Rham Emanuel
Let me tell you about Rahm Emanuel. He used to be Obama’s chief of staff. Have you ever heard him talk? Well, make sure your children are not around when you do, since he is crude and foul mouthed with every other word F…..
Not really professional for the President’s Chief of Staff, don’t you agree?
He decided to run for Mayor of Chicago when the incumbent retired and when he won, he decided to improve the Chicago schools with his multi-faceted plan. Rham Emanuel with the support of the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ entity called Democrats for Education Reform would set qualification standards for teachers. (And you know these hedge fund managers’ children don’t go to the Chicago public schools and so are not subjected to high stakes testing; they attend schools that have a rich and varied curriculum.)
Rahm would create a pool of the best young teachers, and reward new teachers by elevating them to top scale pay in as little as eight years. He would require every principal to sign a five year contract tied to student performance goals.
His most controversial proposal would allow a majority of parents at any Chicago public school to vote to declare the school failed, and give them the right to decide how it should be transformed–called the “parent trigger” reform sweeping parts of the country.
Parents would be permitted to effect change “through administrative changes, by bringing in new operators or by shutting the school down and starting over with a charter, a school of excellence or any other model.”
chicago.cbslocal.com/2010/12/12/rahm-emanuel-unveils-plans-for-chicago-public-schools/
The policies pushed by Mayor Emanuel include: weakening teacher tenure, lengthening the school day, merit pay pitting teacher against teacher, evaluating teachers and schools on the basis of student test scores, closing schools and replacing them with “for-profit” charters (by removing teachers who have been a major part of students lives, you also remove the stability needed in the lives of young children and by the way there’s been an increase in Chicago violence since Emanuel became mayor) and removing teacher protections. The union is saying enough is enough.
Doesn’t Mayor Emanuel realize that teachers’ working conditions are children’s learning conditions? What kind of a Democrat is he that would take away the collective bargaining rights of workers? Dr Diane Ravitch has in her blog reminded us that tomorrow may be the day that the Chicago Teacher union may strike. To remain in solidarity she is wearing red and recommends teachers across the country wear red on Monday
Here is Diane Ravitch’s column.
Thanks for posting, jo ann.
Rahm Emmanuel is the true face of the Democratic Party.
The so-called Democrats allow diverse people to cheer and clap at the convention.
Then they go on to suppress their will by including in their platform references to “God” and Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israel, while fomenting a third war, this time against Iran, that poor kids will fight, and which, if it happens, will more than likely, usher in police state conditions in this country.
The true problem is that public institutions are being starved, just as they are in Europe, even as the problems of mass poverty become greater by the day.
But Rahm Emmanuel, Robert Rubin, the Clintons, and the Obamas send their kids to elite private schools, even as they perform their acts in cordoned-off auditoriums in front of people wearing silly hats.
Some group of teachers will be forced by circumstances to take the lonely road that goes beyond talk and into true tests of the law. Thus will the labor movement find itself again.
As a retiree dependent upon the good will, honesty, and disinterestedness of “venture capitalists” like Gina Raimondo, I know that my time of testing will also come.
The teachers of Chicago are on strike today. This is the first time in 25 years because of Rham Emanuel’s very negative approach in dealing with Chicago public schools. There are those who say the teachers are hurting the children. Not so.
It is the greedy thinking of those in the Emanuel administration, especially when the mayor’s agenda includes giving school funds to wealthy developers like billionaire Penny Pritzker, a school board member, so she can build more hotels…that is hurting the children.
Read this impassioned commentary by a Chicago teacher who will tell you who is REALLY HURTING THE KIDS:
Why I’m striking, JCB
CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard is on record saying both that CTU leadership is deciding whether or not to strike, and that “everyone knows that a strike would only hurt our kids.”
I just wanted to educate my boss a little on the history of Chicago, as he is relatively new to the area. Chicago is founded on the hard daily struggle of working people. It is the birth of the labor movement—not a movement just for wages and benefits, but a movement that stopped child labor so that each of the kids in CPS schools could attend school instead of working. It was a movement that stopped the practice of working conditions so unsafe that consumers were eating the actual workers who fell into the mix while they were making hot dogs. It was a movement that fought so that workers could have some tiny measure of time with our families rather than spending all waking hours working for the enrichment of their bosses.
But even more importantly, I wanted to educate Mr. Brizard about what it means to “help or hurt our kids”.
When you make me cram 30-50 kids in my classroom with no air conditioning so that temperatures hit 96 degrees, that hurts our kids.
When you lock down our schools with metal detectors and arrest brothers for play fighting in the halls, that hurts our kids.
When you take 18-25 days out of the school year for high stakes testing that is not even scientifically applicable for many of our students, that hurts our kids.
When you spend millions on your pet programs, but there’s no money for school level repairs, so the roof leaks on my students at their desks when it rains, that hurts our kids.
When you unilaterally institute a longer school day, insult us by calling it a “full school day” and then provide no implementation support, throwing our schools into chaos, that hurts our kids.
When you support Mayor Emanuel’s TIF program in diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of school funds into to the pockets of wealthy developers like billionaire member of your school board, Penny Pritzker so she can build more hotels, that not only hurts kids, but somebody should be going to jail.
When you close and turnaround schools disrupting thousands of kids’ lives and educations and often plunging them into violence and have no data to support your practice, that hurts our kids.
When you leave thousands of kids in classrooms with no teacher for weeks and months on end due to central office bureaucracy trumping basic needs of students, that not only hurts our kids, it basically ruins the whole idea of why we have a district at all.
When you, rather than bargain on any of this stuff set up fake school centers staffed by positively motived Central Office staff, many of whom are terribly pissed to be pressed into veritable scabitude when they know you are wrong, and you equip them with a manual that tells them things like, “communicate with words”, that not only hurts our kids, but it suggests you have no idea how to run a system with their welfare in mind.
When you do enough of this, it makes me wonder if you really see our students as “our kids” or “other people’s children”.
And at that moment, I am willing to sacrifice an awful lot to protect the students I serve every day. I am not hurting our kids by striking, I’m striking to restore some semblance of reasonable care for students to this system. I’m doing to tell you, “No, YOU are the one hurting our children, and you need to STOP because what you are doing is wrong, and you are robbing students of their educational opportunities.
I ask anyone who does remotely care about the kids we teach and learn from and triumph and cheer and cry and grow with., to stand with us and fight for a better future for our kids.
chiteacherx.blogspot.com/2012/09/why-im-striking-jcb.html
Point of procedure for you all: If you expect people to read whatever position your columnist puts forth, you might start with having her(?) identify herself fully and then deign to actually spell correctly the name of the object of her vitriol. Whatever point she was intending to make was lost on me. If she cant even take the 10 seconds to make sure the name of the subject of her column was spelled correctly, I assume equal inattention to any other facts or positions she might have put forth. Click, next…
Thanks for the heads up! We appreciate your help and understanding.
Thanks for fixing this, now I will go back and actually read the piece.
When is Jo Ann going to post the alternative plan or is she all status quo all the time?
When doing something demonstrably harmful it is enough to suggest stopping as an alternative. That line is like responding when someone suggests we stop banging your heads against a wall, “yes, but if I stop what will we bang our heads against?”
It’s the same old crap. Plenty of hyperbole but no substance. Are you afraid to admit that progressives are happy with the status quo?