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Unions, charter schools, and the Arne Duncan National School System
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First the banks; then the automobile companies, and now the schools. Planet Unicorn’s most entertaining experiment, the United States, has truly fallen down the rabbit hole. All three are failed industries run by weak, overpaid, and disingenuous charlatans disguised as experts. Thank goodness for the occasional Bernie Madoff, or we’d never have any fun at all. At least the phony finance guys go to jail now and then, and most of us enjoyed watching the General Motors clod get kicked off the island after flying to Washington D.C. on a private jet to beg for taxpayer money, but amazingly the man in charge of the nation’s worse urban school system gets promoted and is now in charge of all of our public schools. That is Lewis B. Carroll math to be sure, but it is the only arithmetic we have.
If Arne Duncan accomplished anything in Chicago besides avoiding the potholes in Hyde Park, it was the establishment of a handful of charter schools. The core value of the charter school is its freedom from union structure and restrictions. However, just last week the teachers at the three campuses of the Chicago International Charter School (CICS), voted to unionize. There were rumors and reports of increasing teacher workloads, larger and larger class sizes, and high personnel turnover in the magic kingdom of the charter schools. Furthermore, there is a bill sitting on the governor’s desk that would make it easier for charters to go union. Duncan’s school reform may have the same effect on us as Chinese food; we’ll be hungry again in an hour.
Curiously, the day after the CICS voted in the union, Arne was in town at the Hyatt Regency as a guest of an educational policy group. Inside the hotel they probably gave him an award for his wonderful achievements in education, while outside, C.O.R.E., Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (a really scary name), was demonstrating against his wonderfulness. The Chicago teachers in the C.O.R.E. picket line were protesting the process by which a worm public school becomes a butterfly charter institution. Apparently the larvae stage is called: TURNAROUND.
‘Turnaround,’ is a savage program that befalls a school after it has misbehaved. Everyone is fired: teachers, cafeteria staff, administration, and the mascot. Then the school is absorbed into the infamous Renaissance 2010 machine, Mayor Richard Daley’s shock & awe program to overhaul his school system by privatizing public education just as ‘da Mayor’ privatized parking meters. C.O.R.E. member Ed Gallagher was interviewed and said, ‘the Chicago model of education reform is not about improving schools, it is about putting money into the hands of political insiders and turning the schools over to the mayor’s political allies.’ Egad! C.O.R.E. is indeed scary.
But C.O.R.E. may also be spot on. Just today, the Chicago Tribune reveals The United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), the largest Latino community group in Chicago, is poised to receive $98 million in a state grant to build, create, or hatch 8 charter schools. That’s over 12 million bucks per school. It pays to have a less scary name. UNO executive, Juan Rangel, said: ‘UNO is very open about open about what it is trying to do. It’s trying to build power for the Latino community.’ UNO began in 1984, in a South Chicago neighborhood. It adapted the practices of noted Chicago community organizer (gasp), Saul Alinsky, who sought to lift up the poor by working from within the existing power structure.
That’s very nice, but I would prefer UNO use the 98 million taxpayer dollars to educate children, but then, that never really was part of the plan . . . was it?
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