The Psychology of Windy City Schools, etc.

It is amazing to me just how willing human beings have become to buy into any other idea but the truth. The truth is: Prior to the political take over of CPS, the Illinois State Legislature had set in motion the unequal division of State funding for schools. As long as the allocation of funds is decided by "property ownership" minority schools will always have less money. Property owned by the Majority historically values higher than property owned by Minorities, and schools in areas with public housing have always received the least. When the first school czar took control it was not to bring order to the school board or raise the children's ability to pass National testing as it was stated. It was quite the opposite. A systematic destruction of Chicago public education. A design to create chaos and division of Parents, teachers, principals and the CPS, yes, divide and conquer. How did this happen? 1. The school board was redesigned from an advisory board to aid and assist principals and teachers in the education of children to a corporation committee, made up of people who have interest and expertise that have nothing to do with education their goal is to reduce cost and reallocate funding that was already limited in order to foster the belief that public education doesn’t work and that certain populations can’t learn = division of board, teachers and principals. 2. LSC- local school council - a group of people with no experience in public education= division of principals from board. This also resulted in: a. uneducated influence over policy and procedures under the responsibility of the principal and reduced support for teachers by principals = division of teachers and principals. b. reduced presence of the P.T.A = division of parents and teachers. The LSC has been a disruptive force that has caused many schools to become less than friendly to parents even to the point of stopping parents at the door. Closed campus took on different definition. 3. Test taking was implemented as the goal. Teach children to take test. Passing test is the most important thing to teach. Lies Lies Lies. Prior to Daley’s reign of terror, children were taught the age/grade appropriate curriculum. Quizzes were given periodically to see what the children had learned and what they still needed to study of the lessons already taught. As these lessons were mastered the curriculum for the age/grade was continued until the close of the school year and the normal progression was to give test at the end of that year and notify parents of what a child made need to study over the summer to be prepared for the next grade in the fall. If you teach a curriculum children learn the material and can pass the test. If you just teach them to pass a particular test, that is all that they learn, they don’t gain knowledge, their intellectual growth is stunted. 4. It is against the law to use public funds for private schools, so call them charter schools there aren’t any laws that prohibits charter schools. 5. Why charter schools? They are gentrifying the neighborhoods and that includes schools too. The rich people buying the homes don’t want their children at the old neighborhood schools and don’t want to contribute to public education so the powers that be began to declare schools as “poor performers”, they began moving "undesirable" children to different schools, tearing down old buildings, building new buildings and designate them as charter schools. 6. Why new buildings? To keep the money flowing to the preferred builder, who underbids everyone and then repeatedly request more money from the city council until the school building projects are grossly run over budget, or as with Millennium park the projects are implemented with no planned, voted on budget. And these are just a few of the truths that people don’t seem to want to talk about or even acknowledge. It's an awesome psychological game and they're going for broke! And still they say they are doing it for the kids. Don't believe the hype!