By: Nelson Soza

Possible attendance fraud at Benito Juarez H.S.

The pressure is on Benito Juarez H.S. Principal Juan Carlos Ocon. An ongoing investigation by the Chicago Inspector General alleges fraud at Juarez regarding student grading and attendance, among other serious issues. The principal's authoritarian style, lack of transparency and LSC meetings without attendees could be fertile ground for such actions. The grassroots group Pilsen Alliance has been keeping track of the situation since a group of current Juarez workers and parents reached out to us with the allegations. A thick pile of documents would back up the claims. That is what the Chicago Inspector General is supposed to be looking into, but time is running out.

Call Linda Brown at the office of Inspector General and ask her what's going on with the investigation: 773.534.9412

By: mildred chatman

Law suites against JUAN Carlos Ocon

There are several law suits currently pending in State &Federal Courts against Principal Juan Carlos Ocon.

By: James Klock

Duncan visit to Juarez

I'm somewhere between amused and dismayed by the reporting on this article: your Comments section states that your readers deserve to know who is commenting on your article, but apparently Mr. Schmidt and his editor haven't gotten that message, as they saw fit to include an unattributed quote from "one Juarez teacher." Anonymous mud-slinging is apparently only allowed in the article itself-- the comments are held to a higher standard.

As a named Juarez teacher (I'm James Klock, in case this comment is found separate from my attribution above), my observation is that the school has made modest but significant improvement in the four years I've been here (10 years in CPS), based on the tremendous hard work put in by faculty, staff, students, and parents.

As for the Duncan visit itself, I wasn't there, but I expect that it was heavily scripted, lacking in meaningful dialog, and basically ineffective. Just like the vast majority of everything done by every Secretary of Education, ever. This hardly seems newsworthy.

By: Ann Howard

Accusations

As a proud Juarez teacher, I wish Substance News had done more to include opposing viewpoints in their piece. I have never experienced any grade changes or attendance tampering. I'm not sure where these accusations are coming from, but it saddens me that my fellow teachers would choose to attack our school just as we are getting recognition for our accomplishments. Accusations like these hurt no only our administrators but also those of us who are working hard every day for the good of our students.

By: Manuel Bermudez

Juarez

I have been teaching at Benito Juarez for many years. There is documentation to prove the changing of attendance and grade fixing plus testimonies. Some of you guys should just keep your comments to yourselves especially when you have no idea what is really going on at Benito Juarez. Our students deserve better than just a group of teachers who are constantly defending our administrator’s decisions. If you truly care about our students there should be more concern about education our students, Rather than getting our school out of probation and passing students without any merit.

By: WANDA CURRY

THE TRUTH PREVAILING.

THE BIBLE SAYS,WHATS DONE IN THE DARK WILL COME TO THE LIGHT,AND THE TRUTH WILL SET US FREE.

By: Tim Skaggs

Corruption at Juarez HS

I don't claim to know about the inner workings of the school and its administration, but it seems to me that if multiple teachers are coming forward with these problems they must actually be happening. It's not as though a particular group of teachers is conspiring in secret to make the school look bad by lying about instances of attendance and grading fraud.

Maybe the teachers who are concerned with accuracy/fairness in their grading and attendance feel threatened by the administration. Maybe those teachers know of instances where there has been retaliation by the administration in the past.

From what I have heard about this it sounds like attendance and grading fraud are just the tip of the iceberg.

In any organization where one side has the majority of the power, corruption is bound to occur.

By: Eduardo Castro

Juarez Corruption

I always wondered why Juarez students did not know enough to stay at UIC, but now I see why they failed. I worked at UIC in the admissions office for the last 4 years and the ongoing complaint was that Juarez students that belong to Honors College could not compete with comparable students from other public high schools. If you want to give a good education to our minority students you cannot just pass them in your classes, graduate them and then expect them to be successful in college. I think that the principal at Juarez and those protecting him are stealing the dreams and education of the Latino community.

Eduardo Castro

UIC Honors College

By: Luz Espinosa

Juarez Principal

I am outraged that a school administrator is changing grades, attendance and he is still committing fraud at Juarez. When is the board of education going to step in to remove him? Do we have to protest in front of the school to get the board to act? If they know about this and are all rumors and no facts, why don’t they just hold a press conference and declare him innocent?

By: Alfredo Peralta

Poor Article and Accusations

It is unfortunate that such a poorly written and biased article could be considered news. First an inflammatory reference to "Chicago-style favors", then unsubstantiated anonymous accusations of grade and attendance fraud that, as a teacher at Benito Juarez, I have never seen evidenced in any way. In fact, I only hear such accusatory statements made by a very few who have yet to present evidence. Attendance and grade fraud is a serious issue that should be treated as such, not used as a tool to bring traffic to a website or to divide colleagues. Nor should it be used to ignore something that has clear evidence - Juarez students having increased performance outcomes and personal at Juarez (including teachers, counselors, advocates, and administration) demonstrating great dedication and effort.

It seems to me that news sources should produce articles of substance with fact checking, supporting evidence, or at least a cohesive presentation of information along a logical line of thought.

By: James Klock

Follow-ups

Tim, thanks for acknowledging your lack of perspective on what's happening at Juarez-- as someone living, working, and fighting every day to make it a better school, I appreciate your willingness to situate yourself. That said, you made a reference to "multiple teachers ... coming forward with these problems".

What we've seen in this forum is three self-identified Juarez teachers (myself, Ann Howard, and Alfredo Peralta, all of whom identified themselves here as Juarez teachers) who have said, essentially, that these accusations are unfamiliar to us. Against this, there's Mr. Schmidt's anonymous source, who may or might not be the same as the "numerous" anonymous sources identified by other commenters (including Manny Bermudez, who didn't identify himself as a Juarez teacher, but I'm happy to confirm that he is).

I put my name behind my claim: Juarez is making small but substantial improvements as a school, based on the hard work being done by the people within that school. I'm proud to stand beside my fellow, self-identified Juarez teachers who have said the same.

I challenge the anonymous detractors of the hard work that I am doing, along with my colleagues, my students, and their parents, to engage with me in an open, direct dialog about what's happening in our school. I challenge the readers here to question the value of anonymous trolls.

By: Rose Moore

Attendance and grade change

I am a retired teacher from Benito Juarez. When I was working at Benito Juarez, I had to print out my attendance because some of my student's would come to me, and tell me I had marked them present when they was absent. My printed out attendance sheet will show my student's was marked absent; this made realized my attendance was being changed. I would send my student's to the attendance office with a note stating I had marked them absent not present. Also I would find classes on some of my student's report card that was not on their programs to be given a grade. When I addressed the problem, I was told to give the a grade anyway because they need the class and grade to graduate. When I refused, I was treated with greatly disrespect as usual, put down as usual, harassed as usual and had to redo my increased worked load. Some of my student's would tell me "Ms. Moore, they don't care about us, they don't want us to learn."

By: Mildred Chatman

Hard working teachers do not deserverve a corrupt administration

As a former coworker who is currently in state court for race and age discrimination. I worked with many teachers at Benito Juarez High School for many years.I know that the teachers are hard working,but the students deserve the best and the teachers need not to afraid and stand up for what they believe in.

By: George N. Schmidt

Adios 'Pepe Jalapeño.' Substance source citation policy.

It's nice to see that so many people are taking advantage of the ability to post comments at subtancenews.net here in relation to the first of our stories about corruption at Juarez High School and the latest of Arne Duncan's Potemkin Villages. Most of the comments about this article followed our guidelines for commenting, which require that the person give his or her real name. As we have said over and over, we do not encourage the cowardice of blogging, which allows anyone to hide behind a pseudonym or "anonymous" and take shots around the world.

However, we do our best to check the authenticity of every "person" who posts of comment. We use a number of sources, including the public Board of Education "Position File" which lists everyone working for the Board.

As a result, we have deleted a comment by someone who called herself/itself/himself Pepe Jalapeño. No such person is working for CPS or findable in Chicago at this time (although there are many Jalapeños, you can usually find them in the produce aisle at Jewel, a union store).

One person commenting got silly about the Substance comment policy (but at least is using his real name).

Our comment policy is very different from our attribution policy. In news stories that we report, we allow those who provide us with information to remain anonymous if they request it and have good reason. Given the vicious silliness of some CPS administrators (and the languid corruption of the CPS Inspector General), this policy, which is the same as used by The New York Times in news articles, will continue. Every day, CPS officials provide us with information about the latest predations of the current CPS administration and the Board. When we verify these as authentic and accurate, we use those for our reporting -- without citing sources by name, but allowing our readers to know that the sources have requested anonymity.

Many of our future articles on the corruption at Juarez High School will continue to use off the record sources as necessary. But we will likewise police our comments -- and delete entities like "Pepe Jalapeño."

By: Sebastain Henry

Juarez

Neighborhood schools are fighting for their lives thanks to Rahm & BBB. This fact neither permits nor excuses any alleged wrongdoing.

The teachers who've commented here and those at other schools certainly work very hard and deserve to do so without added distraction. If any evidence exists hopefully an IG investigation will settle the situation one way or another. Teachers can then return to teaching without this added distraction.

For this & more visit: windycityteachers.blogspot.com

By: Yolanda Munoz

Juarez

As a teacher who has been recently let go, I too have seen my attendance changed. One of my students came to me and told me he was absent all day and he was marked present, he was very upset and told me that this school does not know what they are doing. No, they know what they are doing. I agree, we must stop being afraid and start advocating for these students. Not all teachers are being intimidated, some of you don't even know that it exists, but believe me it does. I should know, because of this my children do not have insurance anymore and I don't have a paycheck, but I am not afraid, I only fear one and He is the one that is getting me through this. I care so much for these students that I am willing to fight for them so that they may receive not an adequate education but a great education. A great leader is one who does not take criticism personally or think that everyone is plotting against him, but one who unites his staff, listens to ALL of his staff, not just the privileged few and RESPECTS ALL of his staff, not one who divides and plots against his staff. As stated before, I should know, I realized I was not part of the privileged few because I am out of a job after eight years working at Juarez.

By: Margarita Deluna

Juarez

I work at Juarez and have been teaching there for more than 10 years. I like working there and I think that the students and parents are really great, but unfortunately there are things going on in the school that I hate to say are unfair to the students and teachers. I have been asked in the past to change grades and I have refused. Those teachers who stand up for their rights and speak up against the wrong doings at the school are labeled “trouble makers”. I should know because I have been labeled one by one of the vice-principals. I became a teacher so I can educate and be a positive influence in the lives of my students. It is sad to say that at Juarez we are asked to pass, pass, pass the students. What happened to getting a good education and not being worried about the probation status of a school?

If nothing wrong is going on in the school, then why does the principal and certain teachers hold secret meetings? Why doesn’t the LSC post when they will be meeting? Why do LSC meetings get cancelled last minute? Why does the principal have so many grievances and law suits against him? Why is the newly appointed Business Manager of our school also the principal’s secretary?

By: James Klock

Teaching at and for Juarez

It's becoming clear that a significant part of this discourse is by, among, and of my colleagues at Juarez,which leads me to wonder whether this is the best space in which to deliberate how we, together, can best serve our students and community.

I'm in room 306 during 3rd and 6th period every day, and room 302 during 11th and after school every day, Let's talk, and find a way to address our common concerns-- I don't know that we can have that dialog and planning in a meaningful way, on this forum.

As we take our break, enjoy our holidays, and (as great teachers like we have at Juarez inevitably do) find ourselves obsessively reflecting on our teaching lives, let's make sure that that reflective time and energy includes finding real ways forward. There are so many forces focused on tearing us, and the system of public education we strive to serve, apart. Let's resist that, together, and put our energy into making Juarez even more awesome of a school than it already is.

By: George N. Schmidt

'Data Driven' corruption as CPS (and national) policy

Juarez is not the only school in Chicago which is currently an example of what for twenty or more years we've called "Data Driven Corruption." Or something like that. Once the members of the Board of Education decided to turn the leadership of the Chicago school system to people who had never -- NEVER -- taught for a year (even) in Chicago's real classrooms, this form of corruption was guaranteed to spread like lice in a concentration camp. Why? Because all the value of all the complex work we do as teachers is reduced to a simplistic number -- a "bottom line." I've watched, for this entire century, while members of the Board of Education stopped listening to people talking about the real world of children and schools and turned first to their stupid cheat sheets (notebooks with "data" on all the schools) and today to their little phones. All the "data" they want is there, so they don't need to know anything -- and they are chosen because they don't want to know anything more about the complex reality of teaching human children in a Third World City from ages three to over age 20.

As early as 25 years ago, when I was on the Local School Council at Amundsen High School, one of the "community" LSC members at a meeting demanded to know whether we teachers were failing students who had been "absent." She talked about it like it was a scandal that a child who didn't bother to attend class could get an "F". The political pressure there grew, since the LSC member who raised that question was Harriet O'Donnell, who was also chief of the "Chicago Region PTA", while several of the "parent" people on the LSC were 47th Ward precinct captains, friend of then alderman Gene Schulter.

For some teachers, the solution to that "problem" was simply to stop giving the "F" grade to students. For most of it, the challenge was to insist on the integrity of our classes and the grades we awarded against the growing pressure from the principal (Ed Klunk) and the so-called "community" (those political LSC members).

What I didn't realize then was that we were seeing the beginning of the onslaught of the kinds of corruption that are wildly spread across the country by this year. Once it became clear that the teachers themselves (ourselves) were under attack by men and women who devalued what we did and only cared about the "credit" (no matter whether it meant anything in terms of learning), the writing was on the wall.

Once you could buy a high school "credit" in Chicago by hook, crook, or checkbook, we were facing what we are seeing today in dozens of schools.

So...

It's no secret that Arne Duncan, who helped mastermind these ludicrous and dangerous oversimplifications, honored Juarez High School for several interesting work on the "data." The easiest way to "improve" a school's "attendance rate" is by marking every student PRESENT.

The best way to "reduce the dropout rate" is to give a diploma kind of thingy to everyone who has a pulse after four years in the building.

And, of course, the best was to provide the "credits" needed to graduate is to give them away from the principal's office (or via some other administrator). Instead of having to work from September to January, and from January to June, reading and doing the work of the class for 38 or 39 weeks, the child (or some politician on behalf of the child) simply had to suck up to the boss.

That's part of the fight we're in, and part of why I'm proud to be part of the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union today, as well as editor of Substance. This Data Driven Corruption" is to the schools what the Wall Street corruptions have been to the economy. And as long as the leadership of the USA -- beginning with the President of the United States, who gave Arne Duncan this job -- promotes Wall Street corruption and oversimplifications and their schooling variations, we have a lot of cleaning to do.

This is one example of one of those. And I'm still betting on the CPS Inspector General to be part of the cover up, not part of the clean up.

By: George N. Schmidt

Timoteo Albor -- another CPS Troll who doesn't exist

We keep checking the authenticity of the "named" people who try to comment here at substancenews.net. The latest we deleted, after proving that no such person exists among the human beings of Chicago today, posted as "timoteo albor." Another day, another cowardly troll.

By: Rod Estvan

Attendance falsification

As some of you may know for a number of years I was a monitor for the US District Court overseeing implementation of a special education case with CPS. I discovered several cases of outright attendance falsification involving disabled students who rarely came to school but who were marked as attending.

In several cases teachers told me principals advised them to do this in order to protect teaching positions. I could not prove that, but I did in several cases relate those statements in reports. Lawyers for CPS got those statements removed from reports and criticized me for including them, none the less the message got through to the court of what might be happening in several different schools.

I would suspect this is happening in schools and in charter schools too. I think the inspector general of CPS has looked the other way on this issue for many years. But the dilemma for teachers who are that exposing this is they can effectively can set themselves up and the school administration will deny teachers were ever advised to falsify records.

Rod Estvan

By: Bob Busch

CPS

Chicago Shuffle

Attendance figures for lots of CPS schools are pure fiction. Many variations of the Shuffle

exist but they all have one thing in common, absent students are counted as present.

Computerized attendance procedures have made this a lot easier to pull off than you might

think. Grade changing occurred for the entire 41 years of my tenure but, again, electronic

grade reporting has allowed nefarious individuals make it almost an art form.

I personally know of one day, for which the entire student body was functioned out,

meaning excused absence, that was the day before Christmas 2009.This practice is allowed for two

reasons .First it makes a principal look better ,second it allows the Board to collect money

for kids who are absent, so on both a school level and a system level it benefits the powers to be.

I know that teachers are asked to give kids on the bubble a passing grade for many reasons and

by many people. I have done it myself and done it at the behest of teachers I knew and trusted.

Once the football coach asked me to give a kid a break because of circumstance I was not aware of

I changed the grade and that kid is now a excellent principal.

I am talking about administrators changing grades so they look better,and have better

Promotion rates.

To those who think this is BS ask yourself these questions:

Have you ever been called on the carpet to justify a grade of A?

Have you ever heard of an administrator changing a grade of yours to an F ?

By: George N. Schmidt

Board Meetings and Truth -- from now on

I believe that in the coming months, we are going to see more and more teachers, parents, and others with knowledge take the floor at Board meetings and testify in public to the facts about all the fraud foisted on the public by the "reform" Boards of the past 20 years or so. As I say, since Paul G. Vallas was CEO, "data driven management" has helped. But as Rod Estvan notes, these frauds could not have been without the support from Board lawyers and the deliberate work of the Inspector General, who helps in the cover up and who became notorious for exposing the whistle blowers while helping CPS in the cover ups.

While Bob Busch may be accurate, I think the watershed year is 1995, when Vallas was put in as the first so-called "Chief Executive Officer" of CPS. Vallas, who had been in charge of some of the most corrupt budget tricks in Chicago history, was not a Certified Public Accountant or trained financial professional. This was precisely what "City Hall" (especially the Daley administration) wanted.

Vallas quickly attacked the teachers and principals of "failing" schools by the time of the first lists ranking and sorting schools by test scores. He put teeth in that bite by "reconstituting" several high schools. One of the most noteworthy was Englewood, which receive the full Show Trials treatment via a Rosalind Rossi hatchet job in the Sun-Times. (Bad teachers let down the kids; etc; etc; etc). Fred Bates, the odious "hearing officer" who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in that role for CPS was the hatchet man in that first Englewood lynching.

Once the scripts were firmly established (and reporters like Rossi trained to follow those scripts), the various Vallasizations of teacher basing moved forward, from "Reconstitution" to "Reengineering" to other racists attacks.

But they all rested on the same cheap accountants' tricks, each field tested by Paul G. Vallas. One trick was to change the tests to establish a new "bottom line" every few years. Make sure it's "low" and then issue annual reports about how it is "Trending Up."

Possible the biggest lie coming still out of the Vallas mouth is that one about "eliminating the deficit." When that one was first spread (again, count on certain reporters to mouth it via the "news") it was done with numerical trickery. All it took was a few manipulations of "future" revenues and expenses and the "deficit" could be made as big as Vallas's Mouth could carry it. It's been hovering at between $2 billion and $5 billion for the past couple of years, as Vallas's lies have been spread like manure in Spring across the various districts he has plundered, either directly as a CEO or indirectly via his "Paul Vallas method" of consulting. At this point in history, there are more than a few Gery Chicos out there willing to toss a fellow crook a few hundred thousands dollars for "consulting."

But the time is up. And with Vallas anchoring the Pat Quinn ticket in the upcoming election, a revision of the official history will come pouring out.

That revision may even become "news," many of the more corrupt reporters who fashioned those Vallas scripts in the past are either dead (Ray Coffey) or in other places. We'll see how much of the truth of the history of the past 20 years finally comes out in Chicago in 2014, but it's about time.

And the manipulating of attendance data that Juarez is discussing now is just the tip of one iceberg among many in these cold oceans. And with that bad metaphor, I'm taking the rest of the day off to re-read George Orwell's Politics and the English Language. While it's not a primer on current events at Juarez, at the I.G.'s office, at the Sun-Times, or in the governor's race, it does outline the basics of what we've been dealing with the past two decades.

By: Nancy Bigelow

Grade & Attendance Changes

I would like to point out that it would be unlikely for me to know whether any of my grades had been changed, I have no ability to go into a student’s records to check (nor should I). Attendance changes would also be difficult to spot, so if there is ANY concrete evidence of change, and I believe there is, then this would indicate a deeper systemic problem. As a teacher at Juarez I do know that there is pressure to reduce failure rates and improve out numbers. I feel that the pressure to improve the numbers works against the best interest of the students. Pressure to reduce failure rates frequently leads to a ‘failing student’ receiving passing grades that they may not deserve. I feel this pulls down our expectations of all of our students.

By: Michael Marchewski

Attendance

I wish to state at the very beginning, I am a Juarez employee (get to work on fact checking that Georgey boy) and that I am an admirer and friend of all my coworkers at Juarez, regardless of where they sit on this debate. I have found Klock, Howard, Bermudez, and DeLuna to be fine people and quality educators.

I am dismayed that Mr. Bermudez, has asked others to "keep their comments to themselves" if they haven't agreed with his side. If he believes Mr Ocon, to be "authoritarian" or any other ridiculous word like that, he should realize such language is unfair and would really make him no different than the man he is accusing. If Mr Ocon is as "secretive" as he is accused of being, I find it unlikely at best that Mr. Bermudez is privy to any additional information that others might not be.

My comment regards attendance correction. I have worked in the attendance office and can attest that teachers account for, in my estimate, about 100 attendance inaccuracies per day, presumably because they're busy handling a room full of active children. These teachers will typically fill out forms indicating the error and it will be manually corrected by someone like me. Now, I find it significant that after all these corrections are made (real, legitimate corrections) the attendance percentage for that one day will improve by less than one quarter of one percent. If you extrapolate these tiny changes over the course of an entire school year, 1700 students times 10 periods per day times 175 school days, it would take an immense amount of man hours to move the attendance percentage anywhere near a significant change. Supposing Mrs. Munozs claim to be true, you know, about her one absent student, his attendance "fraud" would change the attendance figure about .00000001 percent (or somewhere in that neighborhood). Is this what were so concerned about? Get real. This cannot have happened SO many times as to make this HUGE difference. You see, it's simple mathematics. And neither I nor any of my coworkers have ever been asked to unjustly make a change. In fact, we have been warned on numerous occasions to be as accurate as possible to avoid potential miscalculation. So if you want to hang Mr Ocon out on a tree in front of the school because the you think the attendance should read 91.103 percent instead of 91.113 percent, shame on you. Maybe we should hang you for teaching 49 minutes and 59 seconds of a 50 minute period.