SUBSCRIPT: Non-teacher 'teachers' picket Chicago Teachers Union meeting as 'Teachers for Fioretti'While some of the most controversial issues facing the members of the Chicago Teachers Union were being debated inside the Operating Engineers union hall on January 14, 2015, outside a group of people holding signs . . . | Article | |
SUBSCRIPT: Should 'Emerging Leaders' include the principals' spies who report about union meetings to the boss?As the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union becomes more complex over the next several months, Substance will continue reporting what some people refer to as "contradictions" over how the union and its leadership are . . . | Article | |
SUBSCRIPT: Chicago Police arrest SnowdenThe Chicago Police Department announced on August 11, 2013 that they had captured Terrence Snowden on charges of murder. Names: Terrence SNOWDEN, 24, 8700 block of S. Euclid, Charges: First Degree Murder, Firearm W/O valid . . . | Article | |  |
SUBSCRIPT: 'BBB' vying for Orwell award... How can you say you are 'listening' when you are ignoring the hearings and everything that is being said (except by your own puppets)?... Byrd Bennett and the seven Board of Education members continue truancy from school closing hearingsTruancy in Chicago is a major topic of public discussion, thanks to the latest revelations (published in the Chicago Tribune) showing that absenteeism and truancy in Chicago continue to be a major problem, as Chicago . . . | Article | |  |
Board continue insulting Chicago teachers and principals at October 24 meetingSince nobody in the corporate media will report it, and Substance will be posting the stories over the next couple of days, it's important for everyone who was not present at the Board of Education's . . . | Article | |  |
SUBSCRIPT: What do J.C., BBB and Jay Silverheels have in common? Answer tomorrow.Before J.C. Brizard rides off into the sunset, we have to pay one more tribute to the kinds of Hollywood productions in which he has recently co-starred, with a nod to one of his illustrious . . . | Article | |  |
SUBSCRIPT: Strike becomes deeply philosophical... A Cultural explosion comes bursting forth from Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012 includes metaphysical, epistemological and eschatological viewpoints in 'Hot Chicago Teachers'One of the secret weapons Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis and the union's leadership launched against the Chicago Board of Education and the city's billionaire and millionaire dictatorship with the Chicago Teachers Strike of . . . | Article | |  |
SUBSCRIPT: 'If she can mention West Virginia and Ohio she can tell 1.5 million members to support Chicago now!'... Is AFT president Randi Weingarten Rahm's secret hope for the sellout?One week after a controversial article in the Chicago Sun-Times declared that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel would intervene in contract negotiations between the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union, a stunning "Labor Day . . . | Article | |  |
BUDGET WATCH: Who needs a 'Budget Book' to read before the 'hearings' in this second year of the REIGN OF RAHM?The hearings on Chicago's public education budget, a $5.2 billion affair, are all being held Wednesday, July 11, 2012. Those who wish to testify should get there between 5:30 and 6:30 and ask for a . . . | Article | |
'Vitale Stall' continues to insult parents, teachers and community leaders as the June 27 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education"Bankers hours and bankers' arrogance because, well, they are bankers and the bankers' stooges..." might be the best way to view the way in which the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education handle . . . | Article | |  |
SUBSCRIPT: Brizard 'disappears' those public meetings. Brizard and Rahm ignore budget hearing deadlines... If Chicago had real newspapers and reporters, these jokes wouldn't be on us.... Instead, we get the Rahm fan club at the Sun-Times and Tribune, with Rahmadulation from the misnomered BGAIt's now the first anniversary of the Reign of Rahm at CPS, and the evidence is piling up that it combines corruption and incompetence to a level never before seen in Chicago public schools history. . . . | Article | |
SUBSCRIPT: Test fixing scandals are as big as Wall Street banks crookedness, but Michelle Rhee and the rest will never be indicted for their crimesAs the number of test "cheating" scandals continues to grow across the USA, it's becoming more and more clear to the attentive reader that the executives who have been running America's large urban public schools . . . | Article | |
SUBSCRIPT: Wigler story went public because Wigler and UPC decided to challenge the union's decisionThere has been some speculation in the Chicago public schools and elsewhere, including on some blogs operated by scab corporations like the Chicago Tribune, that there was some deviousness behind the breaking of the story . . . | Article | |  |
Common Core capitalism propaganda as 'curriculum'? CPS touting banks and credit card agencies as avatars of 'financial literacy'There probably isn't a decent teacher left in the USA who doesn't already realize that the "Common Core" is another straight jacket of nonsense to tighten around teachers and students in the nation's real public . . . | |  |
SUBSCRIPT. BUREAUCRACY WATCH. How many 'press secretaries' does one CPS need?Barely a news cycle goes by without Chicago being treated to a comment from someone in the CPS Communications Department (usually Press Secretary Becky Carroll) bemoaning the fact that these are tough times, we're all . . . | Article | |
SUBSCRIPT: 'Network' maps — and the whole 'Network' and 'Chiefs of Schools' notion — shows the absolute incompetence of Jean-Claude Brizard and his 'team' of overpaid and undercompetent MBAs and other mercenary bureacuratsAs those who following the expensive, mercenary and Byrantine meanderings of management at America's third largest school system know, this year "Chicago Public Schools" got a new name for its subdistricts and a new kind . . . | Article | |  |
SUBSCRIPT: Cold weather in Chicago in January... Who knew street crime would go down? Rahm, McCarthy take full credit for... An act of God!?There used to be wisdom among police officers that said something like this: Don't take credit for things when they are good unless you are ready to take the blame when things go bad. In . . . | Article | |  |
SUBSCRIPT: Last Stand for Children First lampoons turnaround with three new videosThe wonderful website "Last Stand for Children First" has released three new brief videos on CPS "turnaround" (with music) that prepare Chicago for the next round of "turnaround." As the month moves towards an . . . | Article | |  |
SUBSCRIPT: Brizard's bureaucrats must be fluent in Ptydepe... The secret is out. To work in the 'new' CPS administration you have to master pdydepe and pass a test on it administered by Jean-Claude Brizard...We've finally discovered the secret to getting a top level (and highly paid) job in public education in Rahm Emanuel's Chicago in 2011 and 2012. You have to be bilingual — in Ptydepe. Rahm's been . . . | Article | |  |
SUBSCRIPTS: When the 'District 299' blog is totally full of ____ (as opposed to just partly, as usual), it's clear you can't cover Chicago schools from BrooklynHow can you really learn anything about Sayre or Burbank elementary schools from 800 miles away? Shape shifting? Morphatious mutations? Magic? Although I haven't blogged to District 299 since five years ago, they went over . . . | Article | |  |
