Chicago Hypocrisy on Segregation

["George N. Schmidt" <Csubstance@AOL.COM>]

December 3, 2000

Hello Colleagues:

Before you read the following story about the crucifixion of one elementary
school principal in Chicago for "segregating" classrooms at his school,
remember the following:

First, the principal originally divided the classes up by Iowa test reading
scores and wound up with black kids in the "lower" track and white ones in
the "upper" track.

Second, Paul Vallas, who is quoted in the following article severely
criticizing the principal, oversees the most segregated school system in the
United States.

As I reported in the September Substance...

"In September 1995, when Daley's former budget director (Paul Vallas) and
former chief of staff (Gery Chico) took over the school system, the city had
200 public schools that were 100 percent black and an additional 38 schools
that were betwen 90 percent and 98.9 percent black.

"By September 1999, after Daley's former budget director (Paul Vallas) and
former chief of staff (Gery Chico) had been in power for four years, the
number of all-black schools in Chicago had increased to 208, while an
additional 61 schools were between 90 and 98.9 percent black."

In my opinion, the following article is an example of the kind of
disinformation that characterizes Chicago's mass media. Instead of noting the
facts above (which I reported extensively in Substance and which have
received widespread national publicity), the Chicago Sun-Times, which has a
daily circulation of nearly 500,000, follows the party line from Chicago's
City Hall and scapegoats one principal who made the mistake (in one of
Chicago's few non-segregated elementary schools) of grouping kids according
to the test scores that result from the tests Vallas and Daley use.

By the way, the reporters for Chicago's two major daily newspapers (the
Sun-Times and Tribune) read Substance every month. When they spin the news
like this, it's not an accident but a question of policy.

Anyone who wants further information from Substance can reach me at...

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance
5132 W. Berteau
Chicago, IL 60641
773-725-7502

The following article appears on page one of today's Chicago Sun-Times:

Beverly principal is out

December 3, 2000
BY ROSALIND ROSSI AND DAVE NEWBART STAFF REPORTERS
A Chicago public school principal who created two racially polarized
classrooms in a Beverly school that is almost evenly divided between white
and black students has been reassigned to a new post.
Kevin J. McCarthy "blundered" when he made administrative decisions that
effectively segregated seventh-grade students into two classrooms--one room
for mostly African-American students and another for mostly white students,
schools chief Paul Vallas said.
However, for McCarthy, the action was "the last straw in a series of bad
judgments," Vallas said. McCarthy asked for reassignment to the School
Board's central office Thursday, faced with what Vallas called "heavy
artillery" fire from both Vallas and the Clissold School local school council.
"My position was he should go, and he agreed, and the council was
supportive," Vallas said.
Clissold students carried home letters to their parents Friday saying
McCarthy had been reassigned, while McCarthy spent the day at the central
office. Within 10 days, the school council is expected to replace him with an
interim principal who will fill the last three years of McCarthy's four-year
contract.
McCarthy, a veteran of more than 25 years in the Chicago Public Schools,
could not be reached for comment.
Clissold, at 2350 W. 110th Pl., is in an integrated South Side neighborhood
that is home to everyone from police officers and firefighters to lawyers and
judges.
For years, Clissold has prided itself on its racial diversity and almost even
balance between blacks and whites. The school is 49 percent black, 46 percent
white and 3 percent Hispanic. It also operates the only Montessori magnet
program in the system, serving students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
But it was McCarthy's assignment of seventh- and eighth-graders that drew
parental confusion and ire this fall. The National Association of Elementary
School Principals has warned that classroom assignment can be a political
minefield requiring "careful planning" and "kid-glove handling."
McCarthy told officials he used reading scores to divide students by
classrooms, but he gave two different explanations of precisely how they were
divided, Vallas said. The arrangement left two of three seventh-grade
classrooms imbalanced, with mostly blacks in one and mostly whites in
another, Vallas said.
Then, Vallas said, McCarthy further aggravated the imbalance after the school
year began by "caving in" to six parents who asked to have their seventh- and
eighth-graders reassigned.
Some parents asked for transfers because they thought their kids were in the
"B" classroom when they wanted them in the "A" classroom, Vallas said. That
view was supported by a 13-year-old white student who told a reporter Friday
that his parents asked for his transfer to the mostly white classroom because
"my reading score was like everyone else's" in that room.
School council president Joseph Balasa said some white parents asked for
transfers because they wanted a different teacher. One 13-year-old white
student agreed Friday, saying his mother requested his transfer into the
mostly white classroom because "she thought it [had] a better teacher."
"It wasn't anything to do with, `Get me out of a mostly black classroom,' "
Balasa said. "They wanted to make sure they got a certain teacher. The
principal acquiesced. While he solved two or three problems, he created
another."
Afterward, some parents charged that the racial balance that had greeted
their children for years had evaporated. Vallas said three parents, both
black and white, complained to him personally.
"It bothered us immensely," said Tom Bonen, a white parent whose child was in
the mostly black seventh-grade classroom but did not ask to be moved. "One of
the reasons we live in Chicago, in our neighborhood . . . is because of the
opportunities for kids to thrive in a real-world setting. And we were
disappointed when we found out about the arbitrary reassignment of children
within our son's class."
School council members asked School Board officials to step in, and they
found three racially imbalanced classrooms, including two out of compliance
with board guidelines that each classroom in a school be within 20 percentage
points of the racial makeup of each grade within that school, board memos
show.
One seventh-grade classroom was 75 percent black and another was 71 percent
white, even though the seventh-grade overall was 39 percent black, records
show. One eighth-grade classroom was 94 percent black, even though Clissold's
eighth-grade overall was 60 percent black.
McCarthy rearranged the eighth-grade room, but board officials visited the
school Nov. 1 and took the unusual step of holding a lottery to rearrange the
balance in the other two. Four white students and one black were reassigned.
An African-American parent, Stewart Cunningham, said Friday that McCarthy
"treated some kids differently" and "won't talk to black parents.
"It was time for him to go."
However, Vallas said both black and white parents had complained that
McCarthy meted out discipline unevenly.
In addition, according to a board memo, McCarthy was accused of being
"extremely rude" to parents, of suggesting "bad behavior is all that some
[students] are capable of," of avoiding disciplinary action against teachers,
of letting complaints escalate by taking "inordinate time" to respond to
them, and of being "less than . . . honest" about incidents at the school.
In June, said School Board attorney Marilyn Johnson, McCarthy received a
warning resolution for not properly reporting that a teacher admitted she had
directed a child to "elbow" another student "every time he incorrectly
answered a math problem." And he was accused of failing to complete teacher
evaluations--a key educational responsibility of principals.
The seventh-grade fiasco, Balasa said, resulted when McCarthy "put a plan in
place, and the plan didn't work, and he didn't move quickly enough to fix it,
and then it was misinterpreted.
"This man isn't a racist," he said. He just made "a human error."
The local school council agreed to let Vallas give it the names of three
candidates to replace McCarthy on an interim basis for the remainder of his
contract, Balasa said.
"For the best interests of Clissold, the right decision was made," Balasa
said. "What we have to do now is begin to recover."

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