CHICAGO STRIKE ECHOES GROWING NATIONAL HIGH-STAKES TESTING RESISTANCE

Randi on the NewsHour. Why no Karen Lewis who can really defend the strike?

The strike is bringing so many issues to the surface. I know some people at AFT and UFT HQ are sweating it out.

“You have a situation where the teachers feel totally and completely disrespected,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of the striking teachers. In this case, she said she blamed Mayor Emanuel for an aggressive push to extend the length of the school day and for a promised raise that was later rescinded. “He created the seeds of a lot of frustration and mistrust,” she said.

Yeah, it's about respect - we ain't got none in NYC. The longer day  - Randi already gave that one away. A promised raise that was later rescinded by Bloomberg-- oops, where did that 4% raise everyone but teachers got go to? Wait a minute. Is Randi saying the same conditions exist here in NYC for a strike? No, Chicago has Rahmbo and we have mild-mannered Bloomberg.

Teachers also clearly saw the strike as a protest not just of the union negotiations in Chicago but on data-driven education reform nationwide, which many perceived as being pushed by corporate interests and relying too heavily on standardized tests to measure student progress....a teacher, said he believed the city was ultimately aiming to privatize education through charter schools and computer programs that teach classes online.

Shhhh, Randi, don't tell anyone what it's really all about.

FairTest                                            

National Center for Fair & Open Testing

for immediate release, Tuesday, September 11, 2012

CHICAGO STRIKE ECHOES GROWING NATIONAL HIGH-STAKES TESTING RESISTANCE;

EDUCATORS, PARENTS AND COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS SEEK

ASSESSMENT REFORMS NOT DRIVEN BY STANDARDIZED EXAM RESULTS

The Chicago teachers strike is the latest example of the growing national resistance to failed, top-down, test-driven educational policies, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest).  

“Across the nation, parents, teachers, and school leader are rising up to say ‘Enough is enough’ to so-called reforms based on standardized exam misuse,” explained FairTest Public Education Director Bob Schaeffer. “From Texas to Long Island and Washington to Florida, people with first-hand knowledge of the damage being done to academic quality and equity are pushing back against the out-of-touch politicians and their funders who insist on doubling down on strategies that have not worked.“ Schaeffer is the author of “Resistance to High Stakes Testing Spreads,” the cover story in the current issue of District Administration magazine.

FairTest Policy Analyst Lisa Guisbond added, “The Chicago strike is the tip of the iceberg of teacher frustration with policies that blame educators for problems largely caused by the impoverished settings in which their students live and the city’s own misguided polices. Instead of punishing front-line teachers, policy makers at the city, state and federal levels must be held accountable for their failures to create conditions in which all children can learn." Guisbond recently wrote "New School Year: Doubling Down on Failed Ed Policy"

FairTest Executive Director, Monty Neill concluded, “The attempt to improve Chicago schools through increased use of high-stakes tests over the past 20 years has been a colossal failure. The damage is worst in classrooms serving the city’s neediest children. Mayor Emanuel’s scheme to evaluate classroom educators based on their students’ test scores, a technique independent experts say is severely flawed, is certain to make the situation worse.” Dr. Neill will be a speaking on a panel on “How do we measure teacher performance?” at the “Schools for Tomorrow Conference” on Thursday morning, September 13 in New York City. 

FairTest initiated the National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing, which was cosponsored by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, and Chicago Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE), among other groups. So far, more than 400 organizations and 12,000 individuals have endorsed the Resolution.

The Nation: Chicago Teachers Push Back Against Neoliberal Education Reform

The rejection of the service model by CTU’s new leadership is reflective of a long debate in the labor movement—should unions serve their members, existing as an organization outside of the membership, or should the union be made by the members? This is partly why the media’s focus on Lewis is so problematic; her leadership is more of an anti-leadership. A central goal of the CTU now is to have members take control of their union and their workplaces.

This is one interesting article on the Chicago union leadership touching on the role of the strike in union building. Have you seen how many young, female teachers there are on the picket line? Have you heard stories of scabs crossing the lines? Is this a 100% strike? I love this closing line:

a spokesman for Stand for Children Illinois, a pro-education reform group that is a favorite charity of hedge fund managers, saying, “Teachers need to decide if they’re going to be part of this [reform] process or not.” They have, but it’s going to be on the terms of the 99%.

Featured are two Chicago CORE founders I know: Kristine Mayle and Al Ramirez. Al has been very helpful to us here in providing information on how CORE organized itself.

Here is a video I made of Al skyping along with another CORE member, Kim Bowsky, to the MORE Chicago solidarity event a few weeks ago.


MORE Chicago Solidarity Event - Aug 23 2012


The Nation piece is at this link. But I'm also posting.

As one email just came in that Matthew should be the ed reporter for The Nation instead of Dana Goldstein.
 

Chicago Teachers Push Back Against Neoliberal Education Reform 
by Matthew Cunningham-Cook

Picket lines can be sordid affairs. When a union is on strike or locked out—like the recent Caterpillar strike in Joliet, Illinois or the Cooper Tire & Rubber lockout in Ohio—the smell of receding worker power can permeate the air. The air in Chicago has none of that. At schools across the city, 29,000 Chicago teachers and education professionals are on strike—demanding both a fair union contract and a radically different vision of school reform than that propagated by nearly the entire nation’s political class. At the largest teachers’ strike in two decades, educators are fired up to fight for wraparound services for students, with more school social workers, counselors and psychologists; a holistic educational environment where all students have access to school libraries, world languages, art, music, physical education; and the preservation of the tenure system—because good teachers are made through experience in the classroom.

The corporate media’s initial dispatches on this fight have been disappointing. Instead of reporting on what the Chicago Teachers Union’s vision for education is (explained quite clearly here), they have instead zeroed in on the CTU’s demand for a 20 percent wage increase (which corresponds to a 20 percent increase in their workweek) and the so-called “personal feud” between CTU President Karen Lewis and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Along these same lines, media reports have emphasized the “dire” fiscal situation of the Chicago public schools—failing to note that the Chicago district spent $25 million on strike contingency plans, that the schools could gain $43 million if the city stopped providing slush funds for wealthy developers or that the state recently gave a $528 million tax break to the owners of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

This strike is the product of twenty years of “education reform” practiced on the backs of Chicago’s students and teachers. As the city witnessed the social destruction that accompanied high-stakes testing and mass school closures in neighborhoods already deprived of resources, a small group of teachers started fighting back against the reform agenda. As education historian Diane Ravitch observes, it was the first movement in the nation “where teachers have stood up to DFER [Democrats for Education Reform], Stand for Children [and] other anti-union, pro-privatization, anti-teacher groups.”

Al Ramirez was one of the co-founders of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE). “I was working on a movie about school closures, and we began posing the question, What do we do about it?” Ramirez’s group started book study groups, hosted public events with education activists and ultimately came to realize that the union was “ineffective at fighting back.” That’s when they began to ask themselves, “What kind of union do we want?”

The answer was a union founded on the principles of member-directed communal action, mutual solidarity and systemic analysis. CORE began having meetings on a consistent basis, including a biweekly potluck at Karen Lewis’s house, as well as doing the kind of organizing against school closures that the old-guard leadership of the CTU simply was not doing. The former CTU president, Marilyn Stewart, failed to appear at meetings where school closure decisions were made.

The policy of school closures for schools considered failing was a policy initially propagated by Mayor Richard Daley and his longtime schools chief and current Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The Renaissance 2010 program, as it was called, closed schools in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, especially where there was nearby competition from charter schools.

The current financial secretary of the CTU, Kristine Mayle, won election in 2010 on the slate led by Lewis. She had gotten involved as a result of a school closure as well—a thread that unites most of the original members of CORE.

“My school was set for closure, and we called our delegate, and she said ‘get your résumé together.’ We wanted to force them to stand up for us, and we realized we were better equipped to do it than they were. CTU back in the day used to be a fighting union, it had become a service model or company union, and we wanted to change that up,” Mayle said. The rejection of the service model by CTU’s new leadership is reflective of a long debate in the labor movement—should unions serve their members, existing as an organization outside of the membership, or should the union be made by the members?

This is partly why the media’s focus on Lewis is so problematic; her leadership is more of an anti-leadership. A central goal of the CTU now is to have members take control of their union and their workplaces. As a result of this strategy, back in June, 90 percent of the membership, including 98 percent of those who actually cast a ballot, voted in favor of authorizing a strike. Under the new leadership, an internal organizing department was created with seven staff members and the union’s House of Delegates was expanded to include at least one delegate from every building.

For too long at the CTU, the folks at CORE felt that union policy was directed by a tiny group of highly paid bureaucrats who had little connection to the actual conditions on the ground. What’s funny is that this directly correlates to the situation at Chicago Public Schools in general. Rahm Emanuel complains about teacher salaries, even though his own salary is $216,000 per year. Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard has never taught a day in a Chicago public school. The Chicago Board of Education president is a banker, and one of its members is the powerful billionaire Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker.

On the picket line, there is a palpable sense that the teachers who created the fighting-est teachers union in the country are about to do the same to their school system. The city is awash in red, and honks in favor of the strikers are cacophonous. Reuters recently quoted a spokesman for Stand for Children Illinois, a pro-education reform group that is a favorite charity of hedge fund managers, saying, “Teachers need to decide if they’re going to be part of this [reform] process or not.” They have, but it’s going to be on the terms of the 99%.

Matthew Cunningham-Cook

September 11, 2012  

 ================

The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

What goes on in Chicago doesn’t stay in Chicago: Teachers Strike Against Obama Education Policies

My first column of the school year for The Wave (www.rockawave.com), the weekly community newspaper of Rockaway, now 119 years old. I was going to do "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" by recycling something I wrote in the 5th grade but this little Chicago thingie got in the way. One thing about writing for a different audience than reads this blog is that they are probably not really in touch with the Chicago story other than what they hear in a biased press. So I had to rethink the Chicago story from a different perspective. It will appear in this Friday's print edition.

What goes on in Chicago doesn’t stay in Chicago: Teachers Strike Against Obama Education Policies

Updated: Sept. 11, 4PM

By Norm Scott
September 11, 2012

The Chicago teachers strike has national implications, many of them not good for President Obama in terms of getting teachers, a major area of support in 2008, to support him.

Richard Kahlenberg, author of the favorable bio of Albert Shanker, said in a NY Times interview that teacher unions are “getting very little support from some Democrats. The Obama administration has adopted a center-right position on issues like nonunion charter schools and performance pay. The places where teachers’ unions used to look for support are no longer coming through for them.”

Mitt Romney showed how unqualified he was to be president when he jumped into the fray by trying to claim the strike was supported by Obama. Let’s see now, Mitt. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, known by the cuddly name of Rahmbo by Chicago teachers, just happened to be Obama’s chief of staff. And Obama’s educational secretary, Arne Duncan, a non-educator nincompoop who ran the Chicago schools into the ground for 7 years as the Joel Klein of Chicago, but even more clueless, is as much a focus of the strike as Emanuel.

Duncan has taken the Chicago model that began in 1995 when Mayor Richard Daley took control of the schools – adopted here in NYC by Mayor Bloomberg in 2002 – and developed it into a national model by offering monetary incentives to school systems that adopt pay scales for teachers based on standardized test scores using what is known as a value-added model (VAM) that rates teachers based on student growth (not height but might as well be). While the union and Rahmbo are in basic agreement on a pay raise rumored to be 16%, the union has turned that down the money, not asking for more money but contending that Rahm’s call for teachers to be evaluated 60% based on student test scores, a basic tenet of Obama’s Race to the Top (or bottom), is unacceptable. They are also asking for more social workers and other wrap-around services. Giving up guaranteed money to fight for bigger issues.

Let me point out that the UFT here in NYC would have grabbed that money in a NY minute even if in the long road the result was selling teachers down the river. The UFT has defended using VAM for 20% of a teacher rating which many contend can grow into 40% or more. Governor Cuomo has placed a January, 2013 deadline for Bloomberg and the UFT to come to agreement on how to implement this or lose significant state funding. Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), the new UFT caucus challenging Mulgrew that models itself on the group running the Chicago union, is calling for a referendum of the membership on any agreement reached.

Unlike the UFT in New York, Chicago teachers point out that value-added is notoriously unreliable by a factor of 60-80% where the same teacher giving the test to two different classes or the same class two different times can end up being rated the worst or the best of teachers.

Diane Ravitch, Under Secretary of Education under George Bush 1, has written extensively on the failures of VAM. In a blog this morning she said:

“If you add the scores on standardized tests for five years in a row, can you tell who the best and worst teachers are? No. But that's the theory behind value-added assessment. The idea is that an ‘effective’ teacher raises test scores every year. The computer predicts what the test scores are supposed to be, and the teacher who meets the target is great, while the one who doesn't is ineffective and should be shunned or banished. But study after study shows that value-added assessment is rife with error. VAM is junk science. Bunk science. Just another club with which to knock teachers, wielded by those who could never last five minutes in a classroom.”

Obama’s education policies call for tying pay scales to the junk-science VAM results in addition to other merit pay schemes, all of which have a history of decades of failure. Rahmbo wants to implement these policies and in fact unilaterally cancelled the step increases for each year of teaching Chicago teachers have enjoyed for decades, as have NY teachers. There is a national move to eliminate the so-called seniority advantage using the excuse of paying “effective teachers” (based on faulty VAM) with the real intent of lowering the national wage scale for teachers. That would allow privately managed, profit-driven charter schools, also an Obama initiative, to avoid having to pay their teachers the prevailing public school wage scale and maximize their profits.

Chicago teachers have tied the fight against VAM to the impact on students and teachers of a high stakes test driven teaching where teachers whose job is in danger will teach to narrow-based tests, often a mind-numbing drill and kill exercise. This is a working and learning condition. The MORE caucus here in NYC has adopted the slogan: our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions.

And there you have one of the basic stumbling blocks that led to the strike. Another is class size. Chicago has no class size limits written into the contract like we have had here since 1969. One Chicago kindergarten teacher talked about her kids to the NY Times, “They are 5 years old,” she said. “They want their teacher’s attention, and there is one of me and 43 of them.”

Naturally, the anti-teacher, anti-union public and press have ignored the abuse of children by the people running the Chicago schools. Obama, Duncan and Emanuel all sent their kids to the top-notch schools where 43 in a class would be considered child abuse.

Obama is between a rock and a hard place. He can’t support the teachers, not only because the Republicans will jump on him but because the teachers are striking against his own education policies. On the other hand he can’t condemn them for the strike and turn off many teachers around the nation who not only vote but are activists in elections.

Obama will straddle the line as long as he can with statements from the White House press secretary:

“His principal concern is for the students and families who are affected by the situation. And we hope that both sides are able to come together to settle this quickly and in the best interest of Chicago’s students.” 

Sure, both Mitt and Barack are for the children.

One reason the Chicago teachers union had the audacity to hope a strike would hold the line against the Obama/Duncan/Emanuel onslaught is the amazing support they have had from parents, community and other unions, support they built over two years of outreach.

Naturally you don’t see those parents interviewed on TV, only the ones who shout, “How dare you strike?” The same ones never shout at Rahmbo, “How dare you send your children to schools with 15 children in a class while our kids are on overload?”

The union shocked the world when it got 98% of the teachers who voted (92% of all teachers) to say “Yes” to a strike. And you hear nothing at this point about teachers crossing the line. We never had that level of support here in NYC in any of the strikes. Really remarkable leadership by President Karen Lewis who until her CORE caucus took over the union 2 years ago, was teaching chemistry for over 20 years. Out of the classroom into the fire, unlike our union leaders here.

You don’t read stories like this tweet with the hashtag #FairContractNow for all city workers!

“Teachers went into 63rd street police station to use bathroom and got a standing ovation from police.” 

Wow, teachers as heroes instead of villains. Ooooh, is this a sign that Rambo and his pals Duncan and Obama are in hot water? As things play out, next time we’ll examine the similarities and differences between the union in Chicago and NYC.

Norm is back from his summer vacation and ready to rail at the ed deformers. Read him daily at ednotesonline.org

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The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

Analysis: Striking Chicago teachers take on national education reform

Diane Ravitch pointed the way to this analysis at Reuters.

Count on Stephanie Simon of Reuters to get the story that eluded every other reporter. She is the one that got the Inside story on Louisiana, TFA, and for-profit investors. Now she has the scoop on Chicago. The strike in Chicago is not about money. It is a national story. It's about the survival of public education. Read her story.

Analysis: Striking Chicago teachers take on national education reform

• Factbox: Chicago teachers dispute is over school reform, money
  10:34am EDT

Related Video

School is out in Chicago as teachers strike

12:44pm EDT

By Stephanie Simon and James B. Kelleher

Mon Sep 10, 2012 4:15pm EDT

(Reuters) - Chicago teachers walking picket lines on Monday, in a strike that has closed schools across the city, are taking on not just their combative mayor but a powerful education reform movement that is transforming public schools across the United States.
The new vision, championed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who used to run Chicago's schools, calls for a laser focus on standardized tests meant to gauge student skills in reading, writing and math. Teachers who fail to raise student scores may be fired. Schools that fail to boost scores may be shut down.
And the monopoly that the public sector once held on public schools will be broken with a proliferation of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run - and typically non-union.

Real Reforms From the CTU

The battle is drawn between the Real Reformers and the Ed Deformers in Chicago. That is why we call the GEM committee that made the Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman Real Reform Studios. We had 8 or 10 real reforms at the end of our movie, but no time to fully flesh them out. Here, the Chicago Teachers Union offers a plan for real reform.


From the CTU:
http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/text/Deserve_summary.pdf

The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve

Research-based Proposals to Strengthen Elementary and Secondary Education in the Chicago Public Schools

The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve is a new Chicago Teachers Union study which argues in favor of proven educational reforms to dramatically improve the education of more than 400,000 students in a district of 675 schools.

These reforms are desperately needed and can lead Chicago towards the world- class educational system its students deserve. Our study presents 46 pages of research-based details on the following 10 essential recommendations:

1. Recognize That Class Size Matters Drastically reduce class size. We currently have one of the largest class sizes in the state. This greatly inhibits the ability of our students to learn and thrive.

2. Educate The Whole Child: Invest to ensure that all schools have recess and physical education equipment, healthy food offerings, and classes in art, theater, dance, and music in every school. Offer world languages and a variety of subject choices. Provide every school with a library and assign the commensurate number of librarians to staff them.

3. Create More Robust Wrap-around Services: The Chicago Public Schools system (CPS) is far behind recommended staffing levels suggested by national professional associations. The number of school counselors, nurses, social workers, and psychologists must increase dramatically to serve Chicago’s population of low-income students. Additionally, students who cannot afford transportation costs need free fares.

4. Address Inequities In Our System: Students and their families recognize the apartheid-like system managed by CPS. It denies resources to the neediest schools, uses discipline policies with a disproportionate harm on students of color, and enacts policies that increase the concentrations of students in high poverty and racially segregated schools.

5. Help Students Get Off To A Good Start: We need to provide age- appropriate (not test-driven) education in the early grades. All students should have access to pre-kindergarten and to full-day kindergarten.

6. Respect And Develop The Professionals: Teachers need salaries comparable to others with their education and experience. They need time to adequately plan their lessons and collaborate with colleagues, as well as the autonomy and shared decision-making to encourage professional judgment. CPS needs to hire more teaching assistants so that no students fall through the cracks.

7. Teach All Students: We need stronger commitments to address the disparities that exist due to our lack of robust programs for emergent bilingual students and services for students faced with a variety of special needs.

8. Provide Quality School Facilities: No more leaky roofs, asbestos-lined bathrooms, or windows that refuse to shut. Students need to be taught in facilities that are well-maintained and show respect for those who work and go to school there.

9. Partner With Parents: Parents are an integral part of a child’s education. They need to be encouraged and helped in that role.

10. Fully Fund Education: A country and city that can afford to take care of its affluent citizens can afford to take care of those on the other end of the income scale. There is no excuse for denying students the essential services they deserve.

For more information contact the Chicago Teachers Union at 312-329-9100 or read the entire report on our website at www.ctunet.com/Deserve

 

 

Chicago: Day 1 9PM Update - 50,000 people - Oh My God, They're Still Rounding the Corner

Chicago Teachers Union: Pilsen "Día Sin Maestros" march meets up with the entire CTU day one strike protest at the corner of Clark and Monroe. — at Chicago Public Schools. · · Share · 

Video posted by CORE's Sarah Chambers



---------
Read two excellent reports by Philissa Cramer at Gotham School on the Chicago situation.
Part 1: Why Chicago teachers are on strike and what could come next

Part 2: Why New York isn’t on track to repeat Chicago’s teacher strike
---------

George is pumping it out at Substance. Head on over but there are a few quick links:

More than 50,000 people surround Chicago Board of Education in support of teachers' strike

A new 'Chicago Symphony' is born on every street in the Second City... Massive support for teachers as the Strike of 2012 begins

And I love this one: hit 'em where it hurts.

'It's not a boycott. They'll just never see our business again'... Teachers begin being choosey as Simone's restaurant sides with Rahm during the Strike of 2012

---------------

There is so much amazingly great stuff out there on blogs, twitter and facebook I can only touch on a few. Really, if things stretch out much past a week, Obama will be hurt in the election. Teachers are so under the gun that even if it seem rational to vote against Romney, many have reached a wall and and just won't vote if there's no enthusiasm. Think: Obama has to work to excite his own base instead of floating into neutral territory. If he loses due to teachers there will be some irony but not a lot of hand wringing because the Democratic Party deformers are committed to that program because there is no going back no matter how often Diane Ravitch appeals to Obama.

Here is a photo of the MORE/Chi Solidarity rally at Union Square and march to DFER:

One from the massive afternoon march in Chicago:

Chicago Day One 4PM Update

My pal Angel Gonzalez was getting impatient earlier in the day with this FB post: Angel Gonzalez posted in Grassroots Education Movement: NYC

Angel Gonzalez 12:32pm Sep 10 LOOKED at UFT and AFT websites for any mention of solidarity with CTU. Nothing! NADA! We have same Chicago issues at each of our schools and our bankrupt leaders ignore our communities & decline of our schools. JUST AN OUTRAGE. Randi & Mulgrew keep sleeping and marching with the WALL ST. Corporates.

Randi and AFT must have heard him and came out with a support statement. Wear red on Weds. Two days late, but who's quisling, er, quibbling. I know, I'm just being mean. Suppor is support, though a statement at midnight would have been better. But one has to check which way the wind is blowing first. I am working in an analysis of just how dangerous a successful strike is to Randi/Mulgrew and crew.

See below for the full AFT statement.

As of 4PM has anyone seen a statement from UFT/Mulgrew? Send the link.

Chicago teachers strike and challenge corporate reform model of education

RT @CTULocal1: Teachers went into 63rd street police station to use bathroom and got a standing ovation from police #FairContractNow for all city workers!  http://tl.gd/j85t8g

For the best coverage on the strike this morning, go to Democracy Now’s coverage of the strike:

Striking Teachers, Parents Join Forces to Oppose “Corporate” Education Model in Chicago



I'm snatching this from PAA affiliate at the Seattleeducation blog:
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/chicago-teachers-strike-and-challenge-corporate-reform-model-of-education/

Here are the specific stories on the strike:

More than 29,000 Chicago public school teachers and support staff have gone on strike today after union leaders failed to reach an agreement with the nation’s third-largest school district over educational reforms sought by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It is the first teacher strike in Chicago in a quarter of a century. Unresolved issues include the cost of health benefits, the makeup of the teacher evaluation system and job security. Emanuel, who is President Obama’s former chief of staff, wants teacher evaluations tied to the standardized test results of students. We hear the voices of union leaders, teachers and parents on Chicago’s strike.

Chicago Public Teachers Stage Historic Strike in Clash With Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Education Reforms

To discuss the Chicago teachers’ strike, we’re joined by two guests: Phil Cantor, a teacher and strike captain at Chicago’s North Grand High School and member of Teachers for Social Justice; and Rhoda Rae Gutierrez, the mother of two public-school students in Chicago and a member of the grassroots group, Parents for Teachers.

Striking Teachers, Parents Join Forces to Oppose “Corporate” Education Model in Chicago

The showdown in Chicago — the nation’s third largest school district — pits teachers against Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief of staff. Emanuel remains a close ally to Obama, while many of the policies at issue in Chicago are being pushed on a national scale by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, former Chicago public schools chief. We’re joined by Pauline Lipman, professor of education and policy studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, director of the Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education and member of Teachers for Social Justice.

Chicago Teachers Strike Could Portend Referendum on Obama Admin’s Approach to Education Reform

I think the strike is also a referendum on the Weingarten/Mulgrew/Casey policies of collaboration and surrender under the "climate of our times."

[More on this aspect later]

Karren Lewis Saying, Doing All the Right Things

Include poverty, exposure to violence, which increased exponentially this summer; our students experience homelessness, hunger. Evaluate us on what we do, not on what we cannot control. -- Karen Lewis

Ich bin Ein Chicago Teacher --- John F. Kennedy (paraphrased)

Info coming fast and furious. Here is a video of the morning picket at the Chi board of ed http://youtu.be/nLjQZw8usq0

Ravitch reports on An Open Letter to the White House

President Obama must let the nation's teachers know that he is with them. He can do so by disassociating himself from Rhee's anti-teacher agenda, as well as from policies pushed by his own Race to the Top.

And he could go to Chicago and tell Rahm Emanuel to settle with the teachers and do what is right for the children of Chicago.

Hell, NO! I won't back down from refusing to vote for either anti-public education candidate.

President Lewis at news conference: we have failed to reach agreement that would have prevented a strike.

We must do things differently if we want to give students the things they need.

We've restored arts and language . . . .
Board has agreed that we will have textbooks on the first day of school, and not have to wait six weeks.
We are not far on compensation.

But are far apart on benefits.
The evaluations would result in almost 30 percent or our members being discharged in two years.
Still too much based on student test scores.
Too many factors beyond our control.

Include poverty, exposure to violence, which increased exponentially this summer; our students experience homelessness, hunger.

Evaluate us on what we do, not on what we cannot control.

We are facing a possible decrease in teacher training.

We have been lauded by district and colleagues across the country with teacher training to strengthen teachers' craft.

We need air conditioned classrooms. Sweltering 98 degrees classrooms are not acceptable for students or our parents.
We continue to stand in solidarity with parents, clergy,
For a better school day, an elected school board.

We have under 400 social workers.
We call for more social workers, audiologists, nurses.
Students are subjected to an unprecedented exposure to violence.
Need wrap around services.

Hope the board will consider this.

We are committed on staying in discussion.

This announcement is made now, so that parents are informed.

We ask all of you to join in our education justice fight.

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To stay informed about the strike, pickets and solidarity events via text:

Chicago Teachers Solidarity Committee - Text ctsc2012 to 23559

Chicago Teachers Union- Text ctu1 to 69238 

The most important sources of information to go to will be the Chicago Teachers Union website (http://www.ctunet.com/ <http://www.ctunet.com/> ) and the CTU Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/ctulocal1 <https://twitter.com/ctulocal1> ), as well as the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ ChicagoTeachersSolidarity

Here are a couple other websites and blogs to look at over the coming days:
Substance News: http://www.substancenews.net/
<http://www.substancenews.net/>
Catalyst Chicago: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/
<http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/>
Teachers for Justice: http://www.teachersforjustice.org/
<http://www.teachersforjustice.org/>
Matt Farmer: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-farmer/
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-farmer/>

-------

Dear Supporters,

Tonight, Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) made it official: "In the morning, no CTU members will be inside our schools." This is the first time in 25 years that Chicago teachers are going on strike.

There are many ways to support the CTU as they go forward with this strike.Your support is crucial to winning. The city of Chicago needs to see that the people of the city will NOT accept anything less than the schools our students deserve. Please show your support in whatever capacity you can. There will be events happening throughout the city and throughout the day:

DIRECT ACTION & ORGANIZING:

• Walk the picket lines with the teachers! Every school will have a picket from 6:30-10:30am. We encourage people to join pickets at the school nearest them, to connect with other parents and community members in their neighborhoods. Those coming in from out of town or who otherwise would like to picket at one of the schools that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will attempt to keep open during the strike, use this map.
• Picket outside of CPS Headquarters! The CTU wants to maintain a presence outside of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) headquarters throughout the day. Beginning at 5am, head over to 125 S. Clark St. and join the picket!
• Join the afternoon rally! At 3:30pm, the CTU will hold a rally, march, and speak-out, also in front of CPS Headquarters,125 S. Clark St. WEAR RED! RSVP on the Facebook event page and invite your friends and family!
• Join the CTSC organizing meeting! If you want to be directly involved with our organizing work as the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign, we will be meeting directly after the rally at 7pm, at 1642 W. Van Buren, Teamsters Local 705. This will be CTU Strike Headquarters for the duration of the strike.

ONLINE & OTHER WAYS TO SHOW SOLIDARITY:

• Follow & Share! We have a website, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Follow us and share our updates with all your friends and family!
• WEAR RED! Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, wear RED on Monday, to show that you stand in solidarity with the CTU.
• Call the mayor and the school board! Tell them that you stand with the CTU and you want them to negotiate a fair contract that gives our students the quality schools that ALL students deserve! Mayor Rahm Emanuel: 312-744-3300; CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard: 773-553-1500
• Get on our Text Alert System! Text "@ctsc2012" to 23559 to be added and get updates on negotiations, pickets, rallies, and other events.

Remember, this is OUR fight, the fight of working class people for the soul of public education. The Chicago Teachers Union is bravely leading us in this battle, but it will take all of us to win. Education should be a right, not a privilege. We must all stand together and demand a quality public education for ALL students.

In Solidarity,

Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign
http://ctscampaign.weebly.com/

 

Russo and Rotherham: Ed Deform Shills Leach on Ed Industrial Complex

There was a time when I actually took Alexander Russo and Andrew Rotherham (who subscribed to Ed Notes in the late 90s) seriously. My bad. First, Russo.

Some people play Chopin or Bach while writing. I prefer "The Wire." Its fictions are more credible that Russo's "scoops" from Brooklyn.....  he became a full-time scab writing for Tribune. Others can keep in touch with "District299.com" as it unfolds its version of reality on that dwindling number of Chicago readers who can stomach the notion that reporting about Chicago's schools can best be done by a preening minion of the plutocracy out of Brooklyn. --- George Schmidt on Alexander Russo

Alexander,

What the fuck are you talking about? You do not do any reporting. 'Journalistic ethics?' From you! You get paid by the Tribune company to run a blog about Chicago schools from Brooklyn New York!--- John Kulger at Substance.

Alexander Russo pretends to be an honest reporter while he blogs about Chicago from Brooklyn. I never bother to read him anymore. When George Schmidt, who expresses nothing but disdain for Russo, got a scoop of sorts in this story where he caught a pic Barabara Byrd Bennett in the elevator -- she tried to hide her face -- like a perp --- Russo got a bit jealous and on the Substance web site accused George of violating --- you gotta laugh ----

Journalistic standards

George, shouldn't you have disclosed at some point in this article that the reason you were there at the CTU offices is that you work there at the CTU offices, and aren't really functioning as a journalist here?

People in glass houses, rocks, etc. --- Alexander Russo

September 8, 2012 at 11:03 PM

Anthony Smith responds

Dear Alexander,

Seriously, of all the things you could comment on, considering the seriousness of the situation, this is what you come up with?

I have to say I don't care where a journalist works, just as I don't care where a police officer, firefighter, teacher, etc. lives.

What I DO care about is that they are doing there job, properly, professionally, and reliably.

I have to say that George fits that bill for me. A professional journalist is not going to stop being that professional journalist depending on where they are located for a story. Same for first responders etc.

I could care less where someone works. And if the story walks into your area of work who cares, just as long as you report the story accurately.

So I suggest if you are going to choose a particular reason to attack George with your pebble, pick something that has more validity.

In Solidarity! Standing Strong! 

And John Kugler

Alexander Russo — Mr. Brooklyn

Alexander,

What the fuck are you talking about? You do not do any reporting. 'Journalistic ethics?' From you!

You get paid by the Tribune company to run a blog about Chicago schools from Brooklyn New York!

It is clear since SB7 that you promote the ruling class version of events. Remember the nice picture you ran — Vote No! — for strike authorization that you generated? Substance reporters watch all the shit you post. Plus we have notes of all your work since your first contacts in Chicago, back when you arrived, fresh from Harvard, filled with the same self-importance you are still preening.

Instead of pretending to be a journalist covering the public schools, why not get into a public school classroom in Chicago — the inner city — and see how long you last.

George Schmidt responds

September 9, 2012 at 3:22 AM

Russo's silliness? Typical of Tribune's alternative reality

Let's hear it for "journalistic ethics" in Rahm Emanuel's Chicago in 2012! The cool thing about the fierce reality of now is that our enemies in the "journalism" business (and other agents of the plutocracy) are going to try and find even the most trivial distractions from the facts, especially when September 10, 2012 dawns. 

Alexander Russo, — who has been bloviating through District299.com "locally" and at Education Week nationally — seems to believe that the story about those six cowards in that elevator at the Merchandise Mart was all wrong. Instead of reporting who was bargaining on behalf of CPS on September 7, 2012, the story should be about my reporting and other interests (including the fact that I work as a consultant for the Chicago Teachers Union, which I first joined as a member in 1969). 

It's not going to happen. Every Substance reporter will be carrying both our press cards and our vast experiences with us everywhere as the biggest education story of the year continues to unfold in Chicago in the next month or three. Were promising accuracy, not the kind of "fair and balanced" version of "journalism" that has undermined reality over the past quarter century or more. And it's the kind of accuracy you can only get by being at the story when and where it happens, not punditing for the plutocracy from 800 miles to the East.

Most readers seem to think that what that particular group was doing at CTU (especially the latest FNG chieftain Barbara Byrd-Bennett and that Pritzker-Emanuel myrmidon Beth Swanson) was "news". The singular fact that the rest of the Chicago press corps couldn't have answered a multiple-choice question about that "Who's Who" doesn't make it in a world where people are supposed to fixate more on Kim Kardashian than on the tragic facts of Chicago's public schools' realities.

Anyone who doesn't know that I cover Chicago schools from Chicago has been living in one of those plutocratic alternative universes that the ruling class has been trying to create for a couple of decades (almost, sadly, successfully). Every reporter reporting for Substance comes from "inside" — as do our growing number of anonymous sources at all levels who have grown disgusted with the attacks on public schools and unions promoted by the likes of Alexander for a generation now. There are more principals today, in 2012, who despise the way Chicago and CPS are being run than ever before, to take just one example, and "Inside Scoop."

I work as a consultant for the CTU, and as a reporter for Substance. I'm also the parent of two CPS students and one CPS graduate. And I cover the news from Chicago where it is happening, just as our other reporters do. Our bylines are reliable because our reporters are there, whether at the AFT convention covering the shenanigans of the Obama-Biden manipulators with the press (and the protest by Chicago against that) or at Teamster City covering the final hours building up the organization for the strike.

Russo's "Inside Scoop" insiders must really be miffed to have called on him to take a childish shot at Substance after we caught them ducking out of the CTU offices on September 7. I don't even care which of them called him on this one, because it doesn't matter. 

I used to blog regularly around "District 299.com" when Russo was with Catalyst years ago. I stopped when he became a full-time scab writing for Tribune. Others can keep in touch with "District299.com" as it unfolds its version of reality on that dwindling number of Chicago readers who can stomach the notion that reporting about Chicago's schools can best be done by a preening minion of the plutocracy out of Brooklyn.

Our slogan at Substance used to be "Where ignorance is the standard, intelligence is subversive. Read Substance every month and join a subversive activity."

That changed with the 21st Century. Now the best version we have is:

"Ruthlessly accurate in reporting what we see and hear from the front lines.

"Shamelessly biased — for the working class, unions, and public schools."

We did break one policy on this precious moment.

Alexander Russo posted his comment to Substance without following our general rules requiring that a commenter use both his first and last name (and that we can verify it if we decide to). The thing above protruded into our House here under the name "Alexander" — as if everyone knows who that is.

We checked, verified that it was the Brooklyn guy who operates that strange blog on behalf of that scab empire at Tribune, and decided to simply let our readers have his remarks. Usually, when we get something from an anonymous, pseudonymous, or first name only coward we simple hit DELETE.

I hope our readers enjoy this exception, but next time he wants to visit our House, Russo has to follow our rules of good manners. As to "Journalistic Standards." Well, anyone who believes it's possible to "cover" Chicago from 800 miles away has a vivid imagination on that score.

And now we all have better things to do. The first picket lines will be up at some of the central and citywide offices of CPS in 22 hours, and the other 600 (or so) will be up at all the schools in 26 hours.

Anyone who spots Alexander Russo covering this bit of education news in Chicago during the next month should let us know. We'll send a reporter to interview him about his magical sources and "Insidey Scoopiness." 

Meanwhile, I'm going back to some review work in preparation for some of the biggest education stories of the 21st Century, with a nod to "Snoop" and "Chris" (fourth season) before reviewing the recent history of the Tribune Corporation (fifth season). Some people play Chopin or Bach while writing. I prefer "The Wire." Its fictions are more credible that Russo's "scoops" from Brooklyn.

----------

Andrew Rotherham’s Advice for Obama II

by The Assailed Teacher

Despite his benign delivery, Rotherham is an extremist, an educational Jihadist with a one-track mind. Unfortunately, he reflects the educational policy for the Democratic Party. A Republican could not have such a forked tongue without being called out on it.

Rotherham is saying essentially the same thing as Diane Ravitch and many others: there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican vision for education. Rotherham himself is listed as a “Democrat”, yet is one of the most strident apologists for charters, testing, Common Core and the rest of the corporate reform agenda. What concerns Andy here is the fact that “education special interests are pushing back” against his beloved policies. By “special interests”, does he mean the Chicago Teachers’ Union?


Categorizing actual members of the communities that are being destroyed by education reform as “special interests” is a clever sleight of hand on Rotherham’s part. People tend to associate that term with self-interested bigwigs, like our union here in NYC, with no real interest outside of themselves. It is Andy’s self-serving narrative that pits heroes like himself against entrenched mossbacks like the big bad teachers’ unions. The only union pushing back is the CTU, and they have been all but disowned by their national parent, the AFT under Randi Weingarten.

READ MORE from Assailed
===========
The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

Karen Lewis Promo for Ed Notes: She Reads Ed Notes Every Day, But I Bet Not Today

One of the driving forces for the Chicago strike is that all the leaders have directly experienced the impact of ed deform on themselves and their friends. So anyone who wants to compare Karen Lewis to Randi is talking apples and kumquats. But one thing they do have in common: both have been readers of Ed Notes.

I actually saved a phone message from Karen Lewis urging me not to stop doing Ed Notes. So I guess she actually reads some of the crap I write. But I bet not today. I didn't even have my camera on when Karen introduced me to some of the teachers from Chicago at a rally for Detroit teachers at the AFT convention in July. (Funny but I was on the same bus with Randi and we had a nice chat walking over to the rally). Karen told them that she reads the blog every morning and I turned on the camera and asked her to do a promo. Later that night she said the same thing at the AFT Peace and Justice meeting. It is an honor.

Karen is a delightful lady with a giant and warm personality. Could Chicago have found a more perfect union leader? And the remarkable thing is until 2 years ago she was teaching chemistry for over 20 years. I think as I said above, that coming directly from classrooms that have been under assault to running the union has hardened them to not offer any more givebacks. I'll get to some of the issues like the ed eval and the demand that laid off teachers (the ATR equivalents) be hired before the 5-week TFA wonders. I wonder how many TFAers will be used as scabs?

------
If you don't read the comments, you missed that Howard Dean left a comment on this post: Randi and Howard Dean Report #2
saying his son does not run charter schools. Hmmm, would be be ashamed if his son did run charters? I would be too.
------

Let me add this link from Diane Ravitch:

Superintendent J.C. Brizard says a strike will only hurt the kids.

This teacher tells Superintendent Brizard what really hurts the kids in Chicago public schools.

Those who are saying the worst thing is to close the schools in a strike while they are perfectly willing to accept open schools with conditions that they wouldn't want their own children to be in.

============
The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

NYC and Chicago/Where Are They Hiding the Rubber Rooms?

Why are Chicago teachers so ready to strike? They have had enough after 17 years of ed deform attacks. The Portelos story is just one of many in NYC but not enough yet to create a critical mass amongst NYC teachers to get near reaching the stage Chicago teachers have reached. It will take the impact and slaughter of the new evaluation system that has to be signed here by January to really shake the tree. I spoke to the wife of a newly minted ATR last night and she told me a story of having proof that the principal actually told this teacher's best students not to show up for a regents in order to make the teacher look bad. It will get worse.

sadly say that I too believed, before I was a teacher, that these people should be “fired” and not sit and collect our tax dollars. Wow, I feel horrible and am sorry. ---Portelos is on the case

Let's take a brief break from coverage of the Chicago teacher strike but to touch on a related issue -- the overwhelming power to destroy a teacher's career in a relative instant. The Francesco Portelos case provides a perfect illustration. A top level STEM teacher and former engineer, he was sent to the rubber room last April for exposing the corrupt principal in his school, IS 49 in SI, ironically a school getting over a million dollar STEM grant from the Obama administration while their top STEM teacher sits in the rubber room. Portelos, not one to mope over his situation strikes back:

I’ve made the decision to publish the 15+ allegations made against me. The time has come for all to know why countless students were placed dead last on hidden agendas in and out of my school. As my colleagues go in and administer their noble craft of educating students, I will sit at a cubicle over an hour away, read and educate myself.

Now with time on his hands Portelos is tracking the location of all the rubber rooms, not tucked away in nooks and crannies and no longer an embarassment to Tweed and the UFT, which is perfectly happy to not have to answer questions about the RR or be embarrassed, which of course is one of their prime directives. Here is the link to his post. Feel free to leave comments with any RR locations you are aware of. Or email him or Betsy Combier with any info you have as directed below.

http://protectportelos.wordpress.com/rubber-room-registry/

Rubber Room Registry

“Rubber Room” is the nickname that was given to enormous rooms, around NYC, where teachers were reassigned to pending investigations. I want to come out and sadly say that I too believed, before I was a teacher, that these people should be “fired” and not sit and collect our tax dollars. Wow, I feel horrible and am sorry. I felt this ideology was wrong before I was sent to one. How could I ever imagine that there was a modern day Salem Witch Trial in progress within education. What about the students?

In 2010 they “supposedly” closed down all these so called Rubber Rooms:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-mulgrew/closing-the-rubber-rooms_b_539745.html

They are now scattered around the city where reassigned educators are placed along with Children First Network offices personnel. 6 people could be in an elevator, going to different floors, and no one would know who is who and how many of the 6 are Rubber Room teachers. Brilliant idea. My hats off to you!

Here is a list that we are forming.

Location: 8201 Rockaway Blvd. Queens, NY    Approximately 8. Longest one there from January.

” Another RR at 4360 Broadway in Manhattan. As of end of June, 2 were sitting, including an AP. This network office is located in PS 48. Ironic how those deemed “dangerous” to schools and students are mingling with such.”

Source: sobronxschool@gmail.com

335 Adams Street, Brooklyn

333 7th Avenue, Manhattan

Source: Betsy Combier

Email me, mrportelos@gmail.com or betsy.combier@gmail.com to register location and approximate number. No names will be published.

Karen Lewis President of CTU made it official at 11pm, Picket lines, strike is on.

MORE and Chicago Solidarity Committee at NYC Labor Rally, Sept. 8

Major sticking point is evaluation based on test scores without addressing poverty or other conditions teachers can not control. "In the morning, no (union) members will be inside our schools," Karen Lewis said, adding that teachers will march on picket lines and talk to community members.

READ LIVE TRANSCRIPTION OF CTU PRESIDENT KAREN LEWIS' PRESS CONFERENCE AND CPS PRESIDENT DAVID VITALE PRESS CONFERENCE AT:

BREAKING: STRIKE IS ON!: Live Blogging the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) Strike

See how sick (and sickening) Rahm looks in livestream.

 http://www.livestream.com/wgntv

"Not about financial issues," he says. Admits it is about the evaluation based on test scores.

In NYC the UFT agrees to rate teachers based on faulty tests. In Chicago they strike. 

As Chicago teachers head toward strike, Democrats turn against their union

Ravitch: I will be wearing red in solidarity with the Chicago Teachers Union tomorrow, in support of whatever decision they make. If they should strike, they have my support. If they don't, they also have my support. I am not giving my support unthinkingly or blindly. I support their right to bargain collectively. Knowing Karen Lewis, I believe she has the best interests of the children of Chicago in her heart. I believe in her and I believe in the teachers of Chicago.

I'll get to the article about the Democrats abandoning teacher unions below -- and

Diane has not been too kind to Democrats lately.

A Teacher at Central Falls HS Will Not Vote for Obama

I'll get to the Labor Notes article about the Democrats abandoning teachers below, but first: 

If you haven't heard, tomorrow (Monday) there is a rally at Union Square for the CTU at 5PM. Read all about it at the MORE web site.

By the way, did you know that a major part of this dispute is that Rahm and crew just decided to eliminate salary step raises unilaterally? So any raise they are offering must take that into account. Just imagine if they did that here in NYC? What would the UFT do?

You can actually get the fantasy of how the UFT would operate in Chicago from Assailed Teacher: CTU, UFT, MORE and Rahm.

But look at the bright side. A 25 year teacher could be making the same as a new teacher -- other than those that get merit pay due to test scores --- thus eliminating the salary penalty of hiring experienced teachers --- really the goal in Chicago and all over. Get them salaries down so we see bigger profits. I need to start my own online learning business -- Normie's Ed Nuggets.

Here's a report of parent and community support for the teachers:
Union opens 'strike headquarters,' community and parent groups line up behind teachers.

Here is a great excerpt:

Expanding on the idea that a strike would be disruptive to students, Amisha Patel, director of the Grassroots Collaborative, said current conditions are disruptive.
“I’m talking about the disruption of not having air conditioning, or not having libraries in their schools.…When CPS closes their schools instead of investing in the schools, that’s what’s disruptive to students. And when CPS forces students in classrooms with 35 or 40 other children, that’s what’s long-term disruptive for our children.”

Tom Balanoff, president of SEIU Local 1, said thousands of city school janitors represented by his union will be wearing red kerchiefs Monday in support of teachers if educators do walk off the job.

 Labor Notes:

As Chicago teachers head toward strike, Democrats turn against their union

Here is a reprint from Substance which reprinted it from Labor Notes. I met the writer, Theresa Moran, at the AFT convention in Detroit and she has been instrumental in getting the Chicago Solidarity campaign going here in NYC and helped lead the Labor Day contingent of NYC educators yesterday wearing "support CTU" tee-shirts along with the MORE members wearing their red hot shirts right off the press.

With Strike Looming, Substance Needs Your Support

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

STRIKE?

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

STRIKE!

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

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

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

DONATE TO SUBSTANCE
SUBSCRIBE TO SUBSTANCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

George N. Schmidt - September 08, 2012

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

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

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

READ MORE of this insightful reporting by George:

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

OR BETTER, DO BOTH

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

Randi is joining Arne for part of bus tour

Let's hope Randi makes sure to apologize for any actions of teacher unions that are not collaborative. Like Chicago.

Arne's Bus




AFT president Randi Weingarten is joining Arne for part of the bus tour. http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-education-secretary-arne-duncan-visit-charleston-and-mcdowell-county-wva-part