Debating School Reform: George Schmidt on Bill Ayres and Mike Klonsky

NOTE: 2 versions of this article were posted accidentally and each elicited comments, which have been consolidated into one post while the other was deleted.

Small schools, and charters as well, have often been pushed by well-meaning people who were then overwhelmed by the tsunami of corporate and foundation money that used the force if its investments to put in place policies that are anti-student and anti-teacher. Anything short of open and active opposition to this is political log-rolling. -------Michael Fiorillo

We sort of fell into the current Bill Ayres/Obama controversy by wondering where Ayres (and Obama) stood during these 13 years of Chicago mayoral control/education reform and its exportation to other cities like New York.

Education Notes has consistently lined up with people like Susan Ohanian and George Schmidt amongst many others to call the high stakes testing and standards movement a major instrument of school privatization and the bash the teacher and union as the cause of failures.

This is a long post but I didn't want to cut any of it. We may take George up on his suggestion to hold a conference on school reform next year and I will throw that idea out to ICE, Teachers Unite, NYCORE, Class Size Matters, ICOPE and other activists that may be interested.

Reading George (and Michael Fiorillo, a UFT HS chapter leader and member of ICE) will get at some of the core issues facing education reformers, so hang in there.

[Bill] Ayers and [Mike] Klonsky both were part of the union bashing "left" here in Chicago in those days. Their disciples in the "small schools" stuff exported those things elsewhere.

By the late 1990s, the same time I was being sued for a million dollars and Mayor Daley and his appointees were trying to drive Substance out of business, Mike and Bill were collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the Chicago Board of Education directly as a "external partner" to a handful of "failing schools."

George Schmidt

I made charges (here and here) the other day about Bill Ayres and teacher unions based more on instinct than knowledge and received comments from both Fred and Mike Klonsky challenging my assertion that behind the Ayres' world view is a certain level of anti teacher (and union) bias. Klonsky urged me to read "Renaissance 2010 Meets the Ownership Society"* and "Private Management of Chicago Schools is a Long Way from Mecca,"** (Feb. 2006 - see abstracts at the end of this post.)

Mike Klonsky said that after reading these articles (I just read the abstracts) I should send a letter of apology to his brother and Bill Ayres.

Not so fast, Mike. Your articles were written in 2006. Where were you guys when Bloomberg and Klein instituted their assault on the NYC school system in 2002? Due to George Schmidt's warnings Ed Notes was able to be out there since 2001 when before Bloomberg took over, Randi Weingarten came out for mayoral control. Wouldst there have been more voices out there then. Besides, I've learned by watching Randi Weingarten, who can say good things but act directly opposite. Watch what they do, not what they say. But there's more.

George had direct experience with Ayers and Klonsky as his school was one of the closing schools:

One of those was the school (Bowen High School) where I taught and was union delegate until I was suspended (February 1999) by Paul Vallas, later to be fired (August 2000) by a vote of the Chicago Board of Education for publishing the CASE (Chicago Academic Standards Examinations) tests in Substance and consistently opposing the use of high-stakes secret multiple choice so-called "standardized" tests for "accountability."

Part of that "accountability" in Chicago was that if your school was "failing" (as measured by the test scores; nothing else mattered) you were forced to buy an "external partner" (in the case of Bowen, Small Schools Workshop; headed by Mike and Bill).

Instead of joining in the critique of the use of so-called "standardized" tests for the corporate accountability attacks on public schools (and unions) in Chicago, Bill and Mike (and most of their colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as others at other Chicago colleges and universities) got on the gravy train, soaked up hundreds of thousands of dollars of CPS money every year, and came into the schools to tell veteran teachers how to "reform" the schools we had worked in for years, decades, and in some cases, generations.

A familiar refrain to NYC teachers.

I want to make it clear. What Ayres did in the 70's has no relevance here. We're more concerned what he did in the 90's and early years of this century in relation to the Chicago model of mayoral control/ed reform that is entering its 14th year and served as a model of the Bloomberg/Klein shakeup of NYC schools, with the destruction of teachers union influence by attacking unions as being the major obstruction to ed reform (see the debate between Linda and Lisa last week.)

So where did Ayres stand through those years? As supporters of small schools (I hear Klonsky's new book is a must read) one must also think of the consequences of how this movement is implemented. In other words, if you get your small schools going in a manner that results in the undermining of public education and teacher unions then where did you really stand? If you acted in a way that contributed to tearing down teachers and teacher unionism, then it's a duck because you quacked. As Mike Fiorillo calls it: political log-rolling.

More from George Schmidt

I'm going to return to the details of the small schools activities in relation to corporate school reform in Chicago after November 4.

Suffice to say, a lot of people profited in the early days of "standards and accountability" here in Chicago and elsewhere, and among those were Chicago's small schools advocates. The fact that the process continued under George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind after 2001-2002 does not wipe out the history between 1995, when Chicago got mayoral control, and 2001, when the Republicans became dominant nationally.

The "ownership society" is in ways a distraction from the neoliberal project that was well on its way via "housing reform," "welfare reform", and "school reform" by the year that Bush defeated Al Gore for President. And the people who supported and profited from the teacher bashing, union busting, and other activities of corporate school reform in Chicago between 1995 and 2001 included Mike Klonsky and Bill Ayers.

I agree with Mike Klonsky about one thing. The stuff from 1968 to around 1976 is mostly irrelevant (except perhaps some of the origins of the myths of "small" as a solution to massively segregated urban school systems).

I'm still waiting to be invited to have at it at a public forum on these questions. Let's just say that certain people for a long time were given the high ground for their theories, while many of the facts that we've published over time in Substance were suppressed.

Finally, about "piling on" [Ayres.]

When Mayor Daley and his appointees at the Chicago Board of Education sued me and Substance for $1 million -- in January 1999 -- and set out to destroy me and Substance, Mike Klonsky was one of the people who assured "progressives" that I was the bad guy. He put it in writing and devoted some considerable energy to that project.

It hurt us dearly back in those days, because it cut off a large swath of potential support at a time when we were under unprecedented attack by the ruling class. Without attributing causation to Mike's behavior back then, let's just say it was a few years later that his projects became defunded by the Daley dynasty. While I might agree in the abstract that there is some general need not to allow the ruling class to pile on "progressives," there is no record of praxis in Chicago that the rule currently being invoked in defense of Bill Ayers was part of the culture of our official progressives. And I don't personally think anything's changed that much since.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

Mike Klonsky's original comment:

Sad to see leftists and progressive educators piling on Bill Ayers right at this opportune moment and pronouncing various educators at "anti-union." The Weatherman faction of SDS is pretty easy pickens from the right or the left. I ought to know, having led the fight against them in 1968. Problem is, that was 40 years ago and the Weather faction is not really the problem facing New York's teachers or their union at this moment.

And the charge that Ayers is "anti-union" today, or that he supports the current Chicago school reform initiative, Renaissance 2010, is pure bullshit and the people feeding you that crap know it. So if you are really interested in this question, read Bill and my Kappan (Feb. 2006) articles, "Renaissance 2010 Meets the Ownership Society" and "Private Management of Chicago Schools is a Long Way from Mecca," and then go back and tell my brother Fred that he was right all along, and send Bill a note of apology.

Michael Fiorillo's response

My original comment about Bill Ayers was not intended to address whether he has anti-union sentiments. I assume he would declare he does not, and I would believe him.

But that was not really the purpose of my posting, though I perhaps could have expressed it more clearly.

The point to be made about Weatherman was less its arrogance - which was ample - but rather its self-delusion, and there continues to be much self-delusion among so-called political progressives who've signed on to various ed reform programs, only to have them hijacked by the corporate drive to control and privatize public education, with its beach head being urban school systems. From what I've read, that drive has been underway longest and has achieved its greatest influence in Chicago, with DC quickly gaining ground.

Mr. Klonsky, please point out what Mr. Ayers has done to resist these attacks against public education, teachers unions and democracy, by Messrs. Daley, Duncan and others, and I will stand corrected.

Small schools, and charters as well, have often been pushed by well-meaning people who were then overwhelmed by the tsunami of corporate and foundation money that used the force if its investments to put in place policies that are anti-student and anti-teacher. Anything short of open and active opposition to this is political log-rolling.

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think that activism that results in the neutralization and weakening of unions - even ones as incompetent and misguided as most AFT Locals - constitutes progressive politics.

And it's self-delusion to claim otherwise.

Michael Fiorillo

More follow-ups from George
As I note (and you can print) I look forward to the day when these historical realities can be debated in public and full frontally with equal time to me and Mike (and Billy). On the basis of the realities of Chicago's public schools, the history of what they've been part of, and the alternatives that were rejected when their theories became praxis.

[Bill] Ayers and [Mike] Klonsky both were part of the union bashing "left" here in Chicago in those days. Their disciples in the "small schools" stuff exported those things elsewhere. Oakland was one example I got some information about. But I think the toxic impact of their theories is as close as Bushwick, if I'm not mistaken.

If anyone wants to set that kind of thing up I'll debate any of them -- including Deb Meier -- provided that the structure is equitable. No weighting. Just because I was a classroom teacher and the three of them were honchos (Meier most interesting, let's not forget) doesn't erase the historical realities here.

It's been a very hectic time, but wondrous.

George

MORE
I can't wait until we can all get together, in about a year, for a day-long discussion of urban schools, unions, and "reform." Be sure to write Billy and Mikey and invite them to be on a panel about their projects – especially "small schools" -- and their relationships to corporate "school reform."

Remember, by the late 1990s, the same time I was being sued for a million dollars and Mayor Daley and his appointees were trying to drive Substance out of business, Mike and Bill were collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the Chicago Board of Education directly as a "external partner" to a handful of "failing schools."

One of those was the school (Bowen High School) where I taught and was union delegate until I was suspended (February 1999) by Paul Vallas, later to be fired (August 2000) by a vote of the Chicago Board of Education for publishing the CASE (Chicago Academic Standards Examinations) tests in
Substance and consistently opposing the use of high-stakes secret multiple choice so-called "standardized" tests for "accountability."

Part of that "accountability" in Chicago was that if your school was "failing" (as measured by the test scores; nothing else mattered) you were forced to buy an "external partner" (in the case of Bowen, Small Schools Workshop; headed by Mike and Bill). Instead of joining in the critique of the use of so-called "standardized" tests for the corporate accountability attacks on public schools (and unions) in Chicago, Bill and Mike (and most of their colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as others at other Chicago colleges and universities) got on the gravy train, soaked up hundreds of thousands of dollars of CPS money every year, and came into the schools to tell veteran teachers how to "reform" the schools we had worked in for years, decades, and in some cases, generations.

In the case of the schools where I taught those years, the majority of the teachers were black (or other minorities) and we were under attack by university and college experts who were uniformly white and petit bourgeois and (in relation to our situations) privileged.

So...

Let's do a decade long review of urban "school reform" and invite the proponents of "Small Schools" to the debate, before audiences of union teachers, veteran teachers, in the context of a real examination of their praxis, and not the flaccid articles they can publish, without real peer review, in publications like "Educational Leadership."

But, as I said, it will take a bit of time after November 4 for us to synthesize all the things we're been learning, both from this intense political experience and from the even more important economic situation.

So, let's talk and actually bring people together. But not among university theoreticians who pontificate about what veteran teachers ought to be doing in our overcrowded classrooms. Let's bring them to us and listen to them explain what they actually did during the years, as school reformers in places like Chicago, when their alliances with guys like Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley brought their organizations more than a million dollars in public money to engage in one part of the teacher bashing that was being sold to the USA (exported from Chicago to just about every other major town) as the "reform" urban (read; mostly minority children; mostly poor children; strongly unionized staffs) public school systems.

The facts of history are clear. They just have to well up from underneath the sludge heaps of lies that "progressives" have heaped over them.

Abstracts:
*Would-be reformers need to beware of those who would co-opt the language of reform to undermine its ideals. Mr. Ayers and Mr. Klonsky examine how Chicago's Renaissance 2010 initiative has used the terms of the small schools movement to promote privatization and the erosion of public space.

**Arne Duncan, the brightest and most dedicated schools leader Chicago has had in memory, wants Chicago to be a Mecca where entrepreneurship can flourish. In this article, the authors contend that private management of Chicago schools is a long way from Mecca. There is no evidence or educational research whatsoever to show that privately run charters can produce better results. They urge a renaissance in schools based on expanding and not selling off the public space. This involves mobilizing communities and engaging and unleashing the talent and wisdom of teachers. At his best, Duncan has upheld this direction. In this contested space, this conflict over principles and fundamentals, they hope that Duncan finds a way to bring the resources and support of his business partners into play while preserving and transforming public schools and respecting the rights and the power of engagement of teachers and communities.


NOTE: Arne Duncan signed on to the Sharpton/Klein EEP project as well as the Broader, Bolder approach.

Hoola Hoops, Tulips, and CDOs... by George Schmidt

Naomi Klein points to the Chicago School of Milton Friedman's disciples as the most fundamental of capitalists. (To our educators, reading Klein will show you how Uncle Miltie's theories underlie a lot of what is going on in your schools today.) When right wing Republicans blew up yesterday's bailout conference at the White House, economists from Chicago were cited. No surprises there.

George Schmidt, who has lived under mayoral control of the school system for 13 years, would be classified as the alternate Chicago School. Can it be that George and Miltie's boys and girls have some common ground of agreement on opposing this bailout? In this post to ICE mail George treads on this ground.

Note that when George says, "The white collar workers who produced these commodities may have had "perfect" SAT scores and MBAs from the "best" Ivy League schools" he is also describing the very same types that Joel Klein has surrounded himself with.

9/26/08

Friends from ICE:

Some of us have been talking about this for a couple of weeks as the latest Wall Street, "bi-partisan", and Bush scam unfolded. For the first time in a long time, I find myself re-reading the first volume of Capital while agreeing with the most conservative Republicans. The market has judged these commodities, and there is no reason why we should not let the market continue to take its course.

Basically, the "products" that Lehman Brothers, Goldman, Merrill and Genworth Financial (watch that one next, shipmates) and the others were selling were no different (in the classical capitalist sense) from any other commodity produced for a competitive market. Just because they were given fancy named like "Collateralized Debt Obligations" (CDOs) or "Default Swaps" and had to wait to be birthed by Capital until the age of computers doesn't make them any different from their classical ancestors in the history of markets, bubbles, and panics.

The fact that the products were produced using computers by overpaid whiz kids (and their elders, right up to Henry Paulson) doesn't change their basic reality. The white collar workers who produced these commodities may have had "perfect" SAT scores and MBAs from the "best" Ivy League schools, but they were still producing a product to sell at a profit in the "marketplace" they've been worshipping since the first day they read "Atlas Shrugged" in one of those right wing essay contests every high school was forced by poverty to sponsor.

The financial products, as commodities, were and are no different from Hoola Hoops, SUVs, and Rely tampons (which also proved "toxic" after years of marketing hype).

This latest (bi-partisan) scam, from an Adam Smith point of view, is that they think they can unload a worthless inventory of commodities they have overproduced (in typical fashion, going all the way back to the Tulip Bubble at the very onset of Capital) on the taxpayers.

It may help some people to see what's going on by viewing all these arcanely named thingamajigs as simply the latest version of the Hoola Hoop. There is a market. The commodity is overproduced by those trying to cash in on the market. The price of the commodity crashes, and someone is left with huge inventories.

Why should we be buying this generation of Hoola Hoops with our tax dollars when we were smart enough to avoid buying them when they were for sale in the open market?

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

Schmidt on RICO Investigation of CTU and Substance Coverage of NEA

Substance is putting up reports from the NEA convention written by Jack Gerson of Oakland. Many people have met Jack over the years, and he needs no introduction from me. I think that for NEA there will be multiple sources of information, and that will be good for all of us.

So starting late tonight or early tomorrow, you'll be able to read Jack's reports from NEA at www.substancenews.net.

Then, beginning next Thursday, you can read our staff reports from AFT on the same site.

Thanks again to everyone who convinced AFT that it was a good idea to let Substance cover the AFT convention.

We just got work yesterday that the feds are conducting a RICO kind of investigation into the recent silliness inside the Chicago Teachers Union. While these factual realities make great grist for Antonucci, we've got to be careful how loudly we cheer. If AFT gets through the Chicago convention without some major blowup based on Chicago's local stupidities (that's a huge plural), it will be a miracle.

At least we got our press credentials for the Substance team coverage. Janet Bass asked that we try to be "complete" and "accurate" and I promised her that's what we intended from the beginning. Accuracy doesn't mean that we agree with what we're reporting, but merely that we will begin with the facts and double check the main ones. For example, that RICO fact I report in the first paragraph of this e-mail is well sourced. Anyone who cares about Randi and our strength as a union (factions aside) might let her know that's brewing here in the host city of the upcoming convention. She's going to have enough headaches running AFT without having to deal with Chicago's sandbox stupidities.

By tomorrow night, we should have out Web updates well in hand, testing he functions on our newly re-coded site (it should be about five times faster) the next couple of days with Jack Gerson's reports from Washington, D.C. and then providing daily coverage from July 10 through July 15 from and about AFT.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

Substance Response to AFT's Janet Bass

Previous posts on AFT censorship here and here.
Read Alexander Russo's take at the Chicago District299 blog.

Watch the sidebar where we will keep a running account of the story.

In a message dated 6/26/08 8:41:40 AM, jbass@aft.org writes:
AFT will not be able to give your organization press credentials. We only provide credentials to legitimate news organizations.

6/28/08

Janet:

The American Federation of Teachers has not been authorized to determine in the United States today what does or does not constitute "legitimate news organizations."

It's been more than two days since you sent me the silly and unprofessional response to my request for Substance press credentials quoted above.

I asked you to tell me how you (or AFT) determines what constitutes a "legitimate news organization" and to date I have not received your response.

Until you provide me with that information, I can't even begin to know how to respond to those two Orwellian sentences you e-mailed to me on June 26 at 8:41 AM. Please do so immediately, so that we can provide you with any information necessary to assuage your prejudices and assure that our staff can cover the upcoming AFT convention in Chicago with the same rights as all other members of the press.

My preference will be to have this matter resolved quickly, so that I could send you the list of the names of the people we will have covering the convention. However, if you have chosen an alternate route (as seems to be the case), we will have to discuss this further, in any number of contexts.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

Protest AFT Censorship: Tries to Exclude Substance

Is this how Randi Weingarten will allow her stewardship of the AFT to begin?
I'm betting she won't. But I'm not betting a large amount.

To Janet Bass, (jbass@aft.org) AFT:

I was informed of your attempt to keep Substance from covering the AFT convention, claiming it is not legitimate press. You seem to have shifting rules about what constitutes press coverage.

I find that ironic since I was issued press credentials in 2004 for my work for The Wave, a local paper in New York and Education Notes, which is similar to Substance. I sat next to Mike Antonucci from the Educational Intelligence Agency, which the AFT considers legitimate press.

Substance has covered education in Chicago - ask Mayor Daley and CTU chief Marilyn Stewart. Even the White House issued press credentials to Substance when George Bush came to Chicago.

How sad that the AFT is more restrictive than George Bush.

Substance will have a presence at the convention in some way and it will not serve the AFT in a positive manner if the question of how the AFT issues press credentials becomes an issue.

I am CC'ing Randi Weingarten, the next president of the AFT, who despite enormous disagreements with Education Notes, has always been open and supportive of my attempts to cover events in the UFT.

Norman Scott
Editor and Publisher
Education Notes
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/

Education Editor
The Wave
www.rockawave.com

If you agree that Substance should be given press credentials to the AFT convention, email Janet Bass (jbass@aft.org) and cc Randi Weingarten.

Read George Schmidt's full explanation and scads of examples on how Substance is legit press at Norms's Notes.

Here is George's email exchanges and more examples of the work Substance does.

Colleagues and Friends:

As I suspected, the bureaucracy of the American Federation of Teachers under president Ed McElroy is trying, again, to exclude Substance from the AFT convention. The last time they did this was at the New Orleans convention in 1999, when Sharon and I went to New Orleans only to be told by Mr. McElroy, personally, that we were not a "legitimate news organization." As I told you when we began working to get press credentials, I suspected they may try to exclude us again, and now they are doing so.

Below is my exchange with Janet Bass, who is handling media set up for the AFT convention (which convenes in Chicago in two weeks). Please protest yourself and utilize any contacts you have -- especially AFT members -- to protest on behalf of Substance as well.

By this morning, we had seven people who were going to be covering the AFT convention, and Danny was working so that we could provide daily Web updates on the convention during the convention. We will not let them get away with this (after all, I'm still carrying that "White House Press Pool" pass Joe, Jackson and I were issued in January; who is AFT to say what a "legitimate news organization" is?), but it would be useful if the outcry causes them to simply
correct this mistake before we have to go to court about it.

Those with a sense of humor might also contact CTU President Marilyn Stewart and ask her to confirm to AFT that we are a "legitimate news organization."

Thanks for taking your time to begin responding to this promptly. Please cc all materials you send to AFT (and any AFT responses) to me here at Substance.

Sincerely,

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

BELOW IS THE EMAIL EXCHANGE THAT IS TAKING PLACE THIS MORNING WITH AFT

In a message dated 6/26/08 8:41:40 AM, jbass@aft.org writes:

<<>>

June 26, 2008

To: Janet Bass, American Federation of Teachers, Washington, D.C.

From: George N. Schmidt, Editor, Substance

Re: AFT attempt to censor coverage of the 2008 AFT convention in Chicago by excluding Substance reporters and videographers.

Dear Ms. Bass:

Before this goes any further, please inform me what a "legitimate news organization" is according -- to the AFT definition. I'm afraid we've been down this road before, and it's time that AFT stopped trying to censor Substance. Now.

Although I had once had a discussion of this matter with Mr. McElroy (years ago, in New Orleans), I thought AFT had matured since then. If you can quickly correct the misinformation under which you are currently laboring, this matter
can be resolved quickly.

Hopefully, the following information will help you in your pursuit of the facts so that your policy and praxis in this matter improves, although my staff and I resent even having to discuss it with you.

Please note the following:

1. Our staff has covered professional events involving members of the teaching profession for decades. During the past five years, we have covered conference and conventions of educators including the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the National Council for the Social Studies and others. We have also covered other major political events both for print and new media. For example, last summer I covered "Yearly Kos" here in Chicago and during that time we interviewed or questioned several of the (then) Democratic Party presidential candidates.

2. Locally here in Chicago, we regularly cover the news pertaining to education, including the monthly meetings of the Chicago Board of Education (one of which I covered yesterday). We have also covered labor union news on a regular
basis going back decades.

3. This summer, we will have reporters covering the major conventions, including the National Education Association. We intend to cover AFT in the same manner, albeit with more staff so that we can better serve our growing
readership, both in print and on line.

4. As I've noted to you, our publication appears in print monthly and has been publishing continuously for 33 years. You can locate PDFs of our back issues from 2002 onward at www.substancenews.net (or linked to
www.substancenews.com).

5. We regularly publish Web updates on the Web at www.substancenews.net. We are currently updating and enhancing our web site so that we can provide daily updates from the NEA and AFT conventions. Any attempt by you or others in power at AFT will cause us to suffer loss to our business and will certainly qualify as a violation of our First Amendment rights.

6. Our staff regularly blogs at www.district 299.com.

7. We have covered news in Chicago for more than 30 years (education primarily, also other) and all of our regular staff carry press passes issued by the Chicago Police Department, which issues such passes for those covering regular news and "spot news."

8. In January 2008, we were cleared to cover the White House visit of George W. Bush to celebrate the anniversary of "No Child Left Behind" here in Chicago. Although we were not part of the "Pool" (which only included the regular
traveling pool and four local reporters), we were part of the larger press corps that covered the activities of President George W. Bush during his Chicago visit. This included the landing of Air Force One at O'Hare Field, the external
coverage of the visit of the President to Chicago's Greeley Elementary School, and the President's speech on the economy at the Union League Club.

I could add to this list, but I hope this will suffice to clear up any ambiguity so that we don't have to discuss the misinformation that you are laboring under further. Please RSVP me satisfactorily on this matter so we can proceed
with the arrangements.

Since I have to continue making arrangements for both our coverage of AFT and for our Web presence at various events this summer, I will need to hear from you promptly once you have reconsidered this matter and resolved it to the satisfaction of the Bill of Rights and our mutual interests.

If you have further questions for me, please feel free to call me at 773-725-7502 so that we can resolve this before it goes much further. By your response you have forced me, as you can see, that I now have to take a few additional
steps in defense of our right to cover the news on our beat without censorship from the bureaucrats of AFT or any other entity. We have defended these rights in the past and, I promise you, we will continue to do so into the future.

Thanks for your kind consideration in this matter,

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net

Jamaica High School: Sabotage and Shock Doctrine

The ICE blog prints James Eterno's letter published by the NY Teacher over their error in publishing that Jamaica HS, where James is the chapter leader, will be closing. Let's see now. The UFT makes "simple" mistake on Jamaica HS closing - one of the centers of the opposition and a place where many votes came from in the election for high school executive board in recent elections. Do you think they are not planning ahead to the next election where they will try to maintain the New Action phony opposition members on the Exec Bd and keep ICE/TJC out again? And if Jamaica closed - no more James to deal with at chapter leader meetings, delegate assemblies, etc. And it will be less likely they will have to read honest reports on the DA written by James.

And on Charlie Rose, Randi said "after getting help" - what exactly is "help", like maybe cutting class size in a struggling school which apparently is not part of the UFT formula - schools should be closed (Shanker used to say the same thing). No matter how many resolutions the UFT passes, they are not opposed to closing schools and Peter Goodman (Ed in the Apple and Edwize) has made some nice bucks working on committees that lead to closing schools.

Call the article in the NY Teacher wishful thinking.

Below, George Schmidt gives a broader perspective.

After reading the information provided by James Eterno on the destabilization of Jamaica High, it all sounded too familiar.

The privatization formula is simple. First the public school is destabilized, then they come in with a "solution" off the privatization and public school replacement script.

I wish we had had enough staff and will in Chicago to track every instance of this, since Chicago provided many of the templates. But I was glad to read that you are documenting these realities in real time. Thanks.

Let's get together in Chicago during AFT and figure out how to maintain our tracking of these things in the big cities.

Next on your agenda, if the pattern is followed:

Complete privatization via charter schools is the next wave they implemented in Chicago -- with the "failing" high schools as the primary targets.

You're already in trouble in NYC because your local union (thanks, Leo) has cocked up support for the "charter ideal" with those silly samples.

Starting this year, Chicago has been replacing its "failing" small schools with "turnarounds" and charters. You're next. And with the help of your own union leaders, you've already given a green light to the privatization via charters.

George Schmidt
Editor, Substance

Schmidt on Obama and the White Working Class

5/9/08
Norm:

Thanks for forwarding THE HUFFINGTON POST (Richard GizbertHillary's $6.4 Million is a Wise Ivestment, for 2012Posted May 7, 2008 06:06 PM This is not really a case, as some have suggested, of throwing good money after bad.)

Now that the Clinton phenomenon is sputtering to its final termination, more and more people should enjoy watching one of the things Barack Obama does best: winning over white working class and rural voters.

Many people in the media missed the facts about Obama first time around, especially since many of them were being spun by the Clinton machine. It's a variation on the White Blinddspot, and very funny to watch, since it will have been so widespread nationally (from AFT to the major pundits to, of course, the Republicans).

In late 2001, when the Democartic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat here in Illinois was still a pipe dream for Barack Obama, he began slowly building his base. A key was the Illinois Federation of Teachers, which endorsed him against the regular Democratic Party guy, setting up a screaming confrontation within "labor" over the endorsement. For months, I had to listen to very savvy political people swearing at me saying that (a) nobody with that name could get the nomination and win the Illinois seat in the U.S. Senate less than two years from 9/11 and (b) Illinois was not ready to elect another black senator (theoretically, Carol Moseley Braun was such a bad act that she had ruined the "seat").

Obama went out, after getting the nomination, and charmed people all the way from here to the Mason Dixon Line. Remember, southern Illinois is farther "south" than some portions of the Confederacy, and has some of those traditions (some of the worst Klan activity in the "North" in the 20th Century was in Illinois and Indiana).

Day after day, people would report, first wide eyed and then just chuckling, about how Barack Obama would go to some meeting in a place where there were no black people and leave with grandmothers wanting to bake him pies. In those days, Michelle wasn't as front and center, but she was a similar asset.

The Clintons have taken their nastiest shot, and truly deserve to be remembered forever for it. But they didn't write any script that's going to save the McCain campaign. Once Barack Obama rests up (and he's good at that, too) for the next rounds (which begin with the AFT convention in certain ways) it's going to be fun watching all those pies being baked from Portland, Maine to San Diego.

George Schmidt

On the Clinton attempt to destroy Obama, check out Bob Herbert in today's NY Times.

Schmidt on Russo, Social Promotion and More

I asked George Schmidt to comment on work Alexander Russo did on social promotion - which we're calling "test-based retention" - in Chicago. Everytime I start to read someone's blog, George trashes them. I can't keep track of which status quo the Education Wonk crowd is defending. Or are they attacking the status quo? No. I get it. They are attacking the old status quo and defending the new (corporate-style mayoral control) SQ.

I'll keep reading Russo's blog anyway. (Has anyone seen Russo and Rotherham in the same place? I'll check out their workshop with Jenifer Medina of the NY Times at AERA on Thurs. and report back.)

Excerpts from George (he is referencing this piece by Russo):

What Russo is doing is recycling conservative talking points, then dressing them up with some twists as "fact." Note that he never actually talks about numbers, but froths into metaphor and some quips. The reason is that at every point, the numbers are nasty. The kids who are kept back are screwed -- just as the data showed from as far back as the New York Gates programs -- for life. The schools don't improve, either. What happens is a massive triage, with the minority of better scoring children (usually, middle class) slowly being siphoned off into magnet, charter and selective enrollment schools, while the remaining public schools receive the "leftover kids" (as they have been called in New Orleans, and in some schools here).

Russo has a way of dodging facts and ignoring data, except when he is cherry picking to fit his conservative biases.

What's amazing about Russo's piece is that he can ignore what now amounts to more than ten years of history and information, then spin out the same lies about "ending social promotion" that were being served up by right wing pundits a decade ago, when Chicago was in the vanguard of test-based "standards and accountability" long before No Child Left Behind.

George's full piece with some Russo quotes is over at Norm's Notes right here.
And some responses to Russo's piece from Leonie Haimson here.

More on Obama and Education in Chicago

Finally, we are getting some hard core information on Obama and the Chicago school issue from someone involved in the front lines and this looks like somewhat of a plus for Obama. (See my comment below after Julie Woestehoff's points.)

Leonie Haimson has gone to a source and sent the following to her listserve:

As you know, I have always been reluctant on this list and elsewhere to get involved in partisan politics; for one thing, my organization's non-profit status depends on not endorsing any candidates for elective office.

But I think because of the previous discussion of Obama on this list and assorted claims that he supported or was somehow involved in some of the worst aspects of the so-called education reform agenda in Chicago, its important to set the record straight.

I turned to my friend Julie Woestehoff, the president of Parent United for Responsible Education, who has worked in Chicago in support of parent rights and parent involvement in the public schools for many years. Julie is a fantastic advocate, and she co-authored our letter to the parents of LA which we wrote in June 2006, when they were considering Mayoral control in that city. (For a copy of this letter, which received a lot of media attention at the time, see http://www.classsizematters.org/lettertoLAparents.html)

Just a little background – LSC’s or Local School Councils are like our School Leadership Teams – teams made up of parents and staff that are supposed to make important decisions at the school level and that the administration in Chicago has been trying to weaken over many years (sound familiar?)

I urge you to read Julie’s unedited observations about Barack Obama below.

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters

Hi Leonie-
Glad to offer my 2 cents, and I don't mind your sharing any of it.

First of all, Sen. Obama is my neighbor (we vote in the same polling place), and he has also been my state senator and currently my US Senator. I've always voted for him and we have a nodding acquaintance. He is just as charming, funny, straightforward, and thoughtful in person as he seems. Our community is absolutely thrilled with his candidacy -- but it's the senior African-Americans who seem happiest ("Never thought in my lifetime..."). In addition, my husband is a minister in the United Church of Christ and has enormous respect for Obama's church and its pastor, both of which are major influences on him. So I'm not unbiased. But I do have some history to relate.

As a state senator, Obama supported our elected, parent-majority local school councils during a time when we were under attack by Paul Vallas, the schools CEO at the time. Vallas wanted to be able to veto LSC principal selection decisions in cases where the LSC decided not to rehire a principal when his/her contract was up. PURE proposed a compromise, to bring in independent arbitration. There's an entry on my blog that quotes Obama in support of that process, which was made law and has worked well for almost 10 years now:

http://pureparents.org/index.php?blog/show/Obama_on_LSC_principal_arbitration_process

We wanted him to take up the LSC cause more vigorously than he did, and he disappointed us from time to time, but never on anything major. As a sidelight, I encountered Michelle Obama when she was a member of the Chicago Board of Education's Accountability Council, a now defunct group whose responsibility at the time was to review schools for potential interventions. She and a couple of other women on the council were the only ones who stood up against CPS's efforts to get them to rubber stamp any intervention that Vallas proposed. Again, she didn't get out and rock the boat, but she was strong and intelligent.

As our US Senator, Obama made the effort to get onto the Senate Education Committee and his office has been very responsive to our communications about NCLB and related matters. I've had some extensive discussion with his education aide. Where we agree most is on the importance of parent involvement. If elected, I believe that Obama will direct the USDE to take significant steps to promote and strengthen the role of parents. Obama also gets the problems with testing and has begun highlighting that in his speeches and campaign themes.

It's not true that Obama supports Renaissance 2010. He has been publicly supportive of charter schools, but his support developed prior to the wholesale appropriation of charter and other new school strategies that undergird the disaster Mayor Daley calls Renaissance 2010. Even the heretofore positive notion of small schools is tainted, at least in Chicago, by their being used to justify massive school closing and privatization. This is all fairly new stuff and even we have to work hard to keep up with the various mutations. I believe that Obama is aware of what's really going on and that he gets the issues.

Finally, the fact that Obama was recently excoriated for having Linda Darling-Hammond as one of his education advisors speaks pretty well for him. If you haven't read Mike Klonsky's blog on this topic, here's an example:
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-6z6IhP08cqXp9kfshYQPv87gCfJyFg--?cq=1&p=1924

I hope this helps!!
Julie

Norm's follow-up:

On this point:

Even the heretofore positive notion of small schools is tainted, at least in heretof, by their being used to justify massive school closing and privatization. This is all fairly new stuff and even we have to work hard to keep up with the various mutations. I believe that Obama is aware of what's really going on and that he gets the issues.

It seems I've veen hearing about some of this for years, way before this occurred in NYC. Schmidt's Substance has been running stuff on this for many years. Debbie Lynch ran and won in the Chicago Teachers Union election back in 2001 I believe partly on the school closing issue. I ran articles in Ed Notes around 2001/2 addressing this issue in Chicago and that was one of the lessons we tried to bring to the UFT when the small schools business started in NYC. So I would love to hear more than a belief he is "aware" and "gets" the issue. Silence is still complicity and if we are electing a president I would sure like to know where he/she stands on the kind of educational malpractice we've seen in Chicago and NYC and other places.

Comment on out previous post from anon:

So let me get this straight. You want Klonsky to join George Schmidt in attacking Obama in the middle of campaign against Clinton and McCain? And on what issue? Mayor Daley's school reform plan. Have I got that right?

Response: Al

I want to put up as much information unfiltered on where Obama has stood on the Chicago school - I won't honor it by calling it a reform plan. I would like to see Schmidt and Klonsky and others give us some hard info on where Obama has stood if anywhere at all over the past 13 years. Klonsky was correct to crit. Russo but provides nothing much more than that. By the way, I don't consider Schmidt's criticism more of an attack on Obama than on Clinton.

Read more on Chicago school un-reform at Under Assault in this post.

Smearing Obama: More Wind from the Windy City

George Schmidt's critical look at the Obama Ed program which we posted here seems to have been joined by Alexander Russo. I get the feeling Schmidt is not an admirer of Russo. But neither is he an admirer of Mike Klonsky. So, who is lining up where? Klonsky at his Small talk blog accuses Russo of a smear job and if you take his narrow slice, it sure looks that way. He also hints that maybe this is part of the Clinton dirty tricks campaign.

Interestingly, Randi Weingarten raised the issue of Obama's positions on education - gently, but negatively - at the Delegate Assembly on Feb. 6. Maybe not exactly a dirty trick - a slightly smudgy trick. Like the Clintons with their buddies Joel Klein and Andrew Rotherham are not in the phony Ed reform movement up to their ears.

Though right now I am inclined to support Obama, though I am also concerned about the things Schmidt pointed to. I mean, silence on the part of Obama in the face if the Richard Daly/Paul Vallas onslaught is complicity. I wish Klonsky would comment on this aspect of George's statement:

There has been no difference between Barack Obama and Mayor Richard M. Daley on any of the corporate "school reform" plans foisted on Chicago since Daley pioneered the "mayor control" dictatorial model of school governance (thanks to a vote of a Republican dominated Illinois General Assembly, a la the Gingrich Congress) in 1995.

Despite the fact that many community leaders and even some public
officials have challenged Mayor Daley on "Renaissance 2010" -- especially the wholesale relocation of children as schools were closed and often flipped for charter school use, Barack Obama was not public with any criticism of "Renaissance 2010." In fact, his positions are indistinguishable from Mayor Daley's or those of his Hyde Park neighbors and the people pushing privatization, charterization, and corporate "school reform" out of the University of Chicago and elsewhere in corporate Chicago. Rumor locally has been that Barack Obama has included Arne Duncan [the Joel Klein of Chicago] and others of that ilk in his informal educational brain trust.

Here are some excerpts from Klonsky's post which you can read here in full:

Russo won't get the job

Is Alexander Russo auditioning for a job in the dirty-tricks department of the Clinton campaign? One might think so after reading his latest attempt to smear Barack Obama and his school reform supporters. On his TWIE blog, Russo claims that Obama’s co-sponsorship of a bill promoting a Teacher Residency Program, in effect, makes the senator a supporter of school closings, teacher firings and turning over public schools to “outside organizations.”

Klonsky closes with:

Whether or not one agrees with the TRP narrative’s positive description of AUSL, or with Obama’s candidacy, it would be pretty hard to give any credence to Russo’s pitiful anti-Obama smears. Sorry, Alexander. You don't get the job. They already have hired the best in the business.

Schmidt on Obama and Education

Hello Everyone,

Given Barack Obama's stated enthusiasm for merit pay, I thought there might be things we needed to know about his relationship to renaissance 2010 in Chicago. Therefore, I e-mailed George Schmidt, since he would be in a position to know. Below is his response.

Best,
Michael Fiorillo

Subject: Re: Obama/Renaissance2010

1/26/08

Here are the facts:

1. The election of Barack Obama to the U.S. Senate was a blow against white supremacy and all of us should cheer. The election of Barack Obama to the U.S. Presidency would be the same, on the world scale. I don't think we can overestimate its importance. The man is qualified – or more qualified - than about half the politicians who have been elected to that office during the past 140 years, and certainly better by far than any of the last four Republicans. (My family always told me to consider Dwight Eisenhower in a different way, since both my parents served in World War II).

Having struggled against white supremacy, racism, and racial segregation all my adult life, I'm in wonderment about how this is developing.

However:

2. There has been no difference between Barack Obama and Mayor Richard M. Daley on any of the corporate "school reform" plans foisted on Chicago since Daley pioneered the "mayor control" dictatorial model of school governance (thanks to a vote of a Republican dominated Illinois General Assembly, a la the Gingrich Congress) in 1995.

3. Despite the fact that many community leaders and even some public
officials have challenged Mayor Daley on "Renaissance 2010" -- especially the wholesale relocation of children as schools were closed and often flipped for charter school use, Barack Obama was not public with any criticism of "Renaissance 2010." In fact, his positions are indistinguishable from Mayor Daley's or those of his Hyde Park neighbors and the people pushing privatization, charterization, and corporate "school reform" out of the University of Chicago and elsewhere in corporate Chicago. Rumor locally has been that Barack Obama has included Arne Duncan [the Joel Klein of Chicago] and others of that ilk in his informal educational brain trust.

Needless to say, he has no interest in hearing from critics of "Renaissance 2010" or from those of us who maintain that No Child Left Behind has to be abolished.

4. Barack Obama has close ties with a large number of corporate types who are happy with the Daley dictatorship. Most important of these is John Rodgers of Ariel Capital Management, which has placed Arne Duncan and one member of our seven member Board of Education at the "top" of the school system, despite the fact that Duncan had absolutely no experience, training, knowledge or credentials to head up a public school system. Obama's allies, in fact, were partly responsible for Duncan's quick rise to the top of the executive heap.

Ideologically, he seems to share the economic philosophy of the majority of his colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School -- and that is, ultimately, a very reactionary conservatism.

We may go further than this for Substance as we discuss our positions.

5. On the many occasions when I met Barack Obama while I was working for the Chicago Teachers Union, I found him amazingly charming, intelligent, and all of the other things that have brought him this far. He was a superior candidate for the Illinois Senate and for the U.S. Senate from Illinois. He was also, and always, a Chicago politicians, with all the deals that entails.

In those days during the early 2000s -- prior to Renaissance 2010 and prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama was a regular at Chicago Teachers Union events. He even came to the union offices to thank us all after he was elected to the U.S. Senate and prior to his national debut with that speech at the Democratic Convention. I have shaken his hand more times than I have shaken the hand of any politician, ever, and find him immensely likable.

We also have dozens of photographs of Barack Obama at various Democratic Party and union functions. As we've reported, one of the reasons Barack Obama is where he is today is that the leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union in 2003 broke with the labor unions, via the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and endorsed Obama for the U.S. Senate nomination over Dan Hynes, a regular organization guy.

I personally had heated arguments about this with "regular" Democratic Party types (many of them friends) in the CTU during those months, and always countered the opposition to Obama with something like "Will you listen to the guy for a minute..."

6. I oppose Barack Obama's plans for health insurance, which in my opinion will continue the ruin of the American health care system that's developed since the "market" took over and greed ruled over the hypocratic oath. If "Sicko" were made today, there could be a very interesting piece devoted to an interview with Barack Obama.

7. I'm disappointed that his education policies will be in the same
neo-liberal vein, and I don't expect much from him on No Child Left Behind. Our position is that it must be abolished.

8. On February 6, in the Democratic Party Primary here, I will be voting for John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich. With rare exceptions, for the past 40 years I have voted as a Democrat, although sometimes holding my nose. Were there a viable socialist party contending for power in U.S. elections, I'd probably investigate that option deeply.

While I will doubtless vote for the candidate of the party who is running against the Republicans, it will be with a heavy heart, since I think the Presidential election will prove an even bigger disappointment than the Congressional election of November 2006. I worked the streets and all day election day in the Sixth Illinois Congressional District on that transformation on November 6, 2006, and we were not working for a compromise on the war in Irag. As you know if you read Substance closely, we covered the Obama speech against the Iraq war in Substance, both then and since. Most recently, we reprinted the actual text of that speech in Substance.

My one regret about that event is that we didn't take photographs of the speakers, foremost (now) among whom was Barack Obama.

However...

Even in as strong a Republican district as the Sixth Illinois (where Henry Hyde had vacated his seat after decades of reactionary leadership in the U.S. House), the people we were dealing with were focused on many issues, most notably the war. Although our candidate (Tammy Duckworth, a disabled Afghan War vet) lost narrowly to the Republican, the intent of the voters was clear, and it was not to continue to compromise with Bush.

You may share this widely and freely with colleagues, comrades, friends, and anyone else who is asking about Obama's education stands.

Anyone who stands with Richard M. Daley is an enemy of public schools and public employee unions.

Solidarity,

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

Triangulation 2 from George Schmidt and a Question on Shanker and Democracy

This is a video of a statement/question I made at the Century Foundation breakfast in November sponsoring the Kahlenberg book tour which was taped by CSpan. Weingarten was on this panel defending the UFT charter school and pointing to how the only group in the business community that supported her was the Broad Foundation. I guess that was some response to attacks on the ties between the UFT/AFT/Shanker /Weingarten and the anti-union business community.

I pointed out there was another view on Shanker overall and on democracy in particular and asked why the business community was only interested in ed reform on the cheap - ABM - Anything But Money - but plenty of time blaming the teachers - I didn't get to talk about the "culture of low expectations" or the answer being lots more professional development, but never class size.




George Schmidt on ICE-mail in response to the triangulation post a few days ago:

12/25/07
Colleagues and friends:
Merry Christmas.

It's been the same here in Chicago for some time. And the same story could be written today about Barack Obama as he triangulates his way towards the same policies as the Clintons, only with some New Age charisma added. We know what the Clintons have wrought through corporate "school reform". Let's keep a close eye on what the Obamaites will bring under the same ideology.

AFT and the Chicago Teachers Union also use the Hart polling firm to shore up their prejudices. Rather than leading, they "traingulate," as the NYT story reported Sunday.

But here is one to remember. Four years ago, in December 2003, I sat with the staff of the Chicago Teachers Union while people reported on a Hart poll of the unioni's 35,000 person membership. That data formed some of the basis for Debbie Lynch's 2004 election campaign (as opposed to having a grass roots organization in each of the city's 600 schools). A month later, insult was added to injury when Jan Schakowsky's husband, Bob Creamer (of the same "triangulation" crowd in the Democratic Party) became Debbie's "campaign consultant." Creamer didn't even know that the union's rules precluded a caucus from getting the home phone numbers of voting members to do massive phone banking (one of the stocks in trade of that type of election planning), nor was there any plan for a GOTV push the final week.

Result #1? Debbie lost the election in two phases, first by not getting a clean majority in a four-way race in May, then by losing by 500 votes in June. After a flurry of media events, Stewart took over the reins of the CTU in August 2004. It's been downhill even more quickly since then, as recent numbers show.

Result #2? The Chicago Teachers Union, under the new leadership of Marilyn Stewart, has a sliver over 30,000 members, and is declining faster than anyone can count in the face of school closings and charterizations here in Chicago.

Irony #1. A recent Hart poll showed that the members of the CTU are completely confused on such basic issues as whether Mayor Daley is good for the public schools or not, or whether Arne Duncan (our "CEO", as Klein is your "Chancellor") is, too.

That's leadership for you.

Let's not forget that "triangulation" in the 1930s left the USA unarmed at the time of Pearl Harbor. One of the books handed down to me by my family was a thing called "Common Sense Neutrality", a collection of essays by a bunch of isolationists and pro-Nazis.

My Dad, who was in the U.S. Army in 1941 before Pearl Harbor, talked about using wooden "rifles" and "machine guns" during the massive maneuvers in Louisiana two months before Pearl Harbor. The "tanks" they had to fight with and against were often decorated Model Ts or souped up jeeps. That's one of the reasons why GIs were massacred at places like Kasserine Pass during the early days of combat against Germany.

And, it's still possible that had Hitler not declared war on the USA after Pearl Harbor, a declaration of war against Nazi Germany might have been difficult in the U.S. Congress.

Triangulation has a long and ugly history in this country. Many of our comrades were hounded in later years (after the Nazis had been defeated) for being "premature anti-fascists." I'm glad to have been working with all of you premature anti "school reform" people while Rani and Ed dither around looking for a center that is really way out there on the right (just as, it later turned out, "Common Sense Neutrality" was partly subsidized by the Nazis Fifth Column on the East Coast).

Best for the holidays,

George Schmidt
Editor, Substance


George,
One of the themes of the Kahlenberg book is that Shanker was fighting off the anti cold war "isolationists" on the left who wanted to lighten defense spending and focus on the problems here at home. He pretty much gives Shanker credit for the fall of the iron curtain – the glories of "tough liberalism."

One the ideas behind our forum this Thursday is to look at the reasons this book is being promoted at this time and by whom: Century, Broad, Chester Finn. Reading that Times piece on Sunday tied some things together -- the tough liberal concept is part of the Clinton campaign for the presidency.

If you can stand it watch the c-span program at this link . The panel had Bela Rosenberg, Eugenia Kemble, Diane Ravitch, Randi. I got to ask one question near the end but they cut me off.

Here is a link to a video of the short time I got to speak.

The speaker after me was Velma Hill who headed the earliest efforts to organize paras into the UFT (one of the good things). The old gang gathers.

Kemble is an ideologue in the Shanker mode who wants to kill democracy in order to save it from communism, which to them included anyone on the left or anyone who opposed their "enlightened" policies. Thus they are entirely justified in their minds in changing and manipulating union rules to keep power. Rosenberg wrote many of Shanker's "Where We Stand Columns."

New Century has put up short segments on you tube of each speaker. A pretty intensive effort to get the word out.

Norm

I put up The Nation's piece "Shanker Blows Up the World" here at Norms Notes.

Here is a direct link to my "question" which was in response to Eugenia Kemble's claim that the UFT was democratic and that complaints about democracy came only because the opposition lost all the time. I pointed out that when they did win the high school VP election they changed the rules.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haB1X2HXkhM

The entire cspan video is at: http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8957&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No

Chicago Rules...

.... For Firing Teachers

.....has been circulating on ICE-mail (posted on Norms Notes.) No one knows the scene there better than George Schmidt. He comments here.

Chicago gave up seniority in hiring when the Chicago Teachers Union supported corporate "school reform" (and the original mayoral control model of governance) in 1995 during the debates over the changes in the Illinois School Code that were finally called the "Amendatory Act."

The details morph from year to year, but the drive since 1995 has been to create as large a number of "at will" workers in the school system as possible. This was one of the major dialectical thrusts of mayoral control from the beginning, and still is. With each passing contract (and each "reorganization" of each "failing" -- er, "underperforming" -- school) the pool grows larger.

The collaboration of the unions in the destruction of the bases of unionism here in Chicago is now a matter of history, although only Substance has reported it in detail. The AFT local here (the Chicago Teachers Union) just added a few more nails into the coffin of seniority rights in the new contract. But the nails had been driven in since 1995, under both the "old guard" (United Progressive Caucus) leadership (1995-2001; 2004- present) and the "reform leadership" of Debbie Lynch (2001-2004).

The executive model of governance, at the citywide level via mayoral control and at the school level via dictatorial principals' control, requires as many "at will" workers as possible, and as few true worker rights as possible. It's a mistake, in my opinion, to demonize some jerk like Jack Welch, since the policy he's teaching is being thrust on cities nationally (wherever the majority of children are minority and poor), an attack on teachers, and in most of those places there is no Jack Welch (but instead a committee of anonymous Chicago Boys types) to do the dirty work.

Strumming through some back issues of Substance (www.substancenews.net) can give you some of the details. But I'm going to have to write a book about it (after we reprint "The AFT and the CIA" and make some publication costs back on sales) to give people the full flavor. These people plan carefully and have a thousand bullshit versions of why it's "best" that way. They also exchange PR people to hammer you with "bad teacher" stories. That's one of the reasons why I warn people not to use the enemy's phrases -- like "Rubber Room".

Solidarity,
George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

www.substancenews.net (archives at www.substancenews.com)

Substance: Chicago teachers challenge Mayor Daley

It's nice to be in the middle of a breaking story.
This is one of the biggest stories out of Chicago this weekend. Share the access far and wide.
On Friday night, the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates met and after a tumultuous meeting "approved" a tentative contract.

Or didn't.

The complete and amazing story is now on the Substance website
www.substancenews.net

See the anonymous videos from inside the CTU House of Delegates meeting Friday night and Substance's Al Ramirez's two brilliant videos from after the meeting was over.

You can also blog it at http://www.substancenewsblog.blogspot.com/
or see the blog about the CTU activites at www.district299.com

It's been a busy weekend. Happy Labor Day,

George Schmidt
Editor

LA Dreamin'

Some very instructive points in this article and George Schmidt's comment comparing the reactions of teacher unions in LA, Chicago and New York. Debbie Lynch won election originally with what seemed to be a reform agenda over the Chicago equivalent of Randi Weingarten's Unity Caucus, though Debbie also had long-time ties to Al Shanker.

AJ Duffy in LA also won election with a slate of various caucuses that defeated an incumbent leadership that could be viewed as a Unity Caucus equivalent. But Duffy and his team have very different political points of view than the leadership in NYC and have a long-term strategy as opposed to the very short-term goals of the UFT which always looks for the quick PR value and then runs on to the next big thing. And there's got to be a different mind set between dealing with a mayor in LA who was a teacher union organizer and Bloomberg. But the problem with handing over control of schools to a mayor is that you never know who you might end up with. That is why any governance plan requires some serious level of oversight.

From almost the day I started teaching I thought the school system (and the UFT) was in serious need of reform. To see the reform movement captured by the likes of BloomKlein and their allies like Eli Broad nationwide is due to a great extent to the collaboration people like Randi Weingarten and other union leaders who are always defensive about protecting teacher rights because they have no vision for how a school system should look and seem more intent on impressing the powers that be and the press as to how "cooperative" they can be.

Actually, I believe they are way more in line with the BloomKleins of this world than they are with the rank and file teachers. Look at the connections with the Clintons who have played a role in these "reform" movements that end up with teacher bashing. And follow the line to Clinton billionaire buddy Ron Burkle who tried to buy the Tribune newspaper chain with Eli Broad, who has so much praise for both BloomKlein and Weingarten (he gave the UFT charter schools $1 million.)

Some of our colleagues in TJC have contacts in LA and we will monitor what is happening out there.

George comments: 6/10/07
The reason Debbie Lynch was ousted was that she didn't heed the voices of the "rank and file" against these bullshit corporate "reforms." And she just lost her bid to get back into office by a huge margin because her opponents (the Chicago version of Unity) successfully portrayed her as having sold out the membership during her brief three years in office (2001 -2004). The fact it, the "mayoral control" model of corporate school reform that the newspapers all back was in place in Chicago for six years (1995-2001) under Chicago's version of Unity before Debbie ousted them by opposing their sellouts. The exciting thing in Los Angeles is that the leadership of UTLA can't fall prey to this phony fascist version of "reform" despite what all the New Democrats" and their media are saying if the membership remains active. As we know in Chicago and you've also learned in New York City, mayoral control is not in the interest of teachers, children, or democratic public schools. No matter how big the opening bribes are. Hopefully, the Los Angeles union will reverse its support based on how much we've learned already in Chicago and New York (and Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and now New Orleans... among others).

George N. Schmidt Editor, Substance Chicago www.substancenews.com

Union leaders in a bind
Reform-minded UTLA chiefs struggle to win over teachers
BY NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN, Staff Writer

With momentum growing for drastic reform at Los Angeles public schools driven by the superintendent and mayor, the politically powerful teachers union finds itself on the front lines of a potentially divisive battle.

United Teachers Los Angeles' own crew of reform leaders is walking a tightrope between privately backing reform efforts it has long sought, while publicly defending the rights of a rank-and-file that is being described as staunchly rigid and unaccepting of change.

Led by President A.J. Duffy, the small team of advisers is keenly aware that it must quickly and smoothly work to engender the support of its membership or risk jeopardizing the unprecedented alignment of leaders to spark a revolution at the beleaguered school district.

After decades of failed reforms, achievement scores lagging well behind the state averages and dropout rates estimated between 24 percent and 50 percent, the lives of more than 708,000 students and teachers hang in the balance - and with that, the health of the city itself.

"I don't think it's the union leadership any longer. It's a battle between the leadership being more reform-minded than the membership and the membership dragging down what the leadership wants to do in political and classroom advances," said Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.

"It's a tussle with the staunchly rigid rank-and-file where the reformers are on top, but they're being held back by a fear of change in the predominant majority of members."

Los Angeles teachers, who have been on the receiving end of countless promises while little has resulted from previous reform efforts, have become mistrustful of the district even as they have wielded considerable clout in district politics.

The divide is deep, especially in the wake of the backroom deal struck by the mayor with the union leadership to create Assembly Bill 1381, which would have given the mayor a substantial role in the school district.

Maclay Middle School algebra teacher Tim Henricks, who considers himself new to the profession with seven years experience, said what he sees is a membership divided, particularly between newer teachers and their more senior colleagues.

Younger teachers seem more receptive to ideas like charter schools or getting charter-like freedoms, while those who have been in the Los Angeles Unified School District system far longer may be more complacent.

"With charters, there's more freedom to do what you want without the LAUSD breathing down your neck. But the major concern is, what happens after five years and the issue (arises) of getting rid of teachers with just cause?

"It's the parents and the teachers - nothing really gets done without that, anything that's productive anyway, that moves in the right direction. Without our support, it's going to go nowhere."

Suspicious of reform
At Cleveland Humanities Magnet High, teachers have a long record of classroom success by working together closely to help students do well in core classes.

But they said that despite getting 40 percent of their graduates last year into University of California schools, they are facing increasing pressure to follow a standardized approach.
"Teachers are skeptical of the reforms that would seemingly help them because of all the strings attached," said Gabriel Lemmon, a 10th-grade philosophy teacher in the magnet program.

"Bureaucracy should fit itself around good teaching. Teaching should not fit itself around a bureaucracy."

For Duffy, the key to winning broad support for reform is local control.

"I've seen this district reorganize every 2 years for a new reform, and teachers are tired of putting their time and energy, their hearts and their souls into reforms that are not going to bring better student outcomes and more support for teachers in the classrooms and health and human service professionals at the school sites."

Mindful of election
With a union election coming next February, Duffy and his team will likely be treading carefully, especially with the district facing a deficit that might jeopardize its ability to win further increases on top of the 6 percent raise won this year.

"The union's leaders are not strongly moving forward with any reform agenda because it's a very fine line with the upcoming election," Regalado said.

And although AB 1381 is dead - defeated in the courts, with the mayor announcing he won't pursue appeals after he secured a majority on the school board - the sentiment of a "hostile takeover" is very much alive among the members who were split down the middle on support for the legislation.

As school board officials and the Mayor's Office are working quietly to develop a plan for Villaraigosa to oversee a "demonstration project" of low-performing schools, the union has sent a clear message to them: Let the schools come to you with the overwhelming consensus of teachers or we will be forced to oppose the move.

"The mayor has a nasty habit of jumping too quickly," said one official, who asked for anonymity. "What we're trying to get him to understand through back channels and get him to do is not move so quickly."

At a recent news conference announcing the mayor's decision to give up the legal fight for AB 1381, Deputy Mayor Ray Cortines emphasized that the mayor's team will not actively "pick" schools. Rather, it will look to schools that ask for the office's involvement.

Allaying fears
The mayor, a former UTLA organizer and committed union liberal, has insisted his agenda puts teachers first. He has formed an alliance with new Superintendent David Brewer III, won majority control of the school board control and embraced union leaders. But it will take all his powers of persuasion to assuage fears of the rank-and-file.

"The public schools in Los Angeles are not going to be able to change unless you have buy-in on the part of the teachers, administrators, and parents," said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center.

"The fact that the mayor came out of the teachers union, and the fact that he's a very persuasive, charismatic leader, the potential still exists for the mayor to play an important role in shaping the discussion on how to best improve the schools in Los Angeles and getting buy-in from the teachers to make that happen."

Villaraigosa said he believes any reform effort has to come from the "ground up, not from the top down," and that the union is "key to any effort to reform our schools." He admitted there will be challenges with the union, but he repeatedly emphasized one point: his long-standing relationship with the powerful organization.

"I've got a long history with them and we go way back, and my expectation is that we'll be able to work just fine," he said. "Challenges are opportunities and I can't tell you that there won't be some challenges, but I can tell you that I've got a long history with them, a very, very long history, and I think it's one that will provide the foundation for a successful partnership."

Need for change
Brewer insists he wants to work with the union but also made clear he means those who share the reform vision.

"Believe it or not, there are people inside the union that really understand that they need to change, and we just have to work with those people," he said.

What the mayor, Brewer and the union are seeking to achieve are the same core reform concepts: Small schools, greater local autonomy with teachers and principals having more control over budget and curriculum, and streamlining the bureaucracy to redirect those funds to classrooms.

Few can deny that teachers would embrace all those ideas, but the key to getting their support will likely come down to the process and showing teachers they are valued as professionals who have something to say about the reform proposals.

Wong said with public education on the forefront of public discourse, teachers feel under attack.

"There is a concern on the part of many teachers that their input is not being fully appreciated, so they resent it when people use the discussion about school reform as an opportunity to make disparaging remarks about teachers, that it's their fault," Wong said.
Union leaders believe their fatal political misstep was the decision to strike the backroom deal on AB 1381 with the mayor without involving UTLA's governing bodies.

Now they are working hard to educate teachers about the different reform options and what they would mean to them.

"These changes cause so much uncertainty for many teachers - we're not the most revolutionary of folk - and uncertainty causes folks to get very conservative in their thinking," Cleveland High's Magnet Program coordinator Lemmon said.

"So I don't know. I hope that we do something, but it seems that bottom-up or top-down, at the end of the day, it all seems about the same."
naush.boghossian@dailynews.com
(818) 713-3722

George Schmidt on a bunch of stuff

The NY Times reported the other day:

Next year, the four pregnancy schools and the last seven New Beginnings centers for students with behavioral problems will be phased out because of low attendance and poor performance.

We always love to get Chicago's George Schmidt's reaction to things since he has been so accurate in predicting the impact of mayoral control/corporate style management on New York. Due to George's warnings as far back as 2001, Ed Notes opposed Weingarten's call for mayoral control when Giuliani was still nmayor and her total cooperation with BloomKlein since.

May 28, 2007

New Yorkers:

Despite the rhetoric that they are doing all of this "for the sake of the kids," it is likely, unless you put enormous pressure on them, that New York will follow Chicago on this one.

Here in Chicago, the same kinds of things were done. Programs that were serving children with serious problems were dumped, amid rhetoric about improving things. What was actually done was to dump the kids from the place of last resort. The trick was to repeat, over and over and over, about how this was being done to improve things for those kids, then make sure that nobody studied what happened to the kids who were thrown in the dumpster.

The same is true of the schools that served pregnant girls. The last thing on the mind of a pregnant thirteen-year-old girl with other problems is making a high score on a standardized test. Ditto getting to "school" every day on time. As a result, of course test scores and attendance are "bad."

But those schools here in Chicago provided medical, counseling and other services that couldn't be mesured by any simple "matrix" (to use that Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush word the CEO types love). The main points of the schools were to serve both people -- the mother to be and the unborn child. To even talk about the "failure" of these schools in terms of attendance rates and test scores is a little nuts.

Again here, the key will be to follow the "We've got a study on that" model pioneered here in Chicago.

Tell the world you're concerned about every kid you're dumping, promise to make sure every kid you're dumping is both tracked and provided with access to better services (across the board), and then ignore those kids.

Just about every major university in Chicago has collaborated with the Chicago Board of Education in this major form of dishonesty. There are no "studies" and for most of the kids that are dumped, this is a ruthlessly Darwinian move by those who rule the city to purge the system of them (and the social obligation to try and help them solve massive economic, social, educational and personal problems).

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance
www.substancenews.com

Addendum: 5/29/07

One of the things Chicago's corporate media has ignored about all of these localized recreations is that extreme expansion of local administrative overhead.

Some Chicago high schools that once had one principal and one assistant principal (like Bowen, where I last worked before I was fired and blacklisted) now have three "small schools". That requires one "campus manager" (to coordinate all those operations within one building), three principals, and at least one assistant principal for each of those small schools. Each of those seven people is now being paid (straight salary) more than $100,000 per year.

That type of "reform" is providing a built-in social and economic base (within a new corporate "reform" bureaucracy) for the Bloombergs (New York City) and Daleys (Chicago) of the world.

The people who are becoming "principals" in these configurations never believed in their fantasies that they'd be earning $100,000 a year, or that they would be looking at pensions of $80,000 per year just for singing the praises of corporate "school reform" under the fascist model of the "CEO" solution to urban education -- or keeping their mouths shut about how corrupt it is.

Update on principal salaries:
One of the things that the imperial mayors want to do is create a distinct class of people, based on salary and prospective pension, that is always at odds, because of simple economics, with everyone else in the school.

When mayoral control began in 1995, the salary of the averae principal in Chicago was around 25 - 50 percent more than the salary of the average veteran teacher. Over time, the Board of Education tweaked that so that now both principals and assistant principals are being paid between $100,000 and $135,000 per year, while teachers are topping off at $65,000 per year. It seems that when a "teacher" (and this includes principals) gets into six figure incomes and the prospect of a pension based on that, any loyalty to the classroom ends. That's what's happened here in Chicago. The huge salaries are then supplemented, post retirement, with consultancies.

It's a mini version of the "CEO model" of how things are supposed to work.

Keep an eye on what's happening in New York, since for all the differences you're still following the Chicago script (including the collaboration of the teachers' union with the worst of corporate "school reform").

Chicago, Chicago...

George Schmidt provides a preliminary analysis of the Chicago Teacher union election. There will be more to come.

May 21, 2007

The Chicago Teachers Union will be holding a press conference at 10:00 a.m. today, but the results of Friday's election have been widely publicized (both in the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times), so it's possible to begin a commentary.

I'm going to focus here for the most part on the past three years (roughly from Debbie Lynch's only contract through last Friday). There needs to be a separate analysis of the errors made in interpreting the 2001 election victory (and some widespread misinterpretations of what happened in 2001 in Chicago) if anyone is going to learn from these things. And I personally believe that a great deal can be learned, both by people who feel they are in the "opposition" to the leadership in the major AFT locals, and by those in power. (This is important because the leadership now running the Chicago Teachers Union is in as much danger as anybody. They framed the issues as narrowly as possible and "won" on that basis, but they are probably missing the fact that their base is a mile wide, and inch thick, and under major assault -- and not from the inside),

Just to clarify one other thing. I've been a member of the Chicago Teachers Union continuously since 1969 (except for two years when I was organizing full-time within the "G.I. Movement" against the Vietnam War -- see Dave Cortright's "Soldiers in Revolt" for some details). I ran three times for CTU president and got 40 percent of the vote in 1988 against Jacqueline Vaughn and the United Progressive Caucus. My last run was in 1994 against Tom Reece four months after Vaughn's death.

I have served at every level of the union from local school delegate (several schools during my 28 years in the classroom) to executive board (high school vice president) and staff (director of security and safety under Deborah Lynch). I was fired from teaching by Paul Vallas in 2000 (for the publication of the CASE tests in Substance) and have been blacklisted from teaching since, both city and suburb. I was denied the right to remain a union member by the UPC leadership from 1999 to 2001, reinstated (after paying full back dues) by Debbie Lynch in 2001, then denied the right to pay union dues and retain membership after Lynch lost in 2004. I'm currently a member of the Chicago Teachers Union (now, a retiree member) again, as well as a member of SEIU (Local 73) and SESU (the Service Employees Staff Union, which represents those who work for SEIU).

I'm also a persistent critic of privatization and other attacks on unions and public schools. In these things, my record goes back decades. I only offer this summary because some people -- here in Chicago and in New York -- always try to make disagreements within the union into union busting attacks on the union. Also, given the fact that our histories are always being rewritten by the (temporary) victors, it's important for us to share as much information about realities (as opposed to hagiographies) as possible.

This is relatively important for us both in New York and Chicago. Consider the following question: Who are the last five presidents of the National Education Association, and who are the leaders of the largest locals of the NEA?

Gotcha!

What we just learned from that simple question (and our inability to answer it) is that in the AFT, we have suffered from a lot of the cult of personality. This has been most true in Chicago and New York, but also in other major locals. Whether these choices (to have our leaders portrayed as larger than life people, from Al Shanker on) have been good for the union is another question. I suspect (but can't be sure yet) that Deborah Lynch may be the last leader of the Chicago Teachers Union to have taken on that kind of role as spokesman and media arbiter. (Note that she repeated for years that her most important mentor was Al Shanker).

Anyway...

That was just a couple of prefatory thoughts.

Although I'll be writing several news articles and at least one major analysis over the next two weeks (between now and the publication of the June 2007 Substance), the immediate facts that need to be known are the following:

1. For the past six years (literally, since May 18, 2001, when Debbie Lynch unseated the UPC and ended nearly 30 years of uninterrupted rule over the Chicago Teachers Union by that caucus), the United Progressive Caucus of the Chicago Teachers Union has run against Debbie Lynch. During the three years Lynch was President of the Chicago Teachers Union, the UPC did everything it could to sabotage Lynch's presidency, both from inside the union and in the schools.

There are dozens of examples of this kind of sabotage, which I'll be adding to my analysis in the coming week.

2. During the three years she was in power as President of the Chicago Teachers Union, Lynch failed to develop a coherent political organization in Chicago's more than 600 public schools and other work locations. In Chicago, there is no substitute for organized "precinct" level work, either in the public schools or in city politics. The inability (or failure) to organize a coherent political organization independent of the incumbency from 2001 to 2004 was a major problem that Lynch faced every step of the way. The reasons for this will require some energy on the part of people to discuss and analyze, and I'm not sure how many people will want to do this candidly.

3. During the three years after her defeat in the 2004 general union election and her ultimate removal from office after the heated battle that erupted over the question of the integrity of the 2004 election, Debbie Lynch and the main members of her leadership team returned to teaching in the schools. From those positions, they remained active in the union. However, their methods for broadening their base were not adequate to the task before them.

4. During those same three years, the UPC focused on a couple of narrow issues and handled them very well. The three main ones were (a) Debbie herself; (b) the contract provision that allowed principals to get rid of untenured teachers without cause; and (c) the relative cost of the health benefits in relation to the wage increase of four percent per year for the four years of the Lynch contract. (The Lynch contract wasn't signed until late 2003, but was effective -- thanks to retroactive -- from July 1, 2003 to June 30, 2007).

5. Instead of establishing her own broader agenda, Lynch spent a great deal of time and energy defending everything she did in that contract, including those aspects of it that were viewed by the majority of the membership as less than adequate. Placed on the defensive, she remained on the defensive by choice. This took place both in the media and in the union's daily affairs.

6. Early on in the Stewart administration, Stewart wiped out most of the major structural changes that Lynch had begun, including several committees that had been functioning to the benefit of the membership. Three of these I was directly involved in -- Delegate Leadership and Training; School Violence and Security; and Testing. Stewart simply abolished these committees. In other things, she simply purged any of Lynch's supporters from existing union committees and made every effort to return to the earlier status quo. Had PACT challenged each of these at the time and persistently from the beginning, it would have brought into focus what Stewart was doing. Instead, as noted above, PACT spent most of its time and energy focused on defending the record on the weakest things it had achieved.

7. Election rules. One of the most astounding things that the UPC was able to do was to return the Chicago Teachers Union to (almost) the place where elections had been prior to Lynch. Paper ballots cast in the schools. Although the election count is now done by the American Arbitration Association, the ballots are cast in the schools and are in the possession of the school delegate for several days during the election cycle.

8. Control of the union mechanisms. Throughout her three years in office, Marilyn Stewart was able to utilize an organization, which was clumsy but effective in many ways, to expand her base in the schools. This she did by emphasizing the contract and the issues, and downplaying personalities. Every month during the three years she was in office, Stewart (or her people) reached out to former supporters on Debbie Lynch, often bringing them into her caucus first through social events and later in marginal jobs (like committee service and a couple of other small things).

9. Stewart was also able to capitalize on one of Lynch's greatest weaknesses, the internal divisions in PACT. Former Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Howard Heath appeared on Stewart's ticket. That alone cost Lynch thousands of votes. Even though Heath had expressed reservations about Stewart, he agreed to run for union convention delegate, and his name was both a repudiation of Lynch and an affirmation of Stewart. This was especially true in the city's 300 black schools (out of a total of 600 public schools in Chicago, 300 are all-black -- among the students -- and majority black -- among staff, including teachers and administrators; this is not New York City style segregated; this is Brooklyn writ large).

10. From 2004 on, Stewart effectively cultivated African Americans, both in the schools and more generally across the city. During the 2004 election campaign, Stewart not only put her base in the schools, but also in the churches in those communities. She portrayed much of PACT's appeal as tokenism.

Now that the election is behind everyone, the challenge, articulated all along by Stewart and the UPC, is to get the strongest contract ever and re-unify the Chicago Teachers Union.

I don't know what opposition group(s) will present their platforms and people to the union's membership in the months ahead, but with a June 30 deadline for the current contract's expiration, the Chicago Teachers Union has its work cut out for it.

As I said, there will need to be more analysis in the coming months, and from many perspectives. I'm hoping to generate letters to Substance from many points of view, and we'll see what else comes forward.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance
www.substancenews.com