What Does Rahm Emanuel Believe? & following Ravitch's post from 9/10, a still timely post from a monthly ago Why Won’t Rahm Talk to Parents?
What Does Rahm Emanuel Believe?, September 10, 2012
When [Chicago] Mayor Rahm Emanuel is talking about youth crime, he assigns responsibility to parents and families for the values and attitudes and behavior of what he calls “gang bangers.”= = = = = = = = =
When he talks about schools, however, he forgets that parents and families have any influence on how students behave and the effort they are willing to expend on their studies. All of a sudden, teachers alone control test scores, no one else.
Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm
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Linda
September 10, 2012 at 6:34 pm
And what exactly is Rahm responsible for? When is he held accountable? What does he do every day besides shoot his mouth off and blame others for his failings? Despicable human being!
teachingeconomist
September 10, 2012 at 9:57 pm
When he is up for reelection?
Teacher111
September 10, 2012 at 6:47 pm
Exactly! Everyone does that. We see kids do something crazy (like the Jacksonville, FL high school kids who “flash trashed” a Walmart) and you see comments very critical of their families. However, if negative test score data is released on these same kids the next day, all of the blame would fall on the teachers.
ME
September 10, 2012 at 7:19 pm
What’s the best way to move a child out of poverty?
Provide their family with a middle class job, something politicians have not been able to do for the last many decades.
The data speaks very clearly – our middle and upper class kids perform exceedingly well in multiple measures across their schooling career. The nagging problem is that we have more children in poverty now than we ever have – an inexcusable 25%.
As politicians have outsourced our middle class jobs to cheaper labor over seas, our child poverty rates have skyrocketed – more than doubling – since the 60′s. And then we wonder why our students can’t perform?
Quit placing the destiny of this country and its children on the backs of our schools and teachers and place the focus where it ought to be – the family unit. The number of female, single-headed families is astonishing, especially the rise of them since the 60′s. Female, single-headed families are 5 times more likely to be poverty stricken and send their kids to school a couple of grades behind.
And what do you mean “ultimately fail the teachers”? We’ve already done that as the modal teacher experience across the nation has dipped from the 15 year mark in the late 80′s to the 1 year mark at the present time. We lose 50% of our teachers within their rist five years because of people that blame them for why a kid can’t get a job, make it through college, or read or write.
Do you call having more 1st year teachers “championing for kids”?
Carrie
September 11, 2012 at 3:33 am
It’s not what he says, it’s what he does.
Here is an excellent summary of what he’s done during the bit more than a year he has been in office. From the blog, Mayorial Tutorial.
“While you are digesting the fact that the very concept of unionized public service is under attack, that our “free” public education system is grossly underfunded and that education does not respond like a business and cannot/should not be treated like business or a market; know that there are people who champions of a world view that does all of the above. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is one of them. … The Mayor’s point of reflection is that teachers are just workers not civil servants. This makes them obstacles to be overcome not crucial to the functioning of a civil society.
As a result everything the Mayor has done since taking office has been designed to eliminate them from the field of play and to demonstrate to them that they are powerless. He took their 4% raise. He just broke the agreement and stole the money from them. He marshaled out of state help and jammed SB7 down their throats, just like famous weasel Jonah Edelmen said in public on tape. He launched an aggressive campaign of charter expansion, teacher firings across the system via a growing number of Broad Academy-trained principals using redefinition to eliminate problematic and tenured teachers while putting in place “value-added” schemes and turnaround schools at a clip that would shame Richard M. Daley.
His aggression was calculated to show all the unions that the biggest union in the city was powerless to contend with him. The message was simple enough… get on the bus or get run over by it because if he can do this to teachers, firefighters and police officers had better believe that they, not even being able to strike, would be treated to deals only marginally better because at present the public doesn’t believe they should be privatized… but give our neo-liberal friends time and it could happen right here in America soon enough.”
http://mayoraltutorial.com/articles/a_striking_context_rahm_vs._the_ctu [Don Washington's] mayoraltutorial.com
Ari H. Steinfeld
September 10, 2012 at 7:27 pm
This will become the center of education debate and the focal point for real change. God Bless Karen God Bless the C.T.U. and the members of the C.T.U. who are making tremendous sacrifice for the sake of our nation, and our nations core values. Barack Obama, Arnie Duncan, and Rahm Emmanuel should be listening to this and asking one question. How are my policies going to benefit the core values which I profess to believe in? It is time for all children to have the quality education and support services they need to be the best people they can be, and to stop playing a blame game. Our support of politicians with dubious qualifications and ideals should stop. Stop playing politics and support education properly.
mike
September 10, 2012 at 7:33 pm
This reminds me of an excellent editorial written by a teacher some years ago…
http://www.examiner.com/article/in-what-other-profession
“If that entire attitude weren’t bad enough, what other profession is legally held to PERFECTION by 2014? Are police required to eliminate all crime? Are firefighters required to eliminate all fires? Are doctors required to cure all patients? Are lawyers required to win all cases? Are coaches required to win all games? Of course they aren’t.
For no other profession do so many outsiders refuse to accept the realities of an imperfect world. Crime happens. Fire happens. Illness happens. As for lawyers and coaches, where there’s a winner there must also be a loser. People accept all these realities, until they apply to public education.
If a poverty-stricken, drug-addled meth-cooker burns down his house, suffers third degree burns, and then goes to jail; we don’t blame the police, fire department, doctors, and defense attorneys for his predicament. But if that kid doesn’t graduate high school, it’s clearly the teacher’s fault.”
lellingw
September 10, 2012 at 8:33 pm
Are the parents responsible? Maybe some are, but the level of poverty in parts of Chicago and the lack of jobs is a huge problem that parents can’t resolve by themselves. When is the US going to get real about employment and work?
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Carrie
September 11, 2012 at 3:44 am
31% of Chicago children live in poverty, 10,000 are homeless. The homeless children and parents must change shelters every 6 months. Think of the added hardship for them, because they often have to change schools, too.
For original Diane Ravitch post: What Does Rahm Emanuel Believe?, September 10, 2012
Why Won’t Rahm Talk to Parents?August 6, 2012
This parent activist in Chicago says that parents have good ideas about how to improve the schools but Mayor Rahm Emanuel won’t meet with them.For original Diane Ravitch post: Why Won’t Rahm Talk to Parents?
Parents in New York City say the same about Mayor Bloomberg.
Why won’t the mayor listen to the most informed and most committed stakeholders of all? Not the business community, not the entrepreneurs, but the parents of the children?
It would cost more than the city has which is a nearly 1 billion dollar deficit! Parent groups have proposed plans that would increase art and gym, support after school programs and allow more opportunity for hands-on learning, but CPS and the mayor emphatically refuse to discuss the future of our children’s education with parents. Rahm’s only solution is to impose a longer school day with no additional funding and essentially let schools try to figure out how to make it work, while secretly hoping schools fail so he can close them and create more charters.Comments
Linda
August 6, 2012 at 9:26 am
It is ironic that they are all about student and parent choice and lettting them vote with their feet. Create good schools and the parents will flock to them. Until the schools they want are their local neighborhood public schools.
And for all of their talk about choice, when the parents choose to talk to their mayors they run and hide.
Rahm, I thought you were so tough….you can’t meet with a few Chicago moms? And I will quote you in reference to the Chick Fil A fiasco: “These are not Chicago values.”
Neither is swearing at people, degrading teachers and refusing to speak to your constituents, Mayor Emanuel. Toughen up…walk the walk.
Teacher111
August 6, 2012 at 5:15 pm
So much for that “parent empowerment” stuff these politicians speak about all of the time.
Teacher111
August 6, 2012 at 5:17 pm
These politicians seem to be following the conservative education policy line. If they truly believe that parents are the most important and the most informed people in regards to educational decisions, then they need to listen to them
Linda
August 6, 2012 at 5:21 pm
They are only for parents when they can turn them against public schools and public school teachers. Once they disagree or question, they aren’t that interested anymore.
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John Foster
August 7, 2012 at 8:28 am
Well, I’m not surprised by this. If Emanuel, and Bloomberg and LA’s mayor all seized control of the schools and eliminated the elected school boards—which they did—then why would they want to hear what parents have to say?
Wouldn’t parents be yet one more “obstacle” in their plans to turn our schools into “investment opportunities” for their hedge fund and Wall Street buddies?
The only parents these miscreants want to deal with are those who have been bought off or brainwashed—I used to be part of the latter group. Parents who question their decisions will be ignored, until they (hopefully) go away.
Message To The Mayors: We parents aren’t going anywhere. And we WILL remember…
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