What's Rahm with This Picture: 49 Schools?

          I could complain and kvetch all day about Rahm Emanuel.  I try to avoid this as I don’t think it is good for my well-being.  The latest closing of almost 50 schools while making a multi-million dollar deal to build a stadium for DePaul, a private Catholic university, really has me twitching.  (The last I read, it is a $173 million dollars.)  I start ranting then say “Cancel” to myself.  Usually this ends my tirades.  This issue, however, keeps resurfacing in my psyche so maybe if I vent it will become a simmer rather than a full-boil.  

          I studied the list of school closings.  I’m not sure if it is the “official” list or something the Chicago Tribune compiled.  I hope it was the “official” list.  If the Tribune created it, they should be slapped.  It is difficult to follow as both the closing schools and the receiving schools are on it.  In typical CPS fashion, schools are referred to by their last name but listed alphabetically by the first name.  An example I picked randomly is Ignance Paderewski Elementary Learning Academy.  That is how it is listed alphabetically in the “school” column but referred to as Paderewski everywhere else.    

          Question one:  Who the h-e-double hockey sticks taught these people to alphabetize?  Consistency matters!  Any librarian worth her salt would be having a seizure with this list.  I’m having a seizure with this list and I’m not even a librarian. 

          I know nothing about Paderewski school.  I looked it up on the map and I found it on Lawndale and Cermak.  From the list, it is a Level 3 school which is the lowest of three levels.  Paderewski was on probation and about 62% of its children meet or exceed the Illinois Standardized Achievement Test (ISAT) scores.  That is worrisome, of course. 

          So, I dig further.  Almost 80% of the students are African American.  The remainder of children are Hispanic.  93% received free or reduced price lunches.  There are 172 children at this school and there is room, by the idiotic CPS standards of 30 children in a classroom, for 570.  (CPS determines capacity by multiplying the number of classrooms by 30.  This includes Libraries, Special Education classrooms, Art rooms, or anything big enough to be called a classroom as a classroom although it is used for the whole school.)  Even if you say 22 kids in a class, which is what I call “The Lee-Ann Standard,” an amount I believe is reasonable, the school would only be half full.  It must be echoing from the emptiness.  I have to believe the neighborhood has changed tremendously in the last 50 years for it to have become so under populated.

          Questions two and three:  How many of these kids have families who are supportive to their lives?  How many have moved in the last year?  I ask these questions sincerely.  I’m not making assumptions.  I know better.  I do know that some schools have huge turnover.  I do know that an unstable home life affects learning and, consequentially test scores. 

          The list goes on to say the students will be sent to Cardenas and Castellanos schools.  I am mentally slapping the chart maker again while I search for the first names of these schools.  Lazaro Cardenas School, where some of the students are going, is 98% Latino.  The school, by CPS standard is 84% at capacity.  By the Lee-Ann Standard, it is bursting at the seams.  But get this, Cardenas has a Level 1 performance ranking but only 65% meet or exceed the test. 

          Question five:  How can only 65% of your kids be meeting or exceeding the “test” and you have a Level 1 rating?  How does that work?    (I know  those are really two questions but rhetorical questions don’t count.)

          “Castellanos” is Rosario Castellanos Elementary School.  It is at 91% CPS capacity which is way crowded by the Lee-Ann Standard.  Again, it is nearly all Latino students.  Get this though:  64% of its students meet or exceed standards which make it …..get ready for it …. a Level 2 school.  Huh?

          Confused?  Me, too!  I wonder how they figure out the levels.  I looked on the CPS website and was baffled by how it is determined. 

          On a map, these three schools are pretty close together.  That doesn’t mean much in a large city.  Gang lines are gang lines.  After living in Chicago for over 35 years, I have watched neighborhoods become gang war zones.  I suspect, although I’m not positive, this may be a factor with these schools.

          And that is just one of 49 schools being closed.    

          What worries me most is we are cramming the students from Paderewski into schools that are pretty full.  The schools and teachers will be measured by how successful they are at, shall we say, teaching to the test.  So if we go by the new numbers in these schools class size will be about 32 or 33 kids per classroom.

          I have heard from many baby boomers about the size of the classes we had when we were kids.  Yes, they were huge.  My first grade class had 52 kids.  We had three reading groups, the Jesus, the Mary and the Joseph groups.  (That’s a different story.)  I’m not sure how we learned to read.  The goal in those days was for us to finish high school, and maybe go to college if you were so inclined. 

          Today’s teachers have a different world.  We are judged on our students’ AYP, or in non-educator speak, annual yearly progress.  Your students test scores should rise by one grade level each year.  Less actual learning occurs and more teaching to the test takes place.  In fact, one year CPS was saying 34 students in a classroom was okay.  Vent alert:  34 in high school, 34 in fifth grade, 34 in first grade.  First grade! When they are learning to read!  Cancel!

          Children who are suspected of having learning differences have to be elaborately monitored.  One year,  I had twelve, count them, twelve children being monitoring for learning problems.  This means that they were at risk of failing due to the inability to do second grade level work.  Oh, the person who did the monitoring was none other than me, the classroom teacher.  Monitoring requires weekly individual diagnostic testing.  It also meant I had to give them daily small group attention completing scientifically proven activities to increase their learning.  It means making a graph with little dots showing their progress.  What it mostly means is time away from the rest of the class who I have given brief instructions on how to complete valuable and authentic work on their own without my help.  Oops! I’m venting again.  Cancel!

          I loved all my students and wanted everyone to get the help they deserved, but with a group that requires that much over-the-top monitoring, I felt my secure students never got the attention they needed and deserved.  We spend hours documenting learning and behavior issues.  I doubt Sister Hugo, my first grade teacher, ever had to do this for one or two of her 52 students. 

          The point here is:  to be successful in a classroom today takes more than teaching from a text book with children sitting in rows.  It takes creativity, knowledge of your community, and diligence.  There is no way around it.  To make children want to learn, there needs to be more than test practice.  The more children in a classroom, the thinner the teacher’s time is spread.  Three or four children do make a difference.  Maybe 22 children in a class is pie in the sky but as an average class size, I think it makes higher test scores and genuine learning attainable.

          How will the former Paderewski students fare in their new schools?

I wonder where the support structures are for a group of children moving from one learning community into another.  I don’t see these built into this school closings transition.  What is built in is the promise of air conditioning (which I would have happily killed for on a hot June day.)  There is the promise of a plan to help children move across gang dividing lines on the way to school.  There is a promise of iPads for each student.  I wish I felt better about CPS promises. 

          Questions six, seven and eight:  Who supports the child’s well being during this transition?  What supports are the teachers getting to help these children not only academically succeed but help become part of the school community?  What about moving children into a school in another gang’s school?  (Shudder, I can’t even phantom the problems this could cause in a classroom in seventh or eighth grade.)

          I don’t envy the people who had to look at these problems and make decisions about it.  Obviously, some changes needed to be made.  Some of the physical plants of these schools have been neglected for decades and community populations have moved on to new neighborhoods.  Abrupt change to the schools, however, doesn’t seem to be the best route.  A gradual change would have been better in my mind.  Obviously, the city has resources it is spending on DePaul’s stadium. Obviously, the unanimous vote by Rahm’s appointed school board to close 48 schools in one vote was not well researched. Perhaps it was the alphabetizing issue that confused them. 

          Questions nine and ten:  Why did all the closings have to be at once and this year?  Was each school researched by the board half as much as what I did?

          My heart goes out to the teachers, parents and most especially to the children who have to make this move.  The children are the true victims of this.  Change happens in life and not all change is bad.  Change without choice often needs support and I don’t see a promise or even a plan for that.  It seems a change that is doomed to failure.

rahm emanuel school closing c cps