Chicago's Lake Woebegones

[Csubstance@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 12/1/02 7:31:23 PM, gkc@LOUISVILLE.EDU writes:

<< It is possible for every student at a school or in a district to be
above the national average, but quite unlikely.  How likely would it be
that all 12 year olds in a school would be taller than the national
average for 12-year olds much less in a whole district? >>

December 3, 2002

It can be done at a few schools if the district is large enough and those
schools, in the name of "choice", get to select their students only from the
top.

Here's how it's been done since the mid-1990s in America's third largest
city, Chicago,

Chicago has three public schools (all high schools -- Whitney Young;
Northside College Prep; and Jones College Prep -- out of roughly 100 public
high schools) that have 100 percent of their students "at or above national
norms" based on the way Chicago rendered the TAP test scores (the high school
version of the Iowa tests) last year.

All are selective enrollment schools, and they do it the way George noted
above. None of them (and none of the elementary magnet schools that also
carefully select students) is presently on the "choice" list created in
response to "No Child Left Behind," either. In order to bring this off, there
has to be very tight control of input.

The way they do it is to select all of their incoming 9th graders based on a
standardized test. Then they only select those in the top two, three, or four
percentiles on that test. In order to insure that they don't make a mistake,
those schools also refuse to use the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills scores from
the Chicago elementary schools, since within the system everyone knows that
the ITBS scores have been inflated since we "ended social promotion" and
attached sanctions to schools that "failed" based on ITBS scores.

For two years in a row, the Chicago Sun-Times has headlined its annual report
on test scores "Northside Prep best in Illinois." This, in turn, is posted
everywhere by those who promote Northside and the Chicago "miracle" (after
all, if you have the "best" high school in the state, how can anything be
wrong with the other 97 high schools -- or with the 500 elementary schools).
So the media have to be in on the scam for it to work.

Professors also have to either promote the scams (Melissa Roderick, Fred
Hess, Barbara Sizemore) in exchange for large subsidies (all in the range
well above $100,000 per year) to give the bent reporters "sources" that will
explain the scam.

Once those pieces are in place, you are in Lake Woebegone. Chicago not only
has gotten away with it, but we've exported our first huckster (former CEO
Paul Vallas) along with several members of the huckster team to Philadelphia.

Key to the whole thing is a blackout on facts based on tight control of
information by the corporate power structure.

Since test scores are all that matter, there are some collateral problems. In
a number of our highest scoring schools, there are severe discipline problems
(leading to dangerous conditions in two of them). If high scores are all that
matter, and if the kids know it, then they really don't have to listen to
their teachers. After all, a teacher who failed a kid who scores in the 99th
percentile in math on the ITBS or TAP must be wrong, since the kid is by
definition "superior." There is also neglect of the possibility that some
high scoring kids could be sadistic (or even murderous) paychopaths (despite
the fact that Leopold and Loeb were students at my alma mater -- the
University of Chicago -- at the time they murdered Bobby Franks 75 years
ago).

If you leave out enough relevant details, significant facts, and any
skepticism on the part of those who feed information to the public, you can
get these kinds of results. The last century had thousands of them in data
bases ranging from Cuban sugar harvests to East German female athletic
olympians. All you need is sufficient totalitarianism (with all the bribed or
cowardly professors and reporters, as noted above), whether the one party
state is alongside Lake Michigan or east of Berlin.

George Schmidt
Editor, Substance
5132 W. Berteau
Chicago, IL 60641

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