Chicago closes 54 Public Schools; will anyone blink?

[ForWhoForWhat?]

If you've got something else to propose by all means put it forward. You object to the shutdowns so what other choice is there in your mind?

Life doesn't go on after you close the schools. An uneducated public leads to an increase in crime (nothing to do, no skills, no job). Crime means more prisons and more prisons means more cost to you, the tax payer. That is why your solution is short sighted.

My solution is that since 100% of the school closings are taking place in blighted areas full of poor people and 0% of school closings are taking place in middle class and affluent areas, we need to address these symptoms of poverty. I advocate more social workers and counselors in the schools, access to medical care and family counseling services and access to better nutrition. When basic needs are taken care of students have a strong tendancy to perform better. When you don't have to worry about your rotting teeth, where your next meal is coming from, if you can get to and from school safely, you have a tendancy to focus better and want to concentrate on learning something.

Magic bullet? Hell no. Step in the right direction, you bet.

Second, i would like to see more accountability on the part of the student and parent. Right now, students aren't really responsible to learn jack sh*t. They have zero motivation to take our state tests, they're going to pass anyway. They have zero motivation to pay attention to your lesson, no matter how many tablets/computers/tvs you put in front of them nor how much you the teacher sing and dance for them. We are going to pass them anyway, either due to age, space, etc. these students take away from the students who do want to be there, but right now schools are extremely limited as to what we can do with them.

Third, I would like to see more alternative schools established for students who have decided they are not going to try to learn in the traditional school setting. Not an expert here, so i can't say how those schools should be run or what they should offer. but the traditional school setting has been a success for the majority of students who enter it. We should not toss out the entire infastructure because a portion has for whatever reason, decided this is not for them.

[Payton34]

Life doesn't go on after you close the schools. An uneducated public leads to an increase in crime (nothing to do, no skills, no job). Crime means more prisons and more prisons means more cost to you, the tax payer. That is why your solution is short sighted.

But an under-enrolled school closing doesn't mean that the kids who went to that school no longer have a school to attend. They simply are moved to a school (also under-enrolled) and bring THAT school up to full enrollment, yes? Or am I missing something?

My solution is that since 100% of the school closings are taking place in blighted areas full of poor people and 0% of school closings are taking place in middle class and affluent areas, we need to address these symptoms of poverty. I advocate more social workers and counselors in the schools, access to medical care and family counseling services and access to better nutrition. When basic needs are taken care of students have a strong tendancy to perform better. When you don't have to worry about your rotting teeth, where your next meal is coming from, if you can get to and from school safely, you have a tendancy to focus better and want to concentrate on learning something.

Magic bullet? Hell no. Step in the right direction, you bet.

Second, i would like to see more accountability on the part of the student and parent. Right now, students aren't really responsible to learn jack sh*t. They have zero motivation to take our state tests, they're going to pass anyway. They have zero motivation to pay attention to your lesson, no matter how many tablets/computers/tvs you put in front of them nor how much you the teacher sing and dance for them. We are going to pass them anyway, either due to age, space, etc. these students take away from the students who do want to be there, but right now schools are extremely limited as to what we can do with them.

Third, I would like to see more alternative schools established for students who have decided they are not going to try to learn in the traditional school setting. Not an expert here, so i can't say how those schools should be run or what they should offer. but the traditional school setting has been a success for the majority of students who enter it. We should not toss out the entire infastructure because a portion has for whatever reason, decided this is not for them.

LOVE your ideas here though.... Schools cannot continued to be forced to "house" kids that have demonstrated time and time again that they have no interest in learning and are not making any attempt at changing that attitude.... Move them to either a vocational education school (Where they can learn a trade of their choice), OR, if they display the same attitude at a Vocational School, move them to alternative education. Basically a last chance school for them, but it would be what it is.... And likely that is a "School" where the teacher babysits these kids until they're 18 and are legally allowed to NOT attend school anymore...

The latter part makes me question compulsory education honestly... I really think public school should be a right that can be forfeited, which might actually make parents stand up and take notice if they are threatened with losing their "Free Daycare" (Which is what many parents likely view school as for their children.)...

[ForWhoForWhat?]

But an under-enrolled school closing doesn't mean that the kids who went to that school no longer have a school to attend. They simply are moved to a school (also under-enrolled) and bring THAT school up to full enrollment, yes? Or am I missing something?

In theory, yes. In practice, not likely. Remember, the ratio they used for an underutilized school was 30:1, and did not take into account special ed classrooms or (gifted classrooms) who typically have a much smaller ratio because students with special needs require that much more 1-to-1 assistance.

So a spec ed class of 15 with one teacher = half empty to the reformers. God forbid there be 2 teachers there and the class might as well be a ghost town to the reformers. Meanwhile the regular ed class down the hall has 40 kids in the class with 1 teacher and is extremely difficult for a student to acquire the individualized attention we see in private schools. The reformers simply add the 40 regular ed kids to the 15 special ed kids (55 students) and divide that by the 3 adults, to get an 18:1 ratio and voila, your school is underutilized despite there being 40 kids and 1 teacher in your class. And now you're going to another "underutilized school" using the same math. Can't figure out why they are failing.

Sometimes they go so far as to count all the adults in the building like cafeteria workers to get that ratio as low as possible to justify the under-utilization label. I believe Sacramento did something like that, but i'm not sure.

[eaglesnut]

Whole lot of bad coming out of and going into Chicago. They put one of the worst people alive in the Mayorship.

[ForWhoForWhat?]

From a small business owner in Chicago:

every school that is closed adds to the blight and destabilization of a neighborhood. Every closed school invites further social decline in what sociologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling have articulated as the “Broken Windows Theory”. (Atlantic Monthly 1982) This theory suggests that the abandoned buildings invite crime and a communal sense that an area is on the decline. This sense of decline adds to further decline and an eventual lower regard for the surrounding area. All of this leads to a lowering of property values.

I want my Mayor and CPS to keep every school open it can because I believe a half filled school is better than a shuttered school. A half filled school suggests a vibrancy and it means there is at least one adult inside that school working to maintain it, not only for the children the school serves, but also for the community that school anchors. The $27 million cost of keeping such schools open, I firmly believe, is well worth it not only to residents who live near the school, but for Chicago as a whole.

Each time we abandon or shutter a school, we are marring our communal landscape and inviting further social decline. It is imperative that CPS and the Civic Leaders of Chicago recognize that what the money they believe they are “saving” is actually promoting further economic decline that is far more costly to residents of Chicago. Those who do not believe me need only ask business owners whose storefronts abut vacant businesses.

I think it is VERY possible the biproduct of blight and decay from shuttering neighborhood schools is part of the reformers plan, not to save money of course, but to enact some sort of twisted gentrification of sorts.

[ForWhoForWhat?]

Whole lot of bad coming out of and going into Chicago. They put one of the worst people alive in the Mayorship.

Rahm has the "villain/bad guy look", and he is living up to it. just as a comparison, Charles Krauthammer also has the "villain/bad guy look". I know nothing about him though.

[lechrus2]

........

[Viking's Lore]

Rahm has the "villain/bad guy look", and he is living up to it. just as a comparison, Charles Krauthammer also has the "villain/bad guy look". I know nothing about him though.

What's not to like about Chuck, er I mean KrautLilleHammer? (I always get those 2 confused). And Rocky Raccoon is soooooo dreamy.

[Payton34]

In theory, yes. In practice, not likely. Remember, the ratio they used for an underutilized school was 30:1, and did not take into account special ed classrooms or (gifted classrooms) who typically have a much smaller ratio because students with special needs require that much more 1-to-1 assistance.

So a spec ed class of 15 with one teacher = half empty to the reformers. God forbid there be 2 teachers there and the class might as well be a ghost town to the reformers. Meanwhile the regular ed class down the hall has 40 kids in the class with 1 teacher and is extremely difficult for a student to acquire the individualized attention we see in private schools. The reformers simply add the 40 regular ed kids to the 15 special ed kids (55 students) and divide that by the 3 adults, to get an 18:1 ratio and voila, your school is underutilized despite there being 40 kids and 1 teacher in your class. And now you're going to another "underutilized school" using the same math. Can't figure out why they are failing.

Sometimes they go so far as to count all the adults in the building like cafeteria workers to get that ratio as low as possible to justify the under-utilization label. I believe Sacramento did something like that, but i'm not sure.

I get you on that.... My only point is that kids will be re-zoned for a different school. They won't be told that their school is now closed and they don't HAVE a place to go to school anymore....

Not speaking to the conditions.

[ForWhoForWhat?]

http://www.epi.org/blog/internationa...ican-students/

...we disaggregate international student test scores by social class and show that the commonplace condemnation of U.S. student performance on such tests is misleading, exaggerated, and in many cases, based on misinterpretation of the facts.

...Yet a careful analysis of the PISA database shows that the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged children is actually smaller in the United States than it is in similar countries. The achievement gap in the United States is larger than it is in the very highest scoring countries, but even then, many of the differences are small.

What’s more, an examination of trends over the last decade, on multiple administrations of both TIMSS and PISA, shows that the achievement of the most disadvantaged U.S. adolescents has been increasing rapidly, while the achievement of similarly disadvantaged adolescents in some countries that are typically held up as examples for the U.S.—Finland for example*—has been falling just as rapidly. Thus, while the reading achievement on PISA of the lowest social class students in the U.S. grew by more than 0.2 standard deviations from 2000 to 2009, it fell by an even larger amount in Finland. In math, the lowest social class U.S. students also posted substantial gains, while scores of comparable Finnish students declined.

Lazy teachers, don't care about kids...

The share of disadvantaged students in the U.S. sample was larger than their share in any of the other countries we studied. Because test scores in every country are characterized by a social class gradient—students higher in the social class scale have better average achievement than students in the next lower class—U.S. student scores are lower on average simply because of our relatively disadvantaged social class composition.

Our report shows that if we make two reasonable adjustments to the reported U.S. average, our international ranking improves. The first adjustment re-weights the social class composition of U.S. test takers to the average composition of top-scoring countries. The other re-weights the distribution of lunch-eligible students by the actual intensity of such students in schools. These adjustments raise the U.S. international ranking on the 2009 PISA test from 14th to sixth in reading, and from 25th to 13th in mathematics. While there is still room for improvement, these are quite respectable showings.

*Sweden is another example. They switched to a voucher system in the early 90s and their scores have dropped steadily since 1995!

[ForWhoForWhat?]

“The current wave of school closings is latest result of bipartisan educational policies which began with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and have kicked into overdrive under the Obama administration’s Race To The Top. In Chicago, the home town of the president and his Secretary of Education, the percentage of black teachers has dropped from 45% in 1995 to 19% today. After winning a couple skirmishes in federal court over discriminatory firings in a few schools, teachers have now filed a citywide class action lawsuit alleging that the city’s policy of school “turnarounds” and “transformations” is racially discriminatory because it’s carried out mainly in black neighborhoods and the fired teachers are disproportionately black.”

i'll just leave this here...