Report Questions Duncan’s Policy of Closing Failing Schools

First is an article in the NY Times, followed by Ed Week


Report Questions Duncan’s Policy of Closing Failing Schools
By SAM DILLON

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan presided over the closing of dozens of failing schools when he was chief executive of the Chicago public schools from 2001 until last December. In his new post, he has drawn on those experiences, putting school turnaround efforts at the center of the nation’s education reform agenda.

Now a study by researchers at the University of Chicago concludes that most students in schools that closed in the first five years of Mr. Duncan’s tenure in Chicago saw little benefit.

“Most students who transferred out of closing schools re-enrolled in schools that were academically weak,” says the report, which was done by the university’s Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Furthermore, the disruptions of routines in schools scheduled to be closed appeared to hurt student learning in the months after the closing was announced, the researchers found.

The reading scores of students in schools designated for closing “showed a loss of about six weeks of learning” on standardized tests in the months after the closing announcement, the report said. Math scores declined somewhat less, it said.

Partly because of the disruption caused by the closings, Mr. Duncan changed strategy after 2006. Instead of closing schools permanently, or for a year, and then reopening with a new staff, he shifted to the turnaround approach, in which the staff of failing schools was replaced over the summer but the same students returned in the fall.

The new report focused only on the elementary schools closed permanently from 2001 to 2006, and thus offers no conclusions about the effectiveness of the turnaround strategy.

Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for Mr. Duncan, noted that the report also found that students who ended up in higher-achieving schools showed more gains on standardized tests.

“Clearly, the students who transferred to better schools did better, but the ones who went to similar schools did not,” Mr. Hamilton said. “That’s why we worked in parallel to create more new high-quality learning options.”

Still, the report’s findings are likely to provoke new debate about Mr. Duncan’s efforts to encourage the use of Chicago’s turnaround strategy nationwide. He has set the goal of closing and overhauling 1,000 failing schools a year nationwide, for five years, and Congress appropriated $3 billion in the stimulus law to finance the effort.

A review of the history of school reform efforts, published in the current issue of Education Next, a journal published by Harvard University, argues that school turnaround efforts have failed more often than not.

“This leaves reform advocates in a pickle,” said Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Obama administration’s solution is that we’re going to make all the lousy schools better, but that’s harder than the administration has let on. The next most attractive alternative is to shut them down, and let the kids go to other schools, but this Consortium report has found that that brought little benefit to students in Chicago.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/education/29schools.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

LEONIE HAIMSON COMMENT:

More depressing news about how little gains were made in Chicago schools, due to Arne Duncan’s failed policies, which he has now taken to DC and is imposing nationally.

Though the article claims that the district “moved in 2006 toward more frequent use of a turnaround strategy that keeps students in their current buildings but replaces principals and teachers”, Julie Woestehoff, a Chicago parent advocate who is also quoted in the article, has convincingly shown that the student body enrolled in Chicago’s so-called “turn around” schools also undergoes a dramatic shift, with many of the high-needs students transferring out or pushed out of the school.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/10/28/10chicago.h29.html?tkn=SXWFQX%2FwsDDVW%2Fqu%2ByYwiefTbPsBARgn3RhA

Published Online: October 28, 2009

Chicago School Closings Found to Yield Few Gains

John Madigan, from left, his daughter Melanie, and his wife Holly visit a classroom at Polaris Charter Academy last year. The school, located in the former Samuel Morse Elementary School, was launched with a $500,000 contribution from the Madigan Family Foundation.
— John Zich for Education Week

By Dakarai I. Aarons

A majority of Chicago students affected by school closings were sent to schools that were low-performing, just like those they left behind—moves that had no significant impact on performance for most students, a study released today finds.

The study, by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research, examines the academic effects of the closings on students at 18 elementary schools shut down between 2001 and 2006. To measure the impact, the researchers compared students age 8 and older with their counterparts in schools that had similar characteristics but continued to operate. The schools had a combined enrollment of 5,445 students at the time of their closing.

“Certainly, when schools were closed for academic reasons, the idea was to try to change their educational prospects and what they might obtain. Unfortunately, we didn’t find that,” said Julia Gwynne, a senior research analyst with the consortium and the report’s co-author. “The main reason why that seems not to have occurred was because most students did not attend schools that were substantially better than the ones that were closed.”

A Chicago-style strategy is a feature of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s push for the nation to turn around its lowest-performing schools. Mr. Duncan was the chief executive officer of the Chicago public schools from 2001 until December 2008, when President Barack Obama nominated him as education secretary. School closings are one element of the so-called “turnaround” plans Mr. Duncan has promoted as secretary, which also include measures that would replace principals and teachers in persistently failing schools.

John Washington picks up his great-grandson, Rayshaun Cates, at Samuel Morse Elementary School in Chicago in January 2006. The school was closed and reopened as a charter school during U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s tenure as the city’s schools chief.

—Charles Rex Arbogast/AP-File

The 405,000-student district still closes and consolidates schools, but moved in 2006 toward more frequent use of a turnaround strategy that keeps students in their current buildings but replaces principals and teachers.

Among the students displaced, 40 percent were enrolled in schools that were on probation, and 42 percent were enrolled in schools where Iowa Tests of Basic Skills scores were in the lowest quartile in the city, according to the study. Just 6 percent of displaced students were enrolled in schools with itbs scores in the highest quartile, it says.

“If the findings are correct­—for Chicago, at least—we have to question the value of closing schools and creating the dislocations that would attend those school closings for little or no constructive result,” said Daniel L. Duke, a professor of educational leadership at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville.

Mr. Duke, who runs a university program that prepares leaders to turn around low-performing schools, said placing strong leaders who are supported by teacher-leaders and central-office employees has proved to be an effective strategy for many of the schools the program has worked with.

Payoff Questioned

While students who went from one low-performing school to another did not see achievement gains, the study says, those who transferred to some of the district’s highest-performing schools did show progress.

The announcement that specific schools were closing had a negative impact on student achievement, the study suggests. The announcement was often made in January, a few months before students took standardized tests. In the year that closings were announced, students in schools slated to close fell 1½ months below the expected achievement level in reading and more than a half-month below the expected level in math, based on an analysis of itbs scores.

That negative effect was temporary, however. A year later, the displaced students were achieving again at their expected levels, the study says.

Julie Woestehoff, the executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, a Chicago advocacy group often critical of Mr. Duncan’s initiatives as district chief, said the study’s findings are more evidence that the district’s reform strategies are not working. The group has called for the end of Renaissance 2010, a district program that closes low-performing schools and replaces them with charter and charterlike schools run by private groups.

“When Arne Duncan announced this program, he said it was going to lead to dramatically better education for the children. We were hoping that would be true,” Ms. Woestehoff said. “There hasn’t really been any payoff from all the money that has been spent and all the disruption that has been caused to communities and especially to students.”

Chicago’s school closings returned to the spotlight this fall after a high school student was brutally beaten and killed in a fight near a South Side high school. Local activists have contended that the school closings created a dangerous mixture of students from rival neighborhoods. Mr. Duncan said earlier this month that blaming school closings for the uptick in violence was “absolutely ridiculous.” ("Outcry Against Violence," Oct. 14, 2009.)

Chicago school spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment about the study.

Can They Be Fixed?

The displacement of students after school closings also had an impact on student-mobility rates and participation in the district’s summer school programs, according to the study.

Students were more likely to switch schools again not only in the summer after that first year in the new school, the researchers found, but also during the school year. Third, 6th, and 8th graders were less likely than their peers in similar schools to attend summer school in the summer after their schools had closed.

Rebecca Herman, a managing research analyst for the Washington-based American Institutes for Research, said policymakers should especially focus on making sure that students affected by closings are being placed in higher-performing schools, and ensuring that those schools are equipped with supports to help them take on the new students while maintaining quality.

Particular attention should also be paid to the transition period after announcements of school closings are made, she said.

Ms. Herman, who was the lead author of a federal guide on school turnarounds, said the Chicago study leaves some questions unanswered. For example, were there “differences in [students’] motivation and support for excelling in school that would help explain these findings?” she said.

“If you wanted to apply this policy broadly,” she added, “how would you motivate those 94 percent of students [who did not enroll in top-scoring schools] to go to a school farther away and provide support for them?”

Andy Smarick, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, both in Washington, said the study shows the complexities of school turnaround efforts.

“What really jumps out is what school you go to after the school closes is extraordinarily important. The important lesson here is that closures are only one piece of a broader strategy that a city has to develop,” he said.

School administrators must take into account student-transfer policies, geographical considerations, and the impact on the grade levels affected, he said. Successful school administrators are able to show parents and the larger communities the closings are part of a bigger improvement plan, Mr. Smarick said.

“I think a lot of people mistakenly think turnarounds are easy or that turnarounds often succeed. Sometimes there are institutions, whether they are schools, businesses, or nonprofits, that are just broken, low-performing, and they can’t be fixed,” Mr. Smarick said. “That is unsettling for people to think about when we are talking about schools.”

Vol. 29, Issue 10

The website of Labor Notes is www.labornotes.org.

Chicago Charter Teachers Score First Win

— Paul Abowd

Teachers celebrate after presenting cards at three Chicago charter schools. Teachers eventually won an NLRB election after a two-month battle, establishing the first unionized charters in the city. Photo: CTU.

It’s an oxymoron no longer: charter schools are unionizing.

Pioneering teachers and staff sealed an overdue victory in June at three Chicago International Charter Schools, the largest charter operator in Illinois.

Although the schools run primarily on public dollars—and Illinois allows public sector employees to unionize by card check—management rejected cards signed by 75 percent of employees in April. The charter operator argued that its unelected board of directors was not “responsible to public officials or to the general electorate.” CICS forced a Labor Board vote, battling for two months until workers voted 73-49 to unionize anyway.

When he championed charters as labs of educational innovation, former American Federation of Teachers(AFT) President Al Shanker thought they’d be organized. Two decades later, nearly all charter operators—despite varied teaching methods and missions—agree on one thing: teachers should be non-union.

Teacher unions now acknowledge charters have become a fact of life, and few would argue against organizing their teachers. But debate rages over how, and whether, to manage charters’ spread.

The AFT says charters work when they’re teacher-driven schools that share innovations with district schools, when the public can exercise oversight, and when teachers can join unions.

The schools have not succeeded by these measures but continue to expand, especially in urban districts. So that’s where the AFT is concentrating attention, picking up wins in Florida, Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles.

Instead of fighting tooth and nail to undermine charters, which have steadily chipped away at union ranks and siphoned off public dollars from traditional schools, the union has committed itself, even if belatedly, to organizing their tens of thousands of teachers.

They’ve got their work cut out for them: only around 80 of 4,600 charters are organized nationwide.

EDUCATE, ORGANIZE

In Chicago, teachers began to see their vulnerability to the boss’s whims as a flaw in the school’s educational model. At Northtown High School, workers called meetings when the school’s former CEO—who had no background in education—announced instructors would teach an additional class but be paid the same.

And instead of summer school, teachers would instruct failing students during night school. “If we didn’t like it, they basically told us ‘there’s the door,’” said Emily Mueller, a Spanish teacher.

Teacher turnover was high: “at will” employees were quickly booted, and other teachers simply left, overworked, underpaid, and kept at arm’s length from many curriculum decisions. The founding core of teachers dwindled. At Ellison High, only six of 20 teachers returned to the classroom last year.

To squelch the organizing drive, CICS used both stick and carrot. Two members of the school’s board, lawyers at a Chicago firm specializing in “union avoidance efforts” for groups “whose business is education,” came in with another anti-union consultant to fight the drive.

CICS made nice, too, hiring a new CEO who reversed the class load increase and reinstituted summer school, but opposed the union, calling it a threat to school autonomy—presumably his.

Most teachers had set their sights beyond immediate management regardless. “This drive was about creating a culture in our school where teachers will stick around for years, and have a formal voice in our school no matter what CEO comes along,” Mueller said.

In talks beginning this summer, teachers seek higher wages (entry salaries are several thousand dollars lower than district teachers’) and due process (but not the formal tenure system that exists in district schools), hoping that both help retain committed teachers.

They also want more control over curriculum, but making fundamental changes could be tough. Teachers at CICS are told to prep students on specific parts of standardized tests, which comes at the expense of basic educational needs—like supplies for other classes.

“I was told I’m not a social science teacher, I’m a reading teacher,” says Ellison teacher Jennifer Gilley. “It’s ironic because I taught three classes and only one of them came with a book.”

A TEACHER IS A TEACHER

The Chicago Teachers Union, AFT Local 1, has a conflicted relationship with the charters. Union reps were on hand last spring when charter teachers presented cards to their CEO, and CICS teachers received a warm reception from CTU delegates for breaking into non-union territory.

But a reform grouping within the CTU, the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), is raising a ruckus.

“If you’re organizing the charters without taking a position on defending existing schools against charter proliferation and expansion, that’s a failed strategy,” says Jackson Potter of CORE.

CORE is targeting Secretary of education Arne Duncan, whose nationwide tour sailed through Chicago in June. He’s offering urban districts additional federal money if they give the mayor executive control over schools, extract concessions from teacher unions, and allow charters to expand.

The strategy is straight from Duncan’s tenure as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, where he hatched a plan that has closed nearly 70 neighborhood schools and established charters in their wake, promising to raise student achievement.

Five years later, a Stanford University study shows a majority of charter schools performing worse than or comparable to traditional public schools on standardized tests. Some in the AFT are calling for a moratorium on charters.

With strong parent and student involvement, CORE rallied to save six district schools from the gallows last winter. But other schools close, and charters keep opening in them—erasing the elected decision-making committees of students, teachers, and parents at each site.

A University of Chicago study—which Duncan’s corporate backers allegedly tried to suppress—shows the city’s charters under-serving special education students and English-language learners. And because of limits on enrollment, many kids are left without neighborhood school.

Though charter and district teachers refuse to succumb to divide and conquer tactics, CORE says existing union strategies are making divisions difficult to avoid.

WHERE TO FIGHT?

Just as teachers won at CICS, the Illinois Federation of Teachers negotiated a state law allowing 45 additional charters to set up in the city. Though they constitute only 3 percent of publicly funded schools nationwide, charters are 10 percent in Chicago, a share that will now rise again. IFT inserted provisions that beef up oversight of charters and allow charter teachers to organize under the state’s card-check provision for public employees.

The AFT’s organizing pitch is finding a growing audience among charter teachers, says Hugo Hernandez, an AFT staffer. The way to affect charters’ impact on education, he argues, is to bring them into the union. “If they would open the doors, we could find out what’s happening in these schools,” he said. “And to do that, we’re organizing.”

CORE wants the union to defend neighborhood schools and slow charter growth, but with the bludgeoning of teacher unions in the media, AFT is reluctant to fight Duncan’s strategy, which also has the blessing of the Obama White House.

Meanwhile, Chicago teachers—who’ve seen a 6,000-member drop in a decade—are bracing for another wave of non-union charters crashing into neighborhoods. “Perhaps they’re bargaining from a position of weakness,” Potter said of union leadership. “But that weakness is going to mean the end of us all before too long.”

Susan Stellar

CORE Chronicles: Chicago Teacher Protest Proposed School Closures

http://coreteachers.com/


http://www.coreteachers.com/
February 19th, 2009
Protect Public Education this Wednesday, February 25th


http://coreteachers.com/2009/02/19/protect-public-education-this-wednesday-february-25th/cpsprotest-2/

Take the day off on February 25th or come after work to 125 S. Clark to protest the proposed school closings, consolidations, turn-arounds and phase-outs.

If your school wants a bus, CORE made sure you will get reimbursed by the union. Hold the CTU accountable and call Sandy Shultz at 312.329.6226 for information on the buses.

Also, CORE pushed to ensure that there will be a phone banking session from 4pm to 8pm at CTU headquarters (4th floor of the Merchandise Mart) this upcoming Monday and Tuesday, the 23rd and 24th of February. Come out and let’s use our union’s resources to actually support and mobilize members.

Twenty Two schools are targeted and your school could be next. The probation list and underutilized school list are a mile long, we cannot let the Board unilateraly close our schools and replace them with unproven and unaccountable charter, turnaround and contract schools.
Help restore democracy and fairness to the educational system in Chicago.
Contact coreteachers@gmail.com for more information.


NEXT CORE CITY-WIDE MEETING

Come to the next city-wide CORE meeting

WHEN: Wednesday March 4th, 4:15pm

WHERE: The United Electrical Workers Hall, 37 S. Ashland

PROTEST REN2010

Stop Renaissance 2010http://coreteachers.com/2009/02/09/http2009cpshearingsblogspotcom/stop-ren2010/

Check out CORE member Al Ramirez’s new video on the protests against Ren 2010 this past Wednesday, January 28th.

Also view Labor Beat’s coverage of the January 28th protest. CORE and the Grassroots Education Movement helped organize the event, we are calling for a moratorium on Renaissance 2010.

Labor Beat’s coverage of January 28th protest

December 21st, 2008
Teachers demand turnaround moratorium (via Chi-Town Daily News)


Groups representing teachers and parents of Chicago Public Schools students appeared yesterday at a Board of Education meeting to protest the district's approach to turning around troubled schools.


December 21st, 2008
Charter schools Obama praised ripped at board meeting (via Chicago Sun-Times

Posted in News | No Comments »

A parade of teachers, parents and students complained Wednesday about the new breed of Chicago schools President-elect Barack Obama touted the day before when he tapped Chicago’s school chief to be his U.S. secretary of education.

Read more: Charter schools Obama praised ripped at board meeting.

December 18th, 2008
Obama’s Betrayal of Public Education? Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model of Schooling (via truthout.org)

Since the 1980s, but particularly under the Bush administration, certain elements of the religious right, corporate culture and Republican right wing have argued that free public education represents either a massive fraud or a contemptuous failure. Far from a genuine call for reform, these attacks largely stem from an attempt to transform schools from a public investment to a private good, answerable not to the demands and values of a democratic society but to the imperatives of the marketplace.


October 23rd, 2008
Next Meeting Wednesday, October 29th


Check out Core’s next meeting on Wednesday October 29th

Where: 1805 S. Loomis at the Rudy Lozano Library in the auditorium

When: 4:00pm

We always meet the Wednesday before the monthly union meetings at the same time and the same place.

October 8th, 2008
Renaissance 2010 Strikes Again



Renaissance 2010 Strikes Again from jackson potter on Vimeo.

Chicago Teachers Organize Against Privatization

Published on Labor Notes (http://labornotes.org)
Chicago Teachers Organize Against Privatization
By ellis
Created Jan 28 2009 - 11:14pm
Author(s): Jackson Potter
Excerpt:

As the CEO of Chicago Public Schools heads to Washington to run the nation’s schools policy, a new reform caucus of Chicago teachers is glad to see him go. But with their union in chaos, and city leaders hell-bent on privatizing schools, what’s a teacher to do? . . .

Story Body:
Chicago Teacher Protest
Parents joined teachers to protest another round of school closings in Chicago, announced in late January. photo: Jackson Potter.

As the CEO of Chicago Public Schools heads to Washington to run the nation’s schools policy, a new reform caucus of Chicago teachers is glad to see him go. But with their union in chaos, and city leaders hell-bent on privatizing schools, what’s a teacher to do?

The Caucus of Rank and File Educators formed this summer to fill that void. Frustrated with the union leadership’s inept response to Mayor Richard Daley’s privatization scheme, CORE and its community partners called a city-wide public hearing on the plan January 10, attended by more than 500 students, parents, community members, and teachers representing 81 schools.

The organizers are trying to head off a Board of Education announcement of 20 school closings and 12 “turnarounds,” a euphemism for school privatization that entails firing every teacher in a building and rehiring new staff.

One of the schools slated for closure under the plan—marketed as “Renaissance 2010”—is Peabody Elementary School, where three generations of Lillie Gonzalez’s family have attended.

“It’s a school that should not close,” she said. “We used to have 40 children in a class and now that we have 20 in a class they want to close it.”

Chicago’s school closings target poor neighborhoods temporarily drained of population as public housing is destroyed and residents are forced to move wherever they find landlords who accept housing vouchers.

The caucus is demanding that the board put a moratorium on school closings and turnarounds and shrink class sizes in neighborhood schools.

They want to strengthen Local School Councils, elected boards originally designed to give parents, community leaders, and teachers a role in allocating money and personnel at their schools. Since the mayor took control of the schools in 1995, the councils’ power over school budgets and hiring has been stripped.

MR. DUNCAN GOES TO D.C.

Arne Duncan, now the Secretary of Education, left Chicago under a tattered flag. Since he was named schools CEO in 2001, he has presided over the largest destruction of public schools in Chicago’s history, closing almost 70 neighborhood schools.

Jesse Sharkey, a teacher and member of CORE, said Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 plan worsens Chicago’s unequal two-tiered system, where high-quality selective enrollment schools and charters are preserved for better-off “model” students while schools for low-income children of color languish.

Duncan has replaced shuttered neighborhood schools with non-union charter and contract operators that screen out low-income students and exclude children with disabilities, providing them with substandard services when they do admit them.

At one of the district’s flagship charter schools, Urban Prep, only 14 percent of the student body comes from the surrounding Englewood community. Charters have pushed out students with disciplinary records and youth whose first language is not English or whose parents are not active in the community.

Tyrone Jones’s academic struggles at Perspectives Charter School in 2007 were enough for the school to expel him. Perspectives had created a rule just before the start of the school year allowing the administration to remove students who failed to maintain a 2.0 average for two academic terms.

Jones’s mother, LaTanya, attributes her son’s fate to murky standards at charters, which allow children to be abandoned due to low grades.

“This is not ‘Survivor,’” Sharkey said.

UNION TROUBLES

As Chicago’s school district has become increasingly run by private contractors, the 31,000-strong Chicago Teachers Union, an AFT affiliate, has seen its rolls plunge by 6,000.

CTU leaders initially advised teachers at closing schools simply to seek new work. As closures rose the union sought community coalitions, but downplayed public campaigns as rank-and-file pressure mounted. CTU officers, seeking re-election, are now latching on to that momentum.

Court battles and allegations of financial impropriety wrack the union as President Marilyn Stewart seeks to dismiss Vice President Ted Dallas. CTU headquarters unilaterally released Dallas’s financial records—littered with questionable filet mignon dinners on the union’s dime—but refused to release other officer records.

The CTU has been forced to scale back its budget to pay off a $2 million deficit. Union coffers had a $5 million surplus just four years ago.

CORE helped organize a protest at CTU headquarters during the summer that demanded the union “stop the crooks and open the books,” calling for a transparent, member-driven union.

Al Ramirez, a delegate and teacher at Ruiz Elementary School, expressed frustration.

“While teachers suffered from massive job cuts,” he said, “their leadership was not asleep at the wheel—they were joyriding.”


Jackson Potter teaches at Little Village Lawndale High School of Social Justice in Chicago. Read more, and join the group, at CORE [1].

Available Online:
Yes
Source URL:
http://labornotes.org/node/2056

Links:
[1] http://www.coreteachers.org/

CTA president to run Chicago Public Schools

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/1398272,huberman-appointed-cps-chief-012709.article

CTA president to run Chicago Public Schools
NOT DUNCAN'S PICK | Huberman gets Eason-Watkins to stay as 'partner'

January 26, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com
Convinced that Chicago public schools need a proven manager at the helm, Mayor Daley today will name CTA President Ron Huberman as schools CEO after convincing bypassed chief education officer Barbara Eason-Watkins to swallow her pride and stay on as Huberman's partner.
A tireless mayoral trouble-shooter with no background in education, Huberman, 37, replaces Arne Duncan, newly-appointed U.S. education secretary.
» Click to enlarge image
Despite having no background in education, CTA President Ron Huberman will replace newly-appointed U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to run the Chicago Public Schools.
(John H. White/Sun-Times)



Before departing for Washington, Duncan recommended Eason-Watkins as his successor to continue the slow, but steady momentum they had built together toward improving test scores and graduation rates, upgrading neighborhood schools and turning around chronically-troubled schools.
Duncan felt so strongly about Eason-Watkins, he recommended her repeatedly -- so often that he was told to back off.
Sources said Daley ignored Duncan's advice because he's convinced Huberman's management experience -- honed at the Chicago Police Department, the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, the CTA and as the mayor's corruption-fighting chief-of-staff --makes him an ideal fit to run the Chicago Public Schools.
Sources said one of Huberman's first tasks will be to take a closer look at safety procedures for team sports in the wake of an outbreak of violence that forced CPS to ban visiting fans from away games. Huberman also plans toconduct a broader review of school security.
To placate Eason-Watkins, sources said top mayoral aides at first approached her about becoming City Colleges chancellor. When she refused the consolation prize, Huberman convinced the popular former principal to stay on as his "equal partner" instead of bolting for Washington.
"Barbara's the key to all of this," said a source familiar with negotiations that ended Monday.
Sources said Huberman's annual salary will be $225,000, roughly $20,000 more than Duncan's. That's because Huberman has decided not take a pension from the Chicago Public Schools and, instead, to buy time and take his CTA pension at a later date.
A mayoral confidante, who asked to remain anonymous, noted that school reform in Chicago picked up steam, only after Daley "broke the mold" of having "recycled educators" run the nation's third-largest school system.
"The mayor so values the educator, he wants that job to be undiluted by administrative work. Those jobs need to be separate," the confidante said.
The Huberman appointment is vintage Daley. The mayor has long believed that "good managers can manage anything" -- even if they don't have a clue about the agencies under their command.
As chief-of-staff, Huberman endeared himself to Daley by cleaning house in the wake of the Hired Truck, city hiring and minority contracting scandals and by installing an elaborate performance accountability system at City Hall patterned after the one pioneered by General Electric Corp.
At the CTA, Huberman has made a series of budget cuts, technology and customer service improvements; survived the threat of "doomsday" fare hikes and service cuts with a new labor deal and a Springfield bailout; and raised fares when expenses rose, tax revenues declined and Gov. Blagojevich ordered free rides for seniors.
Daley has had a progressions of fair-haired boys -- from Forrest Claypool, David Doig and John Harris to Paul Vallas and Bill Abolt -- who have hop-scotched from job-to-job before falling out of favor with the notoriously demanding mayor.
Huberman is the latest fast-rising start to follow that meteoric path. He can only hope he doesn't flame out like most of his predecessors.
Contributing: Rosalind Rossi


http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/content/education/chi-school-chief-27-jan27,0,2627479.story

Duncan's Last Move: Close 25 Schools

25 schools set for shakeup
6 CLOSING | Parent-teacher forum rips CPS chief Duncan's last move
Comments
January 11, 2009

BY MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA AND CHERYL JACKSON Staff Reporters

In his last major act before heading to Washington as President-elect Barack Obama's pick for education secretary, outgoing Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan wants to close or consolidate 25 "underperforming" or under-enrolled schools, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

The proposal -- which Duncan plans to unveil Wednesday -- would be the largest wave of school closings in Chicago in one year since Mayor Daley gave the schools chief the authority through the "Renaissance 2010" initiative to replace 70 underperforming schools with 100 new schools by 2010.

As expected, Duncan's plan has ignited community protest.
"This reform is not about education. It's about regentrification," angry parent Virgil Crawford said Saturday at a Malcolm X College forum on Duncan's strategy called by the Chicago Teachers Union.

Six schools would be closed under Duncan's plan, details of which were obtained from information provided to parents groups and the CTU.

Five more schools would be consolidated, or merged into other schools. Five would be phased out. And nine would become "turnaround" schools, where students remain but staff replaced.
Many of the 400 parents, students and teachers attending Saturday's forum ripped Duncan's appointment to a national post.

"He's unqualified for the job," charged moderator Karen G.J. Lewis. "I'd like to know what his vision is. What's he going to do without Daley telling him what to do?"

Poor academic performance or under-enrollment generally are being cited as Duncan's reasons for the changes, but some schools also were given new criteria for being targeted, union reps said.

"We were informed [Friday] as classes were beginning," a union source at Peabody Elementary on the Northwest Side said. "Our principal told us, 'We're on the list.' And there's brand-new criteria. The rules change as they go along."

Central school administration officials would not comment on the targeted schools except to call briefings to those schools "preliminary conversations."

"Our position is pretty clear that president Marilyn Stewart and the officials of the Chicago Teachers Union really oppose any closing of schools," CTU spokeswoman Rosemaria Genoa said Saturday .

On Thursday, word that Duncan would move to close Carpenter Elementary -- where the student body is 97 percent low-income -- and turn its building over to Ogden, a Near North Side elementary approved for a new high school, sparked outrage.

"They [CPS] put money where they want to put money," student teacher Terry Rudd complained.

Since taking the leadership of CPS in 2001, Duncan has aggressively pushed the Renaissance 2010 plan over protests from some parent groups and the teachers union. With 61 schools closed and 75 new ones opened, Duncan will have met the mayor's closings goal if his swan song list is approved. Earlier, he had proposed 20 new schools to the Board of Education, but only 13 were approved in October.

"We must take a stand and make a statement about why Mr. Duncan's model is not the model for America," former CTU president Deborah Lynch said Saturday.

TARGETED SCHOOLS
These 25 Chicago schools are targeted for closing, consolidation, "phase out" or "turnaround" in 2009, under plans by schools chief Arne Duncan:
CLOSING
* Las Casas Occupational High School
* South Chicago Elementary
* Peabody Elementary
* Carpenter Elementary
* Nia Foundation Elementary
* Princeton Elementary
CONSOLIDATION
* Abbott Elementary (Hendrix)
* Schiller Elementary (Jenner)
* Medill Elementary (Smith-Joyner)
* Global Vision High School (New Millennium)
* Davis Developmental Center (Hughes)
PHASE OUT
* Key Elementary
* Lathrop Elementary
* Hamilton Elementary
* Best Practice High School
* Reed Elementary
TURNAROUND
* Dulles Elementary
* Johnson Elementary
* Bethune Elementary
* Ross Elementary
* Holmes Elementary
* Yale Elementary
* Curtis Elementary
* Lavizzo Elementary
* Fenger High School

Chicago Fight Back on School Closings

Media Alert: For Immediate Release

Attention: News Assignment



City Wide Hearing on School Closings & Turnarounds: 10:00 am, Saturday, January 10, 2008, Malcolm X College 1900 W. Van Buren



Media Contact: Wendy Boatman, CORE Member: 773-991-6290, weboats@gmail.com; Kenzo Shibata, CORE Member: 312-296-0124, mrshibata@gmail.com; Corina Pedraza, Education Organizer

Pilsen Alliance, pedrazac@hotmail.com, 312-243-5440;



Over Five-Hundred Attend City-wide Hearing on School Closings



CORE (The Caucus of Rank-and File Educators) held a community meeting at Malcolm X. College on Saturday, January 10, 2009 to discuss the effects of Chicago Public Schools Renaissance 2010 program and to call for a moratorium on school closings and the turnaround program, an initiative that allows the CPS to fire entire faculties, administrations, and staffs of schools they have deemed "failing" due to test scores



The next scheduled event organized by CORE's coalition of community groups will be a protest at the Board of Education after the announcement of the next round of school closings on January 28, 2009 at 3:30 PM.



Displaced teachers, angry parents, union representatives, community leaders and students from affected schools made up the crowd. Four panels of speakers described how Renaissance 2010 sabotages neighborhood schools to make way for charters and contract schools that often do not serve all students, such as special education students and English language learners. The remaining public schools become the home for these students as they are "kicked off the island" of charter schools, as panelist and CORE member Jesse Sharkey described.



Renaissance 2010 is a program inspired by a report by the Commercial Club and is currently touted and implemented by CEO of Chicago Public Schools Arne Duncan as he grooms himself for his new position as Secretary of Education.



One panelist, a former student from Englewood High School, quoted Duncan as calling her school a "cultural failure" before slating the school to be closed. The student mentioned that prior to this program's implementation; the school had no replacement books as many of the school's funds had to be spent on additional security measures after the school accepted additional students from the nearby Calumet High School when it closed.



Many panelists spoke of charter schools, which comprise most of the new schools under Renaissance 2010. Chantelle Allen, former teacher at Perspectives Academy, a charter school, relayed how the entire junior class at that school had no special education teachers. She blew the whistle, writing a letter to the state board and was immediately fired. According to Allen, A teacher who does not have an education degree replaced her.



The concern over charters and special education was echoed by parent Lorenza Ramirez, a former CPS teacher who enrolled her daughter at Noble Street Charter School. She pulled her daughter out of that school after it was clear that her daughter's special needs were not being met at Noble Street, one of Chicago's flagship charter schools.



Organizers of the event were CORE and several community organizations and school groups. The community organizations were: Pilsen Alliance, Blocks Together, P.U.R.E, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, KOCO, Teachers for Social Justice, Substance and Senn's Local School Council. The school organizations are Jaguars for Justice and United Senn Students.








On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 5:42 AM, wrote:

16 Chicago schools to be closed, consolidated or relocated
Thousands of students will be affected by changes

By Carlos Sadovi | Tribune reporter

January 17, 2009

Thousands of city students could be attending new public schools this fall under a district plan to close, consolidate or relocate 16 schools because of declining enrollment or subpar buildings, district officials said today.

As part of the proposal, six other schools—including one high school—will become turnaround schools, a status that requires teachers, administrators and others to reapply for their jobs. Four of those six schools are expected to be run by private groups.

The district is in the second year of a five-year program to deal with dwindling enrollment in the city's schools. Last year, the district closed, phased out or turned around 18 schools.

The school board must approve the plan and could as early as Feb. 25, after public hearings. If approved, the changes would take effect before the start of the 2009-2010 school year.

"In neighborhoods where enrollment is sharply declining and we have several buildings that are more than half-empty, we can't afford to keep all of them open," said Rufus Williams, president of the Chicago Board of Education.

Departing district CEO Arne Duncan has said that up to 50 schools may be shuttered at the end of the five years. Since 2001, enrollment has dropped by more than 40,000 students as gentrification in many neighborhoods pushed families out of the city and into nearby suburbs.

The recommendations are among the more controversial that Duncan will make before he joins President-elect Barack Obama's administration as U.S. Department of Education secretary.

At a briefing before Friday's news conference to announce the changes, school officials said they are making the moves to better serve the public.

David Pickens, the district's director of external affairs, could not say how much the district stands to save by closing the underutilized schools, but he said the district would recoup savings by not staffing or maintaining buildings that it could end up selling.

The district's practice is that schools at less than 50 percent of a building's capacity get on the list. The schools targeted for closure this fall are using less than 40 percent of their capacity, Pickens said.

Students who would normally go to the five schools targeted for closure instead will go to other nearby schools. Another five schools on the list will be consolidated with other schools. That means the students and many of the teachers will continue together in different buildings. The district also wants to phase out four other elementary schools and a high school, meaning the schools will not accept new students and will not close until after the current students graduate.

Among the more controversial moves is the district's attempt to turn around failing schools. To land on that list, schools must be on academic probation and be among the district's lowest performing schools in all subjects over several years. While the students will stay in these schools, all of the faculty and staff members—including principals—must reapply for their jobs. About 193 staff members will be affected at the six turnaround schools on this year's list.

"When we are emptying out buildings, it's for efficiency. And in the schools we are turning around and nobody is moving, it's for performance," Pickens said.

But at many of the affected schools and during public hearings, some teachers and parents have accused the district of pushing families and teachers out of the schools to then reopen them as Renaissance 2010 schools under private control. They claim the district also is trying to get rid of union teachers.

The district said 24 of the 75 new schools that have opened under Renaissance 2010 have Chicago Teachers Union teachers.

At Peabody Elementary School in the West Town community, teachers and parents vowed to fight to get the school off of the closing list.

Amy Sherwood, a Peabody teacher and union delegate, said she has taught at the school for about 20 years and acknowledged the school, along with others, has seen enrollment declines. The district said the school at 1444 W. Augusta Blvd. is at only 35 percent of its capacity. The school has 265 students, though the building has the capacity for 750 students.

But Sherwood also said the school has made academic gains and being closed should not be its reward.

"This is a school whose parents are dedicated, as well as the teachers and administrators. We have given extra time, energy and our blood for years so these children can get what they deserve out of life," Sherwood said. "We will fight to keep it open."

Even though Perry Moore's children attend Holmes Elementary School in Englewood—which is on the turnaround list—she is a supporter of the school and the teachers. Moore attended the school when she was a student and has many nephews and nieces in the school. Moore said she would pull her children out of the school and said her relatives may follow if the board votes to get rid of the teachers.

"It's a real sad situation. I can honestly say that they are a dedicated bunch of people. I can see teachers coming in at 6:45 in the morning and sometimes they don't get out of there until 6:30 at night," Moore said. "It's not about the check for them, it's about the love for those children."

csadovi@tribune.com



A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps!

Chicago has had mayoral control and the EEP model of "reform" for 13 years...

... so why are these people boycotting the schools and trying to register kids in schools in nearby suburbs where there are actually elected school boards and parent input (and maybe even teacher unions too)? [reprint from 9/08]

Read accounts at TWIE and Prea Prez where Fred Klonsky writes:

"Over a thousand Chicago Public School students plus parents and supporters traveled to New Trier yesterday and were warmly welcomed, according to press reports, by North Shore students, teachers and parents. All see a common need to reform the way schools are funded in Illinois.

All except the governor. Reported the Trib:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich said students “should not be used as political pawns.”

Man, that’s rich. The governor, Speaker Madigan and Senate President Jones have spent their careers using the students of Illinois as their political pawns.

The governor was joined by Mayor Daley who sputtered something about Senator Meeks being selfish."

ED NOTES PREDICTION:
2009: Bloomberg spends $20 million to get mayoral control.
2015: 13 years after mayoral control: The exact same thing happens in NYC as the people who believed the hype that BloomKlein/Sharpton are leading the civil rights struggle of our times get the real message: they were used politically.

Chicago Rules for Firing Teachers

Chicago Public Schools Policy Manual
Title: REASSIGNMENT AND LAYOFF OF REGULARLY CERTIFIED AND APPOINTED TENURED TEACHERS
Section: 504.2
Board Report: 04-0623-PO5 Date Adopted: June 23, 2004
Policy:

THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER RECOMMENDS:
The Chief Executive Officer recommends amending Board Report 97-0723-P02 by adoption of the following amended policy for use by the Board and administrators, effective July 1, 2004.

HISTORY OF BOARD ACTION:
The Board approved Board Report 95-0814-P02, Reassignment and Layoff of Regularly Certified and Appointed Teachers Due to Changes in Staffing Needs on August 14, 1995 and amended the policy by Board Report 97-0723-P02 on July 23, 1997.

DESCRIPTION:
The Illinois School Code and other statutes permit collective bargaining on decisions regarding reductions in force. The merits of various options concerning the reassignment and layoff of regularly certified and appointed tenured teachers as a result of changes in staffing needs and the remediation, probation, or reconstitution of schools were the subject of collective bargaining with the Chicago Teachers Union. The policy set forth below reflects the agreements reached with the Chicago Teachers Union.

Section I - Scope of Policy
Whenever an attendance center or a program is closed, there is a drop in enrollment, the educational focus of the attendance center is changed such that available teaching positions cannot accommodate some or all current regularly certified and appointed teaching staff, or when an attendance center is subject to actions taken pursuant to Sections 34-8.3 or 8.4 of the School Code, tenured teachers will be reassigned or laid off in accordance with this policy.

Section 2 - Selection of Teachers for Removal
A. In Attendance Centers/Programs That Are Not Subject to Reconstitution
If changes in an attendance center or program require removal of some but not all teachers, teachers with appropriate certifications will be selected for retention based on system-wide seniority. Provisionals, Day-to-
Day substitutes, Cadre Substitutes, Temporarily Assigned Teachers ("TATs") and Probationary teachers within the attendance center or program will be removed before any regularly certified and appointed tenured teachers with the appropriate certification is removed, in that order. Within each group, system-wide seniority shall be the determining factor.

B. In Attendance Centers/Programs That Are Subject to Reconstitution
In attendance centers that are subject to reconstitution, tenured teachers will be removed based upon the criteria set forth in Section 34.18(31) of the School Code. The relative weight of such criteria shall be determined by the Chief Executive Officer or an individual attendance center basis according to the School Improvement Plan and the type of position to be changed or closed.

Section 3 - Notice of Position Closing
When a determination is made that a tenured teacher's services are no longer required at an attendance center, or in a program for the reasons described in Section I above, the tenured teacher will be so notified (hereinafter "notice of removal").

Section 4 - List of Vacancies
Upon notice to the tenured teacher of removal, the Department of Human Resources will immediately provide the tenured teacher with a list of all unencumbered vacant positions for which he or she is qualified and which are consistent with the Plan to Implement the Provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Department will also provide each tenured teacher who makes a written request to the Department with a copy of the list of vacancies in any area identified by the Department to be an area of systemic critical need.

Section 5 - Opportunity to Interview
During the first 30 school days after notice of removal, the tenured teacher will be permitted to interview at schools of his/her choosing without being assigned any additional duties. The Board will make available to affected tenured teachers lists of vacancies, job counseling and assistance with resume writing and interviewing skills.

Section 6 - Reassignment To A Permanent Position
Applications for vacancies shall be made to the principals with a copy provided by the tenured teacher to the Department of Human Resources. The tenured teacher will be interviewed by the principal unless the position is filled before an interview takes place. When a principal recommends appointment of a tenured teacher applicant to a vacant position, the teacher will be transferred to that position.

Section 7 - Interim Appointment
An appointment of a tenured teacher to a vacant position may be made by a principal on an interim basis, with written notice to the Department of Human Resources. An interim appointment will be no more than sixty school days during which the teacher's performance will be evaluated by the principal or a qualified designee. If the tenured teacher is removed from the interim position prior to expiration of the interim period or if the tenured teacher is not offered a regular appointment when his or her interim appointment expires, he or she will be reassigned to an Area cluster as provided in Section 9.

Section 8 - Permanent Appointment
If the principal, determines during the interim period that the tenured teacher is performing satisfactorily and should by appointed permanently, the principal will recommend such an appointment to the Department of Human Resources. The recommendation will be accepted and the tenured teacher will receive a regular appointment. If the tenured teacher remains in the interim position for more than 60 days, he or she shall be permanently assigned to the position.

Section 9 - Assignment to an Area Cluster
Following the 30 school day period after notice of removal and thereafter during any period when the tenured teacher is not in an interim or permanent appointment, the teacher will be assigned to an Area cluster as a day-to-day substitute teacher. The Department of Human Resources will make every effort to assign the tenured teacher to the Area cluster to which the tenured teacher was previously assigned or in which the tenured teacher resides.

Section 10 – Layoff
If a tenured teacher is unable to secure a permanent appointment within 10 school months after notice of removal, the tenured teacher shall be laid off and given an honorable termination from service and the opportunity to be placed as a cadre substitute in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement between the Board and the Chicago Teachers Union. When a layoff is required, the tenured teacher shall be notified at least 14 days in advance of the date the layoff is to take effect.

Section 11 - Recall
If after 10 school months the tenured teacher has not been appointed to a permanent position, he or she will be honorably terminated from service. If within two years after an honorable termination the tenured teacher is appointed by a principal to a permanent position, tenure and prior seniority will be restored to the teacher as of that date.

Section 12 - Plan to Implement Provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
If a removed tenured teacher's appointment to a vacancy would not be consistent with the Plan to Implement Provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the appointment will not be made unless there is no teacher who holds the appropriate certification available to be appointed consistent with the Plan.

Section 13 - Effective Date
This policy is effective only with respect to certified and appointed tenured teachers who receive a notice of removal on or after July 1, 2004. Non-tenured teachers removed pursuant to Section 1 prior to July 1,
2004, and to whom this policy applied prior to July 1, 2004, shall continue to receive the benefits of this policy.
Amends/Rescinds: Amends 97-0723-PO2; 95-0814-PO2
Cross References: Legal References: 115 ILCS 5/4.5, as amended