and his track record in Chicago. It ain 't pretty.
One of the best publications anywhere on education is the monthly Rethinking Schools, run out of Milwaukee by educators who know about what they write, and have the best interest of students as their focus. The current issue, the contents of which are available online (although you could be nice and consider subscribing or buying one of the books they have published) has as its lead article a piece entitled Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality? The authors include a current Chicago high school teacher, an education activist, and a community organizer (and from Chicago! hmmm) who know whereof they write.
Please come below the fold for a brief look at this article, and some additional commentary by this writer/teacher/observer/bloviator (me).
In bringing this to the attention of a wider progressive blogging audience, I do so because an increasing number of people concerned about education are becoming ever more worried about the direction Duncan seems to be taking national education policy. Scholar Diane Ravitch, who has become convinced that NCLB is a disaster, has described Duncan as "Maggie Spellings in drag," seeing very little difference between the policies pushed by Bush's last education secretary (and the person running education policy from inside the WH while Rod Paige served as SecEd) and Obama's choice. Others are saying that they told us so. I heard extensive warnings from people on the ground in Chicago about what to expect from Duncan. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Now?
Let's turn to the article. The authors note that in their ongoing examination of Chicago public schools, it is less about Duncan than it is the structure of the system under mayoral control. They write
...Chicago school policy has not really been set by Duncan—Chicago's education agenda is bigger than him and is about more than schools. Of course, he brought to the job his own strengths and weaknesses, and undoubtedly his own perspectives. We do not argue with those who claim that there have been some constructive steps while Duncan was CEO of Chicago's schools. We recognize that his administration has responded to some initiatives that have emerged from the community and been organized by grassroots organizations. These include, for example, support for the state-funded Grow Your Own Teachers program, designed to recruit community members to be credentialed in order to teach in local schools and a program to help 8th graders make a smoother transition to high school. However, the larger agenda has been corporate and privatizing.
But Chicago Public Schools (CPS) policies are not really about Duncan or his successor. The biggest threat to finally achieving equitable and quality education in Chicago's low-income African American and Latino/a schools is not the individual who carries out the policy but a system of mayoral control and corporate power that locks out democracy. The impact of those policies includes thousands of children displaced by school closings, spiked violence as they transferred to other schools, and the deterioration of public education in many neighborhoods into a crisis situation.
The issue of mayoral control is key, especially given that Duncan has argued for more it as the way to improve schools. Ravitch addressed this in a recent op ed about which I diaried here
The authors identify
Two powerful, interconnected forces drive education policy in the city: 1) Mayor Daley, who was given official authority over CPS by the Illinois State Legislature in 1995 and who appoints the CEO and the Board of Education, and 2) powerful financial and corporate interests, particularly the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago whose reports and direct intervention shape current policy.
And they note
As in other U.S. cities, Chicago has also handed over public services (public housing, schools, public infrastructure) to the market and privatized them, and public education has been in the forefront. Although not the architect, Duncan has shown himself to be the central messenger, manager, and staunch defender of corporate involvement in, and privatization of, public schools, closing schools in low-income neighborhoods of color with little community input, limiting local democratic control, undermining the teachers union, and promoting competitive merit pay for teachers.
Let's review what I just quoted
privatizing public services
closing schools in low-income neighborhoods with little community imput
undermining teachers unions
promoting competitive merit pay
Now, had such an approach been shown to improve the quality of education for students, there might be an argument for someone intimately involved in such an approach (a) being given charge of our national educational policy and (b) attempting to take the nation in the same direction as Chicago. And yet, as Ravitch noted in the aforementioned op ed, independent assessment by the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows Chicago performing worse than other large districts that have not gone to mayoral control, and even analyzing performance on Illinois tests does not demonstrate meaningful improvement - a fact not readily available to ordinary people because the newspapers in Chicago do not seriously examine the claims put forth by Chicago Public Schools and the Mayor's office, because the school system has played games to hide the lack of improvement, and because - sadly - most of those most impacted have been children of color in poorer neighborhoods that lack meaningful political voice.
On this last point, there were Local School Councils that have now been cut out by the approach taken under mayoral control. Allow me to quote just one paragraph from that section of the article:
Duncan publicly stated in April 2007 that he wanted to break the "monopoly" of the LSCs, and in October 2007, Board of Education president Rufus Williams, in a speech to the City Club of Chicago—a major grouping of business people—likened LSCs running schools to having a chain of hotels being run by "those who sleep in the hotels." Nor is this attitude merely rhetorical. Until 2007, when public scrutiny exposed them, Duncan's office overseeing LSCs had a staff of 7 facilitators to train and develop LSCs at nearly 600 schools. This leaves LSCs operating at a structural deficit—set up to fail.
Is it a "monopoly" to allow people in local communities to have some voice in the schools educating their children? Is it wrong that they want to advocate for keeping neighborhood schools with which they can have some connection?
I am not going to go through the entire article. I really do want you to read it. I will note the following points
- the schools that replaced the neighborhood schools are overwhelmingly charter schools whose performance has not been demonstrated - even by the flawed use of tests upon which CPS relies - to be superior to the schools they replaced. Only 50% of the teachers in these "Renaissance" schools need to be certified (which of course is not the standard applied by NCLB for ordinary public schools, where all teachers are supposed to be "Highly Qualified").
- Those who teach at the replacement charter schools are BARRED from being members of the union - an action taken without regard to the lack of evidence that unionization of teachers has anything meaningful to do with student performance (there are good and bad union teachers, there are good and bad non-union teachers, but without a union teachers are vulnerable to bullying and dismissal without appropriate cause)
- The curriculum has been significantly narrowed. Bilingual education and culturally relevant material has been eliminated in favor of narrow preparation for the high stakes tests used to assess performance. I would note that use of things like Socratic method - a regular part of my own teaching approach - and teaching students to raise questions are not encouraged by this approach.
- There has been increasing militarization of the schools. Duncan has been a strong proponent of JROTC programs, and Chicago has the largest such program in the nation. Duncan
was quoted in the Nov. 2, 2007, issue of USA Today saying: "These are positive learning environments. I love the sense of leadership. I love the sense of discipline."
One important criticism of NCLB was the mandate to force parents to opt out of letting the information on their children being made available to military recruiters. We have seen an increasing situation where economic hardship has offered little choice to many children of poorer families than to go into the military. The narrowing of the curriculum will not prepare many students in such environments for college or other employment. Thus some raise real questions on the degree of militarization, especially since for many children there is little choice of an alternative school setting.
There is much more in the article. The authors note that
while we fight hard against educational privatization as well as displacement, we have to collectively develop a positive alternative, a strong and unifying vision of what education should be and a program that makes it real.
They write in their concluding paragraph that
it will take a social movement to push this agenda, no matter who is in the White House and Office of Secretary of Education. Our experiences and observations tell us that genuine partnerships between educators and engaged communities, and links between community wisdom and academic knowledge, can contribute to this social movement. We cannot build toward education for social justice without real partnerships in which teachers understand that their interests and those of their students' neighborhoods are fundamentally aligned and that they need to express real solidarity with the ongoing struggles of those communities. This is needed not only to defend but also to transform public education in the real interests of all students, families, and their communities.
the real interests of all students, families, and their communities
Perhaps we need to involve those communities in the discussions about their desires - for community as well as individual students. The vision should not merely be that imposed by perhaps well-meaning individuals who think they know what is best. This is an all too common approach in the making of educational policy. As a professional teacher I have often noted how infrequently the voices of people like me are part of the official dialog from which educational policy is shaped. I do not think ours should be the only voices, but they should not be excluded.
Nor should the voices of those in the communities, the parents, perhaps even the students.
I wrote above about "perhaps well-meaning individuals" - but there are others with an agenda that is different - such as the deliberate undermining of public schools as an institution, of teachers' unions as a powerful collective voice of millions. Some seek merely to profit at their benefit, either immediately from services to and the running of schools, or long-term by the production of a compliant and somewhat captive workforce that has not been empowered to other employment nor to be able to critically question and oppose the political, social and economic agendae being pushed by certain narrow elites.
All of what I have written in the last paragraph is visible with respect to schools in Chicago. Like the Texas of George Bush leading to the imposition of Rod Paige of Houston as SecEd, despite the less than stellar record of public education in Texas in general and Houston in particular, the raising of Arne Duncan to the same position despite the lack of real success in Chicago during his tenure cannot help but lead thoughtful people to be somewhat skeptical when what he proposes is similar to what failed to work in Chicago.
I do not live nor teach in Chicago. I am in constant contact with those who are, who were warning about Duncan. The article which inspired this diary is written by three people who know all too well what happened on Duncan's watch. I think the article should lead to some pause, to real concern about the direction we now see Duncan attempting to take national education policy.
Read the article. It wont take that long. Then - tell me what you think in the comments.
Peace.