Former CTU President Criticizes Tribune coverage of 'turnaround'... Hits Duncan and CPS teacher bashing
[The following was provided to Substance by Deborah Lynch, a Gage Park High School teacher who served as President of the Chicago Teachers Union during the first years of the 21st Century. Mr. Lynch told Substance that she sent the materials below to the Chicago Tribune, but that the Tribune has ignored them so far].
Former Chicago Teachers Union President Deborah Lynch (above right) stands with retired teacher Louis Pyster during presentations to the August 26, 2009 Chicago Board of Education meeting. In the critique published in the story with this photograph, Ms. Lynch has pointed out that the Chicago Tribune's uncritical support of the Chicago Board of Education's so-called "turnaround" policy continues the media apologetics for corporate school reform and teacher bashing. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.In “At troubled schools, reforms tested again” (8/17/09) the Tribune rightly takes Arne Duncan to task for touting reforms like school turnarounds where “there’s little evidence such efforts have been successful”. Duncan’s hypocrisy is on display in the same day’s editorial “If Illinois blows this” where Duncan claims that “we will use the best evidence available” to determine which states and districts can get federal education dollars. The lack of evidence to support policy change has never stopped Duncan and his puppet master Richard Daley before, as they rolled out reform after unsuccessful reform over the years.
The fundamental problem with their reform agenda is an outright disdain for Chicago teachers. Their every effort has been to circumvent, displace or eliminate the front line teaching staff in struggling schools, rather than listen to them and work with them.
Ironically, the Tribune’s report on Harper High school’s Turnaround effort also left out the teachers, too. What about the fact that so many teachers are not returning to the highly touted turnaround school for a second year? Over twenty of Harper’s 2008-09 teachers were not kept on and another 10 are leaving because of the displacement of the first 20.
A turnover of over 20-30 teachers in one year says that something is very wrong at the school where Arne Duncan and Rev. Jesse Jackson famously posed in their swimsuits a few short years ago. The reported reduction in serious misconduct has everything to do with the Harper students who were expelled and sent to other neighborhood schools and the smaller number of students Harper had this year.
CPS’s ludicrous rationale for this policy is that “a particularly disruptive kid is less likely to misbehave in an unfamiliar environment,” according to Don Fraynd, CPS’s Turnaround Director. As one of the teachers to receive some of the expelled Harper students, I have to say that Mr. Fraynd doesn’t have a clue. CPS sends these seriously misbehaving students to other schools to act up, then blames the receiving school for higher discipline rates and lower achievement. How unfair—and duplicitous.
And what about asking the teachers and staff in these schools what they need? They need manageable class sizes, good security, ongoing professional development in state of the art teaching practices, and administrative support.
The article on Harper failed to mention the poverty levels of the turnaround schools.
Poverty and its attending problems — e.g. drugs, crime, abuse, low student attendance — have crushing impacts on learning which cannot be ignored. They are no excuse for low expectations, but they must be factored in and addressed in terms of support for students such as access to social workers, counselors and other adults who can support them through the chaos and disruption they so often face in their lives.
I challenge the Tribune to do a study of our troubled high schools and look at the students who come to school regularly. Nine times out of ten, these students will have made at least one year’s gain in one year. And it is because of their teachers, not despite them.
Teachers (and their evaluation system) are not the problem in our schools. We show up, we care about our kids, we work hard to help them through their studies, we sometimes have to go way above and beyond because of the many challenges our students face in even getting to school, but we are there.
Student achievement should certainly be a factor in judging a school, but blaming the teachers (and firing them all) when the students attend so irregularly due to problems outside our control, is patently unfair.
We don’t judge police stations on the number of crimes in their area. We add the resources for the officers to better do their jobs.
Let’s ask the teachers what they need to better do their jobs—and then give it to them.
Deborah Lynch, Teacher, Gage Park High School
CTU Past President, 2001-2004
deborahmlynch@yahoo.com
312-890-7713
Comments:
By: Jim Vail
Good Job Lynch!
Debbie was - and still is - an excellent spokesperson for teachers. Where is Marilyn Stewart? Why do I never read or her from her in the public realsm vigorously defending our teachers under constant attack from the corporate power structure on a continuing rampage to milk every little penny out of, now, the educatoring class. Of, yea, Marilyn is working for them, how silly of me to expect more from our union "leader."
By: Jerry
We All Know What The Problem Is
When trouble hits a Chicago Public School teacher, it is breathtaking to find out that there is no one who stands for the teachers. The CTU is guilty of the worst kind of nonfeasance in not providing teachers with all the possibilities that may occur in the variety of "teacher discipline" maneuvers that principals are currently engaging in. The Board certainly doesn't care to protect its workforce, and as has become public knowledge recently, most of our legislators have no clue as to what they sign their names to. Any legislation that provides the principal with a sledgehammer to use against teachers is apparently some mysterious, undecipherable writing to our State Senators and Representatives. They all use the famous slogan, “We can do nothing about it.” Well, then they should get the hell out of office.
Teachers are being assaulted with CPS tools available to principals so that principals can clear out their buildings of the thinkers, activists, and high-salaried veterans who see through the data-driven shallowness of a principal’s credentials and abilities to lead a school. When a teacher receives no assistance from the Union after having paid dues for dozens of years, it is difficult not to assume collusion with the BOE on the part of the Union leadership. Teachers are finding out through experience that insipid-sounding actions taken by a principal, such as issuing cautionary notes, actually add weight to disciplinary claims that a principal may bring later. Then the hearing officer doesn’t even bother to consider the bogusness of the charge against the teacher; he just upholds a suspension-without-pay finding.
When did the CTU ever attempt to educate its membership about this?
The CTU is proving to be seriously weak-kneed when it comes to pursuing grievances brought by teachers against principals. The labor relations board is merely rubber-stamping all of the charges that the principal writes and the Union just wrings its hands.
Complacency is the enemy of change. Teachers who have not yet become victims are not willing to read about the attacks on their colleagues and educate themselves about the tactics that these administrators are using. They are also not willing to take a stand if they haven’t been hurt yet. The worst case scenario is when principal-supporters, in order to keep their jobs, actively aide and abet the principal in damaging people that he wants to get rid of.
We are at a very dangerous place in the history of the Chicago Public Schools.
By: Jean R Schwab
Special Ed. teacher
I agree with Debbie but don't think anyone will listen.
By: Theresa D. Daniels
Lynch speaks the truth
The trenchant remarks made by Deborah Lynch on the subject of turnaround schools should be heeded by the media and those who have the power to improve schools rather than destroy them as Mayor Daley and his henchmen are doing now.