Where Would You Put Your Charter School?

If you were a charter chain operator or one of the boutique charter people looking to get a taxpayer-funded franchise in Illinois, where would you go right now? I'll tell you where I would go if I didn't have connections to the Emanuel administration in Chicago.

I'd go to Glen Ellyn, Wheaton, Lombard, Downers Grove, Crystal Lake, and Pekin, and I'd go quickly. I'd go based on this recent vote in the House.

That's the vote on HB 3754, which coasted out of committee and is picking up co-sponsors like a giant democracy magnet.

The issue seems to be the concept of home rule--- that is to say, does a locally elected school board have any say about the schools in its district or not? Currently, the answer is no. If a charter operator wants to insert a charter, all he or she needs to do is get it through the unelected state charter commission, which thus far has only tested the waters in areas where the everyday people don't have much political power over their schools.

Here's where all the charters are in Illinois at the moment. 

Seriously, I'd make a beeline for Glen Ellyn. I'm not saying Glen Ellyn doesn't like its schools; I'm sure the elected people out there love their schools. I'm sure these elected people love them, and these elected people love them, as well as these elected people, and probably the overwhelming majority who decided to live in these communities so that they could send their children to the many schools in these districts.

There's a democratic process in place for public education in these communities. You can run for school board, make your case, and let the voters ratify your ideas at the ballot box.

A charter operator can basically bypass this process, in Illinois, if he or she doesn't get the desired vote. If the elected people decide not to fund your dream school, you can appeal to the appointed state commission, and those people can decide to insert your school into any school district at an exaggerated cost to the pre-exiting public schools. Which of course impacts the programming at those schools. Every time a charter gets added to a district, the cost comes out of the programming at the schools already running. It's how "choice" becomes a decision that you actually make for other people.

Sandra Pihos, Michael Unes, and Barbara Wheeler have indicated, with their recent votes, that there's a green light, as far as they're concerned, for the appointed state commission to overrule any of the local people in the school districts they represent. Usually home rule is an important concept to Republicans, but in these three districts, home rule is not an operative concept. It's more important to have charter schools no matter what locally elected people say.

That's my interpretation of the committee vote, and I think it's accurate. I think it's actually pretty fair to say that the state charter commission would get no political pushback from Pihos, Unes, or Wheeler, if the commission decided to insert an UNO school, or a Gulen school, or Noble Street, or any other charter school anywhere in these legislative districts. Can you imagine the hypocrisy if they did interfere? There's no way they would lift a finger to fight for their home school districts, not after that committee vote.

If Sandra Pihos, for example, tried to push back against a commission-authorized charter school in her district, it would only confirm that the Republican position on charter schools is that they're good for other people's children.

So I'd do it. I'd go to Glen Ellyn, make my best case before the elected people, and then just hand it over to the state while the commission still exists. Really, any of the school districts in Legislative Districts 48, 91, and 64. Choice trumps home rule in these areas. Act fast.

Of course you could also just run for school board in these committees and shape the schools according to your vision, but that's so ten years ago!

I'm being serious. This guy  in particular should go to Glen Ellyn immediately and make his case, and if he's not persuasive, he should go to the commission. It would all be very clarifying for those of us looking at the issue.

How I Vote Now, 2014 Primary

I've been filming my secret ballot for a few years now. Probably a bad idea, but it's a habit now. I took a Democratic ballot; the idea of playing three-dimensional chess in the Republican ballot was too depressing. These are just the highlights; I left out the water commissioners. And the judges. On the first page of the ballot, I counted three people who've received some kind of award from the Gulen Movement.

The only reason I participated in this primary was to vote against Paul Vallas, which I did for America.

This crowding out of the ballot questions---- to keep the elected school board matter off the ballot--- it's voter suppression, as I've said before. It's Rahm Emanuel deciding what you get to vote for and what you don't.

Music from Jamendo. I wish I had more to film, but we're living in strange times.

The Gulen Money Train

Just in case you missed it, the Turkish parliament has voted to close down the Gulen schools in Turkey. The schools, which are private, for-profit cram schools, are evidently a main revenue artery for the Movement.

Fortunately for the Movement, the American branch is doing fine; the government here even pays for the schools and there's very little oversight. All you have to do is contract out the management of your public charter school to a private management firm, and shazam, the cash goes completely dark.  It's a money train.

Think of it as your little way of financing the global agenda of the Gulen Movement and taking a stand in the internal strife of a land far away.

Sharon Higgins recently reported over on Diane Ravitch's blog about the current status of the Gulen schools here in the States.

The Turkish prime minister had some choice words about the Movement:

"They have sucked like leeches. Leeches are more virtuous: leeches suck dirty blood, while they suck clean blood and hold sessions cursing me, my wife, my children, my administration."

Sounds like it's going to end well, doesn't it?  Then I also saw the Turkish justice minister making some coy remarks about going after Gulen through extradition, which they're not currently doing, but they're certainly leaving the door open to it:

“However, there are some assessments in favor of a search through a Red Notice because of illegalities, immoralities and some actions that are crimes in our law, which have all erupted within the framework of ongoing debates in Turkey. There is nothing we can do as the Justice Ministry within the framework of these assessments because the ministry has no such authority. This is entirely something which can happen within the content of an investigation,” he said.

The main thing I've learned about Turkish politics in the past year is that there's going to be an investigation sooner or later. The Gulenists appear to have most of the wiretaps, but the prime minister, as Frank Underwood would say, has the men with guns.  It's a shame Mario Puzo died before he got a chance to write about these guys.

I've got my fingers crossed for the Turkish people. When you see them out in the streets by the tens of thousands, protesting the lurching authoritarianism of the state, and getting pepper-sprayed and water-cannoned and rubber-bulleted, and real-bulleted, it's pretty impressive. 60% of the people in Turkey have a negative view of the Movement. And yet here we are, funding it.

 Two of the Gulen-linked schools in Chicago (Horizon Science Charter School Academy – McKinley Park and Horizon Science Charter School Academy - Belmont) were approved by the Illinois State Charter Commission, the doomed, unelected board that can decide how public education dollars can be funneled into private hands.

In Turkey, the Gulen Movement is viewed widely as a "parallel state," so it seems sort of fitting that part of their success here in Illinois is through a parallel school board, comprised of people who never had to bother running for office.

Good Job On The Charter Commission Bill, Folks

Dang, we got a lot of hits today, thanks to the help of my grizzled blogger friend and over in Logan Square.* It looks like a bunch of people filled out witness slips.

I was fixing computers all day, so I didn't have a moment to listen to the testimony. Did you? I think it was on the General Assembly's audio feed. 

In any event, things are good. According to Wendy Katten, whose silent auction last night was for a moment the progressive capital of the western hemisphere, and who had some interesting auction items as well---

Surprising silent auction item at tonight's @ILRaiseYourHand winter bash: A fly fishing weekend with Bruce Rauner? pic.twitter.com/hrkQF4x5Hc
— Matt Farmer (@mifarmer) March 5, 2014

the charter commission bill seems to have passed out of committee. Yay!

Whatever the next step is, I'll try to keep you posted. This is a baby step, but it's a huge baby step. It's like a baby step for some monstrously large baby that you would be afraid of. Can you imagine this bill passing out of committee back in the early days of the privatization frenzy?

All of this is kudos to John Laesch, whose organization is spearheading a number of excellent take-back-the-schools bills.  And Linda Chapa LaVia, with whom I have disagreed but for whom I have great respect.

Well done, all. It may end up that Stand For Children dollars win the day in Speaker Madigan's House, but this bill's progress is a good, good thing.

And I apologize for calling Fred grizzled. 
* I see that the great Mike Klonsky also posted the Red Alert, which clearly put us over the top. And Mike is also grizzled, for the record.


NB: Here's the year-in-review video from last night's Raise Your Hand fundraiser. Enjoy!








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Red Alert: You Need To Do Two Things To Fight The Charter Commission

I'm declaring a red alert.  Keep calm and call Springfield.

HB3754, which is Linda Chapa LaVia's bill to dissolve the ALEC-inspired state charter school commission, among other things, has a hearing tomorrow (Wednesday, March 5) at 8:30 AM in Springfield.

I see the bill has picked up quite a few co-sponsors, which is good. It's unfortunate, in my opinion, that Toni Berrios has signed on; it appears that she's scrambling here at the 11th hour to look like the kind of legislator that Will Guzzardi actually will be, God willing. She's dreadful, but a vote's a vote.

Still, look at all these sponsors.

It's hard to tell from the summary that this bill ixnays the state commission, but when you look at the text, that's exactly what it does. 

It's an excellent first step in the restoration of democracy, as it pertains to public education, here in Illinois.

But it needs help. The only people who can attend an 8:30 AM meeting in Springfield on a weekday with short notice are the type of people paid by Stand For Children, or DFER, or INCS, or whatever other mysteriously funded groups are lurking about. Your typical parents of typical kids, and your typical school districts that have been sandbagged by these charter operators are not going to send people to testify because they're busy running school districts.

You have to do a witness slip. It takes ten minutes. And you have to tell 500 of your friends to do the same thing, and you have to do it right now because the hearing will be over before you even remember that it started.  If you can't figure out how to do a witness slip, here's how.





Ok, fine. You're now on the record with your witness slip. All the slips are sort of tallied up by the people whose job it is to tally them up, and the committee members can find out how many people chimed in on the matter.  Because the bill is so important, you might as well pick 2 or 3 members of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, and give them a ring after 8:00 AM on Wednesday, and say to the secretary that you are calling in favor of HB 3754. Then at least email your own representative to tell him or her that you've weighed in on something important to you.

Here are the members of that committee. Pick one or two and call their office, and leave a message. And then contact your own representative and leave a message. I myself will probably call up one of the Republican members and talk about taxation without representation, which is a topic that might ring a bell. These Republicans represent areas where people love their schools; it may never have occurred to them that a group of ed reform zealots has actually hijacked democratic access to public school governance.

So that's that. Tell your friends. There was a time when I would check in with the union government relations people to see what they're doing, but that time has come and gone. We're on our own.

Update: when I actually did my own witness slip, it made me fill in the firm/title fields. I just put "private citizen" in both those fields. It's a weird question for the form. What, you have to indicate your employer and job title to weigh in on a public matter in Illinois? 

Update 2: upon reflection, I realize I was wrongly harsh about the comment I made about the Dashboard. It's not terribly hard to use, and it's organized intelligently. It's certainly better than any database I've designed, and it works. Whoever designed it is good at what she/he does.

The Polls Are Open...

... in the most depressing election season of my life.

Early voting is open. In spite of whatever the Toni Berrios campaign may or may not want you to believe, you may vote early in any of these locations.  I usually vote over at the Budlong Woods branch library.

I have no idea which ballot I'm going to pull. In Illinois, in the primary, you can ask for a Republican ballot, a Democratic ballot, or a nonpartisan ballot. Then you can make your little strategic choices based on what's on the ballot. If you choose the nonpartisan ballot, you only get to vote on the three nonbinding ballot questions. At least I think they're nonbinding.

I always feel a little bit weird asking for a Republican ballot, on those occasions when I have done so.

The only thing I know for certain is that I personally cannot vote for Pat Quinn in the Democratic primary because the wording of the Constitution is so clear, and the Governor has elected to violate it so glibly. Then there's Paul Vallas. Good lord.  I'm too old to continue voting for charlatans.

This year, I only feel strongly about the race is over in the 39th legislative district, currently held by the appalling candidate that I have written about before. However, I live up in Rogers Park, and my own legislative primary is uncontested; the legislative seat is held by the capable Kelly Cassidy, with whom I don't always agree, but who is always available to discuss, listen, and debate.

I'm writing this post to point out, as Fred Klonsky has on so many occasions, that in Chicago we get to vote for the water commissioners, but not the school board.  For example, here are the candidates running in the Democratic primary for water commissioner.

There are no candidates for school board because the residents of Chicago aren't entitled to that kind of franchise. The can't handle it, apparently. All the other school districts in Illinois can handle it, but Chicagoans can't handle it. I wonder what it is about the majority of people in Chicago that lawmakers find so incompetent and frightening...

If you don't have time to research the candidates for water commissioner, you're basically up a tree, as far as I can tell. I used to rely on the IVI-IPO endorsements as being at least based on an open process, but there's some strangeness in that process now that I don't understand and don't trust.  Could it possibly be that the Berrios camp has infiltrated the IVI-IPO process? Maybe someone can give me an assist there. Usually I'm up on all the little scandals but this year, not so much.

Here are the three ballot questions you'll find on your ballot, no matter which election you're voting in. These questions are installed onto the ballot by the Emanuel political machine, including Alderman Joe Moore, in a successful effort to prevent the people of Chicago from even expressing an opinion on an elected school board.  It's the Democratic form of voter suppression.

A number of us gathered signatures a couple summers ago and got a nonbinding question on the ballot in a couple precincts in the 49th Ward. About 90% of the people voting said "Yes" to the elected school board question, but the alderman opposes it. The mayor opposes it. Basically anyone for whom the charter school patronage arrangement is beneficial is opposed to letting voters participate in the democracy.

Rest assured that no matter what happens--- and I mean hell or high water, the voters of Chicago are going to be prevented from voting on the elected school board by people like Rahm Emanuel and Joe Moore until there's a progressive mayor. And nobody can lay a claim to that adjective -- progressive-- if he or she is opposed to letting voters vote.

Pearson Fangs Are Now A Little Deeper

Bit of a wonkish post here, but someone's gotta do it. I see that Pearson has got its fangs even more deeply into Illinois now. Evidently ISBE adopted edTPA a couple of weeks ago as a certification requirement.

Last week, the Board met in Springfield and Chicago. They approved use of the edTPA, a performance  assessment developed by Stanford University, to assess a teacher candidate’s ability to plan, deliver and assess instruction. The edTPA will be required for licensure in Illinois beginning Sept. 1, 2015. 

Read about edTPA here, and here.  Between the recently leaked CPS professional development consultant video and the quiet adoption of the edTPA, I can't imagine why any young person would bother to go into teaching in Illinois. It's a shame-and-blame experience from day one and now there's another pound of flesh going to Pearson even before you start.

I don't know what the temps who will be grading these edTPA videos will be looking for, other than evidence of data worship and lack of dissent. I wonder if you have to do the call-and-response thing that CPS management thinks is important. Who knows anymore?

Watch for TFA to get some official exemption from this onerous requirement, if they haven't already. edTPA sounds like a huge, expensive pain to teacher licensure applicants; I'm just glad I got through my career before all of this craziness started.

By the way, ISBE should be an elected body, too.

UPDATE: The education students at UIC are already on the case.  Whenever I read anything sensible or brave or even just remotely interesting in higher ed policy, it's almost always something they're doing at UIC.