Tribune forum on charter schools and 'Choice' -- 'Chicago Forward: the School Choice Debate'
Chicago Forward: the School Choice Debate witnessed four panelists who spoke at the Chicago Tribune event, all with diverse opinions on charter schools. The forum, which had been publicized widely, took place on May 21, 2014. The School Choice Debate was at Petterino�s Restaurant. The four panelists were: Jitu Brown (Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, KOCO), Tim King (Urban Prep Academies), Beth Purvis (Chicago International Charter Schools) and Cinda Klickna (Illinois Education Association). Noteworthy was the fact that no one from the Chicago Teachers Union had been invited.
Panelists at the Chicago Tribune forum on school choice. Substance photo by Jean Schwab. Jerry Kern, Chicago Tribune editor, Jitu Brown (Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, KOCO), Tim King (Urban Prep Academies), Beth Purvis (Chicago International Charter Schools) and Cinda Klickna (Illinois Education Association) Substance photo by Jean Schwab.All four panelists agreed that they had nothing against charter schools, but at least two of them had reservations.
Jerry Kern, editor of the Chicago Tribune, stated that the topic of The School Choice Debate was whether students and parents should be able to choose their school and whether that will improve the quality of the schools. Kern pointed out that �all solutions begin with education.�
Panel members were:
Cinda Klickna was recently elected to her second term as president of the 130,000-member Illinois Education Association (IEA). She began her teaching career in Springfield in 1973 teaching high school English and Advanced Placement literature.
Dr. Beth Purvis joined Chicago International Charter School (CICS) in March 2003 with more than 15 years� experience working with children with disabilities and their families. CICS now has nine campuses and more than 5,000 students in Chicago.
Jitu Brown is the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance, a network of 30 grassroots community based organizations in 23 cities organizing for community driven school improvement. He has organized with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) in the Kenwood Oakland neighborhood for over 17 years, bringing community voices to the table on school issues.
Tim King is the founder and CEO of Urban Prep Academies, a network of public charter boys� high-schools in Chicago. Of Urban Prep�s graduates- all African �American males and mostly from low- income families- 100% have been admitted to college.
Below is a summary of the exchanges between the panelists:
Jitu Brown noted that Chicago Public Schools had eliminated the regular public schools of Chicago's Brownsville community. Substance photo by Jean Schwab.Jitu Brown: I handed out papers showing the curriculum of Dyett High School, Northside College Prep and Lake View High School, a neighborhood school with open enrollment. There is a disparity in the curriculum of Dyett School and the other schools. Kenwood Oakland Community Organization is not against charter schools in principle. There is a disparity in services. Chicago Public Schools have one counselor for 350 students while the Charter Schools have many more counselors for fewer students. Charter Schools are not a silver bullet. The Public Schools were created so every child could have a world-class education. In Bonzeville, Wadsworth Elementary School had high achievement scores for years and then University of Chicago started siphoning off the top students and eventually took over the whole building. The same thing happened to Woodson South: 80% of the students were meeting or exceeding on the ISAT and Charter Schools came into the neighborhood and siphoned off the better students and resources were cut. The school was sabotaged by Chicago Public Schools. (Wadsworth Elementary School is now a STEM School and Woodson is co-sharing with AUSL.)
Beth Purvis: Charter schools are not a silver bullet but, they are a part of the solution. I spend 90 percent of my time trying to get equitable funding. Chicago Public Schools even agreed that our students were not getting the funds that our students deserve.
Jitu Brown: We are against the destabilizing of students by closing schools. Students in black neighborhoods have no choice of where they want to go to school. At one time, Dyett High School had the largest number of students graduating in the city. King: Charter schools are not the reason for the closing of schools. Since Urban Prep started, the number of African- American males has increased in Chicago. We hope that we are adding to the numbers of African- American males attending college.
Cinda Klickna: We are not opposed to charter schools. IEA has started a charter school. We oppose what parents are told. Parents have not been given good informed choices.
Jitu Brown: One concern with Urban Prep is not that 100% of the enrolled students graduate and go to college. I am concerned because 50% of the original freshman class did not finish by senior year. There is Little Black Pearl School (a contract School) which is an arts school in Bronzville. Our neighborhood is now made up of alternative schools. I now have to start looking for a quality school for my five- year -old to attend. He could travel by bus two and � miles out of the neighborhood. There should be quality neighborhood public schools in our neighborhood.
Tim King: Urban Prep expelled three percent of our students last year after rigorous counseling and help. We work hard to keep our students. An example is a young man that was so afraid to walk to school that he brought an unloaded gun to school. We worked with this student, and he is still attending our school. There is a big difference between Urban Prep and other schools such as Orr High School. Orr only expels .03 of its students, mostly black males, but suspends 80 percent, and there is a 70 percent drop out rate.
Beth Purvis: Why is there inequality in resources in our schools? Our schools on the north side have more resources than our schools on the south side. We have four high CICS schools that are organized (unionized). Our contract is not like CPS� contract with the CTU but it can help a school to organize.
Cinda Klickna. We have public schools that have unique parts of their contracts. We are not against charter schools, we are against charter schools that try to hide that they use the schools to make money and weed out students.
Jitu Brown: Since 2002 only 2 percent of the schools that replaced closed schools do better than the neighborhood schools. Only 1 out of 5 outperforms neighborhood schools. We all know what makes a good school. Urban Prep had 30 out of 450 students expelled. Nobel Schools cut out students by counseling them to leave the school. These students may do things that make them unattractive like getting lower grades. Charter schools need to abide by the same rules we do. There is now a Title 1 civil rights suit brought by Louisiana, New Jersey and Dyett High School. The question is how do schools select students and how do they get rid of students?
Beth Purvis. We want to serve all students and give parents a choice.
Tim King: 20 percent of the students at Urban Prep are special needs students.
Cinda Klickna: The best place to start is not to demonize schools and teachers.
Tim King: I agree that Orr and Philips have been turned around and turned over to the Academy for Urban School Leadership. I was educated in the public schools, and my family graduated from a Chicago public high school. We worked hard against the closing of that high school. Closing schools is not the answer.
Jitu Brown: Rahm Emanuel is bad for democracy in Chicago. Closing schools is a failed practice, and CPS has become a used school salesman.
The Panel was asked to state a major issue.
Beth Purvis: The state needs to solve the pension problem.
Cinda Klickna: I started teaching in Springfield and it was at a nice school. I then was moved across town where we had to scramble for basic resources -- there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms.
Jitu Brown: We have the pension problem because the leaders of our state did not do their part. We take issue with the high expulsion rate at Urban Prep. You can�t think of ways to get rid of young people -- equity is a major problem. Also Orr is struggling because it�s been turned around twice
King: I agree that Orr has been turned around and turned over to the Academy for Urban School Leadership. We don�t engage in any creative efforts to get rid of students. We use creative ideas to keep students. We don�t counsel out students. In the last six years 100 percent of our seniors have been accepted to college and 96 percent of our students attend.
Brown: We don�t have a problem with charter schools, if you don�t want your child to go to a school, don�t put them in that school. Destabilizing is the real problem. It is death by a thousand cuts.
Comments:
By: Rod Estvan
For-profit public education in the past
In 1854 John Dore, became Chicago's first superintendent of schools. But Chicago, had schools well before its first formal superintendent. Effectively these were charter schools with approval of the Chicago Common Council and in some cases for profit private schools with limited public funding.
Between 1840 and 1870, public financing for education evolved from a laissez-faire approach, where almost no tax money went toward education, to the �rate-bill� system, under which parents paid according to the number of children they had enrolled in the public schools, to a flat-rate system more closely resembling the one we are familiar with today.
Superintendent William H. Wells�s Graded Course of Instruction for the Public Schools of Chicago, published in 1862, was adopted as a teachers� manual by many cities and set an example that would be emulated for years afterward. Well�s set the model of CPS which we follow in part to this day, the key to educating children is order in the classroom he wrote: �In all the exercises of the school-room, order is of the first importance. It is often the case that that school is best governed in which there is the least apparent show of attempt to govern. It is certain, that a noisy teacher will have a noisy school. Constant and nervous calls to order only make the repetition of such calls more and more necessary. The voice of the teacher should seldom be heard in securing the attention of pupils. . .�
The second great principle that Well�s passed on to CPS is school wide disciple both for students and teachers. Well�s wrote �The school differs not from the State, so far as regards the necessity for the establishment and enforcement of law. In the school the citizen receives his first training, and he must there take lessons in obedience to rightfully constituted authority. The school must be subject to law. Law without penalty is a dead letter. . . The necessity for any kind of punishment diminishes just in proportion as the public sentiment of the school sustains the teacher's authority. Give pupils to understand, either directly or by implication, which the teacher has not the right to enforce obedience, and all discipline is at an end. Corporal punishment may be resorted to in extreme cases, and after all other means have proved unavailing.�
So the evolution of Chicago from a for profit rate-bill educational system to what we would call a more modern public education system also included enforcement of very harsh and fixed rules. So in many ways in America and in Chicago the privatized charter system preceded Horace Mann�s Common Schools. While, we can abhor the return via the charter schools to a time past, we do need to recognize the baggage that came with free public education in America also has a very dark and disturbing aspect to it.
Rod Estvan
By: Jean Schwab
phases
I agree with Rodney that history has phases and we can learn from those different periods.
As a grandmother of a neighborhood school student, it is harder to accept the discrepancies in funding of our schools and students.
By: Susan Zupan
"We/I don't have anything against charter schools..."
OMG, how many times did everyone feel the need to express this sentiment? Well, you know what? I have a major problem with charter schools, and in basic principle, too. I believe that zero public dollars should go to charter schools.
Do we as a nation believe any longer in a basic system of PUBLIC EDUCATION in which the "profit" is in the form of our collective investment toward the country's future in which all children have access to a quality public school and education within reasonable distance of their homes?
Or are we for "education" in which private financial profit is the bottom line?
Charter schools are FOR-PROFIT, a profit not for the public but for private interests. The money comes before children and education no matter what the blabitty-blah-blah and yackitty-yak-yak of all the charter school jargon that tries to cover up this underlying, basic fact.
It's why study after study continues to demonstrate that charters repeatedly don't/can't hold educational water to the nation's true public schools; it is the MONEY from the public's educational dollars that the charter schools are holding on to. Certainly they are not holding on to particular of the public's children/students systematically kicked out or not even admitted.
So, as a nation, do we value EDUCATION or do we value FOR-PROFIT? This is the question facing us - to continue to "invest" public money into PRIVATE PROFITS (without accountablity even) or to freakin' start to reinvest in TRUE PUBLIC EDUCATION?
This is what the "choice" is all about: True Public Education or "Education Dollars, Incorporated."