Press Statement: CPS School Grade Changes

March 10, 2010

CPS Dysfunction, not Teachers, to Blame for Grade Changes

“Today’s grade changing scandal isn’t news to those of us in the trenches, particularly in neighborhood schools. This is the illegitimate child of CPS’s dysfunction. The blame cannot be placed at teachers’ feet,” said Jesse Sharkey, Senn High School teacher and CORE member.

Karen Lewis, King College Prep teacher and CORE Co-Chair, CTU Presidential candidate, explained that, “To non-educators peering down on data sets, grade changes may look like cheating or grade inflation, but what is really at play is CPS’s failure to place teachers in schools from day one, the pressure to increase freshmen on-track numbers – no Fs in core subjects – and graduation rates, and the simple fact that because part-time and substitute teachers don’t have access to the electronic Gradebook clerks must enter their grades.”

Referring to the Sun-Times Fran Spielman’s report that, “Pressed on where the pressure to change grades is coming from, Daley said, ‘I don’t know. Ask the teacher who did it … [Schools CEO] Ron Huberman would never do that.’” Jackson Potter, CORE Co-chair calls the Mayor’s statement disingenuous. “The Mayor should know CEO Huberman’s singular focus on data to close or turnaround schools and to withhold funding is in part to blame for school staff possibly gaming the system.” Potter noted that Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago by the Chicago Consortium on School Research shows that there was a spike in illegal behavior to cheat and manufacture test results beginning in 1995, the year the Mayor took control of the schools and the inauguration of using test scores to label and punish schools.

“Let’s for once look at the top – the people charged with running our schools. Management, not teachers, is to blame. Mayor Daley was half right – he and the media should be asking teachers to identify the problems and solve them. I’ll start. Misusing data to close and threaten schools — Huberman’s performance management initiative – should stop immediately. It does little to improve teaching or learning,” said Potter.

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CORE is the reform caucus of the Chicago Teachers Union that represents rank-and-file members and the students and families they serve. The group is comprised of teachers, retired teachers and educational staff.

The $355 million lie: About this time every year CPS leadership “misplaces” more than $300 million dollars and blames teachers…

“…drastic measures, like closing 100 schools, increasing class size to a whopping 45 students and laying off 4,000 teachers would not even cut the deficit by half, Huberman said.”

Quoted from WBBM, Feb 25, 2010[i]

Last Thursday, Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman announced a $900 million projected deficit for next year.  Huberman’s presentation[ii] specifically singled out “increases in pension costs” and “increases in teacher compensation” as the main causes of this crisis.[iii]

The following letter is designed to answer some important questions that are raised by Huberman’s announcement.

Can we trust this announcement? No.  This is a political announcement designed to build public support for attacking teachers. Though there is a recession, and we expect there to be some deficit, Huberman’s numbers are suspect.

• For the past eight years the BOE has projected a deficit in January or February only to show surpluses in the actual audited budget as presented in August.[iv] These discrepancies have averaged over $300 million each year.
• No transparency—the presentation that we have been shown is not a budget, does not reveal any of the underlying assumptions on which the projection has been based, and does not seem to add up to $900 million, in any case.[v]
• The percentage CPS spends on salaries has actually shrunk since 2004, while the amount of the reserve (fixed charges) has ballooned to over 8% of the budget. [vi] That’s right, we getting a smaller piece of the pie, but being blamed for the financial troubles.

What about our pension?

• The Chicago BOE is required by law to pay $307 million to the pension fund by June 30, 2010.  This number will increase to over $500 million next year.
• While this may seem like a lot of money, we should remember that the BOE did not make any contributions to our pension fund between 1995 and 2005—as they diverted some $1.2 billion to their general operating budget.  Had they invested this money, our pension would be 99% funded.[vii]
• The average Chicago teacher pension is $39,000 a year.  We do not receive Social Security.

Can we expect help from the state? Are there any other revenue sources?

• The State of Illinois has a regressive tax structure and is facing a budget crisis of about $12 billion on a $26 billion budget.  Although Huberman and CTU president Stewart are lobbying Springfield for more money, we are unlikely to get much help.[viii]
• In Chicago, Tax Increment Financing (TIF’s) drain about $250 million/year out of the schools budget.  This money should be returned to the schools.[ix]

Where do we go from here?

• On Wednesday, February 24^th the BOE voted, over our strenuous objections, to close three schools and fire the entire staff at five more.  On Thursday, February 26^th they told us that they need our cooperation to solve a billion-dollar-shortfall that’s been caused by their bad decisions.

• Show us some respect… and the books!  In addition to ending the practice of ‘turning around’ schools, show us the books before we start any negotiations. In future years, let us write the budget.

If we take our case to the public we can win support—more is being asked of our schools and our teachers than ever before.  Now is not the time to cut front line educators.

[ii] http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/district299/FY2011%20Budget%20Presser%20r1.pdf

[iii] http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/index.php/entry/566

[iv] For the last 8 years, CPS has consistently released inflated budget deficit numbers based on no evidence or descriptions of where these numbers are coming from.  Later when audited, they showed surpluses each year. Over the years surveyed, the public projections announced in January or February were off by an average of $467 million per year.

v These two slides, from pages 10 and 11 of Huberman’s 2-25-10 presentation are fairly typical.  Note the lack of detail or explanation of underlying assumptions.

[vi] Despite the Board’s constant insistence in each year since FY2006 that teacher pensions and/or compensation are devastating the budget, their own numbers contradict this.  From its 2010 Proposed Budget suggest that the percentage of district spending on teacher salaries has dropped markedly since 2004. In FY 2004, Teacher Salaries represented 48% of the general operating fund, while in the proposed 2010 budget, they made up only 38% of the general operating fund. The pension crisis is also a misnomer. Even accepting CPS’ own numbers, the portion of the budget due to teachers’ pensions only represents 9.6% of the budget in FY2010. This year’s portion of the budget for both pensions and teacher salaries combined is still less than the portion that only salaries represented in 2004. In the same time, the unidentified category “Other fixed charges” has ballooned from -.06% of the total operating fund to 8.27%.

[vii] As a recently elected Trustee of the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, I am quite familiar with the escalating pension obligation that the Board of Education is legally mandated to honor.  Before CPS, the Civic Committee or any other entity begins the discussion of any legislative relief for CPS to ts pension obligations, the root of the problem must be acknowledged. Specifically, the reason the Board of Education finds itself in the position it is in is because, for 10 years, from 1995-2005, the Board of Education did not pay into the Pension Fund.  While CPS received City funds that were earmarked for the Pension Fund, for those ten years, CPS spent that money on its own agenda, including outsourcing work to private contractors and funding charter schools.  Now, CPS is crying poor and looking to take money from school teachers’ retirement. This should strike every working man and woman as unfair and illegal. (Until the law is changed in the Illinois State Legislature, it is illegal for CPS to not meet its 307 million dollar annual pension obligation due on June 30, 2010.)   Jay C. Rehak, Teacher Trustee,  Chicago Teachers Pension Fund,  TEL: 312 343 6273

[viii] see, for example http://www.ctbaonline.org/

[ix] Ben Joravsky “Off Track” http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/chicago-public-schools-cps-cutbacks-track-coaches-athletics/Content?oid=1467256 Last year alone, the TIFs siphoned about $250 million in property tax dollars out of CPS’s supposed share.”

Potter teaches at Little Village Lawndale High School and is Co-Chair of CORE.

Huberman says he needs major union concessions to balance the budget this year, and that sets up a scenario in which the district will ask teachers to pick their poison: Agree not to fight pension changes, concede to larger class sizes or give up their 4 percent raises. Eliminating contractual raises would save about $169 million; increasing class sizes to 31 would mean a loss of 600 teaching positions and save only $40 million.

But Stewart faces a tough re-election campaign this spring. In fact, her union caucus recently lost two seats on the Pension Board to the new, hard-line caucus called CORE (the Caucus of Rank and File Educators). It was a major victory for CORE, whose members say the Pension Board needs better watchdogs to protect it from a cash-starved district administration and prevent mismanagement. CORE still lacks a majority on the Pension Board, however.

CORE Co-Chair Jackson Potter says the Pension Board has already made several important changes under new leadership. Lawsuits have been filed to recoup losses from some investment groups, he notes, and the board is squashing investments it has with companies that support charter schools.

In Potter’s book, Huberman’s budget announcement amounts to little more than scare tactics. That position suggests a tough political road ahead for district officials seeking concessions from the Pension Board and elsewhere.

Before asking teachers to support pension relief or any other compromises, Potter wants the district to cut a number of controversial reform programs, such as the Office of School Turnarounds and Huberman’s signature performance management initiative. Such cuts could save the district upwards of $70 million, he estimates.

He also wants Huberman and Mayor Richard Daley to consider directing tax-increment financing revenues toward the deficit. (TIF funds are diverted from schools and other local taxing bodies to stimulate business development, but critics say the creation of TIF districts has contributed to budget problems facing the schools and the rest of the city.)

Potter admits more savings are needed, but “the fact that [Huberman] hasn’t put any of this on the table shows you what his priorities are.”

(left to right) Barrett and CORE Communications Secretary Kenzo Shibata standing in solidarity with their brothers and sisters at SK Tools when they were on strike in Summer of 2009.

Good Morning Rainbow Push and the good people of Chicago. When Rev. Jonathan Jackson walked into my classroom, I was a little surprised—I was in the middle of giving a quiz on Japanese Grammar. Now, as a high school teacher, I don’t really feel comfortable speaking to crowds over the age of 18, but as Reverend Jackson emphasized, we must all stand up and speak to defend these schools or be complicit with injustice.

My name is Xian Barrett and I’m a teacher at Julian High School and a proud member of CORE—a group in the Chicago Teachers Union not afraid to fight for the community and the students of Chicago. Most of all, I’m an adult ally for Chicago Youth Initiating Change, a student group some of whose leadership you’ll hear from today that has been fighting Ren2010 and school closings over the last several years.

I found success with these amazing youth through a simple strategy: I listened to my community. I learned from the experienced African American teachers, and the wisdom of the community leaders who surround Julian. I learned the most by listening to our outstanding students.

The mayoral-controlled CPS board does the exact opposite. It discusses its plans behind closed doors with members of the elite and inflicts them upon the communities of color of our city. In many ways, it’s not a new story. These same elites and powerbrokers have abused our communities since before many of us in this room were born. They are hoping that we will be so desperate that we will again swallow their lies and turn on each other.

It’s happening even this very moment. CEO Ron Huberman is telling “Chicken Little” stories that we have a billion dollar deficit and that we will may have to increase class size to 45 students per classroom. Of course, last year, when there was no deficit, I had 46 students in an introductory Japanese course. And there were some math classes with 60. Yet, he continues to blame the experienced Black teachers instead of his own mismanagement of the funds. Look at CPS’ own budget which this year boasts a $422 million increase in “Other Charges”.

This is a lie to divide us. The CPS leadership is like a gambling addict, trying to blame the unpaid light bill for why there’s not enough money to feed the kids. They have gambled our children’s education away through expensive, experimental programs like charters and turnarounds. The data says they have failed. Our hearts know they have failed. Why do you think there are no charters and turnarounds in rich white communities?

They have fired thousands of outstanding black teachers while hiring more failed business people from outside our community as consultants and managers. They are food bank operators who sit with their friends in the office eating prime rib while the people starve outside.

There are two differences between us and them. First, we are motivated by love. I spend 16 hour days away from my lovely wife out of love—love for my students and love for her as I want to be able to face her when I get home. The students get up at 5 in the morning and continue their activism after school out of love. You all support your community school and came out today out of love. And love conquers tyranny.

Secondly, we have the courage to see this through. Unlike the board, who ignored the community to approve the destruction of 8 schools, we have the courage to meet each other in sunlight and have the tough conversations about what our children need. Unlike those who are too scared to even come out to our neighborhoods, we come together to improve those schools.

And yet, as of today, the official record still says that come June those communities will be destroyed. We must not allow this atrocity to occur. We must stand together—parent, student, community member, teacher and union leader and do whatever it takes to defend our children and our schools. We have all seen the devastating effects of turnaround and closure and we must join together and say, “Not one more school!”

February 24, 2010

The Chicago Board of Education members voted to destroy eight Chicago public schools after massive community outrage forced schools chief Ron Huberman to take six schools off the list to be closed, consolidated, phased out or face turnaround.

“This is a sad day for public education,” said Alderman Pat Dowell, who sponsored a one-year moratorium resolution in the City Council. “I don’t think neighborhood schools should be punished.”

Bradwell, Curtis, and Deneen Elementary schools and Phillips and Marshall High Schools will fire their entire staff and all except Marshall will outsource the AUSL management company to run the schools. Schneider Elementary will be phased out, McCorkle Elementary will be consolidated into Beethoven school and De Las Casas Occupational High School will be closed and the students sent to private operators.

Last year not one Chicago alderman addressed the Board about school closings at the meeting that voted on their fate. This year Alderman Sandi Jackson, Alderman Ed Smith and Alderman Dowell spoke out against a process they say does not include the community and is seriously flawed.

“I’m here because I’m concerned about the posterity of our children,” Alderman Smith told the Board. “Marconi has some problems, but we simply can’t jettison these kids. It seems we have a problem to get together. Just because these people don’t have PhDs and MBAs doesn’t mean we don’t need to bring in these parents. We got to work together to give the children what they need.”

Last year some of the schools that protested strongly were removed, thus avoiding an ugly confrontation on the day the Board was to vote on closing schools. The schools that protested loudly this year, such as Guggenheim Elementary who filled a gymnasium with an outraged community that dared the Board to break up their family, and Prescott Elementary on the northside, which mobilized over 700 people to support their school at two public hearings, were taken off the list and the Board was spared another potentially explosive confrontation.

Marconi Elementary was also removed from the list after Ald. Smith blasted Huberman at a City Hall education committee public hearing on Monday in which he said he was “outraged” at being called the night before that they would close a school in his ward. According to the Board of Education, the hearing officer recommended to close Marconi but Huberman is suspending the decision until officials work with the community on alternative options.

Interestingly enough, the Chicago Teachers Union faxed schools to consider joining an informational picket outside the Board headquarters on Clark Street before the meeting despite warning teachers last year that taking off work to go to the Board to protest could be seen in violation of their contract. Although not many teachers came to picket, CTU President Marilyn Stewart held a press conference and addressed the Board about the school closings.

Karen Lewis, a presidential candidate on the CORE slate spoke during public participation at the meeting. She focused her anger on the turnaround policy and how it is not working. She noted that stability is being sacrificed as a result.

“The turnaround policy is just a layoff policy,” Lewis said. “Of the 31 graduates from AUSL, there are only 5 who are still teaching in their original schools after three years. Please do not turnaround our schools.”

CORE made the most impressive showing as a group of organized teachers who pointed out the problems with Renaissance 2010 and its school closings policy. CORE and UPC were the only two teacher caucuses who attended the Board meeting on Wednesday.

One of CORE’s founding members, Jackson Potter said the Board is doing everything against good school policy, such as eliminating local school councils.

“Can you knock out Ren 2010 instead of us knocking you out, and you know we’re a non-violent people,” Jackson said with a smile.

CORE’s Joe Linehan told the Board it certainly doesn’t feel like a Renaissance.  “Only dropouts and violence are increasing,” Linehan said. “You privatize a lot in this city, but these kids aren’t parking meters.”

Carol Caref, who teaches at Chicago Vocational High School and is an original member of CORE, told the Board that they should use her time to give to a Julian student who had earlier received a Democracy award from the Board, but was not allowed to speak, which appeared to be unprecedented. The student who did speak sat next to the Board members and bashed the parents in his speech.

After arguing with Caref, Board member Clare Munana finally relented and allowed the Julian student Chantelle Steve to speak. But Steve was too emotional and started crying as she said this whole school closing business is horrible and should be stopped. She was not able to deliver the speech she had prepared to give.

Liz Brown, a teacher at Kelvyn Park High School and CORE media specialist, made the school closings connection to the Race to the Top, in which President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are using the Chicago model to close or turnaround thousands of urban schools across the nation. Michael Brunson, a displaced teacher who is currently the recording secretary candidate on the CORE slate, said all this data performance criteria is demoralizing to the teachers.

“How do you think the teachers feel when you are bashing them all the time,” Brunson said. “It looks like you’re not only throwing the baby out with the bath water, you’re throwing out the tub.”

One reporter with CBS TV noted that there weren’t many teachers from the closing schools who testified at the Board meeting. Bradwell and Deneen parents and students were forced to sit in the holding room because there was not enough room in the Board chambers. The Board reserved several rows of seats for their employees, thus locking out a significant number of stack holders whose very careers were being decided on in that room.

A couple of high school teachers from Phillips and Marshall who are all slated to be fired did speak out to the Board. Michael Johnson, a teacher at Marshall High School, appealed to Huberman’s police background to understand the harmful effects of turnaround.

“I know you know Mr. Huberman where Marshall High School is,” Johnson said. “It is in the police district’s Area 11, home to one of the highest crime rates in the nation. If we proposed the turnaround model by removing all the police in this area with rookie cops, this would upset everyone.”

Donald Baumgartner, a teacher at Marshall, said despite the school’s problems, his debate team placed 7th in the city, “but I can’t teach them now because I’m somehow a bad teacher.

“I’m not asking for a second chance,” Baumgartner told the Board members. “I’m asking for a fair chance.”

A teacher and an attorney for McCorkle School – which is slated to be closed and consolidated – disputed the Board’s assertions that the cost of repairs would amount to 60% of building a new school for roughly $8 million. They said an engineering firm told them the building could be repaired at a cost of $1.2 million to last another 100 years.

“First you said the building needed repairs,” said Anna Paglia, a lawyer the McCorkle LSC hired to help save their school. “And then you said it’s not safe. Then the children should be out of the building now.”

Huberman said they should sit down with his staff to discuss their findings which are at odds with the school’s estimates.

After the public testimony ended, the Board members voted in favor of the new president Mary Richardson Lowry, an attorney with no educational background, though she told everyone she had many teachers in her family.

“I am by my nature rather exacting,” Richardson said in her acceptance speech, whose stern appearance and exacting style appeared to be the opposite of the late Board president Michael Scott who would have joked and played a bit with his audience.

The only questions Board members asked Huberman during his presentation on which schools to close was how he can better communicate his wishes to close or turnaround schools.

Then after closed session, the Board voted to approve via a string of letter and number codes that signified the closing of eight Chicago public schools and the elimination of hundreds of Chicago teaching and staff jobs, as children continue to be tossed around on a rocky ship the Mayor still leads into an uncertain future.

Ron Huberman, Barbara Eason-Watkins, and the school board refused to face those whose schools they closed

Today eight Chicago Public Schools were closed or “turned around” by a secret Board of Education vote.  Abandoning past practice, the Board did not have a public roll call vote. Mary Richardson-Lowry, the new Board President, simply ordered to “record the last positive vote,” not even mentioning the schools by name, but referred coldly to them by Board agenda numbers.

“This was a cowardly act by the Board,” said CORE Co-Chair and teacher at King College Prep Karen Lewis.  “This unelected Board sidestepped even the smallest measure of accountability today.  Clearly, thousands of Chicagoans fighting school closings scared the Board into hiding.”

CORE Co-Chair and teacher and Lawndale Little Village High School teacher Jackson Potter warned that the Board’s turnaround policy is dangerous.  “You can’t easily reproduce long-term teacher-student, school-community bonds forged over decades with an entirely new, mostly novice staff who doesn’t stay more than a few years at the school.  Unfortunately, what may prove easy to reproduce is the escalating violence like we’ve seen at Fenger High School, a CPS turnaround school.   The turnaround fanned the flames in a volatile school and no one who knew the students could extinguish the fire.  The school erupted and Derrion Albert lost his life.  This must stop.”

Lewis added that, “Turnarounds are simply a layoff policy.  Between turnarounds and charters, the Board is creating a low-wage, high-turnover work force which is a penny-wise, pound-foolish business move, not an education improvement plan.”

On Monday, hundreds of parents, students, and teachers packed the City Council chambers to urge support for the Council’s school closings moratorium resolution.  The group then picketed   on the “5^th floor” to demand a meeting with Mayor Daley on school closings.  Representatives of targeted schools and CORE co-chair Jackson Potter are presently in negotiations to meet with the Mayor.  “The Board is not in power.  Ultimately the Mayor is responsible for our schools,” said Potter.

CORE is continuing its fight against turnarounds in the courts.  On behalf of African American teachers fired via the turnaround policy, CORE filed an EEOC complaint against the Board of Education, citing that it has a disparate impact on African American teachers.  The EEOC has upheld the case and CORE is pursuing it.   “This isn’t over,” vowed Lewis.

ABC-7 News features CORE candidate for CTU President Karen Lewis, who told the board, “Turnaround is a layoff policy, not an education policy.” CORE Pension Trustee Lois Ashford, “[Turnaround schools] aren’t better…they’re just different.”

Click Here to see WGN Channel 9 coverage of CORE treasurer Carol Caref and CYIC’s Kellina Mojica

CORE Live-tweeted the meeting. Check out www.twitter.com/coreteachers .

Today’s Education Committee hearing ended up being quite a show! Several aldermen gave scathing accounts of their view of R2010, and Alderman Munoz forced the committee chair to change her mind and hear public testimony from a small representation of the many folks who came out to support the R2010 school closing moratorium. It was a powerful day.

When the public was allowed to speak, representatives from CORE and our GEM partners spoke in favor of the Moratorium Resolution, co-sponsored by Aldermen Lyle and Dowell. This resolution would,

…requite that a moratorium of at least one year be place on current and future school closings, consolidations, turnaround, and phase outs until a comprehensive strategy of transparency, community involvement, and public accountability can be developed, which will include the recommendations from the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force.

From Catalyst:

…members of the audience said they wanted the education committee and the City Council at large, to vote on the resolution. Jesse Sharkey, a member of the Caucus Of Rank and File Educators, a group of progressive teachers, said at least then people would know where their alderman stood on the issue.

CORE Vice Presidential Candidate Jesse Sharkey speaking to the City Council Education Committee

Jesse was recently elected as CORE’s Vice Presidential candidate. Jesse’s testimony available at the “read more” link.

During public participation, hundreds of students, parents, and teachers from schools slated for closure arrived and filled the board chambers.

School communities entering city hall

Jonathon Jackson of Operation Push and protestors outside City Hall.

School communities file into City Council chambers to hold their representatives accountable as CORE Co-Chair Jackson Potter looks on

School communities storm the fifth floor to hold the "Education Mayor" accountable

Since the "Education Mayor" refused to speak to students, teachers, and parents, the group decided to sing songs against school closings.

Afterword, they filed up to the fifth floor, demanding to speak to the Mayor. Daley refused to leave his office and sent out a representative who insisted that Daley “has been the ‘education mayor’ for the last 21 years.”

What that means is anyone’s guess.

Mr. Mayor, please don't close our school.

There’s a lot of fads in school reform, just like there’s a lot of fads in weight-loss—and the belief that turnarounds—that is firing the whole staff of a school and bringing in a fresh but inexperienced team is every bit as discredited as crash dieting. In Chicago we saw substantially the same policy, which was called ‘reconstitution’ fail in 1997, re-engineering fail in 2000, we undertook turnarounds in 2006—and there’s a lot of evidence that this latest face on an old fad is doing us more harm than good.

We have now seen enough of this experiment on our schools; we have evidence that is too persuasive to ignore: (1) turnarounds have been associated with increased violence, as we saw at Fenger H.S., (2) the turnaround process has pushed veteran black educators out of the teaching force as they are fired and replaced with predominantly white novices, and (3) the turnaround process has actually destabilized the teaching force and displaced a significant number of students in many of the schools where it is tried—and therefore even the legitimate test score gains that CPS claims—and not all of them are legitimate—are based on a quick fix, that actually reduces the health of our schools overall, and will lead to a sad, but predictable reversal.

Without going on for too long, I want to go through each of these three claims in a little more depth.

1. Violence. No one is blaming school violence on turnarounds—that’s a social epidemic that does not begin and will not end in the schools. But there’s good reason, and plenty on anecdotal evidence to show that destabilizing a school by firing its veteran staff is a bad idea. In early September, Derrion Albert, who attended the Fenger turnaround was killed outside of school after weeks of gang violence dominated the beginning of the school year. No one knows if the tragedy at Fenger High School could have been averted if a veteran staff, who knew the neighborhood, and had a history with those kids, had still worked in the building.

2. The turnaround process has pushed veteran black educators out of the teaching force as they are fired and replaced with predominantly white novices. It is moreover the case that this is taking place in schools that serve the African American community—so not only do turnarounds have a negative impact on the diversity of the Chicago teaching force in general, the policy has the effect of depriving students of role models who look like them, and share their background. Chicago has 2,000 fewer African American teachers than we did in 2002. Turnarounds are a big part of this. In fact, the EEOC has upheld a complaint, filed by CORE on behalf of black teachers whose schools had been turned around. This is a disparate impact case—meaning that driving veteran black educators out of Chicago’s classrooms may not be the intent, but it is certainly the effect, expect the Department of Justice to take up the investigation soon.

3. Finally, turnarounds do not achieve the goal of creating a stable, skilled teaching force at the schools in question. Take for example, AUSL, which is Chicago’s most important turnaround operator. According to data compiled by Catalyst, the large majority of AUSL graduates are not still at the turnaround school three or four years later. This is not too surprising; nearly fifty percent of new teachers don’t make it—but it does not serve these schools well.

Finally, I want to say something more about the historical parallel between turnarounds and reconstitution, which was tried and then abandoned in the late 1990’s. In both Chicago and San Francisco, where reconstitution was first used in 1984, there was an emphasis on recruiting the best teachers for the targeted schools—as well as curricular and other supports which went into place after the school was reconstituted. And in both these cases the program was abandoned because those schools wound up with most of the same difficulties which they faced before the reconstitution—in fact, one of this year’s turnaround targets, Marshall, was reconstituted in 1997! But this leads to the question—if a school system is going to make an effort to hire skilled teachers, as well as provide training and curricular supports for a school—why do you have to fire the entire staff in order to do that?

The turnaround process is like a fad diet—we’re trying it because we’re desperate for results. But like any diet that hurts our health, we’d be better off asking our doctor and using a little common sense. In this case take the advice of educators, not venture capitalists with a product to sell. Do not fire your most dedicated, veteran teachers who work at your toughest schools. Stop Turnarounds.