Sunday, January 27, 2008
Schools Closings Deja Vu
As another 50+ schools face the possibility of closure, the moment, for those of us who have faced the guillotine in past years, is eerily familiar. As a teacher at Englewood High i helped organize a series of protests to stop the closing of our school, a school with over 100 years of history that graduated legends such as Timuel Black, Gwendolyn Brookes and Lorraine Hansberry. How can the Board close a school with such deep roots in the community without any kind of due process? When Edison parents complained about the undemocratic relocation of their school at last Wednesday's Board meeting, Rufus responded that the public hearing would provide an opportunity for public input. Any one who has attended any of those public hearings knows it's a farce, there is a board appointed recorder -- so you get your comments archived -- but there is no opportunity for negotiation. Maybe some of these parents and students should invoke the 1963 boycott where more than 250,000 students stayed home from school until their grievances about overcrowding and jim crow facilities were addressed. How about a teach in at one of these hearings until those with real authority to make decisions show up to negotiate? In the next edition i'll share the union's response to the school closing announcements in 2005 and how that might inform us about what to expect this time around.
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6 comments:
lol, good luck getting a sizable number of kids to boycott school. I'll admit right off the bat that my high school experience was a bit sheltered - I went to Whitney Young - but I'll say that as the years have gone past the students have become less and less interested in politics and activism.
Still, that's a bit simplistic. What do you think it would really take to get the board to stop this? I'd like to think that if the general public knew what gets tossed around in Substance and on District 299 they'd be less likely to just overlook things like this...
In any case, teacher's need much stronger representation than this:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/01/28/harris.fire.teacher.cnn?iref=videosearch
April will be the sixth anniversary of Arne Duncan's attack on public education through the closing of schools. By now, the Duncan record is very clear. Chicago has closed more public schools -- and gotten rid of more public school teachers -- than any major American city except New Orleans during that six year period. The numbers are truly extraordinary, and the only reasons Duncan gets away with this charade every year is that he changes slightly the rules of the game, while Mayor Daley's surrogates bully the organized opponents into submission.
This year, Duncan is attacking teachers most nastily through the use of the claim that a "turnaround model" is needed for Harper and Orr high schools and for their feeder elementary schools. But the "turnaround" specialists Duncan trots out -- the corporate people from the Academy of Urban School Leadership (AUSL) and principals from New Leaders for New Schools -- have never turned around anything, in Chicago or anywhere else.
The claims that they have "turned around" Dodge elementary, Sherman elementary, and (now) Harvard elementary are simply false. But because the Big Lie and a cheap brand of "journalism" prevail right now in Chicago, the lie continues to be broadcast through most media without contradiction. Marilyn Stewart's recent humiliation by Duncan on national television is the direct result of the union's having compromised itself on the entire issue of school "success" and "failure" (measuring both by standardized test scores) and the fact that she has nobody at the union who is really doing regular research on behalf of the union's members.
As a result, the CTU clips articles from the Chicago Tribune (or, even more laughably, the Sun-Times) and acts as if it had "researched" something. Since the Sun-Times and Tribune are both publishing propaganda for Daley's version of corporate "school reform" as news, that proves fatal.
Over the next week, I think we can get many of the facts up at Substancenews.net (web specials), and then bring a great deal together in the print edition (which will be mailed February 7 to all subscribers).
But the hearings begin Monday, February 4, so there will be an incredible amount of work to do.
April will be the sixth anniversary of Arne Duncan's attack on public education through the closing of schools. By now, the Duncan record is very clear. Chicago has closed more public schools -- and gotten rid of more public school teachers -- than any major American city except New Orleans during that six year period. The numbers are truly extraordinary, and the only reasons Duncan gets away with this charade every year is that he changes slightly the rules of the game, while Mayor Daley's surrogates bully the organized opponents into submission.
This year, Duncan is attacking teachers most nastily through the use of the claim that a "turnaround model" is needed for Harper and Orr high schools and for their feeder elementary schools. But the "turnaround" specialists Duncan trots out -- the corporate people from the Academy of Urban School Leadership (AUSL) and principals from New Leaders for New Schools -- have never turned around anything, in Chicago or anywhere else.
The claims that they have "turned around" Dodge elementary, Sherman elementary, and (now) Harvard elementary are simply false. But because the Big Lie and a cheap brand of "journalism" prevail right now in Chicago, the lie continues to be broadcast through most media without contradiction. Marilyn Stewart's recent humiliation by Duncan on national television is the direct result of the union's having compromised itself on the entire issue of school "success" and "failure" (measuring both by standardized test scores) and the fact that she has nobody at the union who is really doing regular research on behalf of the union's members.
As a result, the CTU clips articles from the Chicago Tribune (or, even more laughably, the Sun-Times) and acts as if it had "researched" something. Since the Sun-Times and Tribune are both publishing propaganda for Daley's version of corporate "school reform" as news, that proves fatal.
Over the next week, I think we can get many of the facts up at Substancenews.net (web specials), and then bring a great deal together in the print edition (which will be mailed February 7 to all subscribers).
But the hearings begin Monday, February 4, so there will be an incredible amount of work to do.
You need to copy/paste that comment for it to work.
Based on Arne Duncans record, the failure of city gov't to wake up and smell the coffee, and the uslessness of the current union leadership, I think the only chance we have to save Chicago from this impending school disaster is a wildcat strike by the teachers and in school administration, and massive walkouts and protests by the students. No-one is listening, and we have to get their attention.
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