The Education Wars: Mayor Daley, Renaissance Man

It seems the much-touted Renaissance 2010 program instituted in Chicago isn't all the hype says it is:

Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city's school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.

Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found.

The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 -- that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn't lived up to its promise by this, its target year.

Another great "reform" program is just another bunch of nonsense.

Note this was Arne's baby, and it is apparently stillborn.

The Education Wars

Coming to a school district near you is the Renaissance 2010 scam.

This is a good article. Principals and other administrators trained in this scheme will exacerbate the already scandalous practices in public schools of targeting veteran or older teachers and replacing them with cheapo bimbos.

How would you like to work for this guy?

Roche is a product of the "New Leaders for New Schools" training of principals. According to information provided to Substance, he served as the assistant principal at Boone Elementary and Noble Street Charter School, among other places.

According to teacher Kathy Jacobs, the 'New Leaders' program includes a 60-page Rand Report which includes counseling out so-called 'low-performing' teachers who don’t buy into a principal's philosophy and 'rigorous curriculum and data driven instruction.' The aim of the program seems to be to create an executive class of principals — the "CEOs of the schools" — just as executives in private business (especially banking) have created the greatest economic crisis in modern times.

Roche's behavior, whatever his instructional philosophy, has struck most teachers as bizarre.

"He cut off all our padlocks on the cabinets without telling us and he threw out all the textbooks," Jacobs said. Jacobs said his reports when he suspends teachers or teacher aids or gives unsatisfactory ratings are silly.

"He’ll say stuff like 'Research says you shouldn’t take any more than 16 to 19 seconds to move from center to center' — and these are eight year olds," Jacobs told Substance. "In my whole 36 years of teaching I have never heard of teachers being suspended without pay."

Zellman, who serves as the literacy coach, said Roche implemented a new reading and writing program — courtesy, he said, of the Erickson Institute — that is based on read alouds with no textbooks, something especially difficult for English language learners or others who need extra help.

Another Erickson Institute feature he tried to force the teachers to do is videotaping.

According to Debbie Hines, the fourth grade teacher, the administration was asking all the teachers to agree to videotaping lessons in their classrooms. When Hines said she refused, Jeffery Porter, the principal-in-training, said that this would hurt her teacher evaluation.

Read the whole article; it gets better.