'The Shock Doctrine' and Chicago 'school reform'
Editor’s Introduction
Photo above: Chicago’s Greg Richmond, above center, began the CPS charters schools office under Paul Vallas in 1996, a year after Mayor Daley took over the city’s public schools and went on to head the organization spearheading the charter school attack on the public schools of New Orleans. Chicago was Richmond’s laboratory. On February 23, 2005 (above), Richmond again supported recommendations to the Chicago Board of Education to close existing Chicago public schools and privatize them as charter schools — or other unusual entities. That day, Chicago’s school board voted, unanimously and without debate, to approve recommendations from CEO Arne Duncan that the Bunche, Grant, and Howland public elementary schools be closed as part of Mayor Daley’s “Renaissance 2010” program. By early 2005, Howland had been colonized by the “North Lawndale College Prep” charter school for three years. Bunche was turned over to Providence St. Mel’s, a Catholic school. Grant was subsequently designated for militarization — to house the “Phoenix Military Academy” (Army) military high school. It now houses both “Phoenix” and the new “Marine Military Academy.” After the February 2005 meeting, Richmond left CPS to become president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, now headquartered in Chicago. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans beginning on August 30, 2005, Richmond’s group began working with charter schools to replace the public schools of the devastated city with charters. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
'The Shock Doctrine', No Child Left Behind, and Chicago's corporate 'school reform' since 1995…
The book review beginning on this page is the longest ever published in Substance. It could be longer and well worth our attention. Why? Consider:
First, the excerpt from the Introduction to “The Shock Doctrine” that follows helps explain why the book is relevant to everyone facing the paradoxes of Chicago’s public schools today. Beginning last year, the media were full of laudatory stories about how a group of Chicago “experts” were helping “reform” the devastated public schools of New Orleans.
“Reform” meant the destruction of the public schools of New Orleans, the destruction of the teachers’ union, and the radical revamping of the mission of public education in one of the most important cities in the United States. The New Orleans miracle planned in conjunction with Chicago was allowed by most pundits to exclude thousands of New Orleans children, because it was a charter school experiment, and therefore “good.”
As readers of Substance know, the decisions of those who run CPS for the past 12 years have seemed wrongheaded or worse. If we think that they were supposed to be operating a public school system that tried to equitably serve all the children of Chicago, the closing of schools and displacement of children doesn’t make sense.
Once we view CPS from their side of the class divide, what they are doing has a logic as pure as the dozens of case histories Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine” offers. The regime currently operating Chicago’s “public” schools is really working as quickly as possible to privatize as much of that school system as possible. Hence, Arne Duncan; hence, Paul Vallas. Hence, dozen of top executives (think for a minute about Chicago’s “New Schools” department) with no school experience running the nation’s third largest school system.
Second, corporate “school reform” and mayoral control were designed to privatize, while undermining the education of the city’s poorest children and ignoring the vast inequities in Chicago’s economic class structure. During the 12 years since the Illinois General Assembly in 1995 handed dictatorial control of CPS over to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, we have been the victims of nothing less than a coup d’etat against democracy. Once it was in place in Chicago and its “narrative” (the miracle stories) firmly in place, mayoral dictatorship as a model was spread to large cities across the country by outfits like the Business Roundtable with the help of lies published or broadcast in the major corporate media.
Like New Orleans, Chicago’s public schools faced unique challenges, because of the intense concentration of economic poverty and racial segregation. Rather than face and solve those problems during one of the most prosperous times in the history of the USA, Chicago did the opposite: victim blaming and increasing the privileges of the already privileged.
Chicago had more than 600 public schools when what we can the “Daley Dictatorship” began in 1995.
Like New Orleans, the Daley Dictatorship immediately stripped democratic power from most black people — in a school system that was majority black. Protest was muted, and many leaders were bought off from the beginning, including a couple who became millionaires thanks to their collaboration with Daley’s plans.
Chicago’s public schools were declared a “failure” despite the fact that the majority of the city’s public schools were either muddling along or doing very well. For those 100 - 200 public schools that were at “the bottom” when Daley took over, things were very bad, but not because of the schools. Vicious segregation and intense poverty were the main causes, and Daley’s dictatorship and the attacks on the poor (and on public service) the past dozen years have made things worse for poor children, not better. But the problems caused by class and racial discriminations were blamed on the schools and teachers, while a series of white administrators were placed in charge of the key positions in the $5 billion school system.
Daley’s reforms have been a failure where the challenge was greatest: for the poorest children in Chicago. At the “bottom,” things have gotten worse and worse. Most of the schools that were “failing” in 1995 are failing today. Those that are not “failing” have either been demolished, privatized, or turned over to a different class of students in gentrifying communities. Nothing in Chicago’s corporate “school reform” has helped the poorest kids in the densest ghettos. Everything Daley has done — from public housing “reform” to “welfare reform” to “school reform” — has hurt children, killing many of them. As long as those children were poor and (for the most part) black, Daley has gotten away with it. So we are threading a history of the Daley years across the lengthy book review that follows.
Third, as Klein says, we cannot change reality unless we first confront it and try to understand it. The vast media blackout on the truth about what’s been taking place is Chicago has been well-funded and consistent for more than a decade. Most Chicago public school teachers know nothing but the lies touting Mayor Daley’s “miracles.” While these lies will some day provide hundreds of lessons in the corrupt propaganda of power, today they are still alive and well. The realities of Chicago and CPS today have been reported more accurately in the pages of Substance than anywhere else. Naomi Klein’s book helps frame that reality in a context that may help us plan how to counterattack against the intense and so far successful planning being done by the ruling class. We’ll see over the next five years.
Page Six. Caption Photo Bottom of Page. The tragedy of New Orleans is a charter school zealot's 'Greenfield Site'… Chicago’s John Ayers, above right, has referred to New Orleans in words that could come from any of the dozen nations and cities profiled in ‘The Shock Doctrine.’ “This is the greenfield site that you never get in public education,” Ayers said after Louisiana abolished the public schools of New Orleans, fired the city’s public school teachers, and replaced most of the public schools with by-application-only charter schools based on models brought in from Chicago. Above: Ayers was interviewed by (then) Chicago Tribune reporter Lori Olszewski on October 2, 2003, at the “Mid Morning Club” atop Chicago’s Bank One building. The Mid Morning Club event above featured a “State of the Schools” speech to corporate Chicago by (then) American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Sandra Feldman. In the course of her Chicago visit, Feldman reiterated the union’s “critical” support for “No Child Left Behind” and charter schools. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
Photo above: Chicago’s Greg Richmond, above center, began the CPS charters schools office under Paul Vallas in 1996, a year after Mayor Daley took over the city’s public schools and went on to head the organization spearheading the charter school attack on the public schools of New Orleans. Chicago was Richmond’s laboratory. On February 23, 2005 (above), Richmond again supported recommendations to the Chicago Board of Education to close existing Chicago public schools and privatize them as charter schools — or other unusual entities. That day, Chicago’s school board voted, unanimously and without debate, to approve recommendations from CEO Arne Duncan that the Bunche, Grant, and Howland public elementary schools be closed as part of Mayor Daley’s “Renaissance 2010” program. By early 2005, Howland had been colonized by the “North Lawndale College Prep” charter school for three years. Bunche was turned over to Providence St. Mel’s, a Catholic school. Grant was subsequently designated for militarization — to house the “Phoenix Military Academy” (Army) military high school. It now houses both “Phoenix” and the new “Marine Military Academy.” After the February 2005 meeting, Richmond left CPS to become president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, now headquartered in Chicago. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans beginning on August 30, 2005, Richmond’s group began working with charter schools to replace the public schools of the devastated city with charters. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
