SQRT III or IV... Readers reminded that the original 'School Quality Rating Policy' by Barbara Byrd Bennett & Co. was supposed to solve all the problems...
Now that, once again, the Chicago ruling class is insisting that we get historical amnesia, readers who want to know how big the joke is can read -- exclusively in Substance's BACK ISSUES -- the article we published three years ago about the original "School Quality Rating Policy." ONe Substance URL from 2014 gives readers the story from then, to be updated by the latest from now if you wish: http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=5342
Back then, the corrupt CEO of CPS was Barbara Byrd Bennett (in 2017 it's Forrest Claypool). Back then, the dubious Power Point explaining what a great thing Squirt (that's what everyone called it) was was a guy named Baker (imported from elsewhere, as they usually are, and now long gone).
But the nonsense is the same. A bunch of pretentious "metrics" that only measure the fact that children living in poverty face enormous challenges both at home and at school. Those poverty challenges, coupled with the fact that privileged children (read, "Middle Class") add on all kinds of benefits, and Voila!, Chicago has a way to prove that many schools are "failing" and therefore much be replaced by -- whatever. Byrd Bennett may be in prison for a few years, but the lies she and her colleagues prattle go on forever as long as schools are forced to utilize scorekeeping that guarantees that the rich get richer and the poor (and their teachers) get blamed for "failure."
Anyone who wants to read our original SQRT report can go back to Marybeth Foley's 2014 article on the Board of Education meeting (illustrated with my photographs). Plus ca change...
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=5342
