Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:
Fred All Week Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher
Silence on affirmative action makes naming Chicago’s new elite high school after Obama appropriate.
I have been thinking about the new $60 million public Barack Obama College Prep that will be built a few blocks away from another Chicago public elite selective admission high school, Walter Payton College Prep. The latest project for Chicago’s tale of two cities school system will be built on the metaphorical grave of Cabrini Green, a public housing project. It won’t be far from the City’s large
Keeping retirement weird.
Yesterday was a beautiful midwestern Spring day. I’m writing this – drinking my coffee and eating my bowl of Bob’s Ten Grain – while looking at the serviceberry in the corner of our backward which is on the cusp of full bloom. So naturally I spent yesterday inside at conference room at the Double Tree in Oakbrook, twenty miles west of the Loop. There are a lot of pretty towns that surround Chicag
YESTERDAY
And the winner is…
Fred Klonsky:A year ago I reached one million page hits. At the present rate I will reach two million by mid-summer. To celebrate one million I held a haiku/poetry contest. I must think of something to celebrate two million site hits. Originally posted on Fred Klonsky: Remember all entries must have been a tweet, haiku or limerick. The decision of the judge (that’s me) is final. And the winner of
Barack Obama High School and Chicago’s tale of two cities.
On Wednesday, Rahm Emanuel’s hand-picked school board voted to fire every administrator, teacher, paraprofessional and lunch lady from three neighborhood schools and handed those schools over the the corporate-connected Academy for Urban School Leadership. The three schools – Gresham, Dvorak and McNair are on the south and west side. “Given money, we can do many, many things,” said Diedrus Brown
APR 24
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Race matters.
Yesterday I posted a criticism of the Supreme Courts decision in Schuette v Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. A number of readers commented or emailed me to express their disagreement with the position I took. This is a moment that I am glad to say that I stand with my union leaders – who not only opposed the decision – but earlier filed a legal brief in defense of affirmative action in th
Jose Vilson gets the Fred Klonsky treatment.
Fred, First, I’m thankful you got around to this. On Cloud 10 even. Secondly, and perhaps more jokingly, I was hoping for the Fred Klonsky treatment with the artwork and all. I’m not mad, though. Honest. Thanks again. It’s like you freaking know me. - Jose Vilson This is Not a Test
APR 23
NEA. Supreme Court decision turns back our nation’s commitment to racial equality .
- National Education Association WASHINGTON – April 22, 2014 - The Supreme Court of the United States today delivered its opinion in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, rejecting a constitutional challenge to Michigan’s Proposal 2, an initiative that bans affirmative action in university admissions. The decision of the Sixth Circuit has been reversed. The National Education Associ
CTU’s Karen Lewis on today’s decision by the CPS board to wage war on African-American students, teachers and parents.
- CTUnet The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) released the following statement upon news that the Chicago Board of Education voted to “turn around” three elementary schools on the city’s South and West sides. The move will transfer the schools’ authority to a politically connected business organization with ties to city hall: “Today’s hostile takeover of three of our neighborhood school communities b
3-0 ruling by Illinois Appellate Court ruling defending the Constitutional protects is an omen for pensions.
Crain’s: In a case with implications for the upcoming legal battle over pension reform, an Illinois appellate court in Springfield ruled that constitutional protections prevent the state from reducing mandated payments to county treasurers. The pension protection clause of the Illinois Constitution, which says that workers’ retirement benefits can’t be diminished, is at the heart of lawsuits chall
Justice may be blind but we can see.
Since Michigan banned affirmative action in 2006, the minority population at its colleges and universities has dropped from 12 percent to 9.5 percent. The proportion of Black freshmen has gone from 7 to 5 percent even though the Black college-aged population in Michigan went from 16 to 19 percent. When it comes to the U.S. Supreme Court, justice isn’t blind. It has a racial bias. The result of the
APR 22
The Sun-Times’ call to “fix the error” misses the point.
The Sun-Times is without shame. This morning they ran an editorial that calls on the legislators to “fix the error” in Senate Bill 1. Back in November SB1 was the bill they demanded. The state’s top legislative leaders reached a deal Wednesday to cut pension costs for teachers, state and university workers and legislators. State lawmakers should ratify that agreement when they return to Springfiel
John Dillon. Poor Representative Mike Bost.
. - John Dillon blogs at Pension Vocabulary. Let’s not forget just a year ago, Madigan was the chief architect of an unconstitutional pension bill that was later given after initial failure to a group of ten willing to forgo their oaths of office to patch and paste together an avoidance of responsibility to find real answers and another way to punish the workers. Poor Rep. Bost must have actually
Illinois General Assembly eats shoots and leaves. More about the pension typo.
State Senator Iris Martinez. Because Senator Dan Biss misplaced a decimal point, the line to retire at the University of Illinois is long. Jim Broadway of the Illinois School News Service has lifted his copyright for the day, so I’ll post his comments on Senate Bill 1 in full. Haste makes costly pension glitch: The hastily drafted (and seriously unconstitutional) pension “reform” bill that the le
APR 21
Yes. Dan Biss is an idiot. But the problem isn’t the typo. The problem is what they did on purpose.
Twelve hours before Representative Laura Fine voted for pension theft she told our SORE Retired chapter that she hadn’t seen the bill. The pension news this weekend was about the supposed typo in Senate Bill 1. It is anticipated that thousands of tenured professors at the University of Illinois and other state schools will leave en masse this summer because of a mistake in the language of the bil
These members of the $20 million a year club paid the same Illinois state income tax rate as you did.
Because Illinois is a regressive flat tax state we all pay the same tax rate no matter how much we got paid. Today Crain’s published their list of twenty CEO’s who made $20 million this year. They paid no more of a percentage of their income in Illinois than an associate at Wal-Mart. Or you. James McNerney Jr. — $23.3 million, Boeing Co. Sandeep Mathrani — $22.1 million, General Growth Properties
APR 20
Sunday reads.
Recruiting new members at the IEA Representative Assembly. On Easter Sunday the NY Times’ house conservative expresses interest in the resurrection of…Marx. Beware of corporate reformers who steal the language of The Movement. Defending public schools from the wolves of Wall Street. Matt Farmer’s Graze to the Top. Farewell to The Hurricane. Pistols shots ring out in the barroom night Enter Patty
Sunday book review section. This is Not a Test.
This is Not a Test. Jose Vilson. Haymarket Books Professor Bill Schubert, who is my professional mentor, advocated the very Deweyian idea of teacher lore as a basis for educational research. Schubert’s idea is to extend to teachers “a progressive faith acknowledging that they are researchers and theory builders in their professional lives.” In an age of education experts who have no experience
APR 19
The talented Mr. Biss.
By The Associated Press Posted Apr. 18, 2014 @ 5:30 pm CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — University of Illinois officials have worried for months that state pension reforms will push employees to retire early. But they say language inadvertently placed in pension law may provide even stronger incentive. Avijit Ghosh is a senior adviser to university President Robert Easter. He said at a trustees’ meeting Friday
Mark Stefanik. It’s easy to speak up for teachers.
Cook County Clerk David Orr. - Mark Stefanik is a middle school Language Arts teacher and frequent contributor to this blog. Full Disclosure: I was raised in a strict Irish Roman Catholic household. I married a Jewish girl (best decision of my life). I am an agnostic. I have been rich in cultural blends for over 30 years. At this time of year, Passover and Easter dominate our family calendar. I t
Keeping retirement weird. Stopping the Tom Foolery.
Joe from New Jersey commented on my blog about Governor Christies diversion of public employee pensions, “ummm, NJ is a blue state you nincompoop. Christie has done more for the pension system than the last three DEMOCRAT governors combined!” I explained to Joe that Illinois was also a blue state and that stealing public employee pensions was a bipartisan crime. But I was flabbergasted by Joe’s u
