The Great George Schmidt is Gone

From Substance

Addendum:

In lieu of flowers, donations in George's name may be sent to Loop Church, 11 E. Adams St., Suite 1200, Chicago, IL 60603 (loopchurch.org) or FAIR, 124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting is the nonprofit progressive national media watch group (fair.org).

Since we learned a month ago that the serious illness George Schmidt was suffering from would soon end his life, I've been struggling with what I would say when the end came, which it did early Monday morning. George was just shy of turning 72.

As so often these days, my brain is jumbled with so much to say. I am having trouble sorting things out and I often find myself paralyzed. In George's case there is a long history. Too long to get it all down in one blog post.

So I will write a few things over time to fully flesh out what George has meant to the progressive teacher movement nationally and especially in Chicago. But George's influence goes way beyond teachers and education.

We hear a lot of credit being given to the rise of caucuses around the nation that have challenged the status quo inside their own unions while also challenging the people running the system while pushing for a progressive pro-child movement - the so-called "social justice" caucuses, with CORE in Chicago, founded in 2008, being the prototype.

George was one of the main initiators in the founding of CORE and used his widely read Substance (founded in 1974) as a battering ram to break down resistance to the group which was challenging a Unity-type caucus.

George also used Substance in yet another victory over the old guard back in 2001 when he supported Debbie Lynch when she won the presidency. George had Substance delivered into every teacher's mailbox on 3 separate occasions during that campaign.

George was doing social justice oriented union work from the early 1970s though the day he became incapacitated over a month ago. That's over 50 years of work, including running for president of the Chicago Teacher Union more than once, I believe.

A salvaged copy post-Sandy storm

George wasn't only interested in narrow educational issues. In 1978 he wrote the pamphlet "The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A." exposing our union as an often tool of American propaganda - backing every war and military action and the massive defense budget. (Vera retyped it and we put it up on scribd a few years ago: https://www.scribd.com/doc/106238989/The-American-Federation-of-Teachers-and-the-CIA-by-George-N-Schmidt)

George was always at the center of union action in Chicago. But he went way beyond that. He was the first person I heard of who led the battle against standardized testing from way back in the early 90s and even before that. George took a step that I've seen on one else take -- he published the entire battery of tests in Substance to expose how bad they were and got sued and fired from the Chicago school system for doing so. (I roll my eyes when I hear of some people in the social justice union movement today who brag about how they refused to give a test -often with the approval of the principal -- and faced no repercussions.)

George led the battle against standardized tests
George put his career on the line to fight against standardized tests and the Chicago school system abolished the tests he exposed - though of course they came up with new ones, this time with laws designed to put people who would do what George did in jail. George and the amazing Susan Ohanian cemented an alliance over the testing issue that lasted until George died. Georg'e wife Sharon and Susan are still working together to keep Substance alive.

From Ed Notes: July 4, 2013

A Chicago Teacher's Action Inspires Antitest Crusaders - 14 Years Ago

"He's not going to teach in our system," --Paul Vallas
"What kind of people would do this?"  -- Mayor Daley

The district has brought in university professors to review questions, recruited graduate students to take tests before they are administered and hired a testing-research concern to evaluate its exams. Mr. Vallas says the Substance case hasn't influenced such moves. "We have always ignored Schmidt," he says. ..... Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2001

How come Ed Notes was able to report the Chicago ed deform story that was to spread around the nation as far back as the late 90's - which we did to all the UFT delegates and leadership on a regular basis (leading me to a ---DUHHHHH moment)? Because of George Schmidt and Substance, where I began to read Susan Ohanian for the first time.

I just looked back at the hard copy of Ed Notes May and June 2001 issues and I must publish them online so you will see the full nature of the Unity Caucus sellout.

Susan Ohanian republished the full story of George's career-ending actions in 1999 with this article from those 5-25-01 in the Wall Street Journal.

Ohanian Comment: It occurs to me that since this website was not launched until a year after George Schmidt's courageous Act of Principle, many readers of this site don't know exactly what he did.

Substance cannot survive without the support of people who claim to believe in resistance. We all owe George--big time. Subscribe--and donate--now. Today.

Page One Feature

A Chicago Teacher's Action Inspires Antitest Crusaders

By Robert Tomsho, Wall Street Journal
2001-05-25 - Read more in the original ed notes: https://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-chicago-teachers-action-inspires.html

George was the weather vane for the evils of mayoral control, which began in Chicago in 1994 as the first test case for the massive ed deform to come.  He even sent me a special letter to publish in Ed Notes as a warning when Joel Klein became Chancellor in 2002. George was so prescient - he predicted everything that came after. No Child Left Behind? George issued immediate early warnings which I picked up on and published in ed notes, even as our union leaders in the UFT and AFT were supporting this devastating attack on public schools.

Charters? George was there from day one, pointing out the dangers they posed.

George was a life-long socialist/communist who wore those labels like a badge of honor.

Yet you will never see George mentioned in the left-wing press and commentary that fawns over the social justice caucuses or the evils of high stakes testing and other aspects of ed deform.

Why? Because George always told the truth. Above all he was a journalist who never blanched at exposing bad policy and decision making and bad politics even when he felt in recent years it had infected CORE and the Chicago Teachers Union itself. He mocked what he referred to as "social justice warriors" and those who engaged in divisive acts of identity politics. (See my recent post Identity Politics and the Left - Counterpunch which I imagine George would have agreed with.)

For this he suffered attacks on his integrity over the past years for daring to tell the truth. He weathered those attacks as the many people of all races whom he had worked in battling injustice came to his defense.

George had as much influence on my thinking and political and educational development as anyone. At the 2016 AFT convention in Minneapolis I ran into Jackson Potter, one of the founders of CORE and at the time the head of personnel in the CTU. He invited me to join a bunch of CTU staffers and a few others to lunch. Some were curious as to who I was.

Jackson Potter, in introducing me tried to find a few words to describe who I was and what I did. Then, with a bit of hesitancy, apparently due to George's controversial reputation: "Norm is, and I assume he would welcome this comparison, the George Schmidt of New York."

I proclaimed to the group of a dozen people, some of whom rolled their eyes - and maybe moved an inch or two away from me, I was proud to accept the designation of "the George Schmidt of New York." And I hope to carry on George's work, though I could never fill his giant shoes.

I have a lot more to say, so more to come over the next few weeks.

Sharon Schmidt has put up tributes to George at Substance and will follow up with a longer piece on October 1.

A lifetime of service

By Sharon Schmidt - September 18th, 2018 | 1 comment

George Schmidt died peacefully

By Sharon Schmidt - September 18th, 2018 | 1 comment

A final 'Labor Day' reminder... from 'The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd'-- 'some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen...'

By George N. Schmidt - September 3rd, 2018 | 0 comments

[The following article was published on Labor Day, 2014.] 

Songs about working class and unions

By George N. Schmidt - September 3rd, 2018 | 6 comments

[The following article was originally published on Labor Day, 2011.]

James Eterno also comments on the

ICEUFT Blog

CHICAGO TEACHER UNION ACTIVIST GEORGE SCHMIDT DIES -

George Schmidt: Why every Substance reporter should be proud of the work we've done

[We] knew that at the May 22 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, we were going to witness one of the greatest anti-democratic and racist attacks on public schools since Alabama Governor George Wallace declared "segregation now and segregation forever" while trying to block the integration of the public schools of Alabama more than a decade after the Brown decision. Wallace was there along with several other Southern governors -- from Virginia to Texas -- who  were following the same course, but less flamboyantly. Remember: The attacks on desegregation in the Southern schools were also an attack on public education.  ... George Schmidt

I'm inspired just reading this.

There was a time -- 2001-2004 when I hoped Ed Notes could be like Substance but got sidetracked with the formation of ICE. I wonder if I hadn't gone in that direction and just kept developing Ed Notes as an independent ed news source for NYC teachers if that wouldn't have been more valuable an organizing tool. But I do know myself -- I don't have the patience, the organizational ability, the organizing ability, the reportorial skills, and lots more missing --- including the ability to recruit a staff --- that George has had for the past 40 years. So it was done.

A group of 10 MOREs are heading to Chicago in two weeks for a conference. Very much looking forward to seeing and hanging out with George.

July 27, 2013

Colleagues, comrades, friends, and others...

1. REASONS FOR SUBSTANCE PRIDE... As your proud editor, I spent half the night working editing the two great reporting jobs by Marybeth Foley and Susan Zupan that are now on the top of the Home Page at substancenews.net -- and I'm still not finished because I want to add a dozen more photographs to help our readers understand each in context. 

As the summer of 2013 began, just about everyone who had experienced the 2012 - 2013 school year in Chicago was either tired, exhausted or more than "all of the above." We had all achieved a great deal, from the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012 through the fights against the school closings. But after CORE won the great victories in the May 17 Chicago Teachers Union election, it was soon clear that the ruling class was not going to lighten up in their struggle to privatize as many of Chicago's real public schools as possible as soon as possible. Virtually all of us knew that at the May 22 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, we were going to witness one of the greatest anti-democratic and racist attacks on public schools since Alabama Governor George Wallace declared "segregation now and segregation forever" while trying to block the integration of the public schools of Alabama more than a decade after the Brown decision. Wallace was there along with several other Southern governors -- from Virginia to Texas -- who  were following the same course, but less flamboyantly. Remember: The attacks on desegregation in the Southern schools were also an attack on public education. So the hypocritical votes of the six members of the Chicago Board of Education at the May 22 meeting to close 49 schools and "co-locate," "turnaround," and screw more than a dozen others (while simultaneously adding more to the charter schools) was no surprise. 

At the same time, we began hearing from people in Connecticut after a court there ruled that Paul Vallas didn't have the credentials to be a school superintendent in that state. And that's what I want to remind us of today...

2. SUBSART AS A 'FIRST ROUGH DRAFT OF HISTORY.' One of the reasons why it has become so important for those of us who report for Substance to do our jobs quickly, thoroughly, and with lots of graphics within a day or two of the event we are reporting (or analyzing) is that we are forced to move on quickly. Tomorrow we have new stories to report. We are covering the most important "beat" in the struggle for democracy and public education in the USA today: Chicago. The integrity of our reporting enables people to go "back" and find information they can't get anywhere else. The Vallas situation is one case in point I'd like to share (again). We began out presence on the Web (at the "old" site, substancenews.com) in early 2002 with our special issue, "The Paul Vallas Hoax" at the time Vallas was trying to get the Democratic Party nomination for Governor of Illinois. We were just learning to use the Web, and had to make major revisions in our web site to fully utilize the capacity of the Web to do graphics. We didn't get that capacity until 2007. Since then, we have all learned almost as fast as we need to keep up with the technology. Over time, most of us have mastered digital photography (remember when we used to share those one-use Fuji cameras, and when Kodak was King?) as well as honed our reporting skills. At the same time, I've learned how to edit better, especially how to maximize the "search" tagging for all of our stories. As a result, over time we are contacted more and more as people across the USA (and some from elsewhere on Earth) look for the alternative history of "school reform" in Chicago. The latest is Bridgeport, where the Vallas Hoax is in a new iteration. 

But the key is that every day our reporting, tedious as it may be, brings in the latest chapters. We miss more stories nowadays than we can cover, but that's a tribute to the organizing in Chicago (and elsewhere in some cases). We might have covered more of the dozens of school closing hearings, and recent protests, but we are still covering as much as anyone.

Which brings us to...

3. THE FEDERAL COURT CASE AGAINST SOME OF THE CLOSINGS. The current federal court case against some of the school closings (because they are a violation of the ADA and IDEA) is just the latest in the court cases we have had to cover (or miss) going all the way back to our landmark 1980 case (S.U.B.S. v. Rohter) which established our right to sell Substance in Chicago's public schools. Susan Zupan's coverage of that case was doubtless stressful, but the fact is we are now the only news organization that has complete coverage (to date) of that very very important case. Reading the reporting (and virtually having a front row seat to the testimony, which the reporting "brings alive"), I knew that over time, despite its length, our reports would be central to people's understanding of the case. I had heard from others in addition to Susan that the Board's witnesses were weak and duplicitous, but only after reading the report on Markay Winston's doubletalk did I fully realize what that means. And as you can see from the way I've shared graphics to highlight the history of Winston's ascension to the "cabinet" in Chicago from her Cincinnati roots, we are the only news organization that can tell a story in context as well as with the facts.

4. THE BOARD MEETINGS UNDER RAHM'S REGIME. 
Never underestimate the willingness of tyrants to expand their tyranny. As Marybeth Foley is reporting this month, for the first time I know of, fewer than half the total number of speakers signed up to speak at a monthly meeting of the Chicago Board of Education actually got to speak. As we've reported, almost exclusively, under David Vitale the Board has worked overtime, and sneakily, to undermine every aspect of public participation. At the same time, they rehearse their talking points and smiles proclaiming over and over and over that they want more "transparency." Etc. BlahBlahBlah... 

Thanks for making this a wonderful summer, despite the nastiness we are organizing against and reporting about...

George Schmidt, Editor   

DON'T GET DISCOURAGED.   

A Chicago Teacher's Action Inspires Antitest Crusaders - 14 Years Ago

"He's not going to teach in our system," --Paul Vallas
"What kind of people would do this?"  -- Mayor Daley

The district has brought in university professors to review questions, recruited graduate students to take tests before they are administered and hired a testing-research concern to evaluate its exams. Mr. Vallas says the Substance case hasn't influenced such moves. "We have always ignored Schmidt," he says. ..... Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2001

How come Ed Notes was able to report the Chicago ed deform story that was to spread around the nation as far back as the late 90's - which we did to all the UFT delegates and leadership on a regular basis (leading me to a ---DUHHHHH moment)? Because of George Schmidt and Substance, where I began to read Susan Ohanian for the first time.

I just looked back at the Ed Notes May and June 2001 issues and I must publish them online so you will see the full nature of the Unity Caucus sellout.

Susan Ohanian republished the full story of George's career-ending actions in 1999 with this article from those 5-25-01 in the Wall Street Journal.

Ohanian Comment: It occurs to me that since this website was not launched until a year after George Schmidt's courageous Act of Principle, many readers of this site don't know exactly what he did.

Substance cannot survive without the support of people who claim to believe in resistance. We all owe George--big time. Subscribe--and donate--now. Today.

Page One Feature

A Chicago Teacher's Action Inspires Antitest Crusaders

By Robert Tomsho, Wall Street Journal
2001-05-25
CHICAGO -- When copies of the citywide Chicago Academic Standards Examinations came into teacher George Schmidt's possession in 1999, he did something unusual: He published them in his newspaper.
Although the tests, completed by students earlier that year, were still being given on a no-stakes trial basis at that point, the act got Mr. Schmidt denounced, fired and sued for $1 million. But as President Bush pushes a sweeping proposal for U.S. schools to adopt achievement tests nationwide, Mr. Schmidt was also transformed into a hero among students and educators in the grass-roots antitest movement.
The admirers do not include Paul Vallas, chief executive of the Chicago school district, whose lawsuit against Mr. Schmidt alleging copyright violation is pending. Chicago, like most other school districts and states, doesn't want the exams published because it would cost too much to produce or buy all new questions each year. "His intent here was to sabotage," Mr. Vallas says.
But the publication of the CASE tests in Substance, a newspaper edited by Mr. Schmidt, exposed a number of test questions with sloppy wording or seemingly accurate answers treated as incorrect among the multiple choices.
The world-studies test asked whether economic systems determine: "a) what trade should take place, b) food and language, c) how much goods are worth," or "d) which people should be employed in certain jobs." The answer the school district wanted was "c," but Mr. Schmidt asked Substance readers to "imagine an economic system that didn't help determine trade" or "the kinds of employment people can have."

Another question asked which event was the "spark that ignited" the Civil War. The only answer acceptable was choice "d" -- "the attack on Fort Sumter" in April 1861. But also valid, Mr. Schmidt argues, was choice "a" -- "the election of Abraham Lincoln" five months earlier, which prompted the secession of seven states and the Confederacy's formation.
District officials stood by those items and others, saying the answers they deemed correct were the best of the lot. Carole Perlman, director of student assessment, says perfection was too much to expect from a test in the trial stages, but adds that district officials were embarrassed by some of the questions published. "It certainly wasn't something we were happy about," she says.
Chicago began moving toward rigorous application of standardized testing after being denounced as the worst district in the country by William Bennett when he was education secretary during the Reagan era. In 1995, the state Legislature handed over control of the schools to Mayor Richard Daley, who put his former budget director, Mr. Vallas, in charge. To make sure that teachers followed its back-to-basics curriculum, the new administration pumped $1 million into developing the CASE tests. Students in grades nine to 12 now take the CASE tests in 11 subjects and junior high students will eventually take them as well.
'Sick of It All'
Former President Clinton praised Chicago as a model of school reform, but within the city, testing became a tempestuous issue. Parents protested after eighth-graders were held back or required to attend summer school because of their scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, a national test. Already required to take a raft of other standardized exams, high-school students launched demonstrations of their own as the CASE tests were prepared. "We were pretty sick of it all," says Will Tanzman, now a Yale undergraduate,
who helped organize the protests.
It was the sort of tumult that Substance had thrived on since 1974 when it was founded by substitute teachers pressing for better working conditions. If the muckraking monthly's tenor could be shrill, it also made a mark with a late-1980s series that helped lead to the conviction of an administrator for molesting students.
Mr. Schmidt was teaching ninth-grade English at Bowen High School when he became its editor in 1996. Under him, the paper regularly harpooned administrators and promised confidentiality to school personnel who provided story-generating tips. The paper also blasted Chicago Teachers Union leaders for being too cozy with the administration. "It's just generally antiestablishment, whether the establishment is the union or the board," says CTU spokeswoman Jackie Gallagher.
A burly 54-year-old with a push-broom mustache, Mr. Schmidt has never shied away from an argument. During Chicago's Democratic National Convention of 1968, he and a few other protesters were arrested for criminal trespassing after they waded into the midst of some bivouacked troops to talk. Later, he worked on a quixotic campaign to organize a labor union for soldiers.
Though rated a superior teacher in job evaluations, he could be
unconventional in the classroom. In the fall of 1998, Mr. Schmidt and other ninth-grade-English teachers were advised to cover Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" in preparation for a trial run of CASE the following January. Since he didn't yet have to use CASE results to calculate class grades, Mr. Schmidt advised his Bowen High students to go see the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli movie based on the play. In his judgment, incoming freshmen had enough adjustments to make in Bowen's tough culture, so he never taught Shakespeare before the second semester.
The English exam that Mr. Schmidt administered was among the six CASE tests that Substance later published -- 140 questions in all: two English tests, two in Algebra, and one each in world studies and U.S. history. Mr. Schmidt, whose basement serves as Substance's headquarters, says he received the tests anonymously at his home in unmarked packages, one of which was left dangling from his doorknob in a grocery bag. School-district officials, who later investigated, say they aren't sure how he got them.
Stumbling Rhetoric
Some of the snafus he highlighted involved seemingly careless editing. Of Martin Luther King Jr., one English question asked: "Which of the following activities of King's actions directly led to his imprisonment in the Birmingham Jail?"
But the phenomenon of multiple good answers was more serious. The history test asked which of these items contributed to America's industrial growth: population increase, government regulation, availability of natural resources, or increased taxes. Population increase was deemed correct, but Mr. Schmidt questioned why natural resources should be excluded, or even government regulations "allowing the use of public lands for railroads and the massive immigration to provide factory labor to exploit natural resources."
Ms. Perlman, the school-district official in charge of developing the test, concedes that that item "was possibly not a very good question" but adds that bad questions sometimes slip through multiple screenings before being caught.
Seeing the questions from various tests in Substance "woke everybody up," says Barbara Radner, director of DePaul University's Center for Urban Education, who was working with Chicago schools at the time. "The questions were uneven and some of them were confusing."
Perplexing the Mayor
But city and school officials accused Mr. Schmidt of violating copyright laws and district regulations while rendering hundreds of expensive questions useless for future tests. "What kind of people would do this?" Mayor Daley asked at one news conference.
The school district got a court order barring Mr. Schmidt from publishing more exams and sought more than $1 million in damages from him for copyright violations in a pending federal lawsuit filed in Chicago. Mr. Schmidt contends that, as an editor, it was his First Amendment right to publish the tests.
While the union hierarchy kept its distance from the matter, Mr. Schmidt was removed from the classroom and assigned to a central-office job. There, for a time, he designed refrigerator magnets that listed emergency numbers for latchkey kids.
During a three-day disciplinary hearing at the school-district office early last year, Mr. Schmidt flew in expert witnesses, one of whom likened the CASE exams to a game of Trivial Pursuit. But the district succeeded in limiting the matter to a simple question of whether Mr. Schmidt had violated district regulations, and the presiding administrative-law judge agreed that he had. In August, the school board finally dismissed Mr. Schmidt.
Seeking his job back, late last year he filed a still-pending lawsuit in Chicago asking a state court to review the firing, claiming the board's move was arbitrary and capricious. Chicago school officials say they stand by their decision. "He's not going to teach in our system," Mr. Vallas says.
Chicago teachers and other observers say that recent editions of the CASE tests are much improved. The district has brought in university professors to review questions, recruited graduate students to take tests before they are administered and hired a testing-research concern to evaluate its exams. Mr. Vallas says the Substance case hasn't influenced such moves. "We have always ignored Schmidt," he says.
'Big Inspiration'
But word of Mr. Schmidt's plight has spread wherever people have taken aim at one-size-fits-all testing. A call for donations by one sympathetic Champaign, Ill., teacher has helped to raise more than $80,000 to defray Mr. Schmidt's legal expenses, which now total more than $110,000. "This has really been a big inspiration to people around the country," says David Stratman of New Democracy, a Boston advocacy group that is trying to organize a teacher boycott of state exams in Massachusetts.
Jeffrey Orr says that what Mr. Schmidt did helped inspire him to boycott this year's CASE exams at Chicago's Whitney Young High. "If you are not shown your mistakes, then there is no way you can ever possibly learn from them," says the 16-year-old sophomore.
Meanwhile, copies of the latest CASE tests continue to arrive at Mr. Schmidt's house. He recently used one of them to help his own son figure out how he had done on the district's algebra test. "I think every parent ought to have that right," Mr. Schmidt says.

— Robert Thomsho

http://www.mail-archive.com/science@lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/msg00423.html

George Schmidt Rakes Over Paul Vallas: Liar, Crook, Racist

It may have been that the truth got shelved for Vallas's lies (and of course the bigger lies of corporate reform that went to Washington with Barack Obama and Arne Duncan) for a time, but the facts don't change over time despite the massive work of the liars.

Vallas had publicly compared himself and his talents to Michael Jordan and then trashed Rahm Emanual. Anyone who wants to know why the ruling class dumped Vallas in Chicago in 2001 can see from this the WHY.

Corporate America then put the Vallas show on the road, and Philadelphia and New Orleans suffered as a result..... George Schmidt 

Due mostly to the work of George Schmidt in Substance, Ed Notes (modeld on Substance) has been reporting on Paul Vallas for well over a decade most recently the other day (Drive-by Superintendent Paul Vallas, YOU'RE OUT!!!!!!!!) .

Vallas fired George, had him banned from teaching in Chicago and sued him for a million dollars for publishing and ridiculing the CASE standardized tests. George beat the law suit but not the banning. Well, he had more time for publishing Substance and organizing groups like CORE.

Substance published an article yesterday on the racist aspects of Vallas' reign in Chicago (followed by Philly, New Orleans and Bridgeport, where he seems to have met his Waterloo.

VALLAS FACTS: Paul Vallas began to purge of Black teachers, administrators, and other staff from Chicago's public schools as part of corporate 'school reform'... The Paul Vallas I knew, by Dr. Grady C. Jordan

This morning George sent out a missive to Substance staff. Here is the section on Vallas.

PAUL VALLAS OPENS THE FLOODGATES. As most veteran Substance staff members know, we have always operated on some of the thinnest threads financially... we had to shift our Web site from www.substancenews.com to www.substancenews.net in 2007.... it has now sustained daily -- yes, DAILY -- news and analysis coverage since June 2007, and as a result we are one of the more sustained placed to get news and analysis about Chicago's public schools and about corporate "school reform" in general.

One result of this, over time and with patience, is that we are often the first in Chicago to be contacted about Chicago-related nonsense taking place across the country. Recently, the ruling by a Connecticut court that Paul G. Vallas was ineligible to serve as a school administrators in Bridgeport has roiled the world of corporate "school reform."

As usual, Vallas's ego splashed in the way of some of the more sober people trying to sustain corporate reform. Within a few days, Vallas had publicly compared himself and his talents to Michael Jordan and then trashed Rahm Emanual. Anyone who wants to know why the ruling class dumped Vallas in Chicago in 2001 can see from this the WHY. By the time Vallas assured Richard M. Daley that Tom Reece and the UPC were a shoo-in for re-election to head the CTU against Debbie Lynch and PACT, Daley already knew that Vallas had been making fun of Daley behind Daley's back. The CTU upheaval (which turned out to be more hope than we should have put into it, given Debbie's version of school reforms) gave the pretext for the end of Vallas. But the following year, he tried to get the nomination for Governor from the Democrats, but thanks to Roland Burris failed (Vallas would, like Rahm, have gotten a large part of the "Black Vote" in 2002...). Corporate America then put the Vallas show on the road, and Philadelphia and New Orleans suffered as a result.

At each point where Vallas was caught lying, while his friends were caught stealing, someone surfed the Web carefully enough to get in touch with Substance. We were there, thanks to being on the Web, publishing accurate criticism, and indexing extensively, for people to locate and read the truth about the various miracle workers who were oozing out of Chicago and into the bloodstream of American public schools. Philadelphia officials contacted us when they realized Vallas was a fraud, and Grady and I spent a great deal of time briefing them on the details of how the Vallas frauds operated. After Philadelphia got rid of Vallas, he landed in New Orleans, where he helped destroy the largest and most powerful Black union (UTNO) in the USA and create the largest expansion of charter schools in any major city. Before "Race To The Top."

The past couple of years, as Chicago administrators have taken the Vallas road and gotten out of town, we have heard from people in school boards and unions across the USA who wanted to know the details about CPS bureaucrats who were vying for big jobs, usually based on their version of the "Chicago Miracle." With Arne Duncan in D.C., it was hard for the facts to get out, and a lot of districts (Broward County and Sarasota Florida; Glochester Massachusetts; Madison Wisconsin) are now suffering the penalty of believing the corporate reform hype and hiring one of those Chicago "rock star" administrators who've been bailing out from Chicago quickly of late.

Vallas was also called a "Rock Star" by some Board of Education people in Bridgeport when they were hiring him.

What this means about out responsibility is simple: Substance published the facts first, and we report clearly and with sources. As a result, when someone looks for an alternative analysis about Bob Runcie, Rick Mills, Hosannah Mahaly, Steve Zrike, Jennifer Cheatham -- or Paul G. Vallas -- the best place to get information is at substancenews.net. 

2002 AND SUBSTANCE TODAY. As you have noticed, we are re-printing in 2013 Substance articles about Paul Vallas and Chicago's version of "School Reform" from 2002. As the Vallas story gives people a renewed interest in the lies that have been pushed across the USA for the past 20 or 30 years, our reporting has always had an edge. But I was rarely so proud as I was after someone asked us about what we have on Vallas before he left Chicago, and I could resurrect what we reported the month (March 2002) when we first went on the Web. It may have been that the truth got shelved for Vallas's lies (and of course the bigger lies of corporate reform that went to Washington with Barack Obama and Arne Duncan) for a time, but the facts don't change over time despite the massive work of the liars. I am proud that we can be reprinting the stories we first published about Vallas's frauds and lies a decade ago, and look forward to continuing updating them in the age of Barbara Byrd Bennett and Rahm Emanuel, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama.

Afterburn
Is there a better lesson than Substance, publishing since the 70s, for staying the course and being persistent? George is one of the founders of CORE, works for the Chicago Teachers Union and has been a force in Chicago teacher union politics for almost 4 decades.  So every day when I feel like calling it quits I think of George, who I beg to set me free to laze around on a beach chair.

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George Schmidt writes:
As of Friday, we had $900 in the Substance checking account, owed about $5,000 in federal taxes, and faced a $4,000 cost for printing and mailing the September 2012 print edition after we print it Wednesday (September 12). We decided last week to defer the publication of the September issue because had we gone to press on September 4, the headline would have been

STRIKE?

But when we go to the printer on September 11th or 12th (depending upon how things go tomorrow) the headline will be

STRIKE!

Everyone here will be "broke" in one sense over the next few months. After all, you can't take on the Empire and expect to come out without casualties.

When all heck breaks loose after midnight tonight, we will be devoting all of our time (instead of just 90 percent of it) to publishing every story we can get, and all the analysis we can provide.

Substance has been the major source of information for Chicago teachers for over 40 years. With full monthly print editions, in addition to having a well-read web presence, the work of publisher/editor George Schmidt and his wife Sharron has played a major role in the growth of CORE from its founding days in 2008 (George was one of the founders) to taking over the Chicago Teachers Union just two years later. Substance spread the word about CORE to every school in the city.

DONATE TO SUBSTANCE
SUBSCRIBE TO SUBSTANCE

Don't think print is dead and its all about the web. During the 2001 union elections in Chicago, George delivered copies of Substance to the school mailbox of every teacher 3 times during the election period. That election was won by Debbie Lynch over the Unity style leadership, an election that was a precursor in many ways to the 2010 CORE victory (Debbie's caucus got over 15% of the vote in '10 and she threw her support to CORE in the runoff which helped them get 60%).

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In many ways, Substance was the inspiration for Ed Notes' expansion from a newsletter at Delegate Assemblies to a full-fledged tabloid which led to the founding of ICE which led to the founding of GEM and both groups have played a major role in the founding of MORE. (See: My Path from Ed Notes to MORE Through ICE and GEM and MORE).

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SUBSCRIBE TO SUBSTANCE 


 Really, if you want to know what is going on in Chicago education read articles like this:

Press conference shows community support for CTU strike as contract talks stall because of CPS

and here is the kind of nugget you cannot get anywhere:

BOARDWATCH: Rahm's going to replace Jean-Claude Brizard with Barbara Byrd Bennett... One FNG outsider is as good as another, as long as she's been vetted by the Broad Foundation and checks off that 'diversity' box in the billionaire's check list

George N. Schmidt - September 08, 2012

LET'S CALL THIS: "WHO WAS ON THAT ELEVATOR?" Yesterday as I covered the quickie exit of the CPS negotiating team from CTU headquarters for Substance, I was struck by the fact that our quarter million dollar "Chief Executive Officer", Jean-Claude Brizard, was again AWOL from the bargaining. That's nothing new. After all, the negotiations have been going on, through more than 55 sessions, since November 2011, and Brizard has managed to get away with that particular truancy the whole time.
Above, the latest "Chief Education Officer" of Chicago Public Schools, Barbara Byrd Bennett, tries to cover her face while reporters ask questions and TV cameras film the quickie exit of the Chicago Public Schools bargaining team from the Chicago Teachers Union's Merchandise Mart headquarters on September 7, 2012. Byrd Bennett six months ago was working in Detroit, where the project of destroying the city's real public schools had advanced much further than Chicago's. Then the abrupt (and still unexplained) departure of "Chief Education Officer" Noemi Donoso (in office for less than one year as part of the Rahm Emanuel education reform team at CPS) required a new Chief Ed Officer. As the Emanuel administration knows there is not one person in Chicago qualified for the top executive posts at CPS, the Board of Education once again turned to the Broad Foundation and located the most talented person out in Detroit. Rumor now is that Byrd-Bennett is being groomed, with almost embarrassing speed, to take over from Jean-Claude Brizard when the mayor decides to blame Brizard for the catastrophe that he has engineered. Behind Byrd-Bettet above is Emanuel's education liaison, Beth Swanson, who less than five years ago was a CPS budget chief and telling the world that CPS finances were so good CPS didn't need a property tax increase. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
But there was a group of six people — the CPS "bargaining team" of September 7, 2012 — desperately waiting for that elevator door to close, and it's worth sharing a "Who's Who" of who was in that groups. This is especially important since most of the current crop of talking heads and pretty faces in the "news" business in Chicago are as clueless as some metaphor that might today escape me (well, I'll let someone with a more politically correct mind come up with the metaphor for that level of journalistic degeneration in the Second City; all the ones that come to my mind this morning fall into traditional Chicago historical figures like Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John and their side businesses...).

No Brizard at the Mart on September 7, 2012. And to most reporters in this town, the six people who were there are unknowns because, like the fifth season of "The Wire", Chicago's news persons are less than informed about the stories they have to cover. ("Beats" are where you learn the ins and outs, but beats are not "cost effective" in a business that provides "content" but no longer context or accuracy).

A major fact of the Board of Education's latest "team" at the CTU is that the FNG from Detroit — ("Chief Education Officer" Barbara Byrd Bennett) — was part of the six people who ducked quickly into the elevator at the Merchandise Mart and did the bugout boogie as reporters tried to get questions answered. If this were New York, where there are still some reporters who know the beats, somebody besides Substance this morning would be asking how an FNG administrator who just arrived from destabilizing and privatizing Detroit could become, overnight, one of the six most important educational executives in the nation's third largest school district on the verge of the first massive teacher strike in a quarter century.
As late as six months ago, no one in the world would have guessed that on day soon "Barbara Byrd-Bennet" would be one of the six most important people in Chicago in deciding whether Chicago's kids (including my two littlest ones) would be in school on Monday or helping Mom and Dad on the picket line.

READ MORE of this insightful reporting by George:

And yes, don't forget to either
DONATE TO SUBSTANCE or
SUBSCRIBE TO SUBSTANCE 

OR BETTER, DO BOTH

AFTERBURN
In a follow-up I will make available to you George's short book "The AFT and the CIA" a blockbuster he wrote on the late 70s. We have an exclusive reprint the first one in over 20 years.

Substance Web Site Under Cyber Attack, Needs Assistance

Those of you following the Chicago union story know that George Schmidt's Substance, in the midst of a media blackout, is our major source of information. But if you try to get into the site it is like watching grass grow. Here is a request from George:

6/15/10

I've spent the better part of the day monitoring the attack on SubstanceNews and on the phone with Network Solutions about it. I've learned some very interesting things, and was wondering if you could ask ICE people, when they have the time, to do the following:

Please go to the Substance website at

www.substancenews.net

Every eight to twelve hours and e-mail me a copy of what happens

My email for this is

Gnschmidt@aol.com

I am beginning to document this third time we were sabotaged by Network Solutions since January, and how this always happens at a mission critical time. In January they were supposedly "sweeping for hackers" and had our site stats down a total of four full days (January February 2010). In April, they let another site basically piggy back on Substance, and CPS blocked us for a week from local Chicago schools access. This time, within 24 hours after our announcing the CORE victory, there have been a half dozen different Network Solutions explanations about why nobody can get to Substance.

So I need to document each iteration, and from different places. We're at this point working with lawyers. Needless to say, these problems haven't hit all (or even most of) the site hosted by Network Solutions. While it's an honor in a way, we can't let them continue to disrupt us every time we're in the middle of some large scale political activity here in Chicago or elsewhere, and that is precisely what they have been doing and are continuing to do as I write this.

Thanks for your help,

George N. Schmidt

Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

NAEP Outside NYC and George Schmidt Response

From a contact embedded in an urban school system administrative operation:

Hi Norm,

I mentioned several months ago that I might be helpful in preparing some analyses from the NAEP TUDA math results. Here are some bits from NYC, Washington DC, and Chicago.

It seems like the NYC story has been pretty well covered by the media, but the DC and Chicago stories have not. In both DC and Chicago, there are significant racial disparities in test score gains, with black kids making the least progress in both cities. In DC, the scores of 8th grade black kids dropped, and black 4th graders in DC made much smaller gains that whites. The Chicago story is similar.

Given how both Rhee and Duncan (like your own dearly beloved Joel Klein) love to rhapsodize over "closing the gap," these results seem to be fairly damning.

I sent it to George Schmidt who sent this response:

12/9/09

Norm and friends:

You can share this as widely or narrowly as you want. As usual, you can "use my name."

Thanks for the NAEP heads up. We can run it if someone makes it into a more coherent article, without mentioning any "names." Let me know.

There is enough craziness here in Chicago to fill the rest of the Obama term, only now it's being exported to the entire USA. By the way, as I've already reported, the destruction of Chicago's public schools, which is much further advanced than New York or D.C. based on the same master plan, has also included so much simple old fashioned political corruption that it will take us ten years just to dig out the Arne Duncan era. You can re-read Susan Ohanian's final version of Jerry Bracey's investigation of the "Save-A-Life Foundation" (SALF) at Substance or at Susan's Web site, but remember, that's the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

By my estimate, during the Duncan years Chicago Public Schools doubled the number of no-bid contracts for everything from simple commodities to the most expensive (privatized) computer systems. "Save-A-Life..." was just almost a sideshow. The Big Show is massive privatization.

And of course it was all done behind the smokescreen of the "emergency" in the school system (now 14 years old, since the Amendatory Act established mayoral control here in Chicago) that required special ongoing anti-democratic powers for the mayor and his appointed schools chief and school board.

The (probably a suicide) death of our school board president (Michael Scott) less than a month after President Obama dispatched Eric Holder to Chicago to try and keep the lid the growing Chicago scandals (that's a plural) ranging from simplistic old style corruption like SALF all the way to the surrender of large chunks of Chicago (and the schools, especially high schools) to the drug gangs (you can Google "People" and "Folks" to get some idea of how deep the problem now is here; Mexico is comparable) dramatized the situation again. Holder ordered that Michael Scott (President of the Chicago Board of Education) not be photographed with him (the Attorney General of the USA) while he was in town. Scott, for all the crocodile tears after his death, was one of the most pernicious servants of corporate "school reform" right up to his death, promoting school closings and charterizations at levels New York is just beginning to experience.

Here is the latest big thing to watch out for as they close more high schools in New York and bash more veteran teachers: the lifeboat effect.

As (middle class, usually white) parents begin to believe that a regular public school is a terrible fate for their children, and traditional public schools are starved of resources, one logical step (as soon as I say this, you'll say "Of course") is to try and bribe some public official into getting your kid into one of the remaining "good" public schools. After all, a couple of thousand bucks in hundreds in an envelope is cheaper than tuition to one of the major private schools (unless you're a Hedge Fund manager and don't remember when a drawer full of $100 bills was real money).

Coming soon to a major urban school district near you.

And The New York Times thought they had seen "corruption" when you had those old community school districts. My bet is you're already in the midst of the same kind of privatization and charterization corruptions we had reached here by the final years of Arne Duncan's Kleptocracy, but haven't dug it out yet.

Can't wait to read more about NAEP.

As always,

Solidarity Forever,

George N. Schmidt

Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

Chicago Resistance to Ed Deform Grows as Does Opposition in the Union

Maybe it takes 15 years of mayoral control and the entire ed deform program to get things moving. Chicago has been the poster boy, having had first Paul Vallas (who ruled and ruined Philadelphia and is doing the same to New Orleans as we write) and then Arne Duncan, who was almost considered a joke when he ran the schools before Obama put a punctuation point on Duncan when he Peter Principled him into a national role as Education Secretary.

The Chicago Teachers Union, being run a basic clone of our own Unity Caucus dominated UFT, not only didn't stand up to the Mayor Daley assault, but actually cooperated in many areas (sound familiar to UFTers?) The CTU version of Unity is called the United Progressive Caucus (UPC). In 2001, an opposition caucus led by Debbie Lynch won power (with George Schmidt's Substance playing a major organizing role by distributing 3 issues of the paper to every single Chicago teacher). By the way, it should be pointed out that Daley supporters on the editorial pages actually urged teachers to vote for the UPC and against Lynch's PACT Caucus.

For a number of reason too complicated to get into here, Lynch lost the next election (she got the most votes in the first round but lost in the run-off to UPC's Marilyn Stewart. But for those in NYC thinking about this spring's UFT elections that all it takes is "winning" an election, the point should be made that the UPC still controlled the House of Delegates (like out DA) and the staff positions and used these positions to undermine Lynch at every turn. (She also made some crucial mistakes.) Stewart won the next few elections as Lynch's power waned (she is running again with PACT in the CTU elections this May).

The ed deform program in Chicago is known as Renaissance 2010 and the attack on the public schools has been intense. We've seen the entire program here in NYC under BloomKlein. They have the nerve to call it Children First. I won't get into details of the impact of ed deform but watch the 5 minute video below for Jackson Potter's perfect representation. It is no accident that these deforms have been linked to the increasing violence in Chicago, as we reported on George Schmidt's wonderful piece a few weeks ago. (Chicago Turnaround' the deadliest 'reform' of them all.) I love it when Schmidt's bitter enemies and who were silent for so long write about this issue but make sure to never mention the work Substance does.

The impact on the CTU has been intense. The CTU has hemorrhaged over 6000 teachers to charter schools and other privatized operations. Stewart's response has been to try to repress the growing opposition. She recently forced opposition groups to give out their literature outside and banned Schmidt from selling Substance at the doors of the House of Delegate meetings (which he has been doing for 30 years) and even called 911 on him and two cops threatened to arrest him.*

The rise of the Caucus of Rank an File Educators (CORE)

Around 18 months ago, CORE came on the scene and created an alliance of sorts with Schmidt. The combo has had a dynamic effect on the Chicago scene. Jackson Potter is one of the chief spokespersons for CORE. I got to hang with Jackson and a group of CORE people in July at the 5 city conference we held in LA and I learned an enormous amount from them.**

Here is a 5 minute video from March 2009 where Jackson elucidates the impact of Renaissance 2010 and the work CORE has been doing.

The URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akv07-iXs_c




Related
Follow all the doings in Chicago at Schmidt's Substance News. http://www.substancenews.net/
And the CORE blog.

Must see 28 minute video of Chicago's George Schmidt and CORE Shredding Arne Duncan and the Chicago Corporate Model on our sidebar or at Labor Beat hosted on blip.tv: http://blip.tv/file/2428857

See the Black Agenda Report on CORE's anti-discrimination suit.
""The fired teachers are disproportionately African American, and the newly hired teachers are not-(ironic, eh, in Obama land?)

Chicago Teachers File Racial Discrimination Suit Against Obama Administration's School “Turnaround” Plan

*{By the way, this same kind of repression has started here in NYC. And I believe that was one of the reasons Mulgrew was chosen because the AFT/UFT hierarchy knows that what happens in Chicago will eventually happen here, but much more slowly because Unity is way more powerful than the UPC. Mulgrew is there to bring the goon mentality to the table, as opposed to Randi's "I feel your pain" mantra. (Speaking of goons, I saw Jeff Zahler at the DA after his return from Washington DC as AFT staff director - look for the usual red-baiting from Zahler in this year's union elections - mr. zahler goes to washington....). Mulgrew's new regime has forced all visitors to the DA up to the 19th floor to watch on TV, something I refused to do and was harassed by 2 Unity goons. I told them to call the cops and they backed down. But I think it will eventually happen as Mulgrew will feel he has to defend his toughness (GEMers and ICEers will be ready with cameras.) More on this issue in a separate post.}

**We are way behind here in NY in organizing efforts but maybe we need a decade or more of ed deform for things to jell. The work of GEM, ICE, TJC, NYCORE, and Teachers Unite allied with the growing core of parent and community activists, and even some politicians, give us hope.

AMAZING, MUST SEE Video as Chicago's George Schmidt and CORE Shred Arne Duncan and the Chicago Corporate Model

CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) has only been around for about a year and is capturing the imagination of Chicago teachers, parents and students. And George Schmidt has been doing his Substance thing forever. Teaming up Substance and CORE will shake the pillars of the ed deformers in Chicago.

Obama got Arne got out of town just in time. Maybe Obama decided to rescue his basketball buddy from what is coming. Obama will not escape unscathed as the Chicago model of corporate/ed deformation is examined and protests grow. CORE is expected to challenge the Randi-like CTU leadership in union elections next May.

It is probably no accident that Chicago, the city with the longest history of mayoral control (since 1995), and with a collaborative union leadership (sound familiar, kiddies?) is facing the biggest pushback from the rank and file. Having just spent a bunch of time in LA with some of the leaders of this resistance movement, I am enlightened and encouraged. My guess is New York is a few years behind Chicago in building this movement, though I'll write more about these remarkable people as the weeks go by as we look for ways to support each other and activists in other cities.

Spend 28 minutes watching this Labor Beat video of Chicago-based Substance editor George Schmidt and my new best friends from CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) challenge Arne Duncan and the Chicago model being imposed on the entire nation. Watch Arne gulp and break into a rash when a black student rakes him over the coals. George's comments are featured throughout and CORE members are prominent. CORE gave me a dvd which can be reproduced if you want to show it to people in your school. Or just watch it together online.

The best PD you can do to inform your colleagues as to what is coming down and the corporate rationale behind and demonstrate a model of how resistance can form in the absence of teacher unions. Let me amend that. Not the absence. The UFT/AFT is very present – on the wrong side. (See Schmidt's comments on CTU President Marilyn Stewart applauding Duncan as he outlines the plans to decimate the teachers in her union and the children they teach.)

The video is titled: Secretary of Education Duncan: Pushing the Chicago Plan

Here is the Labor Beat intro:

Before President Obama appointed Arne Duncan Secretary of Education, Duncan was the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. Under his control there, Chicago Public Schools endured a relentless wave of privatization, school closings, militarization, union busting and blaming teachers for the problems of urban schools. Now, the war on public education pursued during the Bush administration will only continue and intensify under the new Secretary of Education Duncan. His Chicago Plan, as former teacher and editor of Substance News George Schmidt explains, is the template for a national strategy to dismantle public education. Through revealing footage and comments from Chicago teachers, this video shows the resistance that has been growing among teachers and community organizations.

Here is a national alert for everyone who cares about the future of public schools, threatened now by Arne Duncan and his corporate vision for the nation's school systems.

The video is hosted on blip.tv: http://blip.tv/file/2428857

Photo: Labor Beat

Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators try to talk to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at his recent Chicago speech at the Hyatt, but are turned back [ED NOTE: also threatened with arrest if they enter the hall.]

Schmidt on Charters and Chicago

Are parents of charter school children across the city being organized into shock troops for Mayor Bloomberg's continued control of the public school system?

March 21, 2009

Norm and friends:

The answer is "Yes." They do the same thing in Chicago, only putting more dollars behind it.

After each conversion, a group of parents if formed to go around praising the charter (and damning the "bad" public school that the children had been forced to endure before they reached the promised land of charters). If you listen carefully (and you should really tape these scripted things), they will all repeated the same teacher bashing bullshit.

-- The teachers rush out of the building at the public school at the end of the day

-- The teachers in the public school did not believe "all children can learn" (a veritable mantra, since the days of "Stand and Deliver" -- which they still are required to memorize, I'm sure)

-- The "bad teachers" in the old public school simply sat at their desks and handed out worksheets, etc., etc., etc.

-- The public school teachers allowed violence and bullying to prevail, but finally our children are "safe" ete.

If you collate all of this garbage, you can actually hear the echnoes of their scripts.

What's interesting is that the two groups of people who repeat these scripts (the charter school TFA type teachers; the charter "parents") usually can't answer the simple question: What public school was that, where all those terrible things happened to you and your children?

They are usually repeating articles of faith, like scripture. Since the right wing talking points are never challenged, they get away with it. (Especially if, in the case of the parents, they introduce themselves as being poor and minority -- which usually they are not, since hustles like this don't go to the poor).

Here in Chicago, the breeding ground for these parents is a thing called the "Renaissance Schools Fund", which currently has more than $50 million to spend on privatization and its necessary "choice" propaganda.

The Renaissance Schools Fund sponsored an annual "choice" fair at Soldier Field (where the Bears play football; honest) in January. It could have been called "Charter Schools and Privatization Expo". Also, union busting Expo.

Their funding comes from the largest corporations in the USA, which is one of the reasons, as a side line, that CORE Chicago organized a boycott of Walgreens (basically, it's the Business Roundtable, which in Chicago is called the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club and includes all the CEOs of the biggest corporations and is straight out of Ayn Rand in its ideology).

They also sponsor several black women who are called "Parents for School Choice" who are always on call to speak at public meetings and denounce anyone who wants to reform the existing public schools and oppose charters. "Parents for School Choice" jobs will doubtless proliferate as these things do.

If some of the parts of these scripts haven't reached you yet in New York, they will.

One of the most fun things is to ask these people where they get their information and who is paying them. The answer to (a) is usually "everybody knows that" (for example, that union teachers trample the children rushing to the parking lot at the end of the day, while the noble charter school teachers work form pre-dawn until post-sunset for the sake of "the children") and (b) "Why are you asking that question? How is that relevant to what's best for my child's future? HOW DARE YOU !!!!"

Etc.

Enjoy.

Let's continue to share these experiences.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

George Schmidt Talks Arne Duncan

George Schmidt (along with Susan Ohanian) has been a prescient voice in opposition to the corporate and political hack attacks on public schools, teachers and ultimately, students and parents in the urban schools. He was interviewed by Bruce Dixon on WRFG Atlanta 89.3 on December 22, 2008 about Obama's choice of Arne Duncan as education secretary.

Did Barack Obama Just Appoint an Underqualified Political Hack & Privatizer to be Secretary of Education?

Audio Version: http://www.blackagendareport.com/newsite/sites/all/sound/interviews/20081222bd_george_schmidt_interview.mp3

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/2618

The entire transcript is also posted on norms notes.

Excerpts:

BD: In Chicago, for the benefit of our audience, we're in Atlanta GA now, the mayor is Richard Daley. 2009 marks his 20th year in office. His father was the mayor too for almost as long, from about 1956 if I remember right to 1975, I think, eighteen or nineteen years. So out of the last fifty or so years, for forty of them the city of Chicago has been run by the Daley clique, the Daley Regime, or as we call it in Chicago, the Machine. Arne Duncan, is he a product of the Machine.

GS: Exactly, Daley as I pointed out, in 1995 was given dictatorial power over the Chicago Public School system. It was based upon the lie that the system as a whole had failed, and the repetition of that lie from the eighties on. Daley has appointed two CEOs and roughly two school boards since then. Both of the CEOs have been white non-educators who replaced African American educators. Both of the CEOs had no experience in education or in corporate America. This is an important point since it's supposedly a corporate model. They were fundamentally political puppets who would do his bidding.

BD: So it does say something that out of all the superintendents of school systems, CEOs or whatever nationwide, Barack Obama reached around and found one that not only liked the corporate model but liked the military model too.

BD: Arne Duncan is going to be the nation's number one guy on education. Surely this guy must have years and years of classroom and administrative experience,

GS: Wrong. He has none.

BD: So he's never been in a classroom?

GS: No.
--------
[Ed Note: George tells Bruce that he has never seen a Duncan resume despite years of asking for one. Bruce seems astounded.]

BD: Of course the new Obama administration is pledged to openness and transparency everywhere, so I'm sure that Arne's resumes and cv's and all that will surface really soon.

GS: If that's the case, people are going to find out that he spent most of his adult life either playing basketball or working with some very wealthy financiers from his old neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago.

BD: Since we are talking about applying this Chicago model of public education nationwide, what has the regime of high stakes testing and closing schools that don't meet testing goals which is now national policy thanks to No Child Left Behind meant to Chicago – oh, and one other thing I'd like to see if I can get your comment on is that Hillary Clinton at one point said let's repeal No Child Left Behind while Barack was saying, well, he didn't quite say mend it but don't end it, but something like that. So what has the regime of high stakes testing done for African Americans in Chicago and public education in Chicago?

GS: Basically the vast majority of the schools that have been closed for supposed academic failure, which means low test scores, have been those schools which served a population of 100% poor black children via a staff that was almost always majority black teachers and usually a black principal. Since Arne Duncan took over in 2001, he has closed over 20 elementary schools. Most of them have been privatized into charter schools, and he's closed six high schools. In all the cases I know of, the majority of the staffs of those schools who were then kicked out of union jobs and forced on the road to try to get new jobs, were majority black teachers and principals, many of which I knew personally. The six high schools he closed, Austin HS, Calumet HS, Collins HS, Englewood HS, Orr HS, and Harper HS, were either all black, in the case of five of them, or majority black and Latino in the case of Orr. That's the active record of what Arne Duncan has done in his school closings for which Barack Obama has praised him.

----
GS: On the night of the Dec. 15th it [Duncan's appointment as Ed Secty] was made official. On the 17th, the Board of Education had its regular monthly meeting scheduled for downtown Chicago. Even though they apparently, expected it to be a love fest for Arne Duncan, what happened was that more than a dozen teachers and community activists from seven schools got up and exposed Duncan's public record of sabotaging public education, of privatizing schools, of union busting, and of fraudulently cooking the educational statistics books. By the middle of the meeting Duncan had walked out for an hour and these testimonies continued to go on. By the end of the meeting members of the board were heatedly arguing with the teachers, and after the meeting two of the teachers were threatened. Members of Duncan's staff called their principals demanding to know why they had been allowed to take the day off work to talk about Arne Duncan's crimes (against public education) before a school board meeting.

Not one of the TV stations was there to film or video any of this activity during the board meeting. The only photographer there besides me, because I cover every board meeting for Substance, was a woman from the Chicago Tribune and the only photograph the Tribune did was of Barbara Easton Watkins, who according to speculation here is in line to succeed Duncan here in Chicago. The TV stations boycotted the meeting completely, the story in the Tribune was a wacky one that ignored most of what happened in the meeting. The Sun-Times which is our other major daily newspaper covered the meeting slightly accurately, and NPR had a reporter there who missed 98% of what was actually going on, typical for the way Chicago Public Radio has been covering this type of story.

The place where the impact of high stakes testing has been most devastating has been in those schools which serve the poorest children with the fewest resources and in the most challenging environments. In that area, the schools have not been improved, but instead the teachers and schools have been under attack for failing at things the society has never taken responsibility for.

Schmidt on Duncan/ Media Failure on Fair Reporting

Crony Capitalism in Education

Take another look at that slimy AFT letter by Randi Weingarten to the New York Times in the context of Substance editor George Schmidt's analysis.

by George Schmidt

Arne Duncan's career has been in crony capitalism, Chicago style. Since he was appointed "CEO" of Chicago's public schools by Mayor Richard M. Daley in July 2001, he has been responsible for the greatest expansion of patronage hiring (generally, but not exclusively, at the central and "area" offices, but often as well in the schools) on the CPS payroll since the Great Depression (when the school system was controlled by politicians, leading to its near-demise in 1945).

Duncan has also presided over more "no bid" contracts from contractors (for everything from buildings and computer hardward and software to charter schools) in the history of the City of Chicago abd its public schools. Finally, and equally important, Arne Duncan has closed "failing schools" (dubiously defined by low test scores for one or two years, often because of special circumstances at the schools) in Chicago's African American community.

Since Duncan became CEO, he has eliminated 2,000 black teachers from Chicago's teaching force, undoing decades of desegregation and affirmative action in the name of "school reform." Last year (2007-2008) Duncan began a program he called "Turnaround" (based on the corporate models) that was actually reconstitution.

He fired most of the teachers and principals in six public schools (four elementary schools; two high schools). At each of those six schools, the majority of the teachers and principals were black.

Were Arne Duncan living and working in Mississippi in 1952, it would be easy for the USA to see what he is and has been up to in the service of corporate Chicago. Because he plays ball not only with Barack Obama but with Richard M. Daley and corporate Chicago, Chicago's white blindspot has ignored the fact that Duncan has gotten rid of more African American educators than most Mississippi and other southern governments during those dark days just before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

The reason why the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) can promote Duncan's candidacy is that seven years of turmoil within Chicago's union has left the union badly split (and weakened).

Arne Duncan does not have the support of Chicago's teachers. He has the support of the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Marilyn Stewart, who is in the midst of a purge of her own staff and elected administration. Stewart, a lame duck officer with no more chance of re-election than George W. Bush, is viewed by the majority of Chicago Teachers Union members as a traitor to her union and the teaching profession.

— George N. SchmidtSubstance2008-12-14http://www.substancenews.net

FAIR Media Report:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3663

Media's Failing Grade on Education 'Debate'
12/16/08
President-elect Barack Obama chose Chicago schools superintendent Arne Duncan as his nominee for Education secretary after an almost entirely one-sided media discussion that portrayed the most progressive candidate in the running for the post--Stanford educational researcher Linda Darling-Hammond--as an unacceptable pick.

Corporate media accounts presented the selection as a choice between "reformers who demand more accountable schools" and "defenders of the complacent status quo," as a Chicago Tribune editorial put it (12/9/08), claiming that the selection would determine whether Obama "wants to revolutionize the public education industry or merely wants to throw more money at it."

The Washington Post's December 5 editorial was headlined, "A Job for a Reformer: Will Barack Obama Opt for Boldness or t he Status Quo in Choosing an Education Secretary?" The Post warned readers about "warring camps within the Democratic Party," which they characterized as "those pushing for radical restructuring and those more wedded to the status quo."
Such loaded language was not confined to editorials. The Associated Press' Libby Quaid (12/15/08 ) summarized the debate this way:

Teachers' unions, an influential segment of the party base, want an advocate for their members, someone like Obama adviser Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor, or Inez Tenenbaum, the former S.C. schools chief.
Reform advocates want someone like New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, who wants teachers and schools held accountable for the performance of students.

These were almost the same terms adopted by conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks (12/5/08):

On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers' unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.

Brooks' exemplar of the "establishment view" was Darling-Hammond, who seems to have attracted the same kind of fury from the actual establishment that was visited on Lani Guinier during the early days of the Clinton administration (Extra!, 7-8/93). As the Tribune editorialized:

If Obama awards the post to Darling-Hammond or someone else reluctant to smash skulls, he'll be telegraphing that the education industry has succeeded in outlasting the Bush push for increasingly tough performance standards in schools. That would, though, be a message of gratitude to the teachers unions that contributed money and shoe leather to his election campaign.Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter (12/15/08) echoed the same theme: "Obama also knows that if he chooses a union-backed candidate such as Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford professor active in the transition, he'll have a revolt on his hands from the swelling ranks of reformers."

Strangely, in corporate media's view, the selection of someone who would continue the education policies of the Bush administration would to signal that Obama favored serious change, even "radical reform" (in Brooks' words). The Tribune again:

The Bush administration exploited this post not only to help promote crucial No Child Left Behind legislation, but to follow up by making schools more accountable for how well their students do--or don't--learn.

Will that emphasis on accountability now intensify? Or will it wither as opponents of dramatic change reclaim lost clout? We trust that Obama instead will make a statement for real improvement.

Voices in support of Darling-Hammond were hard to find in corporate media: There was an op-ed backing her in her local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle (12/12/08), and a couple of prominent letters to the editor--one by Darling-Hammond herself (New York Times, 12/12/08) responding to the Brooks column, and another in the Washington Post (12/11/08):

The claim that Ms. Darling-Hammond represents the "status quo" is ludicrous.... She was the founding executive director of the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future, a panel whose work catalyzed major policy changes to improve the quality of teacher education.

She has been a powerful voice for the fundamental principle that all children deserve a well-prepared and properly supported teacher. She has advocated for strong accountability and has offered thoughtful alternatives--a balanced system of measures to evaluate higher-order thinking skills. And she has urged federal policies that would stop the micromanagement of schools and start ensuring educational equity--an issue only the federal government can tackle. Corporate media have thus far been mostly pleased with Obama's nominations--in large part because the president-elect's moves have been seen as staying close to the media-approved "centrism." (FAIR Media Advisory, 11/26/08).

The media unease with the possibility of a progressive pick for education secretary was dealt with by Alfie Kohn in the Nation (12/29/08):
Progressives are in short supply on the president-elect's list of cabinet nominees. When he turns his attention to the Education Department, what are the chances he'll choose someone who is educationally progressive?

In fact, just such a person is said to be in the running and, perhaps for that very reason, has been singled out for scorn in Washington Post and Chicago Tribune editorials, a New York Times column by David Brooks and a New Republic article, all published almost simultaneously this month. The thrust of the articles, using eerily similar language, is that we must reject the "forces of the status quo" which are "allied with the teachers' unions" and choose someone who represents "serious education reform."

One prominent exception to the corporate media's one-sided presentation of the Education nominee search was Sam Dillon's news article in the New York Times (12/14/08). Not only did it avoid caricaturing Darling-Hammond by citing views of both her critics and supporters, the article included some accurate media criticism:

Editorials and opinion articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have described the debate as pitting education reformers against those representing the educational establishment or the status quo. But who the reformers are depends on who is talking.

Unfortunately, in most establishment media accounts, only one side has been allowed to do the talking.

Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org.