Garcia: 'I will transform the way we run city government' | Chicago ‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Garcia: 'I will transform the way we run city government' | Chicago:



Garcia: 'I will transform the way we run city government'

 Mayor Emanuel claims that he has led our city forward. But whenever light is shed on his actual record, we find he has violated the public trust, squandered opportunities for reform, and left the working families of Chicago with the bill. What’s worse, we don’t even know the extent of the problem.

OPINION

For four years, the current mayor has hidden critical information from Chicagoans — about how he’s spent tax dollars, about the debt he’s saddled on future generations, and about the savings we could realize from the “waste, fraud and inefficiencies” that even Mayor Emanuel has admitted riddle his budgets.

As mayor, I will transform the way we run city government. I will put the people of this city back in the drivers’ seat through real accountability. And I will bring the leadership it takes to bring people together and make tough decisions collaboratively.

My administration will open our books to the light of public scrutiny. And — for the first time in history — we will audit city budgets and operations to take a hard look at how Chicago spends its money.

No one outside of the mayor’s inner circle can tell you how badly Chicago’s books are cooked. But I will not look taxpayers in the eye and ask them to shoulder a greater burden before we have exhausted all other options and made sure that the very wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share.

We also need to be honest about the mismanagement that got us here.

Mayor Emanuel hired a City Comptroller who’s been convicted of taking kickbacks. Mayor Emanuel claimed to have saved $60 million in Streets and Sanitation operations when the Inspector General says that number is $18 million or less. The Emanuel administration claimed the red light cameras were for safety when the evidence shows they are a revenue grab. The mayor “renegotiated” the hated parking meter contract to make it harder for the city to change the terms of or even exit the contract, at the same time that the city forked out tens of millions of dollars in overpayments.

Emanuel has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in police overtime without a single audit or month-to-month breakdown of expenditures, despite repeated requests from City Council members for hard documentation.

Emanuel has said he hasn’t raised property taxes, but property taxes for city agencies under his control have spiked by 11 percent, or $342 million, since he took office in 2011. And he’s used those new taxes meant for our schools to funnel over $70 million to for-profit education companies that enrich ‘consultants’ and corporate owners, while closing 50 neighborhood public schools.

Instead of retiring bond debt, the current administration has refinanced expiring bonds in “scoop and toss” deals that will balloon in cost and soak taxpayers for millions in interest payments for decades.

The current administration has also continued to use TIFs as a piggy bank to give big corporations and campaign donors millions of dollars for development projects that don’t need these handouts such as the Marriot Hotel near McCormick Place.

And he tried to back-door a property tax increase of hundreds of millions of dollars into a pension deal that alienated workers and may not survive a court challenge.

Emanuel’s pay-to-play raids on the public coffers have crashed the city’s bond rating and left us in worse shape financially than when he took office. At the same time, he’s shortchanged workers’ pensions by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Mayor continues to say “trust me” — when he has failed to earn our trust.

Instead, we need a system-wide budget overhaul — for the City, CPS, the Park District and City Colleges. These operations together spend more than $17 billion in hard-earned tax dollars for frontline services that our residents need and deserve. My budget advisors estimate we could save at least hundreds of millions of dollars by using economies of scale to leverage better deals and wiser combined spending for these agencies.

As mayor, I’ll end the gimmicks, hidden taxes and growing debt that Emanuel has relied on to run the city — because Chicagoans have a right to truth in taxation.

As mayor, I will put our fiscal house in order. I’ll start running this city for the people, not the privileged few.

We can create financial stability and build a world class city where all Chicagoans can survive and thrive. We just have to build it together.

Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is a candidate for mayor of Chicago.Garcia: 'I will transform the way we run city government' | Chicago:

Click here to go to Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago Website

‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Forget Test Scores: Let’s Rank Those PARCC States Now | deutsch29

Forget Test Scores: Let’s Rank Those PARCC States Now | deutsch29:



Forget Test Scores: Let’s Rank Those PARCC States Now

According to Louisiana superintendent John White, a primary sell for Louisiana giving its illegitimate version of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is as follows:

For the first time, parents will be able to compare their children’s skills with the performance of students in other states.

So, once the next school year begins, parents will know how their children compared to children who completed the Pearson-contracted PARCC (which Louisiana is not part of) absent any detailed context of across-state differences in social and economic systems and with no ability whatsoever to “make” one state “resemble” another on any given desirable characteristic.

But this is test-score-driven “reform,” and its obsession with test scores must needs lead to some kind of comparison– hence the drive to compare among PARCC states just because that’s how it is supposed to be in the corporate reformer mind.

The PARCC consortium website continues to identify 12 states and DC as “PARCC states”: Arkansas, Colorado, DC, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island.

However, a common listing does not comparability make.

New York is administering a different Pearson test this year, not PARCC; Massachusetts is only giving PARCC in some of its districts; Mississippi withdrew from using PARCC assessments in January 2015 and has contracted with Pearson for “emergency” exams to replace PARCC tests for 2015. And, of course, there’s Louisiana– a state that is giving its pencil-and-paper “PARCC” tests– tests created not by Pearson but by Data Recognition Corp (DRC).

So, if one considers which of the PARCC states are actually administering (or, shall Forget Test Scores: Let’s Rank Those PARCC States Now | deutsch29:

The Seattle Education Association calls to suspend the SBAC | Seattle Education

The Seattle Education Association calls to suspend the SBAC | Seattle Education:

The Seattle Education Association calls to suspend the SBAC

I’ve been asked where the Seattle teachers’ union, the Seattle Education Association (SEA), stands on issues that I write about.

Well, they took a stand on the SBAC.

This resolution was passed on March 9, 2015.

Whereas in order for a standardized test to give meaningful information, it must first be administered to a normed sample group and proven to have reliability and validity; and in 2014-2015 reliability and validity of scores for the Smart Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test have not yet been established; yet Washington is planning to use the results as a baseline in their state accountability systems; and,

Whereas a statement on the SBAC website in Olympia, WA in November 2014 indicates that the SBAC is designed so that almost 7 in 10 eighth graders, and 6 in 10 third graders, are expected to fail to reach the arbitrary “goal” set by the test-makers; and,

Whereas the 2014 WEA Representative Assembly and the NEA RA passed six action items relating to objections to the use of standardized testing; and,

Whereas Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School Senate, made up of faculty, parents, administration, and students, recently announced that they had decided not to administer the SBAC to their juniors this spring for reasons including: the test will not benefit the juniors, it is not valid assessment strategy, it will produce unreliable outcomes, and it is not required for graduation; and,

Whereas at the Oregon Education Association Representative Assembly (OEA-RA), members of the Oregon Education Association (OEA) passed a resolution in April 2014 calling for a moratorium on the SBAC; and,

Whereas the Portland Teachers Association representative assembly recently passed a resolution calling for their members to speak out about the excessive time they spend on testing and preparing for tests, and to become involved with parent groups to educate the public about opting out; and,

Whereas the Obama Administration awarded PARCC and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) a combined $360 million to develop the new standardized tests aligned to the CCSS instead of dedicating said funds to provide the The Seattle Education Association calls to suspend the SBAC | Seattle Education:

“Springtime for Hitler” and Education Reform | educationalchemy

“Springtime for Hitler” and Education Reform | educationalchemy:



“Springtime for Hitler” and Education Reform

Posted: March 15, 2015 in Uncategorized

 No, this is not a contentious and offensive analogy between Common Core, testing and Nazi Germany. It’s a post about how a movement can be co-opted. And how to fight back. It’s about strategy co-optation and “ideological camouflage” in which one agenda can be disguised as something else. In this instance it’s about corporate players camouflaging private interests as a public good, and then pointing the blame elsewhere as a distraction. These strategies (listed here) are not top secret. Anyone who has taken marketing or advertising 101 knows how public perception can be manipulated by media and “research.” Because something is not common knolwedge does not make it conspiracy. It just makes the public susceptible to ideological manipulation. I reference here a few historical and fictional examples of how such strategies have been used, and how the American Legislative Exchange Commission’s (ALEC’s) agenda to corporatize, profit from and privatize our public schools eerily mirror these tactics.

The title of this blog is a reference to the movie The Producers (1967). The premise of the movie is that the two main characters, a theater producer for Broadway (played by Zero Mostel) and a meek accountant (Gene Wilder) are both in a slump and they are in need of money. It occurs to Gene Wilder that they’d make more money with a flop than a hit because they can collect the insurance when it goes belly up. So they create a Broadway musical they believe will flop, basing it on a screen play written by an old post-war Nazi nut. There’s the infamous scene where the audience sits in shock and horror while the singers and dancers on stage all croon, “Its springtime for Hitler and Germany.”

So what if…just what if… you were an organization that intended to privatize public education? Given how deep seated our democracy is with the ideal of public education, such a proposal would not win over very many except the most die-hard followers of Milton Freidman. Perhaps you’d get more people to adopt your agenda if first you created systematic “reforms” intended to be a flop. And then when the reforms “fail” you could cash in on your real agenda?

The goal of ALEC is to craft model legislation behind closed doors to create state level policies which serve the interests of their corporate partners. They are a powerful private-public partnership devoted (to a fault) with Milton Freidman’s notions of private enterprise at the expense of the public good.  Many of the polices we are seeing promulgated right now can be traced to model education legislation bills which can be seen etched carefully into state-level policies that call for:

-more (corporate led, hedge fund invested) charter schools,

-more vouchers draining the funds greatly needed by starving public schools into the pockets of “venture philanthropists,”

-the call for new teacher evaluations (rolling out the red carpet for union busting TFA faux teachers, and Pearson’s “Springtime for Hitler” and Education Reform | educationalchemy:

End the negative rhetoric about local schools

End the negative rhetoric about local schools:

End the negative rhetoric about local schools

When did we allow ourselves to become so negative, dismissive of facts and focused on political expediency more than doing what is right for the right reasons? There has got to be a better, more positive way to have a discussion about public schools. What's positive shouldn't get lost in a heated public discourse.

Monroe County is home to some of the highest achieving and best schools in the state and nation. In all corners of our region great instruction happens on a daily basis. Children meet and exceed rigorous standards, staff members perform at a high level and communities are engaged in their children's schools. The situation is actually pretty good. Not perfect, but, boy, are your schools working hard to get there.

Despite significant success over a long period of time, the governor repeatedly talks about failing schools and the need for major reform. He cites 178 public schools that are failing as evidence. According to the New York State Department of Education website, there are 4,530 public schools. This equates to 96.1 percent of schools finding success and 3.9 percent not making the grade.

According to Education Week's 2015 "Quality Counts" report card, New York state schools rank ninth in the nation. The 2015 Newsweek and US News & World Report"Best High Schools" lists include multiple Monroe County schools citing their overall excellence. The average high school graduation rates for our 19 Monroe County districts (including RCSD) is 89.7 percent, significantly higher than the national graduation rate of 81 percent. Our schools are not failing. Again, they're not perfect, but they are working really hard to get there.

The days of a one-size-fits-all approach in the classroom are past, so why is this one-size-fits-all approach acceptable in legislation? Just as every student has different strengths, weaknesses and needs, so do our districts. The answer is not more legislation; it is more local control.

We continue to be concerned about the pervasive negative rhetoric regarding what we know to be great public schools. We know that we need to continue working hard to continuously improve. We wouldn't have it any other way.

Reform efforts should focus on what works and not on negative rhetoric based on the faulty use of statistics and political attacks on teachers.

Kevin McGowan is superintendent of Brighton Central Schools and Mike Pero is superintendent of Pittsford Central Schools.End the negative rhetoric about local schools:

Public schools aren’t failing | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer http://bit.ly/1DpCfY7

Big Education Ape: Troubled public schools starving, not failing http://bit.ly/1DpCG4y

Will the US Department of Education take your school’s Title 1 funds if you opt your student out of the SBAC? Short answer, no. | Seattle Education

Will the US Department of Education take your school’s Title 1 funds if you opt your student out of the SBAC? Short answer, no. | Seattle Education:

Will the US Department of Education take your school’s Title 1 funds if you opt your student out of the SBAC? Short answer, no.

There is no federal or state law that requires financial penalties to schools’ Title I funds if parents refuse to allow their children to take the PARCC tests. The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law did include a mandate that required schools to have a 95 percent participation rate on state tests or face sanctions. The intent of that law was to prevent schools from hiding subgroups of students from the accountability structure and was not aimed at preventing parents from refusing to have their children tested.

The parents in the states of New York and New Jersey have been fighting back against the Common Core Standards for the last year and the corresponding  PARCC battery of tests which is our SBAC set of tests in Washington State.

But let’s start at the beginning.

It is illegal for the Federal Government to specify a national curriculum or national test.

From my post High Stake Testing: A little history:

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into Federal law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as part of the “War on Poverty” program. This bill ensured that children in poverty would receive additional funding for their school programs. The funding allocated was to include the professional development of teachers, class materials, and support for parent involvement. This federal money is referred to as “Title 1″ funding. (Note: Part of the original ESEA agreement ensured there would not be a national curriculum decided by the Federal government, but rather that each state would determine its own curriculum.)  ESEA was to continue for five years, but Congress has reauthorized the bill every five years and each time it is reauthorized, members of Congress, along with the President, have made changes to the bill.

Any standardized curriculum can only be legally developed at the state or district level. Arne Duncan and his backers, particularly Bill Gates, really, really wanted a standardized curriculum throughout the fifty states. Conundrum. What to do? Have a private entity, led by Achieve Inc., create the curriculum and tests and make it sound like the states had determined the standards, thus the name “Common Core State Standards”. Thing is, no one at the state level in any state ever had anything to do with creating the standards and in fact, the Common Core Standards had not been completed when the state legislators across the country voted to have them implemented in their states. It took some slick Will the US Department of Education take your school’s Title 1 funds if you opt your student out of the SBAC? Short answer, no. | Seattle Education:

Mayoral Candidate’s Plan for Community Schools Has Undisputed Proof of Concept | Philly in Focus

Mayoral Candidate’s Plan for Community Schools Has Undisputed Proof of Concept  | Philly in Focus:

Mayoral Candidate’s Plan for Community Schools Has Undisputed Proof of Concept 

With the endorsement of teacher's in tow, former Philadelphia City Councilman wants to optimize available space in public schools.

By Christopher “Flood the Drummer®” Norris

               

3.10.15: Philadelphia – (Politics): On Monday, March 16th, 2015, The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers will formally endorse former Philadelphia City Councilman, Mr. Jim Kenney, in his campaign to become Mayor.

Mr. Kenney, though he’s admitted to not having the proverbial Big Bang Theory to solve the conundrums facing the School District of Philadelphia, has embraced the concept of full-service community schools, which no doubt contributed to him winning the approval of the 12,000 member strong union, who will directly benefit from having community organizations, nonprofits, and universities, among others, collaborate to transform schools into the center of community life.

 Mayoral Candidate’s Plan for Community Schools Has Undisputed Proof of Concept  | Philly in Focus:

School (False) Choice Sunday | Cloaking Inequity

School (False) Choice Sunday | Cloaking Inequity:

School (False) Choice Sunday

Have you ever been unhappy with your “choices”? For example, you go to a Redbox and there are 60 movies in the machine, but not one film seems interesting. Even though there are many “choices”, you are not happy with any of them. Or how about when someone else defines the choice for you. For example, you are choosing a restaurant on a Saturday night and your companion says that they are open to eating anywhere but then they proceed to reject the next ten suggestions. Then they proceed to give you a list of three restaurants they would prefer for that evening— they have defined the choice for you. Or how about if you are a teenager and your parents tell you that you can see any movie you want as long as its Spiderman at 10 a.m. These are all examples of false choice.

The choice argument is very powerful in the current education policy discourse. The core of the argument goes like this, “parents should be able to choose a high quality school.” What I want to focus on first is the “top concerns” for public schools.

In the Public Interest conducted a poll of voters to gauge what communities find as problematic in their schools. I think a fair translation is that these are the most desired choices for their schools. Here is a little Sunday “Family School (False) Choice Sunday | Cloaking Inequity:

I Swear: On “Grit,” Adult Hypocrisy, and Privilege | the becoming radical

I Swear: On “Grit,” Adult Hypocrisy, and Privilege | the becoming radical:

SWEAR: ON “GRIT,” ADULT HYPOCRISY, AND PRIVILEGE

 I’m gonna cuss on the mic tonight.

“Rockin’ the Suburbs,” Ben Folds

My parents taught me that if you swear, it’s a sign of a poor vocabulary.
If I expect my players to be disciplined, then I have to be, too.
Dean Smith

Few things have been more important to me than discovering George Carlin during my teens years in the 1970s. Soon to follow was Richard Pryor.

Profanity and the art of crafting humor are easily the foundations for my life of words as avid reader and writer.

And yes, I swear.

But in both Carlin and Pryor I learned something far more important than how to swear in ways that gained me credibility among my peers (despite my frail nerdom); I had the curtain pulled back on adult authority—the hypocrisy of the “do as I say, not as I do” adult world.

Carlin and Pryor were my first critical teachers.

I grew up in a rural Southern town and school system where adults demanded children respect authority and tradition while behaving in ways that were inexcusable—racial slurs, profanity, drinking, smoking, you name it.

This was particularly pronounced among the coaches in the public schools.

Years after I graduated, I returned to that school to teach. A sophomore came into my class one day, stunned that the head football coach/athletic director/assistant principal had just given the student demerits for swearing—and had yelled profanities at the student during the issuing of those demerits.

So as I have noted before about Coach K and my fandom for Duke University basketball, I have a great deal of trouble with the berating, profane coach demanding character and discipline from his/her players—often children, teens, and young adults.

And we live in a world still where a coach launches into a profane tirade to reprimand his player for lacking class and a white, privileged male moralizes cluelessly, perched not on his own morality but his privilege (see Elizabeth Stoker I Swear: On “Grit,” Adult Hypocrisy, and Privilege | the becoming radical:

High Stakes Testing Makes Surveillance Necessary - Living in Dialogue

High Stakes Testing Makes Surveillance Necessary - Living in Dialogue:



High Stakes Testing Makes Surveillance Necessary

 By Anthony Cody.

Pearson employees may be off for the weekend but when they get to work tomorrow they will find they have a big mess to deal with. The news broke on Friday that Pearson has been monitoring student social media, and has worked with District officials in several instances to ferret out and reprimand students who they Pearson feels have carried out an “item breach.” Pearson stated that the student had posted a photograph of a test item, but that part was untrue, according to the school official who raised concerns about this with her staff.

According to Bob Braun, his blog suffered a “denial of service” attack after the post was published, making it difficult to access. If that is true, someone with some powerful technical skills is working to defend Pearson’s reputation. But the site is back online now.

Here is Pearson’s official explanation of how it monitors social media.

Pearson was also featured as a “case study” by one of the services they use, a company called TRACX. These folks were working over the weekend, because the page that showed the case has since been taken down. But not before I took a couple of screenshots, which show them monitoring activists like Wesley Fryer and Katie Lapham.

Another shoe dropped on the subject when Mercedes Schneider shared news that the SBAC test, in use in even more states than the Pearson tests, also has a social media monitoring system. Mercedes Schneider shares the full document  here. Here is the SBAC’s suggestion to school district officials:

Sites to Monitor

Twitter (https://twitter.com/.)  If your school has a Twitter account, you can take advantage of following your students by requesting their @username and/or encouraging them to the follow the school Twitter account.

• To search for conversations and posts about the Field Test, consider the High Stakes Testing Makes Surveillance Necessary - Living in Dialogue:

NPE Endorses Chuy Garcia for Mayor of Chicago ‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬ Network for Public Education

The Network For Public Education | NPE Endorses Chuy Garcia for Mayor of Chicago:

NPE Endorses Chuy Garcia for Mayor of Chicago

March 15, 2015 Chicago, NPE Endorsements

NPE Board President, Diane Ravitch says, “Chuy Garcia is a real reformer. His reforms will restore democracy in education; will restore true education–not test scores–as the center of school life; and prioritize the needs of children, not data.”

Network for Public Education endorses Chuy Garcia for Mayor of Chicago, and asks you to support him in any way you can – by voting for him, volunteering in the next few weeks or donating to his campaign.

Lewis and Brown Endorse Garcia

Chuy Garcia is a champion for public education. Chicago Teacher’s Union President Karen Lewis believes Garcia should be the next mayor.

Garcia has also won the confidence of Chicago community organizer, Journey for Justice National Director, and NPE Board Member Jitu Brown. Brown said, “Families throughout the city of Chicago are not just concerned with Rahm Emanuel’s style. His policies, including but not limited to education, have hurt families. Children are in overcrowded classrooms and school climates have been ruined as receiving schools struggle to make the failed policy of closing schools work. Chuy Garcia is a consistent, community minded leader who will listen and build Chicago with the people. He will support sustainable community schools, not failed, corporate education interventions.”

It’s easy to see why Garcia has the support of iconic Chicago leaders like Karen Lewis and Jitu Brown. He clearly understands what the people of Chicago have endured as a result of Emanuel’s failed privatization agenda.

In Garcia’s Own Words:

Last year CPS slashed the budget and closed 50 schools, claiming closures will reduce the $1 billion debt, however they have not provided any proof of savings. And here’s Alice-in-Wonderland part: Mad Hatter Emanuel now wants to open 22 new charters, some in areas where he closed schools because of “underutilization.” These will cost Chicagoans $225 million over the next decade.

Why all the new charters? Because they are the new coin of political patronage. A glaring example is the UNO group, until recently led by Juan Rangel, who was forced out after exposes of cronyism and corruption in its charter network. UNO received more than $100 million in state money and Rangel, who earned $260,000 a year, was a co-chair of Emanuel’s mayoral campaign at the same time that UNO personnel worked against Emanuel’s critics in local political campaigns.

Please, take a few minutes to read Garcia’s entire education platform, but here is a synopsis.

My program involves giving the school system back to the people through an elected school board; reducing to the barest legal minimum the plethora of high-stakes, standardized tests by which we falsely judge schools, students, and teachers; placing a moratorium on further charter schools; expanding public education to include pre-kindergarten and even earlier; and reducing class size, which is one of the largest in the state.

Garcia Needs Your Support

Rahm Emanuel has brought the privatization movement to Chicago, and corporate money is flowing into his race. In the primary Emanuel outspent Chuy Garcia 11 to 1, and it is certain that he will outspend him in the general election as well. The latest poll shows that Emanuel has a double digit lead since he started airing non-stop ads, financed by his Hollywood and hedge fund pals. Despite how friendly he looks and sounds in those ads, Emanuel is no friend to students, teachers and Chicago’s working families.

Garcia on the other hand is a genuine supporter of public education. “If Chicagoans elect him, it will send a signal to the entire nation that the bold and misguided effort to privatize our public schools has failed, and that the people of Chicago intend to reclaim public education to its true purpose: equal opportunity for all the city’s children to learn and succeed,” said Ravitch.

When NPE decided to endorse candidates we promised we would support candidates who support public education. We don’t have the money to compete with the billionaires, but as Diane says, there is power in our numbers!  

We hope our endorsement, and the endorsement of Chicago leaders Karen Lewis and Jitu Brown, will persuade parents, students and teachers to get out and VOTE. This election will be tight and your vote will really make a difference.

If you live in Chicago, please vote for Chuy Garcia, and do everything you can to support his campaign and get out the vote.

The Network For Public Education | NPE Endorses Chuy Garcia for Mayor of Chicago:

Toward Fiscal Sustainability: A New Approach in Prudent Fiscal Management of Chicago

Click here to go to Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago Website

‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

The Network For Public Education | NPE Endorses Chuy Garcia for Mayor of Chicago: