Catching Up On The Mail
It's Friday night. Laundry and correspondence. That's how we roll here in the big city.
Got this idea over at Fred's, I think. See you all at Solidarity Saturday tomorrow.
Got this idea over at Fred's, I think. See you all at Solidarity Saturday tomorrow.
A Spot-On Lament
This is so brilliant, so dead-on accurate. Thanks to @breezydayz for pointing it out. Of all the Next Big Things I've endured over the centuries, the one that has surprised me with its longevity is the whole writing your objective on the board thing. I'm not opposed to writing an objective on the board-- it's just that the national fervor this movement took on was like something from a sci-fi novel. I've written about this before-- there was a whole Red Scare-type thing where principals were running from room to room, making sure you were writing your objective on the board, and it... more »
Catching Up On The Mail
It's Friday night. Laundry and correspondence. That's how we roll here in the big city. Got this idea over at Fred's, I think. See you all at Solidarity Saturdaytomorrow.
The Company You Keep
Just going to pile onto the much-made observation that the CTU strike has awakened something across the land. People understand what this is about; they really do. Before this action, you'd see some bullshit in the press, like this piece written by some choady fellow from Arkansas, and there'd be very little commentary after it. But now you see all kinds of people jumping in to say something nice about teachers and about how much they support the CTU. So I thank Rahm Emanuel for picking a fight with Karen Lewis and the teachers she democratically represents. It's going to be helpf... more »
Meanwhile, Over On The Fringe
Look what Rahm's far-right, non-Chicagoan allies in the legislature are up to. I may be mistaken but I believe that if you polled the four legislators in the article, not a one of them would even agree that evolution happened. These are the folks Rahm runs with---- super uninformed charter zealots.
The Road To Ruin
Just reprinting one of my favorite things, the Track E Assessment Calendar for Chicago Public Schools. What this is is a visual representation of the road to ruin. It's the color-coded key to a culture of compliance. And this ain't nothin'. Wait 'til every student has to have high-stakes testing in every subject so that every teacher can be fired with bureaucratic efficiency. Here's what you should do today if you're in Rahm's Tea Party political base. Call up the school where the mayor sends his kid and ask them to see their version of this.
Bad Ideas Abound
Wtf is the board out in Lake Forest thinking? The teachers are standing firm in opposition to the school board’s demands for a two-tier salary schedule that would require new teachers to teach for 45 years in order to reach top pay. Um, two-tier salary schedules are worth walking out over, and this one in particular just stupid. It's nonsense. Did the Tea Party take over out there? I'm sorry, I meant to ask if the Tea Party underwent a lobotomy and then took over out there. I left out the lobotomy. I hope the IEA sends, you know, *someone *out to Lake Forest to do the whole support... more »
People Get What's Happening
Omfg this is good. Not a false word in it. I'm just gonna steal it and post it here. Awesome. Chicago Teacher by Rebel Diaz Follow them.
A Little Love For The CTU
I work in the 'burbs. Today our staff did a little shout out to our great, great colleagues fighting the good fight in the city. I am one jacked-up photographer, aren't I? There are like20 people off-camera to the left. I can never find my glasses, either. I was just pressing buttons hoping for video.
Truly, Truly...
Moronic. And these are the best and brightest? Seriously, this kid writes with the certainty of someone who's never been shat upon once in her life. And this.. Great educators produce great results. Using challenging social factors as an excuse, as a crutch, as a reason to say our children cannot perform on standardized tests is shameful. Karen Lewis is using these challenges as a scapegoat for the failures of the public education system. You can almost see the holier-than-thou expression that must have been on her face as she typed that crap. Poverty is a scapegoat? I hope she does... more »
I had never been small....
This made its way to me today. I believe the author is a writing teacher at Lane Tech. Teaching these days is just one terrible slog after another, particularly in CPS. It's the political leadership, it's governance, it's the holier-than-thou reformers who have undercut and undermined the schools. If educators were actually running CPS, it would be so, so different. *THE POLITICAL POEM THAT WAS BULLIED OUT OF ME* by *Molly Meacham* on Thursday, August 30, 2012 at 10:50pm · I had never been small until I heard how evil I am for being a teacher. With the lie levels rising in ... more »
Clarifying Reuters
What a pain it is to comment at Reuters. Fill out this form, fill out that form, check your email. Honest to god. In an otherwise pretty okay article over at Reuters, there's this: Chicago also fares poorly compared to other cities. On the most recent national exam, Chicago fourth-graders didn't come close to the average scores posted by students in other large urban districts, in either reading or math. There are some bright spots. Some elementary schools taken over by private turnaround specialists - and bolstered with millions in additional public and private funds - have b... more »
The View From Rogers Park
Chained to my loom all day today; didn't hear a thing about the strike, but let me just say this. These red-shirted teachers, walking home back in Rogers Park after picketing and rallying all day? They're getting *lots *of love from the locals out on the sidewalks. Working people understand what this is about. There is nobody quite like Rahm Emanuel for uniting people in opposition. I'm sure that out in Winnetka, or Wilmette, or where ever the hell he's from, I'm sure they're hemming and hawing, or tut-tutting, or mau-mauing and garumphing, or whatever it is you do when you run ... more »
I Stand With The Union
from the Labor Day Rally I stand with Karen Lewis, the CTU negotiating team, the united Chicago Teachers' Union. I'm not a member of their union, but I've been paying attention. What's happening in Chicago is a full-scale assault on communities and public education in the guise of "reform." The national fetish for teacher-hating has its epicenter here in Chicago, where Rahm Emanuel has decided that his personal agenda is the only way forward, without negotiation, without the assent of the communities impacted by one terrible policy after another. I know there's a faction within the... more »
Pension Vocabulary
This John Dillon series excellent. The whole pension discussion is such a truth-free echo chamber; it's strange how obvious it all seems when someone points it out.
The Missing Metric
I've been thinking about the rise of meaningless data-worship in schools over the past decade, and how it's taken a toll on the communities that need the most help. I remember when it started, at the start of NCLB. You'd get these consultants from Texas visiting your school, talking about their miraculous *data-driven* model that had transformed their state into a beacon of academic excellence. All the while Texas remained basically stagnant and near the bottom of on the various NAEP measurements. Now, I work in a place where data is valued, and I understand the difference between ... more »
The Prison Analogy
Nobody ever privatized a prison to improve prisons, criminal justice, or rehabilitation. Prisons are privatized for two reasons: to spend less money on prisons and to funnel the money that *is* spent on prisons to politically connected people. It's the same with privatizing schools via the charter movement. There is nothing else to it. It's about manufacturing a sense of shock, creating fear, and capitalizing on people's sudden urge to get their kids away from certain other people's kids, and then moving the money while everyone's fighting. *Update:* I kept trying to remember what ... more »
What A Cast of Characters!
Great piece by George Schmidt on who's who over at CPS. There is nobody remotely connected to the actual parents of the actual students. I wonder what it's like to be JC Brizard, rolling from one town to the next, racking up huge salaries and buyouts just for the minor inconvenience of being used as a prop by the actors on the stage. I just hope that when I die, people can name three things I stood for and was willing to fight for, or for the things I tried to build rather than the things I tried to tear down.