As new and old reports at Catalyst and Gapers Block indicate, CORE’s victory in Friday’s teachers union election reflected the group’s activist orientation and commitment to grassroots organizing, in schools and with communities.

“We energized the grassroots,” said one CORE member.

CORE came on the scene two years ago and immediately provided a citywide organizational structure for a movement against Renaissance 2010 that had yet to gain much traction.

Before CORE, small community and education groups committed to the  original school reform agenda of parent empowerment and improving neighborhood schools – along with parents at separate schools scrambling desperately to oppose closings in a very short window of time – had been limited to school-by-school struggles.

CORE was crucial in forming the Grassroots Education Movement, which gave the movement against Renaissance 2010 a citywide scope and strategic vision.

Arne Duncan left for Washington and Ron Huberman took over at CPS last year as CORE and GEM’s first drive against closings crested, and in response to protests and the exposure of faulty CPS data, Huberman decided to take six schools off the closing list.  It was the first time anything like that had ever happened.

This year, another anti-closings campaign — which won the support of several aldermen — forced Huberman to admit “the process is flawed” and to take six of fourteen school closings and turnarounds off the table.

On its website CORE attributes these victories to an approach which “built partnerships with our natural allies and empowered members to stand up for their profession, their jobs and their schools.”  Activism, organizing, coalition-building.

In remarks Saturday morning at King College Prep, CTU president-elect Karen Lewis made it clear that defending against the attacks on teachers and on public education which underlie much of the current “reform” agenda is high on her agenda.

“Today marks the beginning of the end of scapegoating educators,” she said.

She railed against “corporate heads and politicians” who “have never sat one minute on this side of the teacher’s desk” and “do not have a clue about teaching and learning.”  But “they’re the ones calling the shots, and we’re supposed to accept it as ‘reform.’”

Asked if she had a message for Mayor Daley and schools chief Ron Huberman, she said, “I want them to appreciate what educators do.”

(CORE has posted Lewis’s remarks, and WBEZ has audio.)

First, though, comes discussions over Huberman’s proposals to lay off teachers and raise class size, and Lewis called on CPS to disclose “all the financial details” of how it spends its money — including vendor and consulting contracts– including how charter schools spend the taxpayer money they get, “because to date, we have not seen charter schools’ financials” – and including an estimated $250 million a year in TIF money that would otherwise be going to schools.

She called on Daley to put his political weight behind an effort to end the state’s overreliance on property tax funding for schools and the drastic inequities that result from it.  And she rejected the notion “that access to high quality education for all children is a luxury that we simply can’t afford.”

It can happen here.  Indeed, it has happened here.

After federal spending on education and anti-poverty efforts ramped up in the 1960s, there came a point where urban schools were spending as much per pupil as suburban schools.  Racial disparities in achievement rates were cut in half, and were on track to disappear.   For a brief and unique moment in the mid-70s, black and Latino kids were attending college at rates comparable to whites.

Then came Reagan, who cut the education budget in half, and “conservatives introduced a new theory of reform focused on outcomes rather than inputs.”  That’s the theory behind what passes for school reform today.

This is from Linda Darling-Hammond’s contribution to the Nation’s special issue on A New Vision for School Reform.  She contrasts the United States with nations across Europe and Asia that she says are succeeding in providing high quality education to all their students.

The U.S. is “among the nations where socioeconomic background most affects student outcomes,” because we have greater income inequality “and because the United States spends much more educating affluent children than poor children.”  And in many states, segregation and inequality of funding is increasing.

The Obama-Duncan program doesn’t address (and probably exacerbates) funding inequalities, and what it does address won’t help.

Their framework “envisions competition and sanctions as the primary drivers of reform rather than capacity-building and strategic investments,” Darling-Hammond writes. “No nation has become high-achieving by sanctioning schools based on test-score targets and closing those that serve the neediest students without providing adequate resources and quality teaching.”

Elsewhere in the issue, Diane Ravitch writes about “Why I Changed My Mind” on No Child Left Behind and on the sloganeering around “choice” and “accountability” in education.

After the 2008 campaign, she writes, “I expected that Obama would throw out NCLB and start over.”  Instead, “his admininistration has embraced some of the worst features of the George W. Bush era.”

“None of the policies that involve testing and accountability – vouchers and charters, merit pay and closing schools – will give us the quantum improvement that we want for public education.  They may even make things worse.

“We need a long-term plan that strengthens public education and rebuilds the education profession,” including better-educated teachers, principals who are master teachers, rich curriculums, and attention to the conditions in which children live.

Susan Eaton compares magnet schools (with their mission of racial integration), with charters, which tend to “exacerbate segregation” and associated inequities.  (Black students in charters are twice as likely as their counterparts in traditional schools to attend segregated schools.)  That charters don’t upset the racial stratification of public education “may be exactly what makes them, at first glance, appear politically neater than magnet schools.”

David Kirp looks at community schools, which at their best can provide the kinds of things we know help kids learn: longer instructional time, more adults in the classroom, cultural and recreational programming, more parental involvement, and support services to remove obstacles to learning.  But so far Obama’s education department has been “better on rhetoric than dollars for community schools.”

Guest editor Pedro Noguera points out that no progress is likely until policy makers figure out “why NCLB failed to do more to improve schools in high-poverty communities” and “[reject] simplistic approaches.”

UPDATED – With the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force set to meet in Chicago Monday, PURE reviews the minutes of its first meeting, held in Springfield last month, and notes that Rep. Cynthia Soto, Clarice Berry of the Chicago Principals Association, and a teachers union representative all remarked on the connection between repairs to neighborhood school buildings and their subsequent closing for use by charter or other Renaissance 2010 schools.

That’s the issue long raised by advocates for neighborhood schools (see February 2009 Newstip) and one reason Soto introduced legislation creating the task force – enacted last year by unanimous votes in the House and Senate over Governor Quinn’s veto.

A CPS official admitted they “can’t provide” information on facility investments vis-a-vis Renaissance 2010.

The task force requested a comprehensive list of facility investments over the past five years, and CPS promised to provide details on “which schools receiving facility investments were closed, consolidated, or turned over to charters or contract schools, including the sources of funding for renovations, new construction, and capital repairs.”

That would be an unprecedented (if preliminary) step toward transparency for a decision-making process that has been widely viewed as arbitrary, opaque, unaccountable, and politically-motivated.

UPDATE: On April 26, State Senator William Delgado issued the following release regarding the task force: Read the rest of this entry »

Parents and students rallied this morning at McCorkle Elementary, 4421 S. State, calling on the Board of Education to rescind its decision to close the school.  And a teachers union spokesperson said the union is preparing legal action to challenge the closing.

Scores of schoolchildren carried signs saying “McCorkle: Ten Years of Success” and chanted “Save our school.”

LSC member Shantel Foley pointed out that over a hundred Chicago schools have building assessments showing over $4 million in needed repairs – the reason given by CPS for closing McCorkle.  “They’re not being closed,” she said.  “What are the real reasons for closing McCorkle?”

Parent Darlene Penn pointed at new housing being built across the street, where CHA’s Robert Taylor Homes used to stand, and said, “That’s the reason they’re closing McCorkle.”

Until last year, the school was one of a handful with seven years of consecutive test score gains, and it had the highest math increases in the area, said teacher Delia Urgesi-Gray.

If McCorkle closes, many students will end up at lower performing schools, said Andrea Lee of Grand Boulevard Federation.  Earlier this year, in response to findings that school closings had moved students to schools with lower achievement levels, CPS chief Ron Huberman issued a new policy saying only schools with higher scores would be designated as receiving schools.

But Lee said that CPS knows that half of displaced students don’t go to designated receiving schools.  “Do they really care about these children’s education?” she asked.

CTU President Marilyn Stewart came to show support.  “There’s a steamroller going through the schools on State Street,” she said.  “Stability works.  We need to give these children stability.”

Union spokesperson Rosemaria Genova said later that the union “is going to file legal action” to block the closing, based on its participation in a federally-funded teacher development program.

“It’s a good program that brings additional resources and it’s seeing good results,” she said. “We feel the program is being sabotaged” by closing schools in where teachers are in the midst of a costly training effort.

Genova pointed out that even as CPS closes schools that have received federal funds in the Teacher Advancement Program, the system is reapplying for those funds.

CPS has not provided details about the repairs it says are needed, despite promises to do so, said Anna Paglia, a lawyer who has assisted McCorkle’s LSC (her husband is a teacher at the school).

After a local engineering firm did an independent assessment – finding that with about $1.4 million in repairs, the building could last another 100 years – CPS claimed the firm had overlooked serious structural issues.

“I don’t know how an engineering firm would fail to identify structural problems,” she said.  But though CPS officials promised to provide a copy of their own assessment, “we haven’t seen anything,” she said.

At this morning’s event, speaker after speaker demanded transparency and accountability from CPS.

Asked about prospects for saving the school, Urgesi-Gray said, “Our only hope is to keep fighting.”

Supporters of McCorkle Elementary believe that photos of a hole in the roof that was shown by CPS officials in a hearing on the proposal to close the school were in fact photos of another school, said Anna Paglia, an attorney who is representing the school’s LSC.

“Did they mix up the pictures?” she asked.  “We don’t know.  We didn’t have an opportunity to ask questions.”

CPS provided no list of needed repairs or cost estimates, she said – only a general statement that repairing the building would amount to 60 percent of the (unspecified) cost of replacing it. Nor did it provide comparative data that would indicate how McCorkle (4421 S. State) was chosen over other schools.

The LSC arranged an independent engineering assessment that determined that needed repairs would cost substantially less than that, and that a $1.2 million investment would extend the life of the building for 100 years.

“They are saying a school that was built in 1963 can’t be repaired and needs to be demolished,” Paglia said.  “That’s a waste of taxpayer money.”  She said demolition would cost $500,000 – almost half the amount required to repair the school.

While CPS chief Ron Huberman promised yesterday to improve the process for determining school closings, it actually seems to be designed to deny time and information needed to mount effective efforts to save schools.

“There’s one month from the announcement [of the proposal] to the decision [of the school board],” said Paglia, whose husband teaches at McCorkle.  “That’s not an appropriate timeframe.”`

McCorkle’s principal and staff learned that the school was slated to be consolidated into Beethoven Elementary over the weekend of January 23-24, Paglia said; the first hearing on the proposal was January 29.

She said the school has provided CPS with a list of gang territories which must be crossed for McCorkle students to get to Beethoven.  “That’s something CPS has totally disregarded,” she said.

When CPS announced that McCorkle Elementary, 4421 S. State, was being closed because building repairs would be too costly, the school community arranged for an independent engineering assessment.

An assessment by Beckley Engineering showed the building is “structurally adequate,” and that $1.2 million in repairs, including new windows, would extend the building’s life for another hundred years, said Anna Paglia, an attorney with K & L Gates who is representing the school’s LSC on a pro bono basis.  That’s far less than the $4 million that CPS says is needed.

She said the school will appeal if the Board of Education ratifies the recommendation to close at tomorrow’s meeting, and beyond that they are “assessing their legal options.”

It was one of several examples underscoring the need for transparency and accountability in school facility planning which emerged in an extraordinary day that saw CPS chief Ron Huberman and opponents of Renaissance 2010 testify before angry City Council members.

Ald. Fredrenna Lyle (6th Ward) said the choice of Deneen Elementary, 7240 S. Wabash, for a school “turnaround” over fifty or more schools scoring lower on Huberman’s “performance policy” measurement led to the conclusion that it was chosen because it has a new addition on the building.

Parents at Prescott Elementary, 1632 W. Wrightwood, believe the school is being closed — despite growing enrollment and soaring test scores — because the building has been promised to a new high school, said Jennifer Lister.  Supported by the Lakeview Action Coalition, they’ve called a press conference for Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. at the school.

Alejandra Ibanez of Pilsen Alliance testified about De La Cruz Middle School, 2317 W. 23rd, where she said contractors arrived and began making repairs in the final weeks after the school board decided to close the school because infrastructure needs were too costly.  The school had recently won a statewide award for achievement

Two months after De La Cruz closed, the school board voted to allow the UNO Charter School to move into the building.  Ibanez said the new school does not have services for the many special education and English learning students who were served by De La Cruz.

Andrea Lee of Grand Boulevard Federation testified that Raymond Elementary, 3663 S. Wabash, was closed for underutilization and building disrepair and replaced by Perspectives Charter School, which has similar enrollment numbers.  “There’s a double standard when it comes to utilization,” she said.  “Most new Renaissance 2010 schools are never held to the same utilization criteria.”

Among those testifying in support of a resolution calling for a moratorium on closings and turnarounds were State Senators Willie Delgado (2nd District) and Jacqueline Collins (16th District), Clarice Berry of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, Mark Ochoa of the Chicago Teachers Union, and Jonathan Jackson of Rainbow PUSH.

Huberman acknowledged shortcomings in the “process” of closing schools but insisted on the need to push ahead.  He promised to hold “a series of public hearings about the process” as well as hearings on performance issues in schools that are on probation.

More hearings are not the answer, said Cecile Carroll of Blocks Together, especially when they are structured so that CPS officials do not have to respond when their assertions are challenged by community members.

She said it’s been difficult getting special education students back into Orr High School since the school’s “turnaround” under AUSL.

She added:  “The fact that [Huberman] did not mention local school councils makes me think he’s not serious about oversight.”

Many neighborhood school advocates view Renaissance 2010 as a continuation of efforts to remove schools from community control.

Pauline Lipman of the University of Illinois-Chicago and Teachers for Social Justice outlined eight studies that show that Renaissance 2010 has failed to improve educational outcomes.  “The research shows that it’s not about fixing the process,” she said. “The problem is with the entire plan.”

Rico Gutstein, Lipman’s colleague at UIC and TSJ, said “neighborhood schools in black and Latino neighborhoods have not received sufficient support,” adding that CPS does not make information about resource allocation sufficiently available to the public and to researchers.

Jesse Sharkey of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators testified that school “turnarounds” have resulted in a sharp decrease in diversity in the CPS workforce, as “black veteran teachers have been replaced by mostly white novices.”  He said the proportion of African Americans among CPS teachers has gone down from 40 percent  in 2002 to 31 percent today, with most reductions occurring in African American neighborhoods.

Behind the call for a moratorium — and unaddressed by Huberman in his comments — is a state legislative task force charged with examining CPS’s facilities planning and proposing legislation to increase transparency and accountability.

As the hearing wound down (and school let out), busloads of students and teachers from McCorkle and other threatened schools filled the chamber.

Ald. LaTasha Thomas (17th Ward), chair of the council’s education committee, postponed a vote on the resolution.

The Mollison Elementary community is celebrating their removal from CPS’s school closing list – but they say their experience demonstrates the need for big changes in the process.  (Mollison’s story was first highlighted here.)

“We want the process to include schools and communities sooner rather than later,” said Mollison teacher Jodi Curl.

“We are grateful we were taken off the list, but this process remains unjust and we can’t help but have concerns for other schools that were not given a fair and just process,” she said.

One school that remains on the list is Prescott Elementary, 1632 W. Wrightwood, and parents and educators there insist that CPS’s designation of the school as underenrolled is based on faulty calculations.

CPS maintains the school is below 40 percent of  a 540-student capacity.  But at the school’s February 3 hearing, Jennifer Moore, a reading coach with the Erikson Institute who works with Prescott teachers, pointed out that CPS had overcounted the number of classrooms in the school, and that several rooms are used as a library, computer lab, art room, and for ESL and special education.

“If Prescott filled all 18 rooms with a maximum number of students allowable in order to reach a capacity of 540 students, the school would run afoul of educational best practices, CPS policy, and legal requirements,” she said.

Prescott supporters say the school is actually at 64 percent capacity and that next year’s enrollment is expected to take it up to 75 percent.

At Deneen Elementary 7240 S. Wabash, clergy and students planned a candlelight vigil at 5 p.m. this afternoon to protest a proposed “turnaround” despite rising attendance and reading and math scores which rose by double digits last year.

“I am tired of CPS playing with our children’s lives by treating them like they are a shift change at Cook County Jail,” said Rev. Kenyatta Smith, president of the Baptist Pastors Conference Youth Division.

Smith said the change would disrupt a number of programs in place to improve learning in the school, including a three-year professional development program to help teachers work with underachieving students.

Meanwhile, in a statement celebrating their victory, Mollison supporters called on CPS to “reevaluate the public hearing process,” in which CPS staff talk for unlimited time but school supporters are limited to two minutes each, up to the two-hour time set aside for the hearing.  That meant many were shut out entirely – including most supporters of Wells Prep, which was to have been moved into Mollison.

They also questioned the use of the new “performance policy” ranking system to designate schools for closing when it “has not yet been fully vetted by CPS educactors.”

Rev. Jeff Campbell, LSC cochair at Mollison, 4415 S. King, noted that CPS “is already planning to remove two of our teachers.”

“If CPS wants us to do the job that needs to be done,” he said, “we encourage CPS to provide resources that will support educational opportunities, including a reading and math coach, money to keep our two teachers, and not having to make choices between buying teachers or books or books versus educational software.”

The group applauded their alderman, Pat Dowell of the 3rd Ward, for supporting Mollison, and for introducing a resolution calling for a moratorium on school closings until CPS gets feedback from a task force of the General Assembly that is studying the district’s facility planning. A hearing on that resolution is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

A hearing on a proposed school “turnaround” Thursday evening will have something the others don’t have: parents, teachers and community members will be able to question CPS and AUSL officials.

That’s because Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd Ward) is sponsoring the meeting, which is on the proposed “turnaround” at Wendell Phillips High School by the Academy for Urban School Leadership. (It takes place at 7 p.m., Thursday, February 18, at Apostolic Faith Church, 3823 S. Indiana).

According to Dowell’s announcement, the meeting is intended to allow “community organizations, parents, teachers, and residents to learn more about CPS and AUSL’s plans for Phillips High School, ask questions, and raise concerns.”

At official CPS hearings, like the February 1 hearing on Phillips, CPS officials give long presentations and then members of the school community are allowed to comment.  But as George Schmidt writes at Substance, “CPS procedure refused to allow teachers, students, parents or community leaders to ask any questions.”

“The [February 1] hearing adjourned abruptly after two hours, even though there were others who wished to speak and dozens who had questions that had not been answered.”

CPS chief Ron Huberman’s new “performance policy” rating system “has not been subjected to public review” since the school board approved it “without discussion or debate” last December, Schmidt writes.

Likewise, he writes, AUSL’s claims of success “have never been subjected to independent verification.”

PURE recently noted that AUSL “turnarounds” seem to involve largescale “push-outs”:  at five elementary schools taken over by AUSL, enrollment dropped by an average of nearly 100 in the first year.  At Harper High, enrollment dropped by 30 percent the year AUSL took over, Linda Lutton reported on WBEZ last year.

According to Catalyst:  “There is yet no evidence that (turnarounds) can fix high schools at all.”

“There is a growing interest in the council to more fully examine the CPS consolidation, turnaround and phase-out policies,” Dowell told WBEZ. “They’re not transparent; they lack community involvement and public accountability.”

Dowell has joined Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th Ward) in introducing a resolution calling for a moratorium on school closings.

School advocates are calling on Ald. Latasha Thomas (17th), who chairs the council’s education committee, to call a hearing on their resolution prior to the February 24 board meeting where this round of school closings will be voted on.

As noted here previously, Thomas has spoken out against the closing of Guggenheim Elementary in her ward.