Chicago’s George Schmidt on Martin Koldyke, “Golden Apples,” and School “Turnaround”
On June 4, 2014, I posted this piece by a guest writer, a Chicago area teacher, who has concerns about Martin Koldyke’s “Golden Apples” teacher recognition program. Her concern is that the “Golden Apples” program is a benevolently-disguised, self-serving effort for Koldyke to use teachers to staff his Academy for Urban Leadership “turnaround” schools (AULS).
The guest writer read my book, A Chronicle of Echoes, which includes three chapters detailing the history of mayoral control of Chicago public schools, and wished to add to the details in my book.
In response to the guest post, George Schmidt of Chicago-based Substance News offered the following details. Schmidt originally posted the information below in the comments section of the guest post. However, his experience with the topic warrants its own post.
I give you George Schmidt:
As I’ve posted before at various points and on substancenews.net, Koldyke is one of the main leaders of corporate school reform in Chicago. His original smokescreen was the Golden Apple Foundation. The Foundation began awarding the “Golden Apple” academy awards for “excellence in teaching” in the 1980s, by the way. Chicago’s public television station, WTTW, was part of the Golden Apple hype by 1990. Every year, they aired a ceremony which was basically like the Academy Awards. Some teachers ate it up. It turned out there was a lot of phony stuff about the program.(Disclosure: I was a semi-finalist one year; I was told by one of the judges that I didn’t make the final cut because they were afraid I would “pull a Jane Fonda” at the TV show. At that time, I had pioneered the “Macintosh Computer Classroom” at Amundsen High School and among other things was featured in a four-page Apple promotional on using the Macs in classrooms…).Within a few years, the Golden Apples had evolved into as much hype as anything else. One friend of mine who won one told me she did everything but audition for the “show,” changing her wardrobe, practicing a certain kind of telegenic lesson, and even losing some weight while her kids (at one of Chicago’s “better” high schools) worked overtime on their nominating letters.By the early 1990s, Koldyke, in partnership with then mayor Richard M. Daley, had become the Chicago “School Reform Authority” chairman. As such, he was overseeing the mandated “reform” programs in Chicago, using powers that still lingered from the old “Chicago School Finance Authority.” Koldyke was a right wing ideologue the entire time. The “Reform” authority paid a quarterChicago’s George Schmidt on Martin Koldyke, “Golden Apples,” and School “Turnaround” | deutsch29: