Gratitude

Sunday night, anxious about the oncoming strike, I spent ten minutes of my time with my small voice to write a short piece about why I was striking. I sent it out via twitter and facebook, and let it go for the night.

The response was overwhelming. First teachers, then parents and students, and finally the mainstream media reached out.

Today, I am filled with hope. I didn't conceive it, but I am proud to be part of this international movement to save public education. Let's maintain these connections, organize in our own communities and take back our education system.

To this end, I'd suggest a couple of actions:
1) Bring together parents, students and educators with equal voice.
2) Develop our own vision of what education should be.
3) Demand community control of policy and implementation of our shared vision.

As a starting point, I'd suggest that we agree on some basic ideas:
1) Public education means every single young person gets the supports they need to take ownership of and advance their education.
2) Parents and students have a right to determine what they want from their schools.
3) Teachers have a right to determine how to best fulfill parent and student vision with our professional expertise.

For too long, we've waited for the rich and powerful to improve our schools. They have no interest or motivation to do so. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Let's build the schools our students deserve.

Wearing red day 2 on the picket line.

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.

See you on the picket line, my friend.

Finding Fact: This report illustrates a simple fact--we must end corporate control of the school system

It’s time for us to draw a line in the sand: Chicago educators won’t be satisfied simply with more money that will contribute to the decline of the district finances. We must demand to be compensated fairly, but also that the district redirect its priorities back to the classroom and away from poorly thoughtful out political shenanigans. The current conflict has illustrated the path to this solution—the CPS current leadership cannot and will not ever place “children first” and so more than a favorable contract, we need a board elected and overseen by the communities whose children actually attend Chicago Public Schools.

Today, a fact-finding panel tasked with reporting on a small portion of the issues involved in the on-going battle between the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Public Schools appointed board and leadership will issue a report on its findings. The report recommended approximately 18.2% more teacher compensation to pay for the mayor’s proposed “Longest School Day”.

The mayor responded by once again trotting out his tired talking points that CPS has the shortest school day and year in the country. It’s not only false, at the high school level, it’s not really close. Furthermore, American teachers devote far more instructional time and students receive similar instructional hours relative to the other countries corporate education reforms often compare us unfavorably towards.

This fact-finding report that the mayor, city and district governance are tearing apart is actually a report that they themselves demanded through millions of dollars of lobbying of the state legislature.

It appears that CPS will continue to emphasize their inability to pay for basic instructional costs in the district and CTU wasn’t really interested in the fact-finding at all in the first place as CTU’s key issues such as class size and length of school day and year were not subject to either the fact finding process or required to be part of the negotiations due to state laws pushed through by CPS.

CPS will ask for either no major pay increase or massive layoffs.

CTU would be wise to redirect the conversation to teachers’ priorities—humane learning conditions for the students we teach each day. We should emphasize that CPS’ interpretation of the budget—that salaries and pensions are bankrupting the system is categorically false—those portions of the budget are at an all-time low. The budget crunch has been triggered by financial mismanagement in a system that is designed to keep educators and community as far away from management as possible.

The more I watch the process, the more I’m sure that we have no choice but to strike. This isn’t a question of money (which we could negotiate to a middle point). It’s a question of difference in philosophy. CPS believes that it should have unilateral control over all teaching and learning issues. It believes that privatization and the increasing diversion of funds from neighborhood schools and classroom level resources to magic bullet programs, turnarounds and charter schools as in its best interests. It’s not interested in providing a teacher for each classroom on the first day of each school year.

The fact finding process reinforces this notion. It demonstrates that even when CPS gets exactly what they want—a high threshold for strike, the ability to unilaterally impose many working conditions, a neutral fact-finding condition, they still cannot even be motivated to come up with a remotely thoughtful budget or proposals that will allow the independent arbiter any path out of the conflict. The solutions put forth that overworked, overstressed people to work more for no compensation or for students to face inhumane class sizes are nothing that anyone with a care for students could possibly endorse.

Since 1995, the district’s operation has revolved around a simple question, “What is in the best interest of the Mayor and his cronies?”

We must return the operating question to be “What is in the best interests of the students?”

Let me make this clear. I don’t want more money. I don’t need to work more hours. I accounted for my school related hours three years ago and found that I worked between 80-100 hours each week. I cannot extended my day and continue to serve my students in the exemplary fashion I demand of myself.

I want the Chicago Public Schools to bargain in good faith not only with the CTU and us, its members, but with students, parents and communities to the benefit of kids.

We will not negotiate for with those who would terrorize our kids, and we will compromise nothing when it comes to the best interests of their children.

In that spirit, we must redouble our efforts to remove the appoint governance structures that have poisoned our schools and our city. We must be prepared to do damage to our own families and risk our livelihoods to fight the board. We must be the barrier between our students and those who would injure them and our entire city.

CPS FY 2013 budget quick look

Understanding the budget:

So you’ve just had the 212 page Chicago Public Schools budget dumped on you and you want to do your civic duty in understanding and commenting on it in the 3 hours before the horribly scheduled public hearings! You can find the budget here:
http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Financial_information/Pages/Financialinformation.aspx

Why is this important?

Due to poor management of taxpayer dollars, CPS manufactures its own budget crisis every year. This results in worse educational supports for the vast majority of students while privatizing options continue to be increasingly supported. There is no scientific justification for these priorities; rather it is a strategy for manufactured crisis to force policy rather than the best interests of students driving policy and resource allocation. My hope is that this work will motivate the development of a people’s budget movement in Chicago Public Schools to oppose the current corporate structure.

9 quick things about the current budget and then some explanations:

1.       The district is taking in $5.3 billion in revenue from local (47.6% of the total), state (34.7%), and national (17.6%) support. There is an additional .8 % coming from interest income.

2.       Only $4.7 billion (88.8%) of the $5.3 billion even makes it to the General Operating Fund while 9.3% goes to debt service, much of it going to clouted banks (assigned by a School Board appointed with bankers and business people). An additional 1.9% goes to the capital fund for building and maintaining school facilities.

3.       Both the percentage of the budget devoted to teacher salaries and combined teacher salaries + pensions have declined significantly since FY2004 (Salaries 48.43%-->37.65%, combined 56.3%-->44.30%). This year’s projected decline is the highest on record. The growth has been in charter school tuition (which accounts for a portion, but not the balance of the decline in teacher salaries), and “other fixed charges” (p. 126-127). In accounts, Contracts, Equipment, Transportation, and Contingencies are rising this year (p15)

4.       The pension payments have stayed steady or declined while obligations have ballooned. This is natural with any debt that is not responsibility repaid. The vast majority of the pension “crisis” is caused by CPS and to a lesser degree, the state, diverting pension funding toward failed programs like High School Transformation. Accounting for the simple refusal to pay, they do not make up a major portion of the financial crisis on their own.

5.       Despite the discussion of $120 million in additional funds for school level budgeting, the actual outlay to schools has declined this year (-0.3%). Instead, the Chief Education Officer (15.3%), Chief Administrative Officer (22.8%), Portfolio (1368.0%) , Talent (35.5%), Law (10.1%) and Network (31.6%) offices have grown (p13 of the budget)

6.       Some of the above is explained by the shifting of responsibilities, but that still represents a shifting of funds away from school and LSC based oversight to central office oversight.

7.       The Talent Office is still completely unable to develop a navigatable staffing framework and that results in less competitive hiring by CPS and improper/inadequate staffing that severely damages students. So they received more money to oversee.

8.       The grouping of family and community engagement, LSC relations and governmental affairs suggests a priority on attempting to lobby and attain buy-in from communities rather than truly collaborative efforts that are respectful to parent voice.

9.       The deficit is at least in some part real, but should be viewed in the context of a CPS finance department that has been hundreds of millions of dollars off in their deficit projections every single year.

What is the budget?

The budget is a document that CPS is mandated to release each fiscal year to lay out the expected revenue and planned expenditures for public consumption. It is then voted on by the CPS Board of Education. Since the Board of Education is non-elected, neither the board nor central office is required to actually listen to any of public input. Nevertheless, CPS is legally required release a draft budget in June, hold public hearings and then the board must pass a final version at the following board meeting.  

If they aren’t integrated into the process, why have the hearings at all? Why testify at hearings where people running the system aren’t listening?

CPS is required by law to have the hearings. They also use the opportunity to “sell” their budget to the public. I have presented several years at the hearings. The point is not to move CPS, it’s to build community knowledge and confidence that we can build our own budget. Two years ago, I received my termination notice from my teaching position at Julian High School due to my work supporting student organizing. Even though it was very difficult, I testified through my tears to ensure the story was told.

How is the budget prepared and organized?

The process for preparing the budget, despite public outcry, remains almost completely opaque. In examining what is produced in the draft, it appears that the previous years’ budgets are used as a template with all of their underlying assumptions. Then new budget priorities are integrated and a narrative that decries a huge deficit, praises central office for cutting expenditures, and blames teachers for wanting their promised retirement contract honored is produced regardless of the current status of the budget. This results in a budget with the following portions:

·         Letter from the CEO

·         General overview that puts the current FY budget in comparison with the previous years

·         Rvenue explanation (the money the system is taking in)

·         School based budget breakdown (The money at the school level)

·         Departmental breakdown

·         Pension blaming section

·         Capital budget

·         Debt Management

·         Organizational overview/chart

·         Explanation of the various funds

·         Miscellaneous Appendices

Bullets and Names

Joseph Briggs' name is all over the news today. But nobody knew his name when he was alive. To our society, a poor youth's name is only worth knowing when they are about to be put in the ground.

They say “Bullets don’t have no names” cause they take "innocent" lives. But they do. They're made to have the names of vibrant, beautiful black and brown children on them. When was the last time you saw a bullet with a Pritzker or Crown’s name on it?

The worst part is that our kids sense that their names’ are on them. They walk outside to go to school or sit on the porch and they know that bullet may be out there waiting for them. And they often feel resigned to the unavoidable nature of it. And why should they waste time and energy in class on the play tools of the elite? If Winnetka was a “shooting gallery” would Tim Cawley (CAO of Chicago Public Schools) just give up and never let his kids leave the house? No, but if it were, the he would use his clout to do something to remedy the situation.

Joseph was a brilliant, clever child. He seemed to have some interest in our World Studies work, but mostly he was trying to keep up on what was going on around the block. I’ll never know if that’s what killed him or what kept him around as long as he was. We had some great conversations and he had days where he had the most brilliant ideas to share.

I wish I remembered them in this muddle of my mind. I think I’ll go through his work tonight.

What I do remember was a sense that his mind was often elsewhere, and while his intent was to excel in school, he was preoccupied with what was going on beyond the four walls of the classroom.

I visited him frequently in the detention room. He was there, but never really for anything too negative—talking over the instruction, disruption class in various ways, occasionally getting into a mild argument with a classmate. He was pretty calm, flashed his brilliant smile, and worked quietly on make-up work he needed to get back on track.

Earlier this semester he checked completely out of school. He had been suspended several times, and one time he didn’t come back. I asked his sister every time we had a chance how he was doing, and she would say, “Well, you know Joseph. He’s trying…” and she would smile, but I could sense some desperation in her voice.

I hoped each day I would see him back at school, but he didn’t come back. I wanted to go do a home visit, but there was never time. I mean, not in that way where there is time, but you don’t make it—actually not a minute in the day…I think.

When I heard night before last, I wasn’t even surprised. I just thought, “What has this child done to get shot to pieces on his porch feet away from his family?”

Some of you might attempt to answer that question, but I urge you to stop. He’s done no worse that the robber barons and corrupt “do-gooders” who create the economic, social and educational chaos that our kids inhabit and help craft the devil’s bargains that good young people have to choose on.  Joseph opt-out of a education system that didn’t give a shit about his daily struggles and sought to “raise the bar” on his test scores. Two more points on that Explore test wouldn’t have help him before and it sure won’t help him now. Katie Osgood writes better on this than I ever could here.

I don’t want to teach my kids anymore if teaching means “raising the bar” and wondering if I could have done more when I have to put them in the ground. We lose our kids one at a time and it’s not because we don’t have enough “rigor”. We have too much and it’s getting worse. I remember angrily telling a beloved colleague during another frustrating day of testing (we’ve lost about 20 days of instruction to testing this year) that “we lost some kids today and we don’t even know it.”

Joseph knew more than we act like we know. He knew that there was a bullet out there with his name on it, and no amount of racing to the top or “every child can learn” rhetoric was going to save him from it.

I say this not out of fatalism, but out of hope and despair wrapped in the same package. If we empowered these youth, they could take their names off of those bullets, but we are too busy listening to people who feign care for “other people’s” black and brown children.

I loved all of them we’ve lost. Some of them were beautiful, society-changing activists, and others were beautiful, brilliant members of not so beautiful street organizations. And damn those bullets that had Salter, Holt, Daniel, Malcolme, Brown, Briggs, and all the others on them. But damn more the policies that disempower our youth and send those bullets hurtling towards them.

Until the children whose clouted parents run this city have bullets with their names on them, their mommies and daddies will still lock, load and shoot, and ours will keep dropping.

RIP Joseph. You are loved.

A Teacher's last lesson

On November 17, Mary Thorson left her students for the last time. She was suspended without pay for allegedly cursing at a student. On Thanksgiving day, she stepped in front of a semi truck. She left a letter in her car describing the conditions she faced at her school, and her stack of disciplinary notices on her bed in her apartment.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-teacher-suicide-20120101,0,1207321.story?page=2

From the descriptions in the article, Ms. Thorson poured all of herself into her students, and specifically picked an environment that she knew she could take care of students of highest need. She gave all of herself to the students in ways that most of the society could, but chooses not to. She may have made mistakes. I remember in particular a colleague who I would join frequently as we risked our own safety to break up gang skirmishes in my previous school. When CPS turned around Fenger High School, many of the roughest students were pushed out, some to our school and this led to increased violence at our school. One day, my colleague had a bat out "Lean on Me" style and students were rushing his door to get at some of his students. He hit the door frame with the bat to send a message, and the window in the frame shattered from the vibration, hitting a student who was watching the incident. It was a terrible mistake, but a mistake that many would never have been in the position to make. The student got stitched up and I spoke with her later. She said she was fine and she felt foolish for standing there. I honestly don't know how to process that situation.

What exactly happened to Ms. Thorson, or the severity of the bullying she faced, we may never know. But what she described is common, and it's quite clear the environment she faced based on the district's response to the situation. It's particularly telling that from the article, it doesn't appear she assigned much of her stress if any to the students she taught. That's a gift.

Reading the article, all the school board's statements were about how surprised they were and how it wasn't fair to blame them. You who it's more unfair to? The person who put their life on the line for first their country, then the kids, and was loved by the kids, bullied by admin and then pushed to suicide. That's not ****ing fair. And as for surprise, this situation is in almost every district and more pronounced in districts like Mr. Thorson. While we don't blame the students for the stress involved, the challenges we face each day make the lack of respect from the district even more difficult to handle. Even in my school, where the admin seems excellent, the district mandates are soul crushing.

I look forward to the blessed time with the students, but I always go to work knowing that I'm probably going to lose students and colleagues--to the stress, to the poor district supports and ultimately to depression, suicide and violence.

In allowing these conditions to continue, in a way we are all responsible. We in fear stay silent and the society in ignorance chooses to not notice the reality and blame the outcomes on those of us who devote our lives to the students in these environments.

The first step is what her colleagues did in sharing their realities and in such a way, celebrating her life and final words: "We must speak up about what's going on!"

Of endings and beginnings...

So another two more writingless years and I'm ready to have a go at it again. Like jumping off bridges, I figure if my friends are blogging it, I should be too.

My return post is on a topic near and dear to my heart--getting fired. I've been fired twice in the last years, and the whole thing about it being the most stressful thing besides death of spouse/child (or whatever is the reality if that's just an urban legend) probably has some truth in it. As always, I kind of skated through the situation with a slightly more forced smile on my face, but it didn't entirely agree with me or my constitution.

The first time I got fired spurred this unsent letter, which I figure might as well go up now. As I re-read it, it strikes me how special the kids felt our program was. I think they were right--it was special as in "beautiful", but not special as in "one-of-a-kind". I think that every teacher has the ability to create a space where students feel safety, freedom and their own limitless potential, and it's a systemic problem that not only throws obstacles to impede that creation, but also teaches us to not even yearn for it.

____________________________________

September 17, 2010

Just over a month ago, I stood before many of you as a devoted team player and colleague in the fight for educational improvement in our great country and warned you of my concern that the current wave of educational reform—with all of its positive motives and the vast array of talent devoted to it—would fail as a result of it being appropriated by bad actors to be used as a hammer against educators and communities. I did not know how specifically prescient that would turn out to be.

On Thursday August 12, I received a letter from Chicago Public Schools. The letter explained that I was “honorably terminated” as of August 31 and the reason cited by the district was “redefinition”. I would lose all health benefits (actually, we were “generously” afforded an extension of 30 days to our policy as required by state law), seniority, banked sick days and any other privileges of working as a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools. In four years, I had used a total of four personal days and zero sick days—2 for my grandfather’s funeral, one for my wife’s graduation from medical school, and one to support a couple of students who were speaking at the Board of Education (one of whom many of you know, Shantell Steve). I was to have no due process and no respect for seniority.

I would ask for a brief moment that you place yourselves in that frozen moment. Out of all of it—my years of teaching both in the United States and Japan, the walls of awards that the students have won, the thriving programs (Japanese and Social Justice) that have grown in popularity and expanded over the years of 85 hour weeks and the professional mentoring, the support I had given countless colleagues to keep our community hub that is Julian High School strong through five principals over four years, or the leadership role I had taken with the department in promoting community and educator involvement in educational policy and school improvement—none of it mattered. But ponder that briefly, and then move on. The story of education is not the story of teachers.

This story is about the 151 students enrolled in my classes depending on me and who they were/are and the millions of students just like them across this nation. I had specifically performed reverse “traditional recruiting” where instead of targeting the honor roll students, I had recruited many of the most challenging students and supported them toward college and encouraged them to—whatever their ideological perspective—express themselves and work with every last drop of their energy for the betterment of our school, community and society. But that didn’t matter either. It didn’t even matter that I had specifically chosen a school most targeted for my skills—the rarest skills of all; a school that was a large urban school with high neighborhood violence, low parental involvement, completely segregated and a high rate of student discontentment with the school. I ran against the crowd to that environment and supported students in building a welcoming environment that made them want to work hard and be in school every day (a couple of values that I was happy to see the President emphasize in his latest speech).

Despite the fact that the students were told that the classes were cut because “there was not enough interest”, they quickly figured out the truth. They wanted to do something drastic, but I told them that I didn’t want anything done that would hurt them and that they should write for change.

Ja’ Marie James, a Junior wrote the following:

I miss you Barrett. It’s hard to find our old group. They take our cell phones. They kick us all out after school, except for the band. I miss getting together after school and working for good. I used to be late to school every day, but not anymore.

You kept me off the street—When I graduated from 8^th grade, I wasn’t planning on doing nothing. I planned to hang out with my friends on the block. You offered me a whole bunch of great stuff and I took it. I’m shocked because I look at myself back then and my freshman year, I never would have thought to go to New Orleans and help others.

In the 8^th grade, I said I didn’t want to do none of this. My mom put me in Freshman Connection and when I was in the class and you came into our room and talked about it, and I was joking in the back, “Who is this goofy? I’m not doing this.” But I joined and did the summer work and learned to love helping others. Helping the community.

Then I went to New Orleans twice. Slept on the floors of churches, built houses during the days. Complained too much and you scolded me.

The school did us bogus because you are the only teacher than offers us the whole service learning hours in a few weeks, so we do it and we learn to help others. It’s a way of life.

I never had any idea of doing any of this good.

I thank you because I never would of thought of doing any of this.

Just because you are gone, doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t do it. I know there will be others like me, and now we have to do it.

Khadijah Snyder, a sophomore, wrote a speech she delivered on the floor of the Board of Education (you can find her at 2:07:40 at the link:

These teachers really care about the students and our communities. These teachers you laid off at Julian kept the students aware and they made sure that they had what they needed to pass on to the next level. The teachers you fired enjoyed getting up, coming to school to teach. We learned from the teachers and they learned from us. You took away that bond. You took away the teachers who really cared and didn’t give up on us. For example, I go to Julian High School and you took away a teacher that was for social justice and education. His name was Mr. Barrett. He was the only teacher that would come and help us speak our mind about what was right. When we would come down to the Board meeting, people would call him a “troublemaker” because he spoke his mind. I think you fired him because he was a threat and you thought that since you took him away that we were going to stop fighting. But you’re wrong. We are going to keep fighting until you make a change. So be ready this school year. I always hear the saying, “Children are the future.” If we are the future, give us the education and the resources to be that future. But you won’t. Because you don’t want to see us be great. But we will be great and make a difference.

All told, I received correspondence from over 200 students, dozens of parents and hundreds of fellow teachers.

Much of the correspondence was from other teachers or educators who were terminated in similar fashion. In this wave, while the federal supports you generously gave were being squandered on “Culture of Calm” and other unscientific programs, nearly 2000 educators were torn from their students. I spoke to some who are in the process of losing their homes and/or marriages. Others left the district forever. Some are dying of cancer and have lost their healthy benefits entirely. What we have in common is that we are hurting and we have given every last ounce of our beings to improving urban education in the most challenging environments.

Personally, I realized that I was about to lose the ability to support my own family and was fortunate enough to be offered a permanent position for the interim summer job I was working. But I miss my students every minute I sit in my office wondering why the only way I am allowed to fight for the best possible urban education is sitting at a desk at the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago.

I ask you to consider not my situation, but the gaping hole left in every classroom that we have left without an impassioned urban educator. I can off the top of my head name dozens of exactly the caliber of teacher you are looking for who will never teach another student. What do they all say? “It’s never the students (that drive you out).” Some simply got tired of being cut and moved every year. Others got tired of a lack of support. Many got sick of being told that they were the problem as opposed to the failing charter school teachers or the turnaround missionaries (who got fired the next year and left too). Some were TFAs and as is the case, left the profession. A handful of us simply got cut for political reasons, and were placed on the “Do Not Hire” list along with the felons and worse. These are people who decided to sacrifice everything in our lives to be great teachers in the toughest areas and will never be allowed to teach again.

I have treasured my conversations with all of you—the Teaching Ambassador Fellows, our den mother Gillian, and of course, Brad, Peter, Massie, Ann, Jim, Tim, Alberto and Arne—I’ve learned so much. I’ve especially enjoyed hitting the road with Thelma, Dennis, Julie, and all of the area staff. I know the dedication to our nation’s children and our sacred task of education.

But I guess my question is this: How do you intend to improve teacher quality in struggling schools? I have trained dozens of quality urban teachers—many of whom did not come to the system with the all the skills they needed, but were there when they were shown the door—again and again.

The problem is not a lack of quality teachers or quality trainers. The problem is a lack of systemic support and quite frankly a lack of value on anything that constitutes great teaching.

I will close by linking the article used to screen our replacements at the Academy of Urban School Leadership—one of the programs we chose to highlight at the department.

One of the most outstanding teachers I know was grilled on it as part of her interview at an AUSL school after she was displaced from a historic neighborhood schools. She got into a heated discussion with the interviewer about the inherent racism of the article and—more importantly—it’s complete bankruptcy insofar as educational best practices. As a powerful, African American female educator who has motivated hundreds of Black and Latina/o youth to success at one of the schools that Renaissance 2010 peppered with violence, she was told that her radical ideas on race did not fit the vision of the school.

If this is the “Civil Rights Struggle for our generation”, I am horribly grateful that—for at least a short time—I was allowed the honor of training those who will destroy it and lead the “Civil Rights Struggle for the next generation.”

But I’m not writing to tell my sad, sad story and attack the plan we’ve got. There is a plan that works and I know the Department is pursuing it in part.

1) We must stop attacking the communities and families that we claim to be working for. We must open honest dialogues like Alberto Retana is doing and we must set the structure to promote such dialogue in every corner of our nation. We must give the bulk of the support and power to the parent, student and education sides of the conversation because those are the elements that in this era that the decision makers are used to shutting down.

2) We must set concrete attainable long-term goals that are meaningful to students and provide them more power to make positive change in their lives and our communities in the here and now. As I told my students, “Don’t listen when you are told, ‘Someday you’ll be a great leader’. We need great leaders now!” College is nice, but that’s a checkpoint on the road to success. And real success is a destination that even the very privileged often don’t reach even through their prestigious education. I think of Yuri Kochiyama: “Our ultimate objective in learning about anything is to try to create and develop a more just society “ The students who are least motivated to learn through drill and kill are not “problem students”, they are our next civic leaders. They are critical thinkers who need to be taught that school is exactly where you should be asking the hard questions that our society will benefit from for the rest of their lives. Our current and future Gangster Disciple is not going to be reintegrated into school by retaking the another math fundamental’s class. (S)he’ll be engaged by being given alternative, positive paths to attention, power and security. I know because my students have made that right choice again and again.

3) We need to be able to provide honest assessments to students and educators without a fear factor. With the exception of those driven clinically insane by these broken systems (and I mean that literally), I honestly have never met this mythical “unsalvageable teacher” that people claim inhabit our struggling neighborhood schools. I have met a few that were close at the “New Schools” and that’s only because they were so darn condescending and sure of themselves in day 17 of their ephemeral teaching careers. But I learned from every teacher in my building and was fortunate to be trained by venerable, brilliant, African American teachers who knew the community. It was mutual—we energized each other and I pulled a number of people back from burnout. Show me a teacher who is burned out, and I show you one who experienced one too many tough and hollow administrations and one too many years of having to steal paper to print lesson plans. We need to develop systems that humanize and motivate—not vilify and punish.

4) We need to stop thinking we are so much smarter than our students and those who came before us. Fenger High School is the classic example—even after counseling out the most troubled students, that school descended into complete chaos after turnaround. Yet, when the students were transferring over from there to Julian, I could sit down any student and tell

5) Heavily sanction and dismiss those who lie with data. There are certainly some elements who are scared and misunderstand data. But there are many of us who love the possibilities of data and still are horrified that “data” is being cherry-picked and manipulate to push programs that will hurt students. This section could be extremely long and detailed, but in the interests of time, I’d like to provide a few examples: If you select students, it’s intellectually dishonest to compare your rate statistics to a non-selective school. If one claims that “not testing is congruent to not selecting” then they are being intellectually dishonest. If you lose a large portion of your students in a chaotic transition process, you can’t honestly compare new rate stats to old rate stats. Graduation rate is meaningless if you aren’t using the number of students you started out with as for example, Urban Prep continues to maintain its 100% college bound rate even as it continues to lose students following graduation as it must “disappear” students to maintain its mythical status. Isn’t the leaving of children behind education’s worst sin?

Of course this list is neither exhaustive, nor thoroughly researched. It is merely a signpost away from the demise of our program that we have all invested so much time in and nearly $100 billion of taxpayer money—a program that must succeed for our students and the future of American education.

And to me, that means thinking of my students:

· Shantell who thanks to all of you is happily organizing and building the African American student population on a full-ride scholarship to UC-San Diego.

· Kellina who is already planning the 1^st annual Buena Vista University service trip to the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans (where we have spent our last three Spring Breaks).

· Ja’ Marie who is sitting in her second of two identical Algebra/Trig classes with the same content and instructor since they randomly scheduled her after Japanese III was canceled

· Donzell who was thrown out of his home and moved to rural Wisconsin where he is starting his own social justice organization at his new high school

· Asia who is currently being held against her will in an isolation classroom for “bad students” (think “The Wire”) with 22 students, one teacher and 3 different gang affiliations despite her strong GPA and support for other students as retaliation for her activism. Oh, with the money we provide Chicago Public Schools.

· Her sister Khadijah, whose Biology class has 43 students thanks to the cutting of teachers at the school.

· Brandon, a senior and leader in our citywide champion band who has a near perfect GPA but is in jeopardy of not graduating as he cannot complete his language requirement.

· Tiarra whose school lost teachers because it was “overstaffed” and now finds herself in two classes that have not had an adult in attendance, let alone a teacher since the first day of school.

I know you will hold them and the other millions of beloved children we are working on behalf in your hearts as we move forward. I thank you for your time, energy, brilliance, love and pleasant experience as I bid a tearful “Goodbye” to the profession I love more than anything in the world. ________________

But I suck at goodbyes, so that's not the end of the story.