Chicago Teachers Union, CPS help create 'Hooked on Phonics' infomercial
Above photo: Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn (second from left) read a proclamation declaring “Hooked on Phonics Week” in Illinois. The controversial program used Chicago’s all-black Crispus Attucks Elementary School (background above) and its parents, students, and teachers to help promote the program. Despite the lurch at diversity, Hooked on Phonics did not even bother to change the children depicted on its bus. The main black employees from Hooked on Phonics at the August 30 event were heavily armed security (see bottom right) who refused to answer reporters’ questions as to why so many had been deployed to protect a truckload of materials and an events bus. Substance photos by George N. Schmidt.
Controversial program costs small fortune for poor and working class families…
When Chicago Teachers Union officials joined the “Hooked on Phonics” tour this past summer, they apparently didn’t spend a lot of time researching the controversial — but highly marketed — Hooked on Phonics program. Nor did they research much about the HOP “Anniversary Tour” they helped promote at Crispus Attucks Elementary School in Chicago.
Instead, the union’s monthly newspaper, the Chicago Union Teacher, sounded like a division of the Hooked on Phonics public relations department. “On August 30,” the Union Teacher reported in its September issue, “representatives of Hooked on Phonics, an electronic learning toys company, stopped at Crispus Attucks Elementary school to donate $25,000 worth of educational materials to the Fresh Start Schools in Chicago.”
Above photo: Chicago Teachers Union Field Rep Nate Dickson (center) and QUEST director Connee Fitch-Blanks (right) along with Mark Wigler, who heads up the CTU Fresh Start program, gave the union’s endorsement to the controversial “Hooked on Phonic” program at Chicago’s Crispus Attucks Elementary School on August 30, 2007. Although Hooked on Phonics markets itself based on the claims of “research” (such as that provided by the Bush administration’s reading programs), the expensive materials sold by the company that owns Hooked on Phonics may have hurt many poor and working class families because of their high prices. The CTU endorsement was made without consultation to the union’s membership or House of Delegates. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Had they bothered to take a closer look, the CTU might have noticed that “HOP” was a bit more controversial than the bland product placement and strategically placed public relations the union provided in exchange for educational materials that have been characterized as expensive and pedagogically unsound by many critics. Additionally, HOP was doing a lot of its tour at Wal-Mart stores, which are a big outlet for the expensive HOF materials in working class and poor communities. Instead, CTU officials simply provided additional smiling faces — and some important black children playing with the materials — as the HOP tour drove across the USA promoting the product.
What had happened?
On August 30, 2007, the Chicago Board of Education, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (through Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn), and leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union brought the Hooked on Phonics national anniversary tour to Crispus Attucks Elementary School. Attucks is an all-black elementary school in what used to be the “State Street Corridor” of public housing projects (until the projects were demolished). Attucks is also a CTU “Fresh Start” school. The Fresh Start schools are jointly run by CTU and CPS.
Although no top officials of the Chicago Public Schools showed up for the Hooked on Phonics media event August 30, three officials of the Chicago Teachers Union were on hand, as well as Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn. The event was part of “HOP across America”, a Hooked on Phonics marketing event celebrating the HOP’s 20th anniversary.
Armed private security guards protect Hooked on Phonics treasures, above: Neither Hooked on Phonics nor Chicago Teachers Union explained when asked why there were three heavily armed private security guards, all wearing bullet proof vests (as above), at the Attucks school Hooked on Phonics event on August 30. The guards confirmed for Substance that they were working for Hooked on Phonics, but refused to identify themselves or explain whom or what they were hired to guard — from whom or what. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. The brief stop at Attucks Elementary school was part of the “anniversary tour” arranged by the HOP public relations staff. The largest number of stops on the tour, though, we not at union sites, but at Wal-Mart stores. On August 31, the day after the visit to Chicago’s south side with the CTU, “HOP Across America” was scheduled to stop at the Wal-Mart on Kirkman Road in Waukegan.
The Chicago area wasn’t unique for its Wal-Mart stop. HOP was at the Wal Mart in Orlando Florida on September 9, at the Wal-Mart in Alpharetta, Georgia, on September 16, at the Wal Mart in Sidel, Louisiana on September 23, and at the Wal Mart in Brea, California on September 30. Whether Wal-Mart is the largest retail seller of HOP materials had not been established at Substance press time.
Chicago, however, was the stop at which HOP Across America the most publicity shots its marketing department is using to sell the expensive and controversial program to black children. Six of the 12 photographs from the Chicago portion of the tour are from the Attucks stop. Not only did the Union miss the fact that Hooked on Phonics finds its main outlet in the controversial Wal-Mart empire, but CTU must also have missed the fact that few of Wal-Mart’s non-union workers can afford HOP anyway. Like the children who attend Attucks Elementary School, the Wal-Mart workers are a target audience for HOP. Unlike children’s books, the HOP materials cost between $50 and $400.
CTU spokesman Rosemarie Genova told Substance that the only consideration HOP gave to the union was the “$25,000 in educational materials” that were donated to the Fresh Start schools.
Genova said that she was unaware of the Wal-Mart connection. She was unable to answer
Substance questions about the pedagogical soundness of HOP itself. The union did not even know the unusual recent corporate history of HOP. HOP is not a separate corporation at all, but part of the large Educate!, Inc.
