Re: The Economist: The Bloomberg-Klein "grand plan to charterise the entire city school system"

[Csubstance@aol.com]

11/11/07

The same kind of plan has been in place in Chicago for the past five years. 
It's called "Renaissance 2010 -- 100 new schools for Chicago" and is based on 
the same drives (privatize and charterize as much as possible). 

Renaissance 2010, as we reported in Substance, was inaugurated in a speech by 
Mayor Richard Daley here in July 2004. It was scripted, though, in a report 
by a group called the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, which has been 
Chicago's local version of the Business Roundtable for the past 100 years or so. 
The Civic Committee published a report entitled "Left Behind" in 2003 which 
claimed (based on twisting data sets) that all Chicago public schools had 
failed and should be replaced by charters. 

That meant that by the time, one year later, Renaissance 2010 was announced 
by Mayor Daley people could say "Whew, they're only going to charterize 100 
schools (out of 600) so most of us are safe."

The central committee of the ruling class at this point is sharing 
information about how to bring this stuff about. One of their main claims is that all 
they are doing is offering "choice" to poor and "underserved" communities. Of 
course, the ruling class has made those communities poor and underserved, but 
unless our side puts that loudly into the debate, it's ignored.

They have also raised a lot of private money (Gates; Walton; Ford; others) 
for direct assistance to charters. Additionally, they are continually getting 
additional funds from the federal government. Margaret Spellings came to Chicago 
(as we reported in February) for what I called a charter school infomercial 
three days after President Bush pushed charters in the State of the Union 
address.

With the amount of money they have, they are buying a lot of activists to 
shill for them, including many erstwhile "progressives." While they are starving 
the remaining public schools of capital and operational funds, there are 
millions of extra dollars provided you push charterization. 

Finally, for now, there is a very strange religious side to this stuff. One 
Chicago charter schools (Chicago International Charter Schools) now has ten 
"campuses" and is the largest charter school in Illinois. Every one of its 
"campuses" is in what was once a Catholic Schools, and they have generally refused 
to remove the religious iconography from the building. Two weeks ago (as I'll 
be reporting in the November Substance this week) I was surrounded by security 
guys when I went out to the newest CICS charter school which was just opened 
in the old Immaculate Heart of Mary school building on Chicago's northwest 
side. I wanted to get my usual shots (a statue of the Blessed Virgin outside a 
"public schools", the crucifixes all over the place) and wasn't taking my 
photographs five minutes when first one, then two, then three private security people 
(for a school of 200!) rushed around trying to block my camera. They really 
wanted to protect that eight foot high statue of the virgin from my camera 
lens. 

A reason I mention this is that it seems that the powerful Archdiosis of 
Chicago is very much in the middle of the charter school push, and that in some 
cases they are simply flipping Catholic schools, with the same kids and staffs, 
and calling them public charter schools.

On all levels, if you can challenge these programs every step of the way, you 
will be much better off.

Oh, and watch how they pick the people to run things. Here in Chicago, the 
"Office of New Schools Development" is staffed by people who've never worked in 
public schools, all paid more than teachers. Their current chief officer (at 
$135,000 per year) is a guy named Josh Edelman, a former charter school head 
from California. You might recognize the name of this young visionary. His 
mother is Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> See 
what's new at http://www.aol.com</HTML>