Historical Perspective, 2003: On Closing Schools and High Stakes Testing and the UFT's Role

There was a lot of wallop packed into a few pages of Ed Notes when we published our second 16 page tabloid edition 7 years ago in Jan. 2003.

The incredibly perceptive John Lawhead [ICE-TJC candidate for the High School Executive Board] laid down some serious truths on testing and small schools and where Eric Nadelstern [now rumored to be Joel Klein's successor] was coming from at the time.

George Schmidt, sent John an email after reading his article, including this gem:
Most of the "small schools" research (at least the stuff around here, especially from William Ayers and Michael Klonsky of UIC) is also intellectually dishonest. Nailing Ayers 5 years before he became famous all over again.

Check out the ed deform disasters in Chicago and now New York today.

I had just met Lawhead in late 2002, and he proved to be one of a most perceptive analysts on the deep issues affecting education. In March 2003 John and I attended a meeting in Birmingham, Alabama with some of the leading Resisters to NCLB, high stakes testing, and all the ed deforms to come – such leading lights as Susan Ohanian, the late Steve Orel, Juanita Doyon, Bill and Joanne Cala and 20 others. I learned so much from these people and from John, one of the most widely read people I've ever met- code words for "I felt downright inorant." I learned in those days that John had been the administrative assistant to a lawyer at Columbia U who happened to be named James Leibman, who became Joel Klein's Chief Accountability Officer years later. Boy does the worm turn.

Nine months later John and I and a few others hatched the idea of an Independent Community of Educators (ICE) which has attracted some of the leading thinkers and writers in the UFT.

John's analysis is incisive. Teaching at soon to be closed Bushwick HS, he saw a copy of Ed Notes in his mailbox at school and sent in this article. After Bushwick HS was closed – and the process he lived through has given him enormous insight – he ended up a Tilden HS where he is chapter leader. Now Tilden is about to be closed as the Tweed tsunami sweeps through Brooklyn.

In that same early 2003 edition, I ran an email sent by George Schmidt to John sharing his experiences with the small schools movement in Chicago (see below John's article), followed by my 2 cents at the time on the role the UFT was playing in the high stakes tests/school closing scenario.


Shhhhhhhhhh ... The Small Schools are Coming
by John Lawhead, Teacher, Bushwick HS
Jan. 2003

Teachers, let's repeat the mantra:

Change is never easy but it is necessary and good. Change is a part of life and it's a big part of a school system that feeds us.

Teachers know that change is also a godsend for those who can't finish what they start. Often the changes are meant to invite a kind of amnesia that will take us past whatever has previously been inflicted on the schools or promised but never delivered.

I belong to a pocket of teachers who are suspicious and combative about the new wave of small schools reform. Not everyone understands us. For instance, me and my complaints about the New York Teacher newspaper. What they put in and what they leave out.

Why be irritated over a paper that's mainly devoted to making teachers feel good about being teachers? On the days when it comes you can put your feet up and read about the fresh triumphs and "historic" accomplishments of our union.

The rub is that my Brooklyn high school is being phased out and September and October have passed without a word about any of it. Nothing about this year's opening of small schools and the phasing out of large ones in the Bronx. In the absence of clear statements suspicions turn to speculation.

My guess is that this is another issue, like high-stakes testing and teacher-proof curricula, on which our UFT leadership prefers to "deliver" a passive teacher constituency for its political bedfellows. Perhaps that's an overly subjective perception. I'll just leave it there and let's wait and see. {emphasis mine}

[Breaking up large neighborhood high schools into smaller theme-based academies is not something new. Perhaps that's why the current wave of small schools, officially called the New Century Initiative, rolled into the Bronx and now Brooklyn with almost no attention from the major media. The hiring of a staunch small schools proponent, Michele Cahill into the Department of Education's high command as well as comments by Joel Klein have been the more widely noted signals that small schools are the coming trend.]

As with any school reform there are reasons; and then there are reasons. Let's start with a big one. The City's Department of Education is operating under the pressure of federal mandates to demonstrate vigorous reform efforts and offer alternative schooling and other services to students in low-performing schools.

The small schools initiative which is being overseen by New Visions for Public Schools lets the city spend private money to close schools and open new ones in a time of looming budget crises. In this way, leaving aside the nature of the reform, the financially strapped school system is able to use tens of millions in foundation largesse (Gates, Carnegie and Open Society) to do something dramatic. Reason enough. Why debate the particulars?

Only that some fairly credible people are claiming it's all for the better. The plan calls for participants at the school and community level. Staff at schools slated for closing are being wooed as potential small schools designers.

The small schools proponents argue that size is the thing that matters. In the first place the smallness allows for greater familiarity among staff and students. Small schools foster a sense of community in which students thrive.

In discussing the positive effects of the smaller, more friendly environment the reform enthusiasts are often also quick to mention favorable data the show the superiority of a small school situation. If they are careful they will qualify the claim, that this data only pertain to "at risk" students. Sometimes people seem to take for granted that it's only Black and Latino that are being discussed. That's both understandable and alarming. The discussions have mostly revolved around the schools targeted for closing and so far those schools have only been in Black and Latino neighborhoods.

The other part of the pitch is innovation. "Why should students have to learn math inside a classroom?" asks Brooklyn High Schools Superintendent Charles Majors. This part of the argument seems to rely on suggestive appeal rather than achievement data.

The small schools initiative propelled two former small school principals into the role of district administrators. Eric Nadelstern [Ed Note: Now rumored to be Joel Klein's successor] and Paul Schwarz are the deputy superintendents for small schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn respectively. It has fallen upon them to field the most difficult questions. Paul Schwarz, for instance, is facing teachers in a district where a command-style of administration has been prevalent. In my school and several others students must learn math in front of a computer with a packaged curriculum that no one in the school asked for. The obvious question for those charged with small schools implementation, and perhaps for others, is why isn't more local autonomy, innovation and student/staff familiarity being advocated for the large schools?

As a newly minted administrator Schwarz pleads innocence regarding the neglect or abuse of the large schools. As to whether the district is a favorable environment for innovation he describes the coming wave of small schools as a "paradigm shift." Major changes are in the forecast but there aren't many actual guarantees yet. He does voice the suggestion that small schools reform will have an influence on the entire school system.

Eric Nadelstern pushes further in this regard. He's an ardent believer in the potential of small schools reform for everyone. In fact, Nadelstern calls for breaking up all the large schools including selective high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. As unlikely as that prospect might seem, the man seems to have chosen his stand with integrity. He is clearly for more than the phasing out of zoned schools in Black and Latino neighborhoods. He is adamant that all large schools are failing their students.

Nadelstern also expresses a crusader's zeal on another issue: the possibility that small schools would try to improve their data by gleaning students. He concedes that many school people believe the way to show improvement is by finding better students and turning away the worse ones. To prevent that he vows that the small schools will abide by what he calls "random selection." It's something of a paradox the way the man can display both small-scale idealism and an administrator's high and mighty scorn for those who cheat at the numbers game.

The test for such reformers is to what extent they can change the system versus what it does to them. There are, after all, two sides to the bargain. If the school system is only bent on the wholesale elimination of zoned schools in Black and Latino neighborhoods then the school reformers may prove more useful to the system than to their small-scale cause.

Both Schwarz and Nadelstern are advocating the formation of school communities within "choice schools." There's no support from them for neighborhood-based community schools and that's significant. For most of the kids involved small schools is going to mean commuter schools. It's really not hard to imagine what kinds of students will be drawn into the new arrangement and who will not.

Alas, the small schools reformers may be surfing atop Microsoft millions but that isn't the only money in play. A trend in recent years has been the increased interest of upper middle class parents, mostly white, in having their children attend neighborhood public schools. Whites make up just over a third of school-age children in the city and roughly half of them go to public schools. The more affluent parents bring money and a willingness to pour some of it into the schools their children attend. They also bring political clout and one expects their wishes will tend to be met.

The most troubling aspect of the smalls schools reform is the distinct possibility that the school system values small schools for their weakness rather than their strength.

It hasn't been so long since their alternative assessments were defeated in favor of standardization by the State Commissioner of Education Richard Mills. Advocates for the Performance Standards Consortium had been adamant that a regime of regents exams would destroy their curriculum and their mission.

They also practiced a 'holier than thou' approach to the threat by declining to spearhead any larger challenge to high-stakes testing in the city. The court appeal of the Mills' decision was argued as narrowly as possible. It did not directly challenge the use of high-stakes testing in large schools.

So the question is this: If the well-knit alternative assessment schools could not mobilize enough parent or community support to defend what they claimed they needed, then what does that say about the strength of the new commuter academies that Black and Latino youth are being funneled into?

What happens to such schools when their school data shows decline for whatever reasons, including possibly, the honesty of the school staff? We can imagine they might easily be closed without much fuss from the local residents who might say: Who went to that school anyway?

And for the teachers: just another change.



School closings and "small schools" alternatives are epidemic here, too
by George N. Schmidt, Editor, Substance
(from email to John Lawhead re: Bushwick HS)

For several years, I've argued (against the Maoists, the old lefties, and the conservatives who've pushed "small schools") that "small schools" in urban contexts is the new face of Jim Crow.

The "best" high schools in Chicago's public school system (as measured by test scores and other measures) are selective enrollment schools with student populations of between 1,500 and 4,000.

The "best" high schools in the greater Chicago area are large suburban high schools with student populations of 1,500 to 3,000 (New Trier, Glenbard West, Hinsdale, etc., etc.).

The "small schools" people (and Gates money, which is fronting for dozens of other foundations pushing the same stuff) are pushing a new form of "separate but equal." We should point out that their program is an alternative to equitable funding for schools that serve mostly poor minority children.

Most of the "small schools" research (at least the stuff around here, especially from William Ayers and Michael Klonsky of UIC) is also intellectually dishonest. They do not have research to back up their claims, but simply assert those claims over and over based on anecdotes which, when checked out, turn out to be either half-truths or outright distortions.
George Schmidt

I also wrote an article on the UFT role in all this in that winter 2002/03 Ed Notes:

High Stakes Testing: Where the UFT Sits by Norm Scott

Want Higher Scores? Work ‘till midnight
UFT leader blames short day and poor teaching for low scores

An article in the NY Times this past summer [2002] pointed to the fact that “Yonkers far outstripped other large cities on the 4th grade test with 59.5% meeting standards, up from 52.7% last year and up from 33.6% four years ago.”

The article also stated that Randi Weingarten, president of the UFT, attributed the sharp gains in Yonkers to “higher teacher salaries than New York City” and “to an additional 20 minutes a day added to the school day in Yonkers.”

Let’s see. Our union leader is saying that higher salaries in Yonkers have attracted better teachers so the scores have risen. The corollary must be that lower salaries in NYC must have attracted lower paid and therefore less qualified teachers. Ergo, the scores have not risen as much.

Conclusion: New York City scores are lower because the teachers are not as good and don’t work a long enough day.

That’s a union leaders speaking boys and girls. It’s not the conditions in the schools or the difficult family life of students or poor supervision or poor management or political manipulation or waste, etc., etc.

So, let’s all roll up our sleeves and work ‘til midnight. Scores should go through the roof.

Note: The UFT leadership has backed and collaborated in the punitive closing of schools, in contrast to the recently elected union leadership in Chicago which led protest marches over such closings.

Emily LaGates Says - "Never Mind!"

It's really worth noting what was happening in Seattle at the Gates Foundation shindig where reporter extraordinaire Elizabeth Green gives us the full scoop. An awful lot of what Gates had to say was pure poop.

He said that while the investments created some noteworthy successes, which he said proved an important lesson — “that all students can succeed” — the overall goal of scaling up successful models was a disappointment.

“Largely, this has not happened,” he said.

Many of the 8% of schools did not succeed: Their test scores were actually lower than the average scores of schools in their school district, and their college-attending rates climbed painfully slowly, up only 2.5 percentage points over five years. A main strategy of the schools, breaking large high schools into smaller units, on its own guaranteed no overall success, Gates said.

He said the New York City small schools were an example of successes in raising high school graduation rates — but a disappointment in that their graduates were no likelier than any city student to be prepared to go onto college.

Ya mean Bill that you helped destroy entire swaths of the NYC school system and now it's "Never Mind?" Oops!

Green goes on:

Perhaps the most sensitive project will be investments to study a seemingly innocuous subject: teacher effectiveness. The touchy part is that the foundation is signaling that it will urge school districts to find ways to fire teachers judged ineffective.

“If their students keep falling behind, they’re in the wrong line of work, and they need to move on,” Bill Gates...

Following this same line of reasoning, Gates will soon announce he is closing down Microsoft for foisting the Windows Operating system on the world despite it's being a vastly inferior product to the Apple Macintosh OS. "If we keep falling behind Apple, we're in the wrong line of work and need to move on," Gates said. Microsoft will produce hair brushes from now on.

New Microsoft line of products

Skoolboy over at Eduwonkette laughed uncontrollably - Bill Gates, U.S. Superintendent of Schools at this line from Green's report

As part of its new approach, the Gates Foundation will advocate for the politically thorny goal of national standards — and will aim to write its own standards and its own national test.

I have an idea for a national standard:

Ability to use Windows computers and all Microsoft products to the exclusion of anything resembling Apples, even if they want to serve them for lunch.

(Sidenote: I was in NYC school tech when BloomKlein took over. Think there was any favoritism towards Microsoft, which made millions?)

Skoolboy says, "Read it again, slowly: The Gates Foundation will develop its own national standards and its own national test. Does anybody else think this is a really, really bad idea? I'm delighted that the Gates Foundation has realized that throwing money at small schools didn't work, but I'm not prepared to turn over the public's interest in what is to be taught and learned to a private philanthropy, no matter how civic-minded it may be.

Hey Skoolboy, isn't Bill Gates allowed to make a few mistakes? Check out this idiot comment from CodyPT:

How do you manage to pass judgement so quickly when you haven't read the first syllable of the Gates Foundation effort? It's the same old story. No one outside the hallowed confines of the educational "establishment" is allowed to put an oar into the education lake (puddle?) without immediate howling from the education "experts."

Ah, yes CodyPT. What we need are non-experts. I hope you get one of those the next time you go to a doctor

Mike Klonsky also has some thoughts- Gates' unveils '3 pillars' and here on the subject.

Gates Sees the Light on Small Schools Impact

Leonie Haimson reported on the nyc education news listserve:

Elizabeth Green is in Seattle, live-blogging from a Gates Foundation event where they are announcing a major change from their previous emphasis on small school, and will now turn their focus on.... what actually happens in the classroom.

Surprise! it took hundreds of millions of dollars and how many years before they figured out that this is what's most important? Of course, I doubt they will pay much attention to class size, since they told all the researchers who were doing independent evaluations of their small schools not to look at class size as a possible determinant of success -- even though nearly all the teachers and students they interviewed said that this was the most important factor to them.

Anyway, according to Elizabeth,

Bill Gates suggested that the New York City small schools have been an exception to the overall disappointing results of small school projects, noting that in 2006 the schools’ graduation rates at small schools were 18 percentage points higher than the citywide rate. Then he thanked Chancellor Joel Klein, who was in the audience, and Mayor Bloomberg, who was not, for working with the Gates Foundation.

But just a few minutes later, Gates pointed out one major shortcoming of the New York City small schools: Students were just as unprepared for college as were students citywide. Less than 40% of graduates, he said, met the City University of New York’s standards for college readiness, giving them no appreciable advantage over graduates citywide. (I’m looking into what he’s referring to; my guess is that his evidence is the number of students who graduated with a full Regents diploma, versus the easier-to-attain local diploma.)

Check out more at:

http://gothamschools.org/2008/11/11/gates-nyc-grad-rates-are-good-but-students-not-college-ready/

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.