Who Owns This Information?

Fred's got a post up about the general fishiness of the IEA Back Home Lobby Day, also known as No Lobby Day, or 401K's Are Coming Day, or We Give Up Day.

It all looks like a ramp-down to some Grand Compromise that's been  recently laid out as a math problem by an influential person who name rhymes with Shmick Shmingram.  The thinking appears to be that it doesn't make sense to have a Lobby Day--- even if it's in a tent on a lawn--- when the members are interested in holding the line on pensions and the leadership feels that that particular ship has sailed.

Equipment required to create a "database."

Anyhoo, it all seems like a golden opportunity to move forward with the suggestion I keep making about "back-home lobbying." If it's such a good strategy, then it should be supported.

My colleagues in the IFT and the IEA will soon be electing delegates to their respective annual meetings. I would humbly suggest that someone in these organization organize a new business item that calls for the creation of a state-wide, opt-in database that lets members see who else lives in their legislative and senate districts. Such a database would make it so much easier to organize a Back Home Lobby Day any time during the year.

I probably live within one mile of dozens of IEA, IFT, and CTU members, but the only way I could determine that would be by starting a Meetup or going on Craigslist and placing a personal ad, or walking around the neighborhood in a sandwich sign with a megaphone.  But our organizations have this information. I could design the database architecture in about an hour.

Most people won't go sit one-to-one with their representative; however, if they know twenty other people are going, they'll join in. That's the beauty of Lobby Day.  A little data would go a long, long way toward people taking responsibility for organized "back-home lobbying." I live in Heather Steans' district, and I'm sure I could get a hundred people to meet me at her office to express our dismay about the corrupt-by-design state charter authority that she dreamed up.  But how will I organize that? On my blog? With SPITBALLS?

(Sorry, went all Zell Miller there for a second.)

Of course, giving too much power to the membership might be a dangerous thing. The hierarchy exists for a reason.

Anyway, who will lead the charge on this one?

The Orator

I understand Jan Brewer of Arizona got all classy with the President on the tarmac out in Phoenix yesterday.  Let's not forget what a towering intellectual she is.



It's one of my favorite clips of all time. I lived in Arizona. This is pretty much how she is.

More Voices From Crane

"The squeaky wheel gets the grease." -- Alderman Ed Smith

Ald. Ed Smith

At the Crane community hearing, Alderman Smith spoke out passionately against closing Crane down. Really, I can't think of another situation where all of the elected people opposed the plan of the appointed people.

To those who are in charge, let me make it perfectly clear. We will not quit. We want you to understand we've got to march. We've got to raise hell.  Whatever we've got to do, Crane must stay open! We will take this fight wherever we've got to take it. We will stand up to whoever we have to stand up to. We will make our point to whomever we have to make it to. Crane must stay open! I want to hear it from the crowd! Crane must stay open! Crane must stay open! Crane must stay open!

I hope he does march. I hope he does raise hell. We'll see. 

"Crane made me a man." -- Joe McDermott, CTU

I don't have a picture of Joe McDermott, but he gave an electrifying speech toward the end of the evening. It really is striking, the difference between the passion of these in-the-trenches educators and the tinny, bureaucratic thinness of the people appointed to shut schools down based on test scores. I hate to go all ad hominem here, but when I look at, say for example Donald Fraynd, the CPS turnaround guy, I don't see a man that people would rally around. I don't see a guy that would inspire the confidence of a community or a guy who's a legend back at the school he ran. I can't even picture him running a pep assembly, to be honest. You know what you need to run a pep assembly? Pep.

Anyway, this is what Joe McDermott had to say:

Let us also remind the board that seven, eight years ago, Mayor Daley and Arne Duncan came to Crane to praise us for our success. You want to say this stuff has been going on for ten years? You came here seven years ago and said, "Good job, Crane." And then what did you do? You took away the Metro program. You took away other programs.
I want to say something to the Christian preachers who came here, to my Christian brothers: What good is it to gain the world if you lose your soul in the process? 

And, finally, this. I don't usually spend much time over at Russo's place, but I saw this anonymous nugget in the comments. It's a report from the Crane board hearing, which was just last night. Evidently, one of the paid protesters last night was reading from the wrong script, which goes along nicely with my own observation that not one of the paid protesters at the earlier Crane hearing could even name the school that the hearing was about!   Here's the comment from over at Russo's:

Last night at the Crane hearing at 125 N. Clark, one woman spoke at the podium in sweeping generalizations about respect for those who cared about their school(s) and the importance of educating our children, etc. For the first minute, it was unclear whether she was in support or against the CPS proposal to phase-out Crane. But then, during her 2nd minute, she continued to cite the failure(s) of BEST PRACTICE, repeatedly identifying problems with/at BEST PRACTICE, etc. In the audience, myself and many of my fellow Crane supporters sat incredulous. It was obvious that the woman speaking was reading from notes that were in support of the closure of Best Practice High School. Of course, the meeting at hand was about CRANE! At no time did this woman waiver from her position that BEST PRACTICE should be closed! She was completely unaware of the absurdity of her words. (The Best Practice meeting isn't until this evening -- Wed. Jan. 25).
We keep witnessing, directly or indirectly, many non-invested (or at least less-than-invested) people attending and speaking at these CPS school action meetings and hearings in support of whichever CPS proposal is being presented at that time. Mostly, it's just sad. In this case, it was funny. But actually, it wasn't.

Good lord. 

What Did The President Say?

I haven't had time to look into this, but during my recent chat with some Crane kids, toward the end, one of the young men talks about their recent trip to the White House, where they told the President that Crane was being targeted for shutdown.

According to the young man, the President seemed shocked and said he'd send help.



According to the ancient code of journalists (If your mother says she loves you, check it out) I should investigate the details of this young man's account. I'm not a journalist, though.

But it's an interesting story, and if there's a journalist out there, it's an interesting angle. Did these kids eat dinner with the President? Did the President tell these kids he'd send help? Was he "shocked" about the Crane story?  A cursory Google search returns no details about this trip, but then again, these are the kids that will soon be disappeared by the system. Maybe nobody's covering them any more.

I didn't have the heart to tell the young man that the only thing this President is going to send is bus fare and Urban Prep's phone number. The heart of the President's policy is that schools like Crane get shut down based on the test scores, the teachers and staff get scapegoated,  and that the kids get dispersed to other schools where it will be hard to track the fact that they're doing pretty much the same everywhere.  And all of that will amount to "closing the achievement gap."

Update: I have been informed that the kids did indeed meet the President, but it was at a fundraiser, not at the White House. If the President left the impression that he was going to help the young people keep their school open, he needs to correct that and make his policies clear.

Separated At Birth?

The only difference I can find between Scott Walker and Rahm Emanuel is their position on gay marriage, which, unfortunately, seems like all it takes to win the gay vote in Chicago. Anyway, Walker's been raising a boatload of money because the campaign contribution laws don't kick in until after the election is "officially triggered."

Walker’s campaign announced earlier that he raised $4.5 million in just the period from December 11 through Jan 17, and has over $2.6 million on hand. Walker has been taking advantage of a key aspect of the state fundraising law for recalls — that until the election is officially triggered, the targeted incumbent can bring in unlimited donations. As a result, he he has been able to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in individual donations.

Note to Wisconsin: that's a really stupid law you've got there.

Rahm did something similar when he bought his current job here in Chicago.

Many of Emanuel's biggest donors are the same people who filled Mayor Richard Daley's campaign coffers over the last two decades. Daley swore off contributions from anyone with a City Hall contract following a bribery scandal, but that was only after he had banked a large campaign fund.

Emanuel declined to follow Daley's executive order while raising more than $14 million for his campaign, but on Friday his spokeswoman confirmed that now he will make good on his pledge to adopt a similar ban when he takes office May 16.

In other words: "I'll swear off this horribly unethical thing that I'm doing once this horribly unethical thing gets me my office in a horribly unethical way."

Rahm Emanuel. Scott Walker. Same person. Except for the gay thing.

iDon't Need an iPhone That Badly

I'm so over Apple products.  I was once their biggest fan, too. I guess if I thought the people of China had any chance whatsoever of leveling the field, I'd feel slightly less guilty for my decades of being a groupie. But they don't.

It's weird that with all the modern technology, we don't have webcams available where we can watch the workers on their 12 hour shifts, or monitor the goings-on in the dormitories. We could have parimutuel wagering on which worker will off himself next. The technology is there-- and the market is there, I have no doubt.

Anyway, the world is just going to hell. Last night, I was re-reading parts of A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain, and the Buddhist idea that desire causes suffering is right underneath every story. It makes me think of all the online salivating over every new gadget that is the hallmark of the educational Twitterverse. We have so many new things, but it seems to spark only the desire for more new things and the discussion of how the new things are hotter than the old things. It's like we live in a world where there's only cause but no effect, like there are no consequences to anything beyond our immediate gratification.

I think the iPhone is the modern embodiment of what the Buddha was talking about. Someone should really invent an app that beeps loudly every twelve hours six days a week, at the minimum. It shouldn't even be optional.

This is my favorite graf out of the entire article:

At dinner, for instance, the executives had suggested that the government should reform visa programs to help companies hire foreign engineers. Some had urged the president to give companies a “tax holiday” so they could bring back overseas profits which, they argued, would be used to create work. Mr. Jobs even suggested it might be possible, someday, to locate some of Apple’s skilled manufacturing in the United States if the government helped train more American engineers.

 There isn't a phenomenon that exists that isn't a reason for corporate tax holidays. Truly, it was out of the blue. Nothing in the article had anything whatsoever to do with tax burdens.

By the way, Steve Jobs was wrong about some things:

Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.

 Actually, competent principals can do exactly what he suggested, and in the successful schools I've worked in, no, work rules didn't seem to hobble anyone. "Work rule" seems to have been a Jobs code word for "the right to work from home after an 8 hour shift."

Whatever. It doesn't surprise me that a guy with those misinformed opinions would be running sweatshops in a dictatorship.

Anyway, I definitely need a phone soon. This Blackberry works only in certain weather conditions, none of which exist in Chicago in the winter. Is there a phone out there that isn't produced by volunteer slaves?

Ayodeji Griffin at Crane

"We will accept any student no matter how low their test scores are."
Crane teacher Ayodeji Griffin spoke from the heart about what Crane has been doing over the years. From the outside, it looks like nobody told them that the way to keep your doors open is to ixnay the open-to-all idea. The road to success now lies in sculpting your graduating class in such a way that those kids not headed for graduation are dispersed to other schools. It's all very old school, what they're doing at Crane.

I know I have a photo of this teacher somewhere, but I can't tell from my notes which one it is. If you see her in my Flickr stream will you let me know?



Just in case you missed it, this is what she said at the end.

A couple of years ago, I questioned an elementary counselor who attended our articulation breakfast and asked her why did she always send her students with stanine scores of four, five, and six to Crane.  

Simply put, she stated, "Because I know that Crane will graciously receive our students, will educate them, and make sure that they graduate and attend college." 

After thinking about it, I said to myself, "Well, isn't that our claim to fame? If I don't know this, then no one else knows--- we will accept any student no matter how low their test scores are. We educate and we graduate. Thank you. 

I suppose that some know-it-all reformer will ask why more of the Crane kids don't graduate and go to college. And I'm sure Ms. Griffin could tell you five or ten things that neighborhood needs in order to make that happen-- suggestions that will fall on deaf ears.  But the one thing she probably won't suggest is to get rid of the most difficult-to-teach kids, which as you know, is the underlying theme of the board's policy.

Crane's Linda Weseman and Myia Black

"White people live in the area, but how many of their kids go to Crane?"

Linda Weseman and Myia Black

Crane teacher Linda Weseman encouraged student Myia Black speak from the heart about race and the new segregation school reform.



It isn't easy to speak truth to power, particularly when the powers that be have labeled you and your teachers a failure, so to honor Myia's work, I've gone ahead and transcribed her it here. I'm sure I've butchered it; please send corrections if you know Myia.

they don' t care 'bout our effects.

chop us down like trees with their big axe

raisin' property tax

when they build condos and tear up the projects

they don't want us to be able to afford to live in this area

white people live in this area

but how many of their kids go to Crane?

they see us as a high school for black kids that gangbang

they want this whole area

(unclear)

Shootin' em up like a can, and crush

now they're trying' us

they want their kids to be able to go to school close by

but Crane aint good enough

so they want to  rebuild, tear us down, kick us to the curb

like dust

by us being in the area got them aggravated

and now they're comin up with all type of excuses

like low test scores and kids that ain't graduated

they think they've won but it ain't true

we're gonna fight for us and show them

we're proud to wear red

and Cougars agree


Corrections Are On Their Way!

Mark Carter at Crane Hearing

"The blood of these children is on your hands."

Mark Carter

The firebrand Mark Carter spoke at the Crane phase-out hearing, bringing an entirely different tone to a meeting that was otherwise simply about a community that loves its school and wants it to stay open. Much has been written about Mark Carter, here, here, here, here, and interestingly, here. He spoke about the history of violence and murder that has resulted in the constant dispersal of CPS students into other neighborhoods.

Carter was escorted out of the auditorium by police and Malcom X security after his two minutes were up.  Throughout the event, he was lobbing remarks to the CPS turnaround guy, Donald Frayne, a couple of which ("we're gonna turn you upside down") were right up on the line of menacing, if you asked me.  However, the only actual violence that occurred during the evening was started by the paid Rahm supporters who were all to anxious to start pushing and shoving some high school kids.

I'm including Mark Carter here because he's right about the policy-caused violence, and these things must be said no matter who they make uncomfortable. I'm not endorsing him; I'm covering his words at the event.

Crane Teacher Steven Godfrey and Student Demara Howard

"You have misinformation about Crane."

Crane Teacher Steven Godfrey

A Crane teacher points out that some of fake protesters were holding up signs referencing the ISAT, a test that doesn't even apply to high school students here in Illinois.







"Since Crane is a neighborhood school, you think it's filled with neighborhood fools."

Crane Student Demara Howard

Student Demara Howard spoke with such passion--- she definitely touched a nerve or two. (I may be hearing her first name incorrectly, too. Will someone let me know?)



I liked her work so much, I transcribed it. Forgive the errors--- if anyone knows Demara and can send me corrections, please do.


         Secrets, by Demara Howard

I've got a secret, but can you keep it?
you see my secret is I’m talented and I speak real bold
I use my words metaphorically to make people's minds unfold
I am strong-willed, long-winded 
and to struggle
I don’t only see the beginningbut the ending 
to fight for what is right I am willing
And there’s no way it is rightto kick us out of our building 
y’all have secrets, too
because you want to be closerto downtown
so for sure you fix our buildings that used to be run-down
and push our people (who used to be able to afford it) pushing us out of our building
because to you us having a school isn’t important
instead of being a man about it you’re tryin to backdoor it,
talking about attendance, and how low we’re scorin’
givin us less funding and less choices, mute us to the public so they don’t hear our voices
keepin our talents quiet, makin it seem like all we think about is violence
but what about our secrets?
things that can’t be measured by numbers and told on the news?
what happens every day when we walk into our school?
teachers and counselors pushin usto be our best
because stereotypically we’re not supposed to graduate
and if we don’t we’ll be dead by twenty-one
and instead
if you asked us what we want to be?
(everybody’s gonna say drug dealers or somethin they see on tv)
I know future doctors at CraneI know people that push hard and work hard for what they want to be every day

         I know people from my school who have dreams to be successful just like most of you

don’t get me wrong, we’re not perfect--we can always improve
but we deserve a chance like all of you
and revelation brings revolution and ignorance is a problem to which educationis the solution And by closin Crain we are losin
and to be honest every school in the city charter or public  

could use some improvement 

by closin Crane,  what is it really doin pushin us out of our home which we lived in since 1903

if we were so bad, why haven’t we been gone?
now it goes back to your secrets 

you want to be closer to downtown because that’s where the jobs are
and businessmen need the school for their kids so they don’t have to drive their cars far.
and since Crane is a neighborhood school you think it’s filled with neighborhood fools
but what about the students who want to be doctors and lawyers too?

Alderman Fioretti and Crane Teacher Ms. Wilson

"Crane must remain a neighborhood school."

Alderman Fioretti, talking directly to board member Jesse Ruiz:



"If I'm such a bad teacher..."
Ms. Wilson, Crane Teacher.



Sorry, I didn't get a clear photo of Ms. Wilson. I couldn't hear her first name clearly.

Crane Community Rallies For Its School

Heck of a night over at Malcom X.

CPS was having it's community hearing before destroying Crane High School right down the street. I'm far too tired to do a detailed piece, but let me just make some quick observations.

First of all, Crane showed up in force. These kids love their school, and they're not going to let it get "phased out" without a fight. I've been working with kids now since let's just say the early 80's, and I've never been so proud of young people as I was tonight.

There were some tense moments, and I'll post more about those later. I intend to post at least the audio track of every speaker.

Once again, two busloads of poor people were rounded up and sent in to play the part of pro-shutdown demonstrators. They didn't seem to have a clear idea about the purpose of the hearing, and several of them were anxious not to be seen on camera,  although they were armed with signs, one of which was comically inaccurate (more later).  I understand there's some video coming out where one of the demonstrators spills about the payments they were expecting, but for now you can watch me greeting the hired demonstrators as they arrive.



I have no skill with a FlipCam, it needs to be said. I openly admit this.

With the exception of a lone "boo," the paid people were silent until near the end, when one of them - I believe it was this fellow on the right - gave an incendiary anti-teacher, anti-Crane, anti-union speech. I'll dig up that audio later. In any event, the audience was howling, and a bit of a shoving match followed. A lot of people out of their chairs, but it ended quickly.   I'm not sure who's paying these people to come in but I can't imagine that bringing in these obvious fakes is in anyone's interest. If I were a charter operator busing in ringers for a public hearing, I'd want better ringers.

Here are a few pictures from the evening. The event was held in the auditorium at Malcom X; it was a very, very dark room. The net result is that you can take over 400 pictures but only about 50 are going to survive the long exposure and the shaky camera man.

Like a say, I've never been so proud of kids. Throw caution to the wind; watch it full-screen. There's a picture of some of the bus-in's in this set, and one or two of the district's portfolio guy, who I can't imagine feels good about what he does for a living.



Over the next week, I'll post more comments and audio, but for now, here are four clips for your your listening pleasure. You might want to go get your headphones.

First, I talk to some of the kids before the event.



Next, two students start the evening's commentary.



Two more wonderful students:



Here's Martin Ritter of CTU. He does a great job reviewing the breadth and depth of the opposition to this closing. Basically, the only elected person who wants to shut down Crain is Rahm. Anyone else who has ever faced voters is opposed to it.



Like I say, more to come.