Dear xmca people:
Yes, Paul Vallas, Superintendent of Chicago school, quit. So did the head of
the Board of Education, Chico. But it wasn't just because the test scores were
drooping. It was because there was organized resistance to the implementation
of the education plan of which the test scores were the publicity vehicle.
Another activity system expanding, you might say.
Chicago Mayor Daley (plus Chico plus Vallas) set up what was supposed to become
"the Chicago miracle," a whammy of testing and "intervention" and
"reconstitution" of the public schools. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU)
president during this period was Tom Reece, who went along with the testing
binge.
In reaction, a caucus of union reformers ran against Reece. The opposition
group is called PACT. The central issue for PACT was the use of massive
testing to determine the whole range of possibilities of what goes into a
school. PACT ran against Reece back in the previous election. At that time
they got 43% of the vote, then gained strength and maintained a visible
opposition between elections, and this time around (while Reece et al appeared
to be unconcerned) they ran again and won with 57% of the vote.
Exit polls from the Mary 18 election (in whch 22,788 ballots were cast out of
34,000 members) reported a solid win for PACT. The next day in the Chicago Trib
Chico's retirement was announced. Then Vallas quit. The new head of the Board
of Education is apparently a "go-along-get-along guy" who currently runs the
park department! We'll see!
So it wasn't that Vallas, reflecting on the failure of the tests to produce
miracles, decided to get another job. It was that years of organizing work
resulted in a big win where it counts -- in the union, producing a much more
militant leadership that campaigned on a platform that includes resisting the
testing mania. The change in union leadership resulted in heads rolling at City
Hall. Yes, it was about testing. But it was also about organizing and
organizational structure and process -- and activity systems and "learning by
expanding."
I apologize for abstaining from the LBE discussion so far. I got iced by the
interactions around Marxism and nature. I've been reading the book, which is
wonderful but very very dense. I'm in the middle of Chapter 4.
Helena Worthen
Mike Cole wrote:
> Hi Phillip-- Yes, the noose is being tightened around our children in the
> name of their futures.
>
> Yesterday the head of Chicago schools who implemented a lot of quality
> control measures, and totally scripted teaching, gave up gbecause the
> early gains leveled off. The attempt to create good education through
> Fordist measures will fail over and over and over again, if not at grade 2
> then at grade 4 or 5 or 6.
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 01 2001 - 01:01:27 PDT