Chicago -- Small Schools and Big Scams

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

2/4/00

This is in answer to the question by Pete (and others) about the people who
are sent in to help "failing schools."

In Chicago the SWAT teams are called "external partners." At best, they are
irrelevant wanderers. At worst, they are teacher bashers and ideologues
pushing a political line while collecting political patronage. One of the
interesting things about the Daley administration is that they figured out
how to buy the services, and the support, of people across the spectrum, from
the "left" to the unions and all the way to the far right.

Bowen High School, where I taught (and was union delegate, security
coordinator, and other things) from 1993 until my suspension without pay in
early 1999, was typical of the kinds of schools that got put on "academic
probation." The school is located in the South Chicago neighborhood, which
was the victim of disinvestment from the steel industry. The area was in an
economic recession for the better part of two decades, as steel mills from
Wisconsin Steel to the USS South Works plants were closed. By the early
1990s, Bowen has about 1,400 students, half of whom were African-American and
half of whom were Mexican American (often, by the way, third or fourth
generation). Nearly 90 percent of the kids came from poverty level homes,
often working poor (very little welfare poor).

The Chicago "standard" against which schools were measured was the TAP test,
the high school equivalent of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. In 1996, the
school system announced that schools with less than 15 percent of the
students reading (and doing math) "at or above the national average" would be
put on "Academic Probation." Since more than 90 percent of our kids entered
Bowen (from our feeder elementary schools) reading well below the 50th
percentile, we naturally went on probation. Schools on probation had to jump
through additional hoops, including having an "external partner" and a
"probation manager."

Our "external partner" at Bowen High School was from the famous "Small
Schools Network" at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The people they
sent (several different ones during the time I was there) had little or no
classroom experience. Their activities ranged from irrelevant to intrusive
when it came to discussing things like classroom instruction with people. On
a couple of occasions, they sent out their heavyweights (Mike Klonsky and
Bill Ayers), who were equally irrelevant, albeit more arrogant (and a bit
more polished).

Bowen High School's improvements on the tests that determined "probation" in
Chicago had nothing to do with the costly (more than $200,000 over the first
three years) work of the "Small Schools Network."

In the opinion of most teachers, our "external partners" were pesky and
underfoot. At worst, they were pushing for nonsense.

And, at the end of the 1997-98 school year, they tried to push for the
elimination of some teachers, but failed. By that time, Ayers was reportedly
into proving how serious they could be by forcing principals for fire some
teachers. Not once did they criticize the "standard" that had been set or
mention the economic and social problems of the community (including a
terrible gang problem which I was partly responsible for keeping under
control).

The "Small Schools Network" is one of the many recipients of political
patronage from the Chicago Board of Education (at that time called the
"Chicago School Reform Board of Trustees"). In 1998-99 alone, they received
more than $200,000 from the school board for these activities. During that
same school year (1998 - 1999), the total spent on "external partners" was
almost $5 million, by my count. Most of it was a waste of money and
undermined teacher morale. Although the school board refuses to give the
exact amount spent on "external partners" since 1996, I believe it has
exceeded $25 million by this year.

It is important to note that these programs purchase a lot of political
loyalty from the recipients. One of the funniest things in Chicago is
watching some of the ensemble talk shows, like the "Chicago Tonight" show on
our local public broadcasting station (Channel 11). Often, they will invite a
representative of the school board and three others, supposedly
"independent." It usually turns out that one or two of the "independent"
people are dependent on political and professorial patronage. In effect, you
have the school board president and two or three of his employees discussing
policies. On one show a few months back, Mike Klonsky (who has never taught
in an inner city public school classroom) was the "teacher" voice. Nobody
mentioned that Klonsky, in effect, worked for School Board President Gery
Chico, who was also on the show.

You can't underestimate the importance of those kinds of Orwellean moments.
As a result, most of the organizing against things like the "external
partner" hypocrisy has to be underground.

As in North Carolina, most teachers in Chicago are afraid to talk. (One of
the reasons Chicago's leaders sued me for $1 million and suspended me without
pay was to send a "chilling effect" through the ranks.) Like North Carolina,
Chicago is a right to work state (albeit unofficially). Only here we have a
company union to make things worse -- the Chicago Teachers Union, Local 1 of
the American Federation of Teachers. At this point in history, the Chicago
Teachers Union is cravenly subordinate to Mayor Richard M. Daley's City Hall
political machine and to Paul Vallas's bureaucracy in the school system. One
of the funniest examples of this is in the pages of the "Chicago Educator" a
monthly tabloid put out by the school board. Most of the "Chicago Educator"
consists of columns by local school bureaucrats. (The January 2000 issue, for
example, features 23 different bureaucratic chiefs, ranging from the Chief
Executive Officer [CEO) and the Chief Education Officer (CEO?) to the Chief
Operating Officer and the Chief Accountability Officer. Generally, the union
chief gets five or six inches on page ten or twelve, somewhere between the
Chief of Specialized Services and the Chief of School and Community Relations.

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

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