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

Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 05:49

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Public-private partnerships between Chicago's City Hall, where two men named Richard Daley have ruled more than 40 of the last 55 years, and a gaggle of corporate bagmen from the Gates, Bradley, Walton and other foundations have honed a disastrous “education reform” agenda that is now national policy. In Chicago, where dozens of neighborhood public schools have been shuttered and hundreds of experienced, predominantly black teachers fired in mid-career and replaced by underqualified, underpaid, uncertified and ovewhelmingly white newbie instructors, resistance is brewing and spreading.

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

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

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"The fired teachers are disproportionately African American, and the newly hired teachers are not.”

In May, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared the Obama administration's intent to close and “turn around” 5,000 "underperforming” public schools in poorer neighborhoods across the country. Duncan's last job was CEO of Chicago's public schools where he shut down dozens of neighborhood schools, practically all in lower income areas, and dismissed thousands of committed and experienced teachers, the vast majority of them African American women.

When the Chicago Teachers Union made no effort to reach out to parents, students or their communities, refused to organize teachers to oppose the wave of school shutdowns and privatizations, teachers organized what they call CORE, the Coalition of Rank & File Educators. CORE has now filed suit against the Chicago Board of Education, charging that the mass dismissal of hundreds of mostly black veteran teachers and their replacement with uncertified and generally underqualified white teachers is racially discriminatory.

“We looked at the number of teachers who lost their jobs in these 'school turnarounds,'” CORE research director Carol Caref told BAR, “and we looked at the number of African American teachers who were employed in those same schools or in the charter schools which replaced them and there was a huge discrepancy which couldn't be accounted for by chance. The fired teachers are disproportionately African American, and the newly hired teachers are not.”

“Even if it's inadvertently discriminatory, it's still discriminatory because the majority of the teachers wiped out in these turnarounds are African American,” offered Chicago teacher Wanda Evans. The fired veteran teachers, CORE also maintains, are being replaced by a much younger, much whiter and much less experienced corps of instructors graduated from a handful of accelerated programs funded by Boeing, the Bill and Melinda Gates, Bradley, Walton Family, Rockerfeller and other foundations, and favored by City Hall and the Commercial Club. “The new teachers are paid half or less what experienced teachers with advanced degrees were making."

"The fired veteran teachers are being replaced by a much younger, much whiter and much less experienced corps of instructors."

They are forced to work longer hours. They are reluctant to stand up for themselves or their students and tend to be fearful of participating in union and other activities. A high percentage of them burn out or are not asked to stick around after their first year,” according to Jackson Potter, another CORE teacher.

“The young, mostly white replacement teachers are de-skilled temp workers, teaching test-preparation skills. They are neither connected nor committed to the communities their students come from,” added Evans.

The prospect that Chicago's disastrous educational policies are about to go national is frightening, say the teachers BAR talked to. “We all hoped that Obama would not fall for this okie-doke of high-stakes testing, No Child Left Behind, of demonizing teachers and dismantling public education,” Ms. Evans continued. “But he (Arne Duncan) was the president's basketball buddy. It was a slap in the face locally to even have a CEO rather than an educator in charge of our schools here, and a slap in the face for us all nationally to have such a terribly unqualified person as Secretary of Education. Mr. Duncan has not taught in any classroom a single hour, and is in fact not qualified to teach anyplace.” reform

The Chicago-style “school turnaround” model does indeed owe more to the culture of corporate asset stripping and raiding than it does to any known strategy for educational improvement. In school “turnaround” operations, every teacher, food service worker, building engineer and custodial staff person is fired and the slate wiped clean. Experienced teachers who have invested their careers in urban education and are not rehired are, in the board's terminology “honorably terminated”, with no specific reason given for their dismissal. “Show me a hospital, no matter how bad it's doing,” asked one CORE teacher, “where you walk in and fire every doctor, every nurse, every administrator and tech without bothering to professionally evaluate them? It just sounds foolish. Why does anybody imagine this would help improve a school?”

Wanda Evans, a veteran former teacher at Chicago's Orr High School saw “a solid four restructuring processes in ten years. In ten of the eleven years I taught at Orr there were six principals. In the last year there were three principals.” The next to last, she relates was a 27 year old accountant who graduated from some principals training program favored by City Hall. Like Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan, he had no classroom teaching experience. But in corporate-raider fashion he didn't need it. “He was their cleanup man. He came in to downsize departments, fire people, to cut programs, and clean the books,” Lewis explained. Later that school year City Hall replaced him with still another closeout principal who would spend the remaining money on showy projects, frequent field trips, T-shirts, special events and other nonsense that had little or nothing to do with instruction in the classroom but were heralded in the corporate media as good faith efforts to correct the situation at the troubled high school.

"In school 'turnaround' operations, every teacher, food service worker, building engineer and custodial staff person is fired and the slate wiped clean."

During the ten years of corporate school-busting reform, Orr was broken up into four smaller schools, only one of which remains today. That was a military academy, whose director took his institution off campus so as to escape the stigma of the parent high school's corporate-engineered “failure.” And as it happens, turning public high schools and even middle schools over to the military was another hallmark of the Duncan regime in Chicago.

Ruled for more than 40 of the last 55 years by two men named Richard Daley, Chicago has given the nation dubious education reforms before this. The New Orleans model, in which the entire public school workforce was fired at one stroke immediately after Katrina, and nearly all the city's public schools replaced with charter schools was implemented by Arne Duncan's predecessor at the Chicago Board of Education, Paul Vallas. Like Duncan, whose longest period of employment before the Chicago Public Schools was as a professional basketball player, Vallas was no educator either. Vallas was an accountant. And as in New Orleans, the closing of neighborhood public schools in Chicago and their wholesale replacement with charter and other special schools has destabilized vast residential areas of the city and greatly contributed to gentrification.

CORE teachers pointed out that Chicago still has laws on the books enabling elected councils of parents to veto the contracts of principals and certain portions of individual school budgets. The turnaround policies allow authorities to strip these last vestiges of democratic control over educational outcomes from those who ought to be among the primary stakeholders -- parents.

The widening craters of collateral damage caused by these misguided policies extend well beyond the affected students, families and their immediate neighborhoods, into the broader communities that teachers live in. These experienced black teachers were part of the bedrock of stable African American communities. Up till now, they could buy homes, raise their families, send their own children to college and play active roles in their churches, sororities and a wide variety of local and civic affairs. Dispersing and dispossessing hundreds of such teachers in Chicago, and tens of thousands nationally of their livelihoods and agency in mid-career will be a severe blow to African American communities across the country. For the nation's first black president - a former community organizer at that - to embrace such a socially destructive policy is puzzling indeed.

"These experienced black teachers were part of the bedrock of stable African American communities."

But just as bad policies and bad examples come from Chicago, so do good ones. “CORE has only been in existence a year. In 2008 we were only able to get a single neighborhood pubic school off the 'turnaround' list,” Potter told us. “This year we have stopped the turnarounds at six schools. We've done what the Chicago Teachers Union never did, reaching out and building partnerships between teachers and community organizations and parents and students.” In 2010 CORE may field a slate of candidates in the union elections in an effort to reclaim the union for its members.

“If I could get a few minutes of the president's time,” Carol Caref told us, “I'd tell him that public education and quality neighborhood public schools are the foundations of stable, livable communities. Turning schools into test-prep centers doesn't improve the quality of education. Neither does repeating the corporate propaganda about our schools being 'dropout factories,' as Arne Duncan does. What works are resources, stability, parent and community involvement and smaller class sizes. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods have all these things. Children and families everywhere deserve them.”

Effective teaching, as one CORE teacher put it, is a performance art. You need commitment, connection and experience to pull it off, not hysteria, insecurity, mass firings and more tests. Somebody, they say, needs to tell President Obama.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and based in Atlanta. He can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

38 Comments

Charter Schools

Submitted by VoltoSanto on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 11:42

As a former teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), I have some experience from working at an under performing high school, the activities of the teacher's union (UTLA), and charter schools such as Green Dot.

The one thing that I find particularly interesting about this report is that it fails to address the issue of why are the students under performing. Instead, this report focuses on teachers and their jobs. I realize that unions can be both helpful and detrimental at times. The main function of a teacher's union is to serve the interests of teachers, not the students. Thus, unions help teachers negotiate issues such as salaries with district administrators. However, unions also impede education by guarantying credentialed but ineffective teachers job security. As a result, it is not uncommon to find veteran teachers, in inner city schools, who have a certain amount of apathy towards education. For them, teaching is a mere job. Whether or not the students are actually being educated is irrelevant. Although the majority of teachers care about the students’ education, the percentage of teachers who do not is significant. It is also practically impossible for an outside agency to differentiate between good and bad teachers – school administrators are even untrustworthy because they might have a personal vendetta against a good teacher.

Charter schools can offer a decent alternative to the malaise found in public schools. For example, a charter school may be able to fire a teacher who is not providing the type of education needed far easier than a public school. As a result, teachers are forced to apply themselves more. An apathetic teacher will be identified and promptly removed. A charter school may offer lower student-teacher ratios than the 34 to 1 ratio found in schools throughout L.A. I don’t know if this is the ratio found in middle and high school in Chicago, but I would not be surprised if it is. But ultimately, I believe the true test of a schools success is whether or not the students are being educated. The report concedes that students perform better at charter schools, but the reporter attributes that to not allowing “undesirables” into the charter’s program.

The ability to remove “undesirables” is an ability every teacher wishes they had the authority to do. This is not a problem for charter schools, but it reflects one of the systemic problems in public education. Unfortunately, public schools spend very little time in figuring out and implementing policies to improve student education. It spends most of its time responding to teacher and union demands for more pay and better benefits. Nowadays the main complaint is being fired. But there is little to no discussion about improving student education. Public school districts also receive a lot of law suits. Millions of dollars that could be spent on education are being spent on addressing those suits. Charter schools have been able to avoid such wasteful spending.

Interestingly, a lot of public schools have tried to adopt charter school models by creating Small Learning Communities (SLC). The reason why SLCs came into existence is because charter schools work, and public schools needed to do something to curb the number of students leaving public schools and enrolling in charter schools. But until public schools address more fundamental, systemic problems, they will never be able to provide the quality education the students deserve.

Ultimately, parents will have to decide where they would like for their children to be educated. And appropriate choices should be available for the parents’ informed decision. Applying a business model, it’s as if the parents and children are the consumers. And up until recently, there was only one entity monopolized the industry. Charter schools challenge public schools. And as a result, public schools will have to make the necessary changes to compete or lose their clients to more effective charter schools. As a result, a lot of union reps will be out of jobs. But I’m more concerned about the students’ education.

The article's scope is hardly limited to defending teacher jobs.

Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 12:58

To say that this article focuses on teacher jobs to the exclusion of whether, how and why children "underperforming" is is a lazy and selective misreading at best, and a lie at worst. You do not bother to define what you mean by "underperforming," perhaps because tht would require you to defend the indefensible system in place which equates academic achievement with scores on high stakes, multiple choice tests.

In any case, although the CORE lawsuit focuses, as lawsuits must, on the relatively narrow ground of the racially discriminatory impact of mass teacher firings, the scope of the article reaches well beyond that issue, touching upon matters including the democratic rights of teachers in a workplace, which also happens to be public sector schools, the use of school closings in gentrification and stripping parents of effective input into school decision making, and the importance of school policy in maintenence of stable learning and civic communities where teachers teach and live.

While how you manage to ignore all this content in the article, and reduce it to "defending teacher jobs" is a mystery, why you would do so is not. Your attempt to justify these discriminatory mass firings and undemocratic school closings with the canard that some number of teachers are apathetic and unconcerned with students exposes you as just another carrier of the pervasive "blame the teacher" nonsense that has been a staple of corporate anti-public education propaganda now for almost a generation.

Like Bush's Secretary of Education, who defined teachers unions as "terrorists" you seem to imagine there is a fundamental conflict between the rights of teachers on the job and the welfare of the students and communities they serve. The fact is, it just ain't so, and you cannot be an enemy of organized teachers without being the enemy of parents, students and the communities they come from. If, as you concede, the majority of teachers do a good job, then how can you be the enemy of organized teachers without being the enemy of education and of democracy itself? It just doesn't make sense.

The concerns of removing apatheic teachers and undesirable students --- problems which charter schools "solve," are not the central dilemnas of public education, and the notion that public schools are an evil monopoly in need of market based "competition" is a foreign one introduced by the corporate enemies of public education itself. The idea that everybody in a society should be entitled to a quality free education at public expense is, in human history, a radically democratic and relatively new idea. Like all new and radical ideas, it has many powerful opponents. The "public-schools as government-schools" and the charter school movement are wholly creations of think tanks and corporate foundations which have always been inimical to public education in the service of democracy.

The charter schools and special rules enacted in Chicago-style transformations are accomplished in a non-transparent manner wth sham hearings and by executive fiat because they cannot stand the democratic tests of public scrutiny.

Whatever is wrong with public schools, my friend, will not be solved by "the market". The god of the marketplace is not just undemocratic, he is anti-democratic. Charter schools appropriate public funds and channel them into private hands. They offer an opportunity to de-skill the teaching profession and have not been proven to acheive better results, even on their own crooked yardsticks, than they schools they replace.

Of course the article

Submitted by VoltoSanto on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 19:55

Of course the article focuses on teacher jobs. That’s why a union delegate narrated the video prologue. That is why “discriminatory…teacher firings” is the thrust of the lawsuit. And that is why you, Dixon, refer to all of the resultant problems as “collateral damage.” And by “collateral damage,” you mean damages that are incidental to the main activity: teacher firings. Hopefully, that clarified some of your misapprehension about my reading of your article. Perhaps instead of critiquing my reading of your article and divining why I commented as I did, my friend, perhaps you should focus on being a better writer. (see paragraph 13 of article).

Your conclusion about standardized tests and “defining underperforming” begs many questions. But since the rhetorical nature of your statement nullifies any response, I won’t answer it. But note that there is no need to assume or wrongly infer my intentions or my stance on any issue because I am right here--ask me. Further, I’m not interested in responding to allegations or buying into conditional if-then logical constructs, especially where the hypothesis is false. Others can, cool. But I won’t.

Let me say this: the students’ performance is a condition preexisting passage of Renaissance 2010, and thus, it is not collateral damage. Because it is not collateral damage, it is beyond the scope of this article. I understood that when I wrote my initial response. However, student performance is tangentially related, and it would have been good to address that issue in this article.

The needs of the students always seem to come second to all other interests both corporate and union. I never said charter schools are perfect. But they do offer a decent alternative. And I presented Green Dot as an example of a decent alternative, especially considering that it took over Locke High School from the LAUSD. Now if Green Dot is able to provide our children with an education better than what the State can provide, I am down for that. But I am not down with keeping the same course and getting the same results to appease union reps and frustrated teachers. I thought it would have been good if, while interviewing different teachers and union members, you would have asked them, “do you have a plan to improve our children’s education?”

Can I make a prediction? CORE’s allegation of discriminatory impact of the challenged school board’s policy will not be enough for it to win its case. CORE will have to show discriminatory intent (impossible to do absent certain facts). I doubt CORE will win its case. CORE has a hella burden of proof to meet under strict scrutiny.

Great Site!

The objective of "turnarounds" is not improving education....

Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 13:04

As humans, we all learn to lie, around the same time we acquire speech. I can recall being punished for clumsy lies I told before I was three. Quite naturally our public policy discourse is shot through with interlocking and reinforcing lies, big and little, lies of commission and omission. That's life. At the heart of your stand are the acceptance of several bodies of lies, like the one that posits scores on multiple choice tests as the only relevant ways to measure academic progress, that organization on the part of teachers is always evil and inimical to the educational mission, and that the application of market logic "solves" just about everything, including education.

No Child Left Behind starts with the first and third of these lies, obligating jurisdictions to brand schools that do not consistently improve test scores to brand their own institutions as 'failing' and to undertake measures which rarely if ever succeed even on their own terms in improving test scores, which themselves are poor indicators of educational quality, but pretty accurate indicators of family income.

The wholesale school closings and dismissals and attendant disruptions of communities, of education, and of careers which have already taken place in Chicago and some other places, and which are now national policy are means to SOME end. I would say that the end is the destruction and privatization of the public sector, a big chunk of which is public education. The policymakers do not appear to give a damn about education. if they did, their models would be based on honest record keeping, and their procedures would be democratic rather than autocratic, and they would be able to persuade good, honest, knowledgable educators, including those organized into unions, to go along. They can't do this because improving education is fundamentally not the objective.

Privatization is the objective, and anti-democratic, non-transparent measures like mayoral control of schools that supersde elected school boards and parent councils, are the means. The privatizers really do not care about education, they DO care about privatization and improving the bottom line on the schools they take over. That's why, in the lore of the privatizers and their dupes, organized teachers are invariably the villains. An article arguing how much or whether the educational mission is advanced by these nontransparent and undemocratic school turnarounds would have had a totally different cast. Though the material is rich enough for a book, this wasn't a book, it was a thousand word article aimed at a different point.

In medicine, the first principle is to do no harm. Turning schools into multiple-choice test-prep centers is arguably harmful to the educational mission. Misportraying an educational crisis -- there is one, but not the one usually depicted -- and blaming it on frontline teachers and their organization is harmful to the educational mission. the article's intended point was that school-busting and firing hundreds or thousands of dedicated and competent teachers is harmful not just to education, but to the stability of cummunities that schools are located in, and the communities that teachers live in.

I could have asked teachers what their alternative plans were. That will have to be a different thousand words. But in a crisis, where massive harm is being done, it seems vitally important and legit to describe to our audience the harm these school-busting measures are inflicing upon education, upon students and their families, upon communities, and even upon the teachers whom and the rest of the right seem to dislike so much, as a necessary step in stopping it.

and charter schools in NYC are being given public schools

Submitted by NYCartist on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 13:28

Privatization has historically taken public space and
turned it over, or for slight charge/cost, to privateers
for profit, as well as things like highways, railroads, water
supplies/infrastructure of cities, electricity/power supply.
I think Juan Gonzalez recently had a column in the
DailyNews that there's a fight over part of a public
school being turned over to a charter school, yes?

My spouse has been saying for years that the goal
is to turn over CUNY (City University of New York) to
private colleges and destroy the wonderful system,
which is being defunded by cutbacks. A whole other
story.

PS I really like your reply above about teachers.

Please explain this to me so I understand it...

Submitted by PanaSemitaSioni... on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 08:16

...the US government is allowed to PRIVATIZE public schools? I don't know what to say exactly. That's fascism. In Panama, it couldn't happen. If a president tried it, he or she would be indicted and tried for about 7 constitutional vioilations. He or she would probably be kicked out of his or her party and governmental impeachment and expulsion proceedings would also begin. Besides all that, the people would have a general strike.

Do you know how precious a democratic republic with rights and freedom is? I know if any blog in the US understands it's this one. How is this "No Child Left Behind" thing constitutional? My son's mother lives in NYC and my son goes to a regular public school there. He'd go here but for the usual Patriot Act Homeland Security Blacklist of Latin America, my custody rights don't exist. He hates the USA but for his friends there.The last thing I want to hear is that my son's school is going to be privatized out from under him. They've done enough damage to him already the US government and their bigoted anti-Latino war on narco terrorism. I can't get a visa to visit him between school holidays and your summer (our winter). If Obama denied a visa to the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court, he sure wouldn't give me one. Good. I hate the thought of a single penny of my money ever supporting that terrible Empire.

I've really had about all I can stomach from this Obama. At least with Bush he'd make snotty remarks about our president, Martin Torrijos, but he respected our sovereignty. Obama's planning to TEACH US A LESSON IN RESPONSIBLE BANKING TOO. Because we're "evil people who enable terrorism with our shady tax haven bank privacy laws." The galll of that man beggars the imagination. While he's slaughtering 1000s of people 120 miles to my South in Colombia. For the same reasons partially: Snot nose elitist Barack Obama doesn't APPROVE of the Colombian "movimiento del sindicalismo." Yeah, he takes organized labor's money in the US and assassintes trade union organizers in Colombia Just tell me I don't have to pretend that his life was some onerous struggle out of poverty because mine wasn't and I didn't grow up with his privilege on some big Kansas farm and Hawaii and jet-setting around the world.

And he's the spokesperson for Black America? Wow. I don't tell anyone what to think or do about their identity but I'm Jewish and I'll be damned if Eric DelValle here represented me or Joe Lieberman or Rahm Emanuel up there. I think of them as "conversos de mierda". Fake Jews. Nazi collaborators.

About the last thing I care about is whether or not his school follows the LOVE BARACK OBAMA FERIA DEL EGOISMO DAY of whatever. My son knows what a sadist and prudish Victorian schoolmarm Obama is. I hardly have to tell him the guy's full of it! I won't even write what my son and his friends down here say in Spanish about Obama.

I do enjoy watching those White school districts exercisng their rights even if it's for stupidity thinking that Obama is a "socialist." He's not a socialist. That's egalitarian and voluntary. He's a fascist salesman. But if he loves white Evangelical Extremists so much which he does, then he better stop whining when they choose not to love him back.

Wonderful "new begiinning" with Colombia and Panama. What a GREAT ONLY IN AMERICA STORY! Except we've had an Afro-Panameno president and I think "Chama" Butcher has a good chance to be another one in 5-10 years. Except Chama's mother's family wasn't White and didn't own slaves. They were slaves which is why he has an Anglo last name. There's no super-duper special magazine articles about Chama Butcher and his "perfect family". He's an Assemblyman representing a part of San Miguelito. That's it.

Just wondering. Any teacher

Submitted by fionasmith on Thu, 10/21/2010 - 07:27

Just wondering. Any teacher who supported this morally bankrupt politician should be ashamed-since they are charged with helping their constituents develop critical thinking and decision-making skills. Oh wait, too many of them lack these skills. flash animations

Yes. Just to add to beverly's comment:Basir Mchawi on

Submitted by NYCartist on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 09:57

his show on WBAI, "Education at the Crossroads" has
been having a series on mayoral control in NYC, and
they are archived www.wbai.org for 90 days from show
airing. Basir Mchawi has years of experience in education.
(To see Basir Mchawi, he is in video on
www.takebackwbai.org    Also see www.wbixradio.org
and www.wbaix.org WBAI-IN-EXILE).

    I taught in NYC from 1960-1965 (I was only 20 when
I started teaching.) but still follow what is going on, long
time listener to Basir Mchawi's radio show. Ironically,
I taught CORE, in junior high school. It was supposed
to combine social studies (my major at a state teachers
college), language arts and "guidance" using problem
solving as a way to learn. I had the "top"
and "slow" classes, for double periods. I volunteered
one year to take all the kids who couldn't read at all, so
other classes could have an easier time. I didn't get
any support from the principal, mostly because I ques
tioned authority, e.g. almost all the kids had grown up
in the neighborhood, K thru 6, so the fact that they
hadn't been taught to read could not be blamed on
the kids having come from Puerto Rico or the US South.
   This excellent article reflects the corporatizing and
privatization of, the effort to destroy public education.
It was beaurocratic and "short changing" kids in poor
neighborhoods in the 1960s, but it's far worse now.
One goal is union busting via the charter schools.
I was a union delegate in the brand new union in the
early 1960s, involved in the first strikes in NYC (pre-Taylor
law). The union in NYC has a couple of "rump" factions
because of the UFT seems to be going along with the
Mayor. Do listen to Basir Mchawi's show, "Education
at the Crossroads". (I am the middle generation of
3 NYC public school educated in my family.)

Finally, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was the
opportunity given to destroy the public schools of NOLA.

Moles in the Midst

Submitted by iambia on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 11:49

Bruce, that person is a mole. Moles give themselves away by either starting out the gate with insults, ridicule or belittlement, or, like that mole, hitting on a follow up. Rather than keep the discussion focused, the mole must now say you can't write. This is TYPICAL mole behavior. I've been watching it for years. And if you couldn't write, so the heck what? You were more than clear enough for even an infant to understand, so why hit on something so nonsensical and off topic? You are simply not supposed to be able to see the tubes in your mouth and the plugs in your neck, and body. You must never realize you are in the Matrix. Shame on you for being awake. LOL.

The mole asks why the students are underachieving, but does not talk about what ALL real teachers know. They are not given enough funding for proper books, the classes are too large, there is no effective guidance counselor for troubled kids, there is no proper equipment, if any; they are TOLD (with threats) what to teach and what not to teach (and how to teach it), leaving their hands tied, and they get no thanks from ANYONE, not even through monetary reward. Their suggestions for what and how to teach are ignored, including their suggestions on how to effectively design and utilize test results. The mole does not point out a single thing that teachers know are going on in the system. Yet, the mole is going to make it seem as though you are talking gibberish and only focusing on teachers, rather than students. The teachers' voices are not being heard as to WHY the students are failing. And that is because the intent IS to ignore them. Folks think Gates, Rockerfeller and their ilk have some altruistic motive behind their funding? Clearly these wolves have zipped up their sheep's clothing to the neck, to ensure no one can see the little brown hairs peeking through.

I'm not religious by any measure, but if I were you, I'd leave that mole at the foot of the cross, and just walk away. It is trying to misinform, be deceptive and counter your efforts to enlighten by acting as though there is some concern on its part. Mole. Know a thing by the fruit it bears. I was waiting for the insult after I read your response. And true to form, you get that you can't write. If I were a betting person, I'd be RICH right now. LOL.

We Afrodescendants Deserve Our Own Schools

Submitted by mathrise on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 12:39

Ever since its inception the U.S. government has brutally imposed ethnocide and forced assimilation on African slaves and their descendants. The white American ruling class has always controlled both public schools and private schools. These educational institutions are meticulously engineered and designed, with malice aforethought, to produce Black and Brown tools for the inherently racist, unjust system. I say this as a graduate of both Harvard College and Atlanta University who was blessed to ascend to a higher plateau.

For seventeen years we the awakened Afrodescendants, under the leadership of Mr. Silis Muhammad of AFRE, have been demanding both our Human Rights and Reparations inside the United Nations. Our Human Rights include the right to our original language, original religion and original culture. We also deserve our own government and economy on some of this Earth that we can call our own.

As all inner cities implode under the weight of centuries of ethnocide and forced assimilation, ghetto schools become increasingly uncivilized and dangerous. We the slave descendants must now rapidly develop our own state-of-the-art educational institutions, solely under our control, so that we can nurture and elevate our long-suffering youth through educational ethnogenesis, instead of allowing them to be systematically destroyed through educational ethnocide. To facilitate this we deserve both major funding from the U.S. government and the United Nations.

As-Salaam-Alaikum,

>www.allforreparations.org

PUT 2 AND 2 TOGETHER

Submitted by LL on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 01:22

Wealthy white suburbs don't have and never will have charter schools. I wonder, why?

No Surprises

Submitted by sunny-cat on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 18:24

When the charlatan was a candidate for the puppet position of president he said he supported the criminal NCLB and everything else that was a poor solution to K-12 public education and Ms. Hilary was set to repeal it. Guess who all the teachers/unions/etc. fell on their knees to worship. Yep? You guessed it. Reading some of the articles in the teacher magazines was pretty repugnant.
Maybe this means that the unions made the decision without the teachers? Just wondering. Any teacher who supported this morally bankrupt politician should be ashamed-since they are charged with helping their constituents develop critical thinking and decision-making skills. Oh wait, too many of them lack these skills.
Gracias for the article Mr. Dixon.

The Corporate State Has No Use For Public Schools

Submitted by PaulMoore on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 09:23

When AIG got its credit default swaps in a bunch, they were not shut down and reconstituted by the US Treasury Department. They were invited to back a truck up to the US taxpayers vault and shovel dollars into it. They made several trips. What is it now, $180 billion? What were the performance bonuses for AIG's failed managers and traders, $454 million?

When Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and others were driven into insolvency by reckless banking and investment practices they were not shut down and reconstituted by the US Treasury Department. They were invited to takeover the US treasury and to run it themselves. And if there was not enough in the American people's vault, the Federal Reserve offered to print more money for them. What was the bank bailout, $700 billion in its first installment?

In the wake of the bankruptcy filing by General Motors, it is widely reported that the "US taxpayer owns a 60% share" in the failed automaker. But the chief representative of the US taxpayer, President Obama says, "What we are not doing — what I have no interest in doing — is running G.M." So majority ownership apparently entitles the US taxpayer to cough up another $50 billion and stand by and watch. When the company fires enough workers, closes enough plants in the US, and kills the health care and pension benefits of enough retirees it will emerge as "the new GM."

One of the central features of the fascist state is the melding of corporate power and finance capital with governmental power. Sometime before the Italian people left Benito Mussolini hanging on a meat hook, he uttered one truism, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Nascent fascism explains the US Department of Education diametrically opposite treatment of the public schools. The attack on public education gathered steam throughout the Reagan years and then was formally launched through the Business Roundtable's Education Summit in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1989. The ball has been carried in the years since by corporate forces--Gates, Broad, the Walton (Wal-Mart) Family, and others. But in this moment of declining economic fortunes in corporate America (Bill Gates' personal fortune reduced by $18 billion, Warren Buffet's losses total $25 billion, Eli Broad's KB Homes and stake in AIG both in decline) the US government must step into the breach.

Enter US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the plan to use billions of taxpayer dollars to rescue the flagging corporate plan to shut down and reconstitute the public schools in the most depressed American communities and build the charter school movement as a viable replacement education system. Duncan's objectives are described by Sam Dillon in the New York Times (link below).

http://www.nytimes. com/2009/ 06/02/education/ 02educ.html? hp

If recent developments do portend a fascist America there are certain facts that public school workers and their allies should know. A full blown fascist state has no use for teacher's unions or unions of any kind. Indeed, the corporate state has no use for universal public education period.

good comment, 2 thoughts

Submitted by micah pyre on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 19:43

I like the comment Paul, I have two thoughts on it.

1) It's not exactly accurate to say that AIG people "mismanaged" anything. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew derivatives were high-risk. They knew there was tremendous volatility. They knew that the only value was on-paper value, the kind that can disappear instantly (at one end of things) or explode and rocket upward instantly (at the other end of things). There was no mismanagement involved. The plan all along was to take the risk and seek a bailout -- to put the risk on the US Treasury, not the owners of AIG. So let's not excuse them by saying they made an error in judgment. They did nothing of the sort. This was a conscious plan. Anyone who knows the style of management used by AIG will be able to tell you, any risks taken by that entity were always accounted for with counter-balanced conservative measures in enough volume, quantity, etc to render the risk null. That's what AIG was all about. The AIG bailout is a straight-up theft, pre-planned. Hard to believe? Not if you know AIG. How do I know AIG? I used to work for them, as outside counsel on insurance regulatory matters.

2) America is already a fascist country. Fascism is defined as the unity of corporate business and government. That's precisely what we have today. The AIG scenario demonstrates it. The other "bailouts" demonstrate it. The use of war as profit vehicle demonstrates it. Mr Dixon's primary essay here demonstrates it -- Arne Duncan as Secy of Education? That's corporatocracy in a nutshell right there! Every heavily regulated industry in America plays the role of fox guarding henhouse. The Department of Justice is full of lawyers who are such soft-pedalers on white-collar crime, it's almost a laughingstock. The majority of the SCOTUS justices from the 20th and 21st Centuries are and/or were lackeys for corporate interests. Our current president is nothing but a nice speaker whose path to the White House was paved by his services rendered for heavily regulated businesses -- nuke power, health care-related businesses, insurance companies, Wall Street financial houses, and the law firms who defend all those businesses. That's what we have in America right now -- a perfection of the vision begun by Benito Mussolini, and a system that has many shocking parallels to Hitler's post-Weimar regime. One might even see the events of 9/11/2001 as the Reichstag Fire of America, not as a "conspiracy" matter, but as a matter of historic parallel.

Otherwise I agree completely with your excellent comment. Nicely done!

*************************

Overall, VERY nicely done by Mr Bruce Dixon. This is one of the best essays I've read here at BAR.

Thanks for constructive criticism

Submitted by PaulMoore on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 22:02

Points well taken, Micah. Sorry to hear of your brush with AIG. Did you take a good shower afterwards?

Paul -- heh heh heh. Thanks

Submitted by micah pyre on Mon, 06/22/2009 - 01:30

Paul -- heh heh heh. Thanks for the empathy. It's been about 11 years. But I was still in the insurance game until about 5 years ago. So I've been scrubbing like an obsessive-compulsive to wash off the filth of the industry in general, and the titan AIG specifically. I think I'm almost clean now.

Incidentally, the idea that Eliot Spitzer removed Hank Greenberg from actual power at AIG is something that makes me howl with laughter. Hank Greenberg is a tyrant, and he could be removed on paper, even removed to Switzerland, and he'd still run the show.

My thesis is that Greenberg's advanced age had him ready for retirement. He'd tried to groom his sons to take over the helm, but they were spoiled brats -- petulant, impulsive, arrogant and every other negative modifier you can throw at an adult man who ought to know and behave better. So he couldn't keep the wealth in the family that easily. That meant he had to sell outside. But there was a problem -- the US Dollar on the fast decline, and AIG pretty much depends on the dollar's strength. It has to. It's regulated heavily as a US insurance company, it wouldn't do for the company to shift all its cash assets and investment vehicles into alternative currencies. So how would Hank sell AIG?

Hmmmm.

To Uncle Sam, of course.

Why would Uncle Sam buy ("bail out") AIG? What motive?

Hmmmm.

Well, AIG insures and insured a lot of the CIA's front companies.

Hmmmm.

Stinky, and filthy. Like the pit beneath a well-used outhouse.

AIG, murdering intellect

Submitted by dilbertgeg on Mon, 09/07/2009 - 03:04

Micah,
Thanks for the wonderful insights on AIG, and the crash and the bailout.

I had long ago told my friends as much about this whole crash and burn and bail game, without knowing any inside details you mention (other than articles online by people with an economics background, such as Chossudovsky and Michael Hudson). I knew it was a pre-planned crash, had to be. These banks and insurance cos excel in RISK MANAGEMENT. That's their game. That's how they got rich in the first place. I get it.

The idea that they all experienced a "huge blunder" being hyped by every talking head was patent nonsense. Worse, the sick but popular notion that sprung up immediately that the cause was certain selected soft-hearted Democrats --- and also Bush with his Ownership Society program -- who badly wanted to help po' folks to be able to buy a house, that was beyond ludicrous. Especially ludicrous after the rough treatment granted to Katrina victims --- fend for yourself and die trying.

re EDUCATION:
An uneducated, ignorant populace is easier to manage. Just look at (CIA-backed) Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge murdered anyone who wore glasses, assuming they could read and were therefore "intellectuals". Or look at Iraq, where hundreds of high-level scholars and professors were murdered, always by "terrorists". Or look at any fascist state in history exhibiting disdain for "intellectuals".

I think even Stalin killed "intellectuals", and the Russians considered him right wing in a certain paradigm, in contrast to I suppose Lenin and other genuine Bolsheviks. However, at that time of industrial development, the USSR needed a large number of intelligent technicians.

Today, it's de-industrialization, except in China. Nowadays, so much can be automated and CNC'd and AI'd, there's little need for many intellectuals of either the technical variety or wise or even literate variety. The world has a "surplus labor force". Everything in the world can be made very cheaply, by machines or by farm girls with tiny hands. I saw a vid on YT of a CNC machine boring out and cutting an entire engine block out of a block of aluminum, in record time and with no human intervention. Those types of machines cut out hundreds of skilled workers, vastly increasing productivity and output, per human hour. Yet the prices keep going up. Bankers --- and what are corporate industrial management and leveraged owners but bankers in disguise --- legally own all the machines.

They need an infinite supply of consumers, yet the profit margins demand a curve on labor costs that approaches the zero line. That's a conundrum. Corporate Capitalism as we have known it, I think it cannot continue as it has been, not mathematically, not without massive govt involvement and cash infusions. And humans are nothing but an excess labor pool, useless eaters.

"People are our most important asset", remember that corporate slogan? How about the one about "only eliminating "nasty" jobs that no one would want anyhow"?

A govt study in the 70s showed that profits in manufacturing were declining due to competition, margins were getting thinner. So the money left and went to finance. The numbers show that. Then to tricky finance, and derivatives. Even Dogbert is discussing making 'fictional' products, investments.

They saw what happened in the US in the postwar Gi Bill era, in the 60s, when there was a lot of college-educated proles from working class families walking around, people who could think. It was more difficult to conduct foreign policy as they wished. This was a threat to power, a "Crisis of Democracy", as Sam Huntington wrote, echoed by Brzezinski and other Trilaterals, along with the long-standing Right Wing and religious hatred for intellect.

It's much cleaner and better disguised to simply murder intellectualism and education, than to actually round up and murder intellectuals.

Re 60s: Brzezinski's 1999 book lamented that a democratic society resists imperial wars --- EXCEPT in the event of a widely-perceived and truly massive threat to security. Michael Ledeen stated that it would be "lucky" and "providential" if a bloodbath occurred on US soil. He's an admirer of Mussolini, and suggested a global Waffen SS was the best way to run the world. Strauss (a Machiavellian and Plato-ist) as well as Ledeen and others suggested that permanent war was the smartest way for the Elite Few to run things, while manipulating the Vulgar Many. The VMs are those who believe in democracy and who are troubled by things like a conscience or moral questions.

I don't know what leads people who understand the sordid history of CIA-backed death squads, including Al-Qaeda, and Operation Gladio terrorism, would conclude that 9-11 was NOT a black-bag Intelligence job by our Security State.

who's side are you on ?

Submitted by Cool Breeze on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 16:45

Valtosanto, do you agree or disagree with the below statement?

“If I could get a few minutes of the president's time,” Carol Caref told us, “I'd tell him that public education and quality neighborhood public schools are the foundations of stable, livable communities. Turning schools into test-prep centers doesn't improve the quality of education. Neither does repeating the corporate propaganda about our schools being 'dropout factories,' as Arne Duncan does. What works are resources, stability, parent and community involvement and smaller class sizes. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods have all these things. Children and families everywhere deserve them.”

It is very simple.
You are either a part of the solution or you are a part of the problem. And as Mr. Dixon skillfully informs us as well as reiterates in his efficient, expository counter punches; there most certainly is a problem.
There can be no question that all things PUBLIC have become, unequivically, CORPORATE ENEMY NUMBER ONE.

Obama and education

Submitted by eric on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 19:18

Second try.

When Obam said he was Abe Lincoln when he got elected I got nervous.
The charter school movement brings public education back to where it was prior to the Civil War, there was no public education.
The charter school movement is an effort to destroy education as a profession. Its an effort to destroy teaching as a profession for Blacks.
Bill Gates used the H1b visa to drive Blacks out of the IT industry.
He is after Black professionals again through the charter school movement.
NYC, Chicago, DC the same thing is happening. Can't the remaing Black teachers see the hand writting on the wall? Why are Black profesionals so silent?

Black professionals wake up!

Eric

Comodified Commericalized and Corporatized Education

Submitted by S Murph on Mon, 06/22/2009 - 17:14

Thanks Bruce for another informative article. I have said this in previous comments that the nation as a whole is going to get a full measure of what the city of Chicago is already getting mass mis education Chicago Style. What is going on in Chi City and soon to go on in cities all across the country is the same thing that has happened to GM and Chrysler. These corporations were allowed to go (forced if you will) into bankruptcy so that they could crash the unions dump the employees and the benefits that they were contracted to provide for them. Using that model CEO (Chief Educational Overseer) Arne Duncan is about to unleash the same corporatized mayhem on public education. By closing schools he will accomplish the same thing GM and Chrysler did break contracts bust unions privatize whole school districts and turn them over to the charter/military school cult. Welcome to the Education Black Hole of the Chicago Boys.

If the schools that are high jacked by this method are ran like corporation they will be nothing more than cash cows to be pimped by the privatization tycoons that run them (think Enron WorldCom etc). If these schools treat the CHILDREN like the employees were treated at corporations like Enron/WorldCom then the probability that those children will get a quality education is slim none and impossible!!! If these schools treat their finances the way corporations like Citibank BoA and AIG did then they will make public school districts look like penny pinchers by taking abuse and misuse of funds to whole new levels. You can see where I am going with this using the corporate model is DOOMED TO FAILURE!!!

I know that public education is not perfect but we (most of us) are a product of public education with all its faults and flaws and we are still whole and complete human beings with an education to boot. Many of us went on to college and post graduate schools then professional careers. If it worked for us there is no reason that it can not work the generation of today. The only reason it will not work is if they rig the system not to work. They have been doing that for over the last thirty years (it’s called DUMBING DOWN). Even with that some of us are not going to be denied and will get an education. Some of us remember what Carter G. Woodson said about education quote” there are two educations that you get. One is given to you and the other you give yourself.”

Does anybody see a pattern here??? Just like the auto industry crisis the villain is organized labor (union). It is the same story line for education the villain is organized labor the UNIONS. They screwed everything up in public education. It was not inept school boards, or irresponsible politicians or uninvolved parents that might have been, could have been or may have been the problem. I know that unions are not perfect but to blame them for the whole problem is just plain dumb. There is plenty of blame to go around for EVERYBODY!!!

As someone who also taught in LAUSD (West Athens Castle Heights and 42nd Street elementary) I can speak form experience. You can NOT blame UTLA for bathrooms were not clean and working. I taught in a bungalow for seven years and the inside had not been painted since they put them on site (in the sixties). That was not the unions fault. It was NOT the union’s fault that the heater did not work all the time and that there was NO air conditioning those triple digit days. Especially when the district at that time had one of the largest budgets, only the county and city had larger (today it is a multi-BILLION Dollar Budget). In the ten years that I taught in LA (1979-1989) the district changed superintendents two or three times (can we say NEXT children, I knew you could). You had a White female school board member call a Black female school board member a BITCH on an open mic during a radio show (OH NO SHE DIDN’T!!!) think that created a chummy atmosphere at board meetings??? The district reorganized it self three times form areas to regions and back to areas (can we say change children, I knew you could). But those low down dirty unions, NOW that is the problem with LAUSD much less any other school district (Yea Right).

As one of the commenter’s stated you are NOT going to see any charter schools in the affluent suburbs much less any schools being closed (Only in our neighborhoods GO FIGURE)!!! I have said this before they want us all DIRT POOR DIRT IGNORANT and DIRT HEALTHY. The man made financial crisis and the ensuing Grand Theft Heist of the Treasury will keep us DIRT POOR. The manufactured educational crisis and the whole sell conversion/selloff to the privatization tycoons and the charter/military school cult will keep us DIRT IGNORANT and allowing BIG insurance/BIG Phama to keep pimping us all like two dollar tricks instead of having single payer universal health care will keep us all DIRT HEALTHY!!! LOL please help us all right now I did not say now I said RIGHT NOW PLEASE!!!

Peace

S Murph

Another Example

Submitted by nthomas00 on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 16:37

This is just yet another example of why I think Obama and his administration have no idea what they are doing. They closed Guantamo bay without considering where the prisoners would go, now they're going close schools without thinking about where the children will go. Sad.

-Nikki-

Racial Discrimination? What about Age Discrimination!

Submitted by Cyber on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 14:09

I had high high hopes for this administration but as a Chicago Public school teacher;
I now know that my hope is gone. I am a single African American female who had a teaching degree but never used it. I went into teaching because of one simple reason "I love to teach." I think of the old school marm; this would afford me a profession until I am too old to walk...but not under Arne Duncans' watch. When Obama promoted his old school/basketball buddy as the head of our nation's education system. I actually shed a tear in disgust.
I have seen first hand what Renaissance 2010 did for Chicago Public Schools it is no more than a "Good Ole' Boys" network for their cronies to gain funds and profit off public education. Ask how many "people of color" are part of the "management" of these "turn-around schools."   They give a cluster of schools to their cronies to turn around. These privateers hire "their own people." Oh of course they hire some of the former teachers but its a smokescreen...
They have diversity (mostly Hisipanic) on the front for their media coverage but how many are actually "running them?"
Teachers in Chicago are jobless thanks to Arne Duncan. Don't believe the all that is sweetness and light that surrounds him. He comes from a connected family of Daley Lieutenants ...Duncan got his job as CEO of CPS because of being "politically connected." Just like he got this Washington position via his buddy O'Bama....What this really means?

They are displacing veteran teachers who can not find jobs not because they are not trained many have not only experience but are highly qualified with excellent reviews/references, and "advanced degrees up the waZoo.
We are.

We went "back to train at considerable cost" and "paid for" continuing education under NCLB. We have been and are continuing to be "displaced" while they actively "recruit" younger teachers straight out of college and not only because they are cheaper (IMO).

I have not had a job as a teacher in three years. I had a principal tell me straight off. "I'm not hiring old people." Too bad I didn't have my cell phone on for a video or audio bite.....my word against his.  I am too embarassed to make something like this up. This district treats their (vet ) teachers like crap.
We are lumped into a job fair cattle call for job opportunities given at Chicago landmarks....Navy Pier, McCormick Place, Cultural Center, etc ...no consideration for our senority we stand in line with those who have no teaching experience. Talk to administration for 3 minutes, then drop a resume in a box with thousands of them..some even say, "We usually throw half of these away because we just can't get to them"
We start at ground zero with right out of college novice teachers.

When we are displaced we are put on "cadre" status for "one year" which means you can get your regular pay (no holidays) until "you find another school."   After that, you are demoted to a "day to day sub" which means you have to wait by the phone until the substitute center "calls you " each day" for an assignment at $136.00 per day. Which is not too bad, the problem is they "don't call everyday.

I can't file unemployment compensation because CPS blocks it with a technicality that makes it like you are employed....same said for summer, you can't collect unemployment because you are employed but you havent been called so you have really made no money. I have no income for the summer...no deferred pay to cover for the summer months...CPS does not pay into Social Security because of their useless Chicago Teacher's Union pension. They do not help their members find placement.    Now our union has been busted. Why did I pay dues all these years?

In region one of Chicago Public School District there are "young," white, teachers being hired over veteran teachers. Chicago (CPS) is a "who do you know" network. If you don't "know anybody" you will not find a job here (for the most part). They even have post around town (come young and all) that Baby Boomers retiring......job recruitment. I am not saying young people shouldn't be hired. I like working with them it keeps me fresh on my toes...I'm saying the disparity is overwhelming.

Because of the economy many boomers are "returning to work" or / and working longer....Arne Duncan has his lieutenants of "young teachers" old people hit the exit door...I would like to know how many teachers they hire 50+ straight off?

I've given up I have a few years left before I can get my full benefits but am "forced to retire early." I'm losing a lot of money because of it...I've been living off my savings for the past three years for the most part with a few day to day sub calls along the way..
Because my last two schools closed under Renaisance 2010 turn-around project.
Bottom line its all Daly (ed) up here in Chicago "for the most part."   Not saying there is not diversity. I'm saying they are looking out for their own first and what is left is what we get...However if "you know somebody" like Duncan did and does in Washington...
you are good to go. Youcan have a Ph.D. in education and they still will block you from teaching third grade with the NCLB endorsement nonsense...because it cost $7-8 ,000 to get endorsed in a subject...these new teachers its "included" in their training while I paid extra and you have to get endorsed in each subject like you're teaching college...I've gone to many of these classes taking extra courses. "Most" provided me with no new news....
All I ask is re: this man's educational philosophy; think for yourself don't buy into his media hype with pictures of him playing basketball with the underprivledge children and all that starting a school on the UTube channel emphasizing all that sacchrin publicity. I bought into it and I had such high hopes when he came on as CEO of our district. Young, fresh with new ideas, and thought he was the best thing that happened to us.

Bit by bit, litltle by little, I became disillusioned when I saw it for what it is; the same cah-cah warmed over..another "business man" (who hired his buddies from Harvard. I saw how many jobs downtown were created for his buddies (making the big bucks). ....Cronyism....
...what you see isn't all there is to this man. He and his privateer / charter school buddies now have keys to the kingdom and will wreck havoc, thanks to his BF Obama, nationwide. As a Chicago public school teacher who have been on the "front" for years; these charter schools are more about "funds" less about "education." My advice watch where this money goes, pay attention to the punch list and who is gets paid and how they are connected to Daley/Duncan. Obama championing his philosophy for public education while his girls (not sure so correct me if I'm wrong) however,   I was told and if it is true they attended the exclusive, private and very white well funded Pritzker family, University of Chicago Lab school grates my nerve....

Good luck
You'll need it...

PS apologize for the long reply but when I saw this I just went into a rant...LoL

You're right

Submitted by Bonniwell on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 16:42

You nailed all the important issues here. This is truly frightening. I taught in Houston during Rod Paige's tenure, when he developed NCLB. He destroyed so many aspects of the schools, from good teaching and curriculum, to the food service contracts that were an insult to the very capable cooks in the kitchens. When he left to join Dubya in Washington ("Don't let the door hit you on the way out," said Houston) he left behind an organization that was an unspeakably demoralized shambles. The key to everything he did was to promote big money interests. He absolutely despised teachers, and let us know it. Of course, being a football coach, he had no actual teaching experience, much less knew how to teach reading to a first grader.

I had such high hopes for this administration. With Obama, I thought we had a guy who could see to the core of what matters in education. Now it seems he simply does not care to find out, or else is more interested in promoting private enterprise.

This story about teachers in Chicago has me scared witless. At first I suspected that the racism is largely a fallout of the economics of getting rid of as many older teachers as possible, but that doesn't account for the fact that most of the younger ones being hired are white.

I believe that an underlying factor is that we live in a society that does not like older women, regardless of the race, and teaching is still primarily "woman's work." it especially does not like older women who challenge the power structure. Older teachers have enough experience to know when a school is going down a path that is not in the best interest of the children, and they have the nerve to say so. In protesting against NCLB over the years, they have been challenging powerful business interests. The best way to get rid of them is to have a nouveau witch hunt. Instead of accusations of praticing witchcraft, we are accused of incompetence based on the bogus premise that certain test scores are all we need to know about a child's learning. The charges are almost impossible to contradict because the powers that be hold all the cards. I am appalled that Obama has bought into this story.

Best of luck to all you brave Chicago teachers! You are the front line that is taking it on the chin for all of us.

He knows exactly what he is doing

Submitted by jlfittro on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 16:10

I think Obama and his administration know exactly what they are doing. Corporate media let Bush off the hook by calling him an idiot; perhaps he himself is one, but not the people who really ran the show. They knew what they were doing. We only had to look at Obama's advisers during the campaign, and his cabinet now, to see that he also knows what he is doing-same agenda with a prettier face. Obama is here to preserve capitalism and privatization of schools is part of the plan.
And Guantanamo Bay prison is not yet closed. I don't see it happening because the U.S. still loves to stick it to Cuba, and what better way than a U.S. torture center on an island of socialist and humanitarian government (and even if it ever happens, Obama has not addressed the other detention/torture centers operated by the U.S. or client states around the world).

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It certianly won't solve any

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It certianly won't solve any problems going in and firing all the teachers. There are REAL ways to solve the learning gaps in public schools, but shoving problems under the rug doesn't help anyone.
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hey could buy homes...

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hey could buy homes, raise their families, send their own children to college and play active coach purses in their churches, sororities and a wide variety of local and civic affairs. Dispersing and dispossessing hundreds of such teachers in Chicago

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Submitted by Ablack on Fri, 11/05/2010 - 12:26

Of Obama's several disappointing appointments, Duncan ranks right up there with Tim Geitner. Wealthy kids get well-resourced schools and well-prepared teachers, while low-income kids get test prep and uncertified teachers who won't last 2 years. Duncan's answer to struggling inner-city schools? Turn them over the military and channel kids into the school-to-cannon-fodder pipeline. His policies are a national disgrace that Obama should distance himself from ASAP. How can someone who's never been an educator serve effectively as Secretary of Education?

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