The Chicago Tribune reports that the Chicago Board of Education is set to consider as many as 21 proposals for new charter schools. As you’ll see in the article, the rhetoric is already heating up. But, the state has no budget and no vision for correcting its decades-long failure to adequately fund schools. Pension debt is expanding at the rate…
Tag: Chicago Unheard
Teachers Unions Need to Stop Playing the ‘Class Card’
I’ve heard it too many times. As I’ve worked to create greater access to high quality schools for the children in the most underserved communities in Chicago, it’s one of key arguments they use: “The big corporations are trying to make a profit off of our children…” “The big dollar school reformers don’t really understand what’s going on in poor…
Is Your Child Being Taught Black History?
I asked them who was the first Black president. They eagerly and confidently responded, “Dr. King!”. I was extremely shocked and caught off guard by their answer, for multiple reasons. At the moment I was leading a discussion at a primarily African American, after-school program, on the South side of Chicago. But it wasn’t just the South side of Chicago.…
I Told You So: CPS Knew This Was Coming
I hate to say, “I told you so”. But, as Chicago aldermen begin to come forward to sacrifice on the altar of woefully underfunded Chicago Public Schools, neighborhood projects that would have been funded by monies from the Tax Increment Financing (or TIF) program, it is hard for me not to think about the work that I was doing ten…
Moving Everest Charter School Opens in Austin Community
On August 24, 2015, Moving Everest Charter School opened their doors. Located on the West side of Chicago, Moving Everest has a vision to provide Austin with a robust elementary school that prepares students to enter and excel in a college preparatory high school.
Chicago Public Schools Is Bleeding Out But Neither the Teachers Union Nor the Governor Will Help
Chicago teacher and award-winning blogger Marilyn Rhames paints an awesome illustrations of “Mr. CPS” dying. Yesterday, I woke up to the news that 292 people were shot and 51 people murdered in Chicago in the first month of the New Year. Then later in the day, I learned that the tentative offer Chicago Public Schools (CPS) made to the Chicago…
What I’ve Learned from Working at a Charter School
I started working at Johnson College Prep about 2 months after I returned home from teaching overseas in South Korea as an English teacher. Teaching at Johnson was the first teaching job upon my arrival back stateside. Needless to say, my transition was fairly quick.
Too Good to Be True: CTU Should Have Taken the Offer
There’s an old saying that goes, “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Today, the Chicago Teachers Union’s “Big Bargaining Team” applied that logic in their unanimous vote to reject what Union President Karen Lewis had termed “a serious offer” from Chicago Public Schools.