report, and with good reason. 

See, it shouldn’t matter if a child is born in Mississippi, Connecticut, Illinois or California. That child is an American and our entire nation has the responsibility to ensure he or she receives a high-quality education.

Ralph Martire is the executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and served as a commissioner on the U. S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission.

It’s also a bad omen for communities. The last thing Englewood, Austin or any of the neighborhoods—most of them poor and black—that stand to lose schools need is another boarded-up vacant building. (CPS says it is “working with community and city departments on a comprehensive planning process to determine the best use for unused buildings.”)

With CPS losing enrollment, officials insist that the closings are needed to “right-size” the district, to save money and to provide more resources in schools that will stay open.

But many long-time observers and community activists aren’t buying that. They see no evidence that mass closings, the largest ever in a major urban district, will bring anything but more chaos and turmoil to communities that already struggle with social and economic woes. Our chart on page 10 gives readers some hard statistics on the challenges faced by the 54 schools and their neighborhoods.

As we report in this issue of Catalyst In Depth, members of the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force, which was created by lawmakers, are already sounding the alarm about children “falling through the cracks.”

That fear is based in part on what happened last year, when CPS shut down four small elementary schools and displaced 467 students. CPS now cannot account for the whereabouts of 51 of those children, slightly more than one in 10 students. Yes, that’s a small number. But as task force members point out, what about the multiplier effect with 54 closings instead of four? If CPS can’t adequately track 467 children, why believe they can track thousands?

Critics also are skeptical of the promise that children will end up in high-achieving schools, which is the only way to make closings pay off academically. The district simply doesn’t have enough top-notch schools. And a University of Chicago Consortium on School Research study found that most students displaced in previous closings over five years ended up at schools that were only marginally better academically.

That’s what happened to Rose Traylor’s granddaughter when Guggenheim Elementary in Englewood closed last year. Guggenheim students were assigned to Bond, a Level 2 school that has since fallen to Level 3, the lowest performance rating. Traylor characterizes Bond as “rough.” Her husband says he has no confidence in its academics. 

CPS has promised to opeN new specialty programs at some receiving schools—in International Baccalaureate, arts and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) studies. But high-quality programs won’t happen overnight. Without ongoing teacher training and resources, the promise will end up as nothing more than public relations “spin” to sell closings as a sound educational idea.

“This is a group of people who historically have not done what they said they were going to,” says one knowledgeable observer. “For me to trust them, without vigilance, would be foolish on my part.”

The district has promised that none of the closed buildings will end up housing charter schools. But as part of this year’s plan, CPS has co-located charters with existing traditional schools. That practice has caused friction and controversy in the past.

Some 40 percent of previously shuttered schools now house charters or contract schools, and CPS plans to open more charters in coming years. Barring charters from closed buildings would be a 180-degree change of course from previous practice. Charters wouldn’t benefit either, as facilities are their top need. 

One promise that communities can likely have confidence in is that this year’s mass closings won’t be repeated next year. When CPS lobbied lawmakers for a bill to extend the deadline to announce this year’s closings, sources say the district refused to include in that law its five-year commitment not to close more schools. But there’s another factor: Mayor Rahm Emanuel is not likely to want more upheaval over closings next year if he plans to seek re-election in 2015.

Despite the anger and anxiety, one activist says communities are driven by an over-arching goal: “The bottom line is how do we keep them from destroying our children in the [closings] process?”

Teacher strikes, school closings, new standards, new standardized tests, new teacher evaluations, too much testing, unequal resources between neighborhoods, charters vs. traditional school advocates, increasing childhood poverty, lack of recognition for schools that are doing well, reduced resources overall--so where are teacher voices in all of this?

Some teachers speak out bravely. Some complain angrily. Some moan mainly to each other. What we lack is a wider sharing with the public about effective classrooms where teachers are creative and inspiring and where kids are engaged and learning in depth. Teachers feel undervalued, misunderstood, not heard. Yet it’s not in the tradition of teaching in America to sound our horns in public.

Increasingly, though, some educators are calling for more exercise of teachers’ voices. And teachers can begin simply and effectively by telling their stories – not complaining about challenges we face, real as those can be, but telling what our classrooms are like, at our best. Without this understanding, it’s impossible for citizens, parents, or policy-makers to know how to support our work. If we want people to understand and value what we do, it’s up to us to tell them. Think of this as “building our brand.” That’s what Coca-Cola does; it’s what Ford Motor Co. does. And in America, that’s what we must do.

(Note for hurried readers: Of course I want you to hear all my reasoning. But if you already agree with me and are short of time right now, I still want you to go to the end to see what I’m asking – namely for teachers, as well as appreciative parents, to write your own great classroom story and send it to me to see about getting it into print.)

Wonder whether teachers’ stories can really get heard? Here are a few excellent examples from other parts of the country:

• Teachers connected with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project provide monthly feature articles for the Hampshire Gazette, a local newspaper there. The teacher who facilitates this says that area superintendents love it.
• University of Georgia Professor Peter Smagorinsky writes portraits of outstanding teachers, published regularly by journalist Maureen Downey in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
• Atlanta TV station WXIA features a weekly video portrait of an excellent teacher, nominated by parents and moderated by reporter Donna Lowry

Building public trust

We’re not saying that all schools are wonderful and all teachers excellent. We know there are struggling, alienated, burned-out teachers in some places, and schools that have become dysfunctional organizations. But improving them means not simply judging and firing teachers--and where would all those supposedly better teachers come from, anyway?--but helping them, starting with a clear view of what a great classroom looks like, in its many forms and styles. It means understanding a school as a complex social organization where each adult influences the others – rather than just a disconnected collection of separate classrooms. And we can best start on this with our stories.

Certainly unions and teachers organizations can contribute to this informing, this education of the public. But while these groups play an important part, unfortunately their voices are too often perceived as “special interests.” However, when large numbers of individuals speak out from their own experiences and expertise, change can begin to happen.

True, the positive approach I propose will not solve all of our problems in education. But if it helps build public trust and support, it will lay the groundwork.

Now, there are obstacles to teachers speaking out more publicly, even when speaking positively:

• Lack of specific skills. Writing effectively in public forums, on blogs and websites, in newspapers, requires particular kinds of rhetorical skill that many of us have not had an opportunity to learn.
• Lack of time. A teacher’s first responsibility is of course to his or her students. The work is intense in any educational setting. Most non-educators, having no idea how intense, are shocked, if they change careers, when they first step into the classroom. And with new mandates, larger class sizes, and little time for planning or collaboration, teachers are more stressed than ever.
• Fear of administrative reprisal. Many teachers worry they’ll anger their principal if they go public in any way, except perhaps through informational messages to parents. This worry may or may not be justified in specific schools or situations.
• Believing no one will listen. Some teachers have described attempts to communicate in their schools on some issues, only to be rebuffed, or worse, ignored. Others feel that decisions are made by powerful voices with money and influence, leaving them helpless.
  

New strategies from organizers

However, some of us have been learning from community organizers, who, having faced similar obstacles in many struggles over the recent course of American history, have learned how to overcome them. (I’d like to especially credit Kim Zalent at Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, an organizer with whom I worked for several years, for what I’ve learned about this.) Organizers have explicit training in how to strategically inform and energize people, and how to thoughtfully exert influence in a community or organization.

Here are some strategies I’ve learned from this thinking: 

• Hold one-on-one discussions with key people – the principal, supportive fellow teachers, active parents – not to argue for specific actions, but to build trust as a basis for later collaboration. Talk with teachers who are like-minded so you aren’t acting alone. But also meet with and listen to people who don’t see things your way.
• Build connections with parents, community members, and groups by finding common ground, involving them in the school, and visiting them on their turf. People outside the school can often be more believable spokespersons for your work than you.
• Document meaningful data about students’ learning in your classroom, to concretely show the important learning that takes place.
• Get your message out through newspaper articles, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, e-mail, letters to parents, etc. Craft messages to share ideas positively. Messages must be well-crafted so we don’t become defensive or self-serving.

I’ll share just a few thoughts on the first strategy for now. It’s not directly about speaking out publicly, but creates the base for it. Ask almost any organizer about his or her most valuable tool, and you’ll be told: “The one-on-one meeting.” When you sit down with an individual over coffee, not in a public forum, it becomes possible to non-defensively exchange stories about how you came to the work you do, what each of you values, and how you think about your situation. Doing this even briefly, but repeatedly, with a principal can build trust and understanding. Then later on when you approach him or her about writing an article on good things happening in your classroom or the school, the principal can trust your motives.

For more detail on the strategies I’ve outlined, plus good examples of teachers’ public writings, check out my website, www.teachersspeakup.com .

So here’s the point: I’ve talked with a number of news editors and reporters in the area who are strongly interested in teachers’ stories. I urge teachers – or parents, principals, or interested community members – to write and send me, through the website, stories about vivid moments of great teaching and learning. I can work to get some of them published in local newspapers and/or online. (This could include Catalyst Chicago, we hope, but also more general media.) I’ll be happy, too, to give feedback to writers who wish it. I’m not just seeking the nodding of heads here. I want action.

Steve Zemelman

Director, Illinois Writing Project

At UNO, I’ve heard of teachers working average of 10 hours a day with minimal preparatory periods and only three 25 minute duty-free lunches a week at pay that is 20% less than the average teacher in Chicago. They have few protections on the job and teachers have reported being fired for breathing a hint of criticism at UNO's CEO Juan Rangel. He, in contrast, is paid many times his average teacher, making over $200,000 a year for running 13 schools, while Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett makes nearly as much for operating an entire district of over 600 schools.

This state of affairs contributes to the extreme turnover of teachers at UNO, where over half the educators leave every two years.

Additionally, students are often taught in over-crowded classrooms that average 15% larger than all of CPS, despite UNO's contention that their school expansion will help ease overcrowding. This is unjust and unsustainable for the teachers and their schools’ community.

Imagine an UNO where management did not squander tax-payer dollars on political favoritism and clout and instead invested that money in educational programs, retaining staff, lower class sizes and serving the people who learn and work in their schools. If UNO educators had a union they could feel able to question the cronyism that is rampant throughout the organization and insist that resources be directed to where they belong, their classrooms. 

UNO teachers must be empowered to speak out. Almost four years ago, my colleagues and I founded the first charter school teachers union in Chicago and we’ve been growing ever since. Our union has grown to represent over 350 teachers in just three years.  I am proud to have the ability to speak out about issues that impact my colleagues and our students in Chicago’s charter schools and I believe all teachers should have the same opportunity.  UNO teachers, contact Chicago ACTS and let’s talk about how you can affect change at UNO.

Brian Harris

President, Chicago Alliance of Charter Teaches and Staff, Local 4343, IFT-AFT, AFL-CIO

Special Education Teacher, CICS Northtown Academy