Flanked by a U.S. Navy banner and speaking from a U.S. Army podium, Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan announced the Daley administration’s  latest attack on the city’s remaining public high schools on September 19 at Farragut High School. Nobody from the media asked Duncan why the seven reorganizations of the high schools (1996 - 2004) since the Daley administration took over in 1995 had failed. With each passing day, critics of the Daley ‘education miracle’ are more likely to be fired from CPS teaching or administrative jobs. Meanwhile, corrupt officials are transferred from City Hall to the school board’s growing political patronage bureaucracy. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

“We have classes that are now over 40 and will have to be reorganized at some point,” one high school principal told Substance September 13, the day of the infamous Pittman memo. “It’s as if Arne Duncan were deliberately sabotaging the general high schools.”

In fact, an informal survey by Substance of more than 50 traditional Chicago public high schools during the last two weeks of September 2005 revealed that policies and practices of the Duncan administration are sabotaging all of them. Substance reporters were surprised to learn that the sabotage extended to the remaining elite “academic magnet high schools” like Whitney Young, Lincoln Park, and Northside College prep.

Despite an announcement by Arne Duncan that the Chicago Public Schools administration is once again going to redesign the city’s high schools and regular speeches replete with talking points provided by the Board’s communications department about the “failure” of the high schools, a closer look at budget constraints and staffing strictures shows that the word “sabotage” is not too strong to describe what the central administration, on Duncan’s command, has done since April to Chicago’s public high schools.

Although the staffing restrictions that are undermining the city’s elite public schools are not as dramatic or damaging as those hitting the city’s 45 general high schools, by the end of September it was clear that the Duncan administration, as part of Mayor Daley’s Renaissance 2010 plans and other initiatives, was doing every thing possible to undermine the public high schools and push as many resources as possible out of the public high schools and into privatization and militarization schemes. At every step, the public high schools have been stripped of teachers and other materials, sometimes in dramatic ways, while every military and privatization scheme has been allowed extra resources.

Across the city, a large number of students in the general high schools entered the last week of September in overcrowded classes. Many of them were not able to take books home to study, because school staff, knowing that program changes will come after the 20th day of the school year, are fearful that some of the books will not be returned as the classes are churned.

At some schools, such as DuSable and Senn, Duncan’s innovations are driving an old school out of existence while aggressive new schools expand within the walls of the old school. Teachers reported that at both schools, materials disappeared over the summer from the general school and wound up at the “new” schools in the building. At DuSable, computers that had been laboriously accumulated over the years were missing from classrooms when teachers returned in late August. At Senn, promises that a computer lab would be in the school as well as the naval academy were not being kept.

One of the biggest problems facing the general high schools was that the Board demanded position closings even though the schools could reasonably expect a large influx of students within the first four or five weeks of the school year. In many cases, projections for enrollment were established as early as April 15, and schools were staffed based on that projection.

Board budget officials claimed a “deficit” which was much larger than could reasonably projected, and the board refused to examine the calculations that went into its projected “reserve” fund. Substance in the past had exposed the “reserve” as being between $100 and $200 million per year. Despite claims that that large a reserve is necessary to maintain the city’s bond rating, two years ago the bond rating agencies denied that they required a specific amount in the reserves. Instead, Substance was told that a reserve should be “reasonable” or “prudent,” leaving a large amount of leeway in the calculations. Projections for budget “deficits” and screaming headlines in May and June set the stage for layoffs of teachers and cutbacks in staffs that were causing serious problems across the city by August and early September.

Not one high school contacted by Substance during the second and third weeks of the school year expected to continue with its present staffing levels. Every one had numerous classes that were above the contract provisions in Article 28 of the teachers’ union contract.

An additional burden on teachers in the general high schools is an ever increasing number of special education students who are placed into regular classes, then not provided with the special services the law says they are supposed to get. The Board of Education plays a cynical game of “catch us if you can” with those who try to oversee the requirements of the special education laws and court decisions, withholding special services, especially to poor children and those without strong families to advocate for them.

Across the city, the massive privatization, charterization, and militarization programs of the Daley administration have also drained resources from all of the remaining public high schools. At the general high schools, oversized classes, short staffing, and other shortages are becoming the norm again, despite the fact that the Board of Education’s budget has increased considerably over the past several years, primarily because of increased property assessments.

At the magnet high schools, the squeeze has come in a different way. Teachers have been told that they have to have 28 students in advanced placement and International Baccalaureate classes, making it impossible to program students for these classes based on reasonable academic prerequisites. At one north side high school, Substance was told that students who were in ESL-I classes a year ago have been placed in Advanced Placement English classes this year to make the new quotas. At a more famous north side high school, more than a dozen AP classes have been cancelled because of the new guidelines.

During the two weeks of the review by Substance, principals, teachers and others who looked closely at the realities in the schools asked that they not be quoted on the record. Ten years of a dictatorial CEO model of school management in Chicago has produced a generation of professional teachers and administrators who are aware of the problems and willing to talk about them but who know that there will be consequences if they tell the truth. The fate of whistle blowers in Daley’s Chicago is as widely known as the fate of whistle blowers in the Bush administratioin.

Substance will be monitoring the problems outlined here throughout the school year, and will try to place in context any impact on standardized test scores in the general high schools that results from the policites that the Duncan administration put into place last spring.

Chicago’s “Chief High School Officer” Don Pittman (above) has issued programming guidelines which are strangling the city’s general high schools and making a mockery of advanced programs and classes such as Advanced Placement (AP) and the International Baccalaureate (IB). Despite complaints from parents, teachers and principals across the city, Pittman forced draconian staff reductions on all the public high schools, resulting in oversized classes and forcing major reorganizations after the 20th day of the school year. When asked during the Farragut High School “redesign” media event how a general high school could offer Advanced Placement courses such as calculus to 28 students when only a dozen or fewer might be ready for such rigorous math, Pittman repeated a Hollywood line that the high schools did not have high enough “expectations” for the students. He claimed that with high enough expectations from teachers and principals, students put into such classes would succeed — and it they didn’t it was the fault of the teachers. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt