Re: Disaster: Rising Test Scores

[Csubstance@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 12/2/02 12:11:32 PM, kvscanty@PACBELL.NET writes:

<< Wow...drop by drop, person by person, who knows....the world might
actually change if we have the "left coast" and the Midwest in agreement
about teachers, etc!!!!
 >>

Yesterday I wrote a memo in my capacity as a research analyst at the Chicago
Teachers Union, enclosing both articles George Sheridan forwarded last
weekend (the Johnson piece and the one on Gary Hart failing in the real world
of the classroom to do his "standards and accountability" thing). The last
time we had a "teacher proof" curriculum in Chicago, 25 years ago, one of our
superintendents tried to teach it in a classroom in his own (very poor) inner
city sub-district. After a couple of months, he announced to the press and
the world that it was impossible to follow the guidelines he was forced to
implement. That and a few other reality checks (including some
self-destructive narcissism from Ruth Love, who was general supt. at the
time) rid us, by 1985, of "Chicago Mastery Learning Reading."

As you know, California and Illinois are two of the (too few) states that
resisted the Republican surge in last month's election. Greed is in remission
here, and general rich guy nastiness might fall out of favor, too. Our new
Illinois attorney general (slandered for the past year by the Chicago
Tribune, but now in power), for example, now will model on Eliot Spitzer
(from NYC) rather than on those law and order white guys who are always
lining up black kids on death row and looking the other way when the CEOs of
the world rape and pillage pension funds, the environment, and just about
everything else in the name of "increasing shareholder value".

(Remember: Chicago has the distinction of housing Andersen LLP before its
recent fall. We were also home to "Chainsaw Al Dunlap's" Sunbeam and that
cesspool (going back, actually three decades) presently known as Waste
Management -- two of the corporations that ruined their shareholders through
crookedness and Andersen-enabled book cooking long before Enron, WorldCom,
etc. lined up to do the deeds since Bush took over.

Enough. You never know when a pendulum will reach its apogee and begin
swinging back. The recent election here in Illinois bodes well (albeit with
all the reservations we should have about Democrats) for a more humane view
of the role of government (and a critical eye on corporate chiefs).

Not perfect, but a lot better than places like Texas, Florida, or Arizona.
Here, for example, the Chicago Tribune said "Thank You" when we agreed to
support the expansion of the number of charter schools in Chicago from the
present 15 to a total of 30. We can always organize them, too, once their
(usually very young and quite naive) teachers realize that a job requires
pay, benefits, and reasonable hours -- not self-immolation.

George Schmidt

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