Save Our Schools Rally

I attended the Chicago Teacher's Union (CTU) Save Our Schools Rally today at the Ariel Academy in Kenwood. The rally is the first public event that I know of sponsored by the CTU since the new Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) slate took office this month. I was especially interested in how the new leadership was approaching the Chicago Public Schools position regarding school finances, tenure, teacher evaluation, cuts, and so forth.

CPS and CTU have started talks, but based on what Karen Lewis reported at the meeting, a report on the CTU website, and an online report plus comments on the Catalyst blog, the Board is asking for everything and giving nothing. [Lewis also said that the union wanted, and received, the right to have 40 observers (including representatives from other caucuses) sit in on the negotiations, as part of CORE's promise to boost transparency in the union.]

I was especially interested to hear about CTU's strategy at this point. The union is launching several initiatives, all with a common theme: reaching out. Reaching out to CTU membership, to parents, to community organizations, to pastors and congregations, to aldermen and state representatives, to the general population at events like neighborhood festivals and the annual southside Bud Billiken parade. The union had sign-up sheets available for the various committees it has set up to undertake the reach-out campaign.

The union's strategy reminded me of a report on the two-week long 2005 British Columbia teacher's strike. Teachers in BC were not allowed to strike by law, but they did so anyway, over class size, student supports and pay. As I understand it, the Canadian teachers worked to win the public opinion battle first, through ... reaching out. The British Columbia Teacher's Federation (BCTF) worked hard to present teachers as human beings dedicated to the challenging job of educating the community's children under very difficult circumstances. As a result, the BCTF gained support from other unions, from parents, and from the community at large. That support enabled them effectively to win.

CPS's position, echoed by the major news media and self-appointed education experts, is that teachers are lazy, incompetent, overpaid and greedy. The CPS position is that the union shields the generally lazy, incompetent, etc. etc. from discipline. The union, effectively, is the reason for the CPS budget crisis, poor test scores, high dropout rates, etc. Only charter schools, privatization and more testing can save education in Chicago. This is the official CPS narrative. This is the CPS propaganda offensive that the union is finally, with new leadership, thankfully beginning to confront.

Getting out a counter-narrative, one that actually explains reality, really is the only way forward for the union: to win the propaganda war by speaking truth to power, forging necessary links with everyone else in the same boat (is that a mixed metaphor?), and getting over the understanding that what is wrong with education is not teachers (much less teachers organized), but something much deeper and more complex, something that will require a broad, mobilized network of community to overcome.

jd

Not so simple

Below is a link to a recent (7/9/10) New York Times article that should be mandatory reading by anyone mesmerized by the possibilities of computers and education.

The article reports on several recent studies that suggest that computers in the home have little educational impact, and in the case of of low income students, they may actually result in lower test scores.

The suspicion as to why this might be the case is that with presumably more people working in low income families, there is less time for supervision, and so the kids are gravitating towards game play and not research. Their computer skills do go up though, in particular the ability to skirt around firewalls, blocks, and other security measures that keep them from doing what they really want to do.

Computers are seen, as the article points out, as the Great Equalizer in education. Which is a convenient fantasy for hardware and software developers, who have a financial stake in selling the Great Equalizers. The article indicates that education is not a mechanical problem, but a social problem -- a supportive home life, engaged families, optimism about the future, supervision and direction -- a stable and nurturing social environment -- are all critical ingredients to successful education (and successful use of technology in education).

Here's the link to the article: Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality


jd

CPS elem testing schedule for 2010-11

The CPS Elementary Assessment Calendar for 2010-11 is available.

A summary, for schools on the regular schedule:

K-2:

DIBELS: September, January, May. (Schools not doing DIBELS must do either STEP or ISEL testing).

mClass Math (required): September, January, May.


Grades 3 - 8:

Scantron (required for all schools, grades 3 - 8): September (the first three weeks after school starts); January; late April-May.

Chicago Benchmark Assessment (Reading/Math) (optional): October, January, May. Since this one is optional, I don't know if my school will be taking it or not. Our Area Office seems to like lots of data though, so...

District Wide Writing Assessment (required): October, January, March 21-25, May. Note that the March test is used for promotion policy.

ISAT (required): 2/28 - 3/11 (note it is a bit earlier next year).

Grade 8 only:

EXPLORE: 9/27 - 10/6

Winter and Spring Benchmark and Scantron will overlap. The Winter Scantron testing is a month earlier than ISAT next year.

I left off some of the other testing that applies to small groups of students, see the link above for info on all of the planned assessments for CPS elementary schools for next year.

jd

Interesting results from CTU member survey

If you are in the Chicago Teachers Union, you may have received an automated phone call last Wednesday inviting you to participate in a massive conference call (I confess I hung up). According to a posting on the NTN2000 Yahoo Group mailing list (that's the Chicago New Teacher Center list), some 8,000 CTU members were on the call. During the call, participants were surveyed about several topics. Some of the results (quoting from the letter re-posted on the list):

2. As a member of the Chicago Teachers Union, what do you think should be the Union's top priority?
Prevent teacher layoffs - 52%
Protecting our 4% pay raise - 18%
Smaller class sizes - 19%
Instituting a hiring freeze - 11%

3. How many students do you currently have in your classroom?
0-15 students - 21%
16-24 students - 19%
25-28 students - 26%
29-32 students - 23%
Over 33 students - 11%

4. As a CTU member would you rather have your negotiators fight harder for the 4% raise, or to preserve jobs?
Preserve jobs - 72%
Preserve the 4% raise - 28%

5. Of all the participants on the call, how many were members of the CTU when we last went on strike in 1987?
If you were a member on strike in 1987 - 15% of callers

6. How many on the line have been teaching 10 years or less?
If you have taught in CPS for less than 10 years - 38%
If you have taught in CPS for more than 11 years - 62%

One of the most surprising answers from our surveys was the overwhelming amount of members that would forego their 4% pay raise this year to protect the jobs of their fellow members.

jd

CORE victory

The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) scored a decisive victory in the Chicago Teachers Union run-off yesterday (6/11). According the final vote count, CORE won almost 60 percent of the vote.

Separately, or maybe not, CPS CEO Ron Huberman has called a special Board of Education meeting for Tuesday (6/15) to give him the authority to raise class size to 35 students; to fire tenured and probationary teachers who are displaced by as a result of "cost-saving measures" (including raising the class-size limit); and borrow up to $800 million to deal with the CPS budget crisis. (See "Huberman Calls Emergency Board Meeting")

CORE has achieved what it set out what to do, and congratulations. It caught the car. Now what?

jd

New core standards

Some links regarding the new national "common core standards":

New York Times article: "States Receive a Reading List: New Standards for Education" (6/2/10)

The Common Core Standards

The Math Common Core Standards

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and other math teacher organizations support the math standards.

Ron Huberman signed a letter along with heads of many other school districts supporting the core standards and urging their adoption.

ISBE also supports the core standards. And since adoption of the core standards will add points to a state's Race to the Top application (see the NYT article), it is most likely just a matter of weeks before Illinois formalizes their adoption.

jd

A historic election

It sounds like hyperbole but it isn't. The run-off election for the Chicago Teachers Union leadership, scheduled for June 11 is A Big Deal. Not just for Chicago teachers, but nationally. If the CORE caucus can unite the other caucuses that challenged the current leadership in the first-round voting last month, and gain the leadership of the CTU, it will signal several things:

1. Locally, it should provide a much-needed counter-force to the policies of CPS CEO Ron Huberman -- it'a amazing how much destruction he has wrought in CPS in one year. The current union leadership has been fiddling.

2. It will be a significant challenge to Mayor Daley's control of Chicago education, and the failed policies he has pushed on CPS for the past 15 years.

3. It will represent an important victory for grass roots control of education and for the institution of public education, at a time when the idea of "public" in "public education" is under attack.

4. It signals resistance, and significant resistance at that, to the current attacks on public education. As the the largest union in the historic labor capital of the U.S., and because the CTU represents teachers in the third largest school system in the country, a CORE victory can be a rallying point for teachers across the country.

5. It will represent a blatant rejection of the privatization of public education and the general attack on teachers. The fact that the point man on this push, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan test-drove many of his policies here in Chicago, just adds to the significance.

6. An invigorated CTU can provide a national voice in favor of child- and community-centered education. There is an alternative to defunding public schools, skimming by charters, turning children into testing machines, turning teachers into room monitors, management by bogus numbers, etc.

7. It will be a victory for democratic unionism, which may help invigorate the labor movement as a whole.

That's what comes to mind. Like I said, A Big Deal.

jd