Recent Comments
Re: “The Chicago manual of school closings”
Much of this school opening and closing chaos was connected with the development of Roosevelt Square which was billed as the city's largest mixed-income housing development at the time. In other words, this was always more about real estate than good educational practice. While at UIC, I was asked to do a study and make recommendations to CPS for real mixed-income (racially integrated) schools in the neighborhood. My study was immediately shit-canned by David Vitale without so much as a cursory reading. He already knew what I had in mind and it certainly wasn't the re-segregated, two-tier school system they are creating today.
Re: “CTU strike authorization: breaking the news to Mayor Rahm”
Original IAC is not very original in his defense of autocrat Rahm. IAC says, "His starting point in the negotiations was to offer a 2% raise over two years and then to offer merit pay increases after that. You may think that isn't large enough. But it is a raise."
Uh uh, IAC. Remember, Rahm arbitrarily took back the 4% raise which was agreed on during the last contract negotiations. Do the math. -4+2=-2%. Not a raise. Especially when you consider no cost of living increases over the next five years, cuts in benefits, a top-down imposed increase in working hours, and a Rahm-led hit on the teachers pension fund and health coverage.
So called "merit pay" based on student test scores has been tried twice in pilot programs here and was found to be a bust both times and dropped. It's one more disincentive for teachers to come and teach in the inner-city, resource-starved schools.
Rahm's talk about "teachers deserve a raise" came about only after the strike threat became real. As Frederick Douglass said: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Re: “CTU strike authorization: breaking the news to Mayor Rahm”
Hey Ben.
You mentioned something about "President Obama ripping Mitt Romney for ripping teachers." Did I miss something? I've been combing the press every day since Mitt fired his education shot across the Dems' bow. So far I haven't found so much as a peep out of Obama's or Duncan's mouth about teacher bashing. Or in opposition to Romney's call for larger class sizes (Duncan said the same thing).
And when Romney attacked Obama for being soft on unions, the prez' press sec. responded with something like, "we've been bashing unions more than you have."
On charter schools and privatization...? Well, you see where I'm going with this.
But if you should hear some kind of ripping sound coming from the WH on education between now and November, please let me know.
Re: “While you were distracted by NATO ...”
Hey Benny, please make a note. Lots of us out there protesting the NATO war machine were neither anarchists nor hippies (well maybe some of us used to be). Rather there were lots of teachers, librarians, students, artists and yes, even small media journalists being confronted by those billy clubs.
Re: “Mayor Daley for mayor!”
Ben,
I'm surprised you didn't pick up on Daley's beautiful malaprop. Instead of saying, "we need quality instruction," (good teaching) he adds an S to make it "quality instructions." This brings him into harmony with autocrat Rahm and his top-down corporate-style reform.
Re: “President Clinton helps Mayor Rahm stage a show”
Rahm should have said, "it's for the kids..." That usually gets him over.
Re: “The Emanuel administration kicks Persepolis out of class”
Ben,
It only took a quick call over to Arne Duncan's alma mater, the U of C Lab School, where the mayor currently sends his own children, to find out that Persepolis is part of the middle school curriculum and is readily available to all middle school students in the Rowley Library. In fact, the middle school library has 7 different editions of Marjane Satrapi's book, both in English and in French.