CURMUDGUCATION: Hunger Strike in Chicago

CURMUDGUCATION: Hunger Strike in Chicago:
Hunger Strike in Chicago

http://www.reclaimourschools.org/

Education reformsters have a selective deafness problem when it comes to not-white, not-wealthy citizens, and that is on display again in Chicago, where community activists are staging a hunger strike this week in an attempt to get Chicago Public Schools to actually pay attention to them.

Members of the Bronzeville community have been fighting for Dyett High School since it was marked for phaseout in 2012; CPS cited academic failure. CPS stretched the closing over four years to allow students already enrolled to finish their careers there; that resulted in just twelve seniors being enrolled last year. Supporters of the school say that CPS pressured those remaining students to transfer out; CPS says it was just "gauging interest." Certainly Dyett hasn't enjoyed a great deal of support from CPS-- no infusion of resources or attempt to actually fix the alleged academic shortcomings.

Instead of talking about how to revitalize the school, CPS has been entertaining proposals about what to replace it with, including a proposal from the principal brought in to shut the place down-- that particular proposal has been considered even though it was handed in late. But the school seems marked to be one more victim of the mayor's wholesale slashing of neighborhood schools.

But here's what you need to know about the community activists of Dyett High School-- they have done everything that you're supposed to do in such a situation. They put together a proposal for a school focusing on green and leadership studies, complete with partners and support, that would have allowed the area to keep its last open-enrollment high school. CPS has hemmed and hawed and at one point said, okay, you can keep the school under this plan as long as we still hire someone to run it.

Activist Jitu Brown had some thoughts about that, as reported by Edushyster:

"Why can’t we have public schools? Why do low-income minority students need to have their schools run by private contractors?" As Brown sees it, handing the school to a private operator isn’t much better than closing it. "We want this school to anchor the community for the next 75 years. We’re not interested in a short-term contract that can be broken."

So while CPS has twiddled their thumbs and stalled, the supporters of Dyett have organized and petitioned and called and done what people do when they are ignored-- steadily escalated. They CURMUDGUCATION: Hunger Strike in Chicago:

Campbell Brown's Edusummit AM

Today is Campbell Brown's education summit in New Hampshire, featuring six GOP candidates and some other filler. It's an all-day extravaganza. The live streaming had some trouble hitting its stride, so I missed the opener and the first part of Jeb Bush's turn in the soft, comfy chair (there are no hot seats anywhere at this summit.)

I had no intention of watching, but it's like netflixing a bad comedy series-- you just keep sticking around a little bit longer. So I have no super-coherent observations about the morning with Bush, Fiorina, and Kasich (Jennifer Berkshire is there for Edushyster, so I look forward to her write-up). But there are several things that jump out.

"God-given"

That's the preferred modifier for the talents and abilities of students. This not only lets candidates name-check God, but it also sidesteps any discussion about what effects poverty and environment might have on the talents and abilities that a student brings to school.

Local control is union control

Yeah, this is a new but already-beloved talking point. If you let people have local control, those damn unions will just buy the elections, just like they did in...well, somewhere. The problem with this talking point will be coming up with an actual example of a local school board that is run by the bought-and-paid-for tools of the teachers union.

Cognitive dissonance

Holy smokes but the candidates disagree with themselves. Kasich thinks local control is awesome, but the state takeover of Cleveland and Youngstown is also awesome. This is a sticking point for all three candidates, who love them some local control and decry the evils of top-down federal over-reachy policy-- but you can't privatize and get charters and choice unless you open up the market by shutting down local voters.

Also teachers unions are terrible and awful and a barrier to great things in education, but teachers 

Campbell Brown's Edusummit AM