Interesting Exchange between Ald. Moore and Activist on Charter Schools
Lew,
If life were only as simple as you make it seem. Your "solid research" is contradicted by a host of other studies that point to the opposite conclusion--that charters, as a whole, have actually out performed their traditional counterparts. I don't pretend to be an expert on this issue, but I do know this. Some charters do an amazing job at educating kids, some do a horrible job and many fall in between. Some neighborhood schools are great, some are horrible and many fall in between.
>Over the years as alderman I've discovered that I can't change the
>world. I can't even change the Chicago Public School system. But I
>can have an impact on my ward. I can do things that improve the
>lives of the 56,000 people I represent. Working to keep CMSA in my
>neighborhood when they outgrew their original St. Jerome's location
>six years ago is one of my proudest accomplishments. As a result,
>thousands of families in my neighborhood (the 600 that have children
>enrolled in the school now and the thousands more that have had
>children go through the school in the past ten years) were given an
>educational choice for their children. And from both anecdotal and
>objective evidence, the vast majority of families are happy with the
>choice they made.
>
>CMSA strongly promotes their students going on to college. Well over
>80% do just that, an amazing statistic for a school whose population
>is 96% low income. Hundreds, if not thousands, of children went on
>to college after graduating from CMSA. Many were the first kids in
>their families to do so. And CMSA devotes a full-time staff person
>to following up with those kids to help encourage them to stay in
>college once they get there. What other Chicago public school does
>that?
>
>I'm trying my best to avoid the ideological debate going on between
>the left and the right over private vs. public education. Lew,
>you're welcome to engage in that debate as much as you'd like, but
>I'm more concerned about what works for the people I represent. If a
>school in my neighborhood offers the parents in the 49th Ward a
>quality education and a better future for their kids, you can bet
>I'm going to stand up and fight for it.
>
>Lew, you mention the union battle that took place at CMSA a few
>years back. The school ran into a rough patch, and as often happens
>when management doesn't communicate well or address legitimate
>grievances of its employees, a union stepped in to offer those
>employees a better way. As you know, I publicly called upon the CMSA
>administration to accept the "card check" and allow the union to
>represent the teachers without a formal secret ballot vote. The
>school took a different approach and called for a secret ballot.
>They went to court, as was their right, and ultimately prevailed
>when the court ruled that a secret ballot was required for the union
>election.
>
>During the court battle, the CMSA administration righted their ship,
>changed principals, and addressed the legitimate concerns of the
>teachers and staff. As a result, support from the teachers for the
>union greatly diminished to the point where the union organizers
>didn't even call for a vote. I have heard nothing to suggest that
>the CMSA administration did anything underhanded during that battle
>other than to litigate and ultimately prevail in court, and, much
>more importantly, fix things that had gone awry in the
>administration of the school.
>
>The school is now back on course with a solid principal. Test scores
>are going back up again and I have heard nothing to suggest the
>teachers are unhappy or otherwise dissatisfied with the new
>leadership at the school.
>
>Finally, Lew, you can question my assertion that I never hear
>complaints about CMSA and charters in general from the low income
>parents in my community. OK, don't take my word for it. But what you
>can't contradict is the fact that 600 kids are currently enrolled at
>CMSA and thousands more have attended the school in the past and
>that the overwhelming majority of those kids come from low income
>families. Are you absolutely certain that you know what's better for
>those kids than the parents that send them to that school?
Ald. Joe Moore
>Lew Rosenbaum from Rogers Park East Just now
Dear Ald. Moore,
>Paragraph one: I've given some examples of researchers. I can give
>more. There is no good research I have seen tha confirms your
>beliefs and would appreciate your citing (as Mr. Schiessl asks as
>well). What I have seen is highly suspect material funded by charter
>school partisans like Michele Rhee, Bill Gates, the Eli Broad
>foundation and more. Even our own commercial club of Chicago, for
>whose politics I have not a high regard, pointed out that Chicago's
>experience with charters and with turnarounds does not bear out any
>cause to celebrate charter achievements.
>
>Paragraph two and on: I agree you can't change the world. No one of
>us can. But the debate about public vs. private is central to our
>own communities. You have said that charters can co-exist with
>public schools, but the experience here, in this ward, as well as
>throughout the city and country emphasize the opposite. 50 schools
>were closed this year. The reason? "Underutilization" was what the
>school board said. How does a school that was teeming with students
>last year become underutilized this year. One part of that comes
>from building charters right next to public schools and turning
>public funds over to them. The 50,000 kids in charters in Chicago
>this year would have been in the public schools most likely. Of
>course there are other factors, but that is one major one. Their not
>being in public schools limits what the public schools can offer.
>That's been said by others in this thread, I won't repeat it more
>than that. So to be proud of bringing to the neighborhood a
>corporate private school (you may not realize this but the Concept
>Schools are the largest chain of charters in the country) but you
>will also have to acknowledge therefore the effect that it has on
>public education.
>
>If the charter schools in our neighborhood are doing a better job of
>educating our kids than the public schools, then we need to rethink
>our commitment to public education, not undercut it even more. I'm
>guessing that you must have read something of the work of Jonathan
>Kozol, if you consider yourself a progressive alderman. Kozol does
>not write about ideal public education vs. nasty private education.
>He has written for half a century about how our society has created
>segregated, unequal, terrible education in the urban north. The
>solution, he argues, is not to divide education into education for
>the haves and education for the have-nots. But that is what we have
>done, and when schools have to have a toilet paper drive because
>they haven't enough money to pay for toilet paper, that shows
>something about society's value of our children. I read your piece
>about the apple lady at Sullivan, and good for her and for Sullivan.
>But what about the budget shortfall that Sullivan faces, perhaps in
>part because UNO expanded to 9th grade this year?
>
>Concerning the union battle at CMSA, yes, I am aware of the effort
>you made there, a bit late but welcome nevertheless. But lets be
>clear. I've seen you at labor rallies and so I have to assume you
>know something about labor history. You must know that CMSA was
>using the court battle as a delaying tactic. They had first claimed
>to be a public school, in order to curry public favor. This is a
>tactic used by many charters. And under those circumstances the
>union organized within CMSA as a public school. However, when the
>union won their election, CMSA refused to recognize the results and,
>when directed to do so, changed their tactics and claimed instead
>they were a private school and hence not subject to the rules under
>which they had been organized in the past. This is standard practice
>to avoid unionization. After years of effort, the union had to begin
>all over again. I can't imagine how you, as a progressive who fought
>against Walmart, could possibly condone that as righting their ship
>and addressing the legitimate concerns of the teachers. Perhaps you
>should call up the ACTS office (that's the charter union in case you
>don't remember) and investigate if there are teacher complaints at
>CMSA. That might help you to find out if there really is no
>dissatisfaction here.
>
>Lastly, I'm not questioning that you don't hear complaints from CMSA
>parents. I'm also not questioning that our neighbors want better
>education. I am also not questioning that, given the bad choices our
>public servants have provided our community (note: e.g., closed
>mental health services and underresourced educational facilities)
>ANY choice looks better than what we have. But perhaps you should
>listen more, do more investigation. Then you would hear other voices
>from your low income constituency that are not satisfied with what
>they have but want to see public education preserved and changed for
>the better. You as an alderman have a responsibility to these
>parents as well, to those of us whose kids are still in the public
>schools. You may not remember what you said at the opening of the
>UNO school in our neighborhood, but you praised the parents who had
>chosen to enroll in the UNO school, parents who really were
>interested in a better education for their children. That tells me
>what you think of the rest of us and of public education. We don't
>want a good education for our children, and therefore public
>education, in your belief, is good enough for us.
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