A new Labor Beat video out in January 2012 adds to the growing list of videos that teachers, parents, students and supporters of real public schools can draw on to educate themselves, their colleagues, and their neighbors about the attacks on public education in Chicago (attacks which have been exported around the USA since Arne Duncan became U.S. Secretary of Education by appointment of the President in January 2009).
Since he appointed Chicago's Arne Duncan to be U.S. Secretary of Education in January 2009, President Barack Obama has supported every attack on the nation's urban public schools and the Duncan Education Department's "Race to the Top" program, which is aimed at privatizing as many public schools — through anti-union charter schools — in the nation's urban areas as possible. Above, Obama and Duncan during the back-to-school media event in Minneapolis in September 2009. Every September, Duncan tours a part of the country promoting the attacks on teacher unions and real public schools and their replacement with false 'market based choice', usually via charter schools.
This video begins with Professor of Education Pauline Lipman (University of Illinois-Chicago) briefly recapping the plans hatched a decade ago in Chicago to replace public schools with private charter schools. Then Chicago Public Schools head Arne Duncan implemented those plans (Renaissance 2010) so obediently that President Obama picked him to do the same thing to every school system in the country.
So Chicago's growing uprising against these deepening attacks against public education has national importance. Here is a battalion of voices from the communities and the teachers union, all exposing the constantly changing, Kafkaesque rules for evaluating school turn-arounds and closings. The counter-attack from the working people in the city is energized and spreading, and is on a collision course with the 1% who want to take away their children's futures. Includes comments from Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, teachers and parents from targeted school communities. Length - 24:40.
No sooner was former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (above left) inaugurated Mayor of Chicago in May 2011 than he began an orchestrated public attack on the city's unionized public schools and the promotion of privatized and anti-union charter schools as their replacement. Above, Emanuel with President Barack Obama at a November 20, 2011, election rally promoting Obama's presidential run in Iowa. Because of Obama's support for Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel, and the attacks on real public schools, he has lost the support of the majority of the public school teachers who helped elect him in 2008. At the time of the Democratic Convention in August 2008, the largest single group of Obama delegates were public school teachers. In 2012, thanks to the policies of Obama aides like Duncan and Emanuel, the majority of the nation's public school teachers are alienated from or hostile to Obama.
What you can do:
* Download this comprehensive list of actions your school community can take.
* Attend a community hearing on school closings. Download the list of dates here.
Did you know...
* Tim Cawley, until his recent appointment as CPS Chief Administrative Officer, was a managing director of the Academy of Urban School Leadership (AUSL), the organization the Board wants to take over Turnaround schools?
* Many of the Board members donate tens of thousands of dollars to political organizations?
* Only one Board member has classroom experience?
For more details about the background of the members of the Board of education, as well as the history of AUSL and CPS Turnarounds, download this research briefproduced by the CTU Quest Center.
The Quest Center has also compiled this table on teacher demographics at schools slated for "action" as well as this map showing the relationship between school actions and forclosures and this map that shows the relationship between school actions and African American population.
Further Reading:
- Quest Center information on school closings and turnarounds
- CTU Statement on Turnarounds
- CTU Statement on 2012 school closings
- From the New York Times: "Why School Choice Fails"
What you can do:
- Attend the unified actions in support of our schools.
- Call the State Representatives and Sentators who have schools slated for turnaround or closure in their districts. You can download the list with their contact information with this link.
Chicago Teachers Union
CROSS POSTED @ http://www.substancenews.net/...
More Reading Regarding Opposition to Crony Corporate Education Politics in Chicago
- DAY #2 CHICAGO: Parents and Teachers Takeover City Hall
- UPDATE CHICAGO: Parents and Teachers Takeover City Hall
- Chicago 'Juking' the Stats
- Education Reform: Where's the Debate?
- One Public School's Death By A Thousand Cuts
- Taking It to the Next Level With CPS and AUSL
- Another CPS Miracle?
- What real education reform looks like
- Opposition to Marquette Plan
- Rahm's Bureaucrats Fluent in Ptydepe
- You pray at the altar of greed!
- No More Peons, Where is Boss Emanuel
- Rahm's 'Rent-A-Protest' Fails
- Rahm's Rent-A-Protest pickets outside CPS
- Chicago Public Schools sponsor Christian breakfast to promote CPS push for longer school day
- Students As Collateral Damage? A Preliminary Study of Renaissance 2010 School Closings In The Midsouth
- School Reform Chicago Style
- Bloody Days in Chicago