Re: Bill Clinton: Fix NCLB

[Csubstance@aol.com]

2/3/08

Thursday, January 30, I covered a press conference hosted by Chicago's public 
schools and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to tout the new "turnaround model" 
for fixing "broken" schools. As some here know, Mayor Daley has now abandoned 
the "Small Schools Model" after nearly ten years of it in Chicago and now 
wants to have a group of corporate officials train cadre of "turnaround 
specialists" to take over schools that are "failing" and whip them into shape. The 
press conference was held at the "Sherman School of Excellence" which is 
(supposedly) Chicago's first "turnaround school." 

The press event also included an announcement by the Gates Foundation that 
Gates was giving $10 million to fund the "Turnaround" center, a Chicago thing 
called the Academy for Urban School Leadership, founded by millionaire Martin 
(Mike) Koldyke. Koldyke is the former head of the Chicago School Finance 
Authority and the Chicago School Reform Authority. One of his contributions to 
Chicago's corporate version of "school reform" more than a decade ago was to pay 
Checker Finn hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to be the lead 
consultant on Chicago's school reform.

The "Turnaround" model is less than two years old, by the way. It was put 
into Sherman Elementary School, a K-8 school located in one of the bleaker 
sections of Chicago's vast South Side ghetto, after CPS closed Sherman for "academic 
failure." From the opening of the "Sherman School of Excellence" (the new 
name of the school now that it's been placed in the hands of the Academy for 
Urban School Leadership) the turned around Sherman has had a great deal of 
corporate media attention, including a three-part series in the Chicago Tribune last 
September and recent hagiographic coverage on NPR (courtesy of Chicago Public 
Radio). Not mentioned in the hype, of course, is that there are as yet no data 
-- let alone significant trend data -- to validate any claims about the 
place. As with many of the miracles Chicago has announced since corporate school 
reform began here in 1995, they announce it and then craft the narrative to fit.

The trouble with the new iteration of the corporate narrative in Chicago is 
that it is banging up against the last one.

For the past decade, Gates money has been funding a great many "small 
schools" initiatives across Chicago, especially in the high schools. These have taken 
two main forms, all of them in the general high schools of the inner city. 

In a few Chicago high schools (Orr; South Shore; Bowen; DuSable), the schools 
were broken up into "Small Schools". Each Small School had its own part of 
the building. Each had its own principal and administration. The result was that 
a building like Bowen High School (where I was teaching -- and serving as 
union delegate and school security coordinator -- when I was purged from CPS 
nearly ten years ago after the mayor and Paul Vallas had me sued for a million 
dollars for publishing the odious and ridiculous CASE tests) becomes three "Small 
Schools." Each had its own principal, office staff, and assorted other 
overhead. 

Not surprisingly, the dollars always ran out before the virtues of smallness 
got to the classroom in terms of smaller class sizes or additional staff for 
the most challenged kids, so things remained fundamentally the same. The 
teachers and other staffs sodiered on despite the contradictions, with only 
Substance ever mentioning some of the stranger results (including that huge internal 
administrative overhead). Small Schools was (were?) by definitiion a good 
thing, and millions of Gates and other outside dollars flowed into them.

Orr High School, in Chicago's West Side ghetto (Pulaski and Chicago avenues) 
was unique among the Small Schools experiments. It became four Small Schools 
on the "Orr Campus." One of them was a "military academy" (the Phoenix Military 
Academy) where the kids wore Army uniforms and supposedly had extra 
discipline courtesy of that military them. The others had other themes, and the whole 
place, which had once been "Orr High School" became the "Orr Campus."  

The Orrs (as I called them) had another distinction: every year, in October 
or November, its "Principal for a Day" was Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. 
Principal for a Day is a major event every year in Chicago. Corporate, civic, and 
athletic leaders (many celebrities) spend a morning in a school, hang out with 
the principal and some teachers, do photo ops in classrooms, and generally 
have a nice day before going for a massive downtown dinner where everyone thanks 
everyone else. The most recent Principal for a Day events have had more than 
1,000 participants (for out total of 600 schools). 

Every year, Mayor Daley went to the Orrs, often after proclaiming how 
important Small Schools were for transforming "failing" schools. 

Two years ago (November 2, 2006), I ran into Daley during the Orr Principal 
for a Day event and covered his media remarks. Orr had covered most major bases 
in its Principal for a Day people. One was Victoria Chou (University of 
Illinois at Chicago). Another was Torey Malatia (Chicago Public Radio). Daley was 
the main one, though. 

In addition to doing Principal for a Day, Daley was going to make a major 
announcement about some Ed Department money coming into Chicago. Daley's media 
people had set up a podium in the main hall of the school, and all the media 
were supposed to face towards a wall in front of which was Daley's podium. A nice 
mural was the background. We were facing south (the usual bank of TV cameras; 
print reporters seated in the front row, knees crossed and notebooks perched) 
towards the mayor's official portable podium. The school's main entrance was 
to our left (east) and a cross hall was to our right (west) leading to the 
school lunchroom.  

Daley began speaking, while a major gang fight broke out less than a hundred 
feet from where they had set up his podium to announce some more U.S. 
Department of Education dollars for Chicago's miracle school reforms. 

I was the only reporter who went down the hall to witness a platoon of 
security people suppress the gang fight while the mayor and assorted others droned 
on. (CPS had provided three different security teams for Orr that day). Three 
security people quickly shut a door and blocked me from taking photographs of 
the suppression of the gang fight, which was making quite a bit of noise. I got 
a few photographs, but mostly they show a swarm of security through a door. 
Within two minutes, calm had been restored.

When I turned east and looked at the scene, every other reporter was still 
perched facing Daley's podium, busily ignoring a very loud event taking place a 
short distance away. I returned to the press pack and continued taking notes 
and photographs. It was clear that whatever benefits had happened at the "Orr 
Campus" as a result of Small Schools, an end to the violence that comes with 
the drug gangs on Chicago's West Side was not one of them. 

Over the years, it became clear that there had been very little movement or 
"improvement" of the kind measured by test scores and other "matrices" of "data 
driven management" -- at Orr or at any of the other major Small Schools 
experiments in Chicago.

As far as test scores went, at Orr or any other the other Small Schools CPS 
had created during that iteration of corporate school reform, the bottom was 
still the bottom. 

The reason has been simple. During the same time Orr and the others have been 
forced to take the leftover kids, Chicago has been increasing the number of 
selective enrollment schools at the high school level. The intensity of 
selection prior to 9th grade has never been harsher in Chicago. Neglect of the 
general high school; slight privileges for others.

This process began almost as soon as Mayor Daley was given dictatorial 
control over Chicago's schools (1995). It began first as a series of "college 
preparatory magnet high schools" (the number of which has doubled since Mayor Daley 
took over CPS in 1995). For the past three years, selective Charter High 
Schools (foremost right now, a group called the "Noble Street Network of Charter 
High Schools") have been added. 

More and more, children with resources were applying to the city's selective 
high schools (which can usually kick out the "bad" kids after they've 
pre-screened their 9th graders). That left the "leftover kids" (a phrase you'll hear 
in Chicago, not just in New Orleans) for the general high schools, including 
those that had gone to Small Schools (and a less major thing, "small learning 
communities"). 

Despite all the Small Schools hype, the Orr Campus stagnated, to the point 
where they couldn't keep the gangs quiet even on a day when Mayor Daley was 
there with his entourage from City Hall, CPS, and the U.S. Department of 
Education. 

On January 30, 2008, Mayor Daley announced that Chicago was now promoting 
"Turnaround Specialists" for "troubled schools" and one of the first he would be 
closing was -- Orr.

He told a major press conference that he was glad that the Gates Foundation 
was giving Chicago another $10 million for school reform. This round of money 
is going straight to the "Turnaround" group, a quasi corporate cult called the 
Academy for Urban School Leadership. Even the Chicago Sun-Times asked what 
happened to Small Schools, and why Orr was being closed when Orr had done what it 
was supposed to have done during the last iteration of sure fire how to fix 
it school reform things.

Daley ignored the question, Gates dodged it, and when I asked whether Daley 
was going to meet with the Orr teachers and explain why they were being fired 
after having done Small Schools for the better part of the decade, Daley's 
press people ended the event without answering my question (or the follow up 
question I had for the fraudulent parent they cart around with them to sing the 
praises of their newest thing).

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

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