More than 1,000 teachers, other staff, face Chicago Hit List
More than 1,000 Chicago teachers and other school staff are facing firing during 2012 as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and novice Chicago Schools Chief Executive Officer Jean-Claude Brizard continue the failed policy of "turnaround" into the 2012 year. At the end of November 2011, the Chicago Public Schools announced the ten schools on what critics have been calling the "Hit List." All of the schools serve inner city children, virtually all of them African-Americans or Latinos, in the city's poorest communities. Ignoring the massive impact of poverty on the ability of poor children to score well on standardized tests, Brizard and Emanuel continue to repeat the same story lines that corporate school reformers have been repeating for a decade or more: Teachers are to blame for the "failure" of poor children to compete with wealthy children in public schools in the USA, so teacher should be fired in order to make the schools better.
