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Today's
Stories
September 3,
2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
September 3, 2004
Chicago's School
Privatization Plan
Making
Students and Teachers Pay for the Political Crisis in Education
By
JESSE SHARKEY
The head of Chicago's public schools,
Arne Duncan, has announced plans to privatize at least 60 "failing"
schools. According to recent press reports, the privatization
scheme would allow these schools to operate outside the teachers'
union contract.
Duncan's proposal is called
Renaissance 2010. It would close 60 schools, and reopen 100 new,
smaller ones in the old buildings. Some two-thirds of these would
be non-union charter schools or "contracted-out" schools
under private management.
Renaissance 2010 comes from
a close collaboration between the Chicago Public Schools (CPS)
administration, the University of Chicago and the Chicago Commercial
Club, an influential business group representing the city's biggest
companies and law firms. The Commercial Club is involved in raising
$50 million of seed money to help launch the project.
In a statement to the press,
the Club claimed that the Duncan plan "presents the opportunity
to transform a major urban school system, improving educational
opportunities and bringing hope to some of our most distressed
communities."
But in a private memo to Duncan
that was leaked to the New York Times, R Eden Martin,
president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, wrote,
"The school unions will not like the creation of a significant
number of new schools that operate outside the union agreement--but
operating outside the agreement is a key element of this strategy."
In other words, the same Chicago firms that avoid paying taxes,
drive down wages and bust their own unions want to "bring
hope to distressed communities" by attacking public school
teachers as well!
It doesn't seem to matter that
CPS schools have shown marked improvement over the past 10 years--test
scores in math and reading have risen from 30 percent of national
norms to over 50 percent. Nor does it matter that the means of
improving the schools--primarily privatization and charter schools--are
proven failures wherever they have been tried.
Renaissance 2010 aims to create
a significant pool of non-union teachers who will work longer
hours; take counseling, coaching and other responsibilities for
no extra pay; and undercut the unionized teaching force. In other
words, the plan intends to "improve the schools" at
the expense of teachers. If allowed to proceed, the plan will
render meaningless contract protections on hours of work and
non-teaching responsibilities.
However, at this crucial moment,
our union has been all but paralyzed by a bitter internal war
over the disputed June 11 leadership election. An investigation
committee of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)--the CTU's
parent union--ruled August 5 that Marilyn Stewart of the United
Progressive Caucus (UPC) was the rightful president. Up until
that point, both caucuses claimed leadership of the union.
In the June 11 vote, incumbent
President Debbie Lynch of the reform-oriented Proactive Chicago
Teachers (PACT) caucus lost to the old-guard candidate Stewart
by only 566 votes--less than one per school. With two days to
go before the handover of power, the CTU's Canvassing Committee
announced that it had found substantial evidence of fraud at
a number of schools, including missing ballots and forged signatures
on voting lists. The committee invalidated the election results.
The following morning, with
TV cameras rolling, Lynch had the locks changed on the CTU office
and announced her intention to rerun the election. Since then,
the two caucuses have battled in the press, on Internet list
serves and in the courts. PACT maintains that mismatched signatures,
complaints of intimidation at polling places and other irregularities
occurred primarily at schools with UPC delegates, and were part
of an attempt to steal the election.
With no compromise in sight,
the AFT sent a team of investigators--comprised of the AFT presidents
of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore--who held hearings in
late July. The team's 19-page report concluded, "It was
clear at the end of the 11 hours of testimony that very little,
if any, evidence was submitted to substantiate any claim of election
fraud, yet the charge itself is destructive to the union. To
make such unfounded charges for no good reason is improper because
it undermines the members' trust in the local."
In an unsigned e-mail to the
entire CTU membership, Lynch repeated the charges of election
fraud and rejected the AFT's conclusions. "We cannot understand
why the AFT thinks it has the right to interfere and overturn
the lawfully made decisions of [the CTU]," the e-mail said.
So the bitter split in the union could continue--and even intensify--as
the school year begins. That leaves nobody in the union's two
dominant caucuses to fight against the union-busting Renaissance
2010. Lynch's response to the initiative--a press statement and
a hastily organized picket at a board meeting--were steps in
the right direction, but far too small a reaction.
Lynch was also hampered by
the fact that she spent the last three years proudly "cooperating"
with Arne Duncan. It is too early to tell if the UPC will respond
to Daley's plan, but to this point, it has been virtually silent.
It will be up to rank-and-file teachers to mobilize against Renaissance
2010 during the school year, regardless of which caucus they
supported in the election fiasco.
Charter
schools leave kids behind
IF CREATING more charter schools
is a centerpiece of the Bush administration's plan for our schools,
then we can expect many more children to be "left behind."
That's the only conclusion to draw from a New York Times report
that found charter schools lagging behind other public schools.
Charter schools were a much-hyped
model for public education after George W. Bush's "No Child
Left Behind" Act became law in 2001--with its goal of imposing
the rules of the free market on schools, so they either improve
or perish. Charter schools are public schools that receive public
funds, but are managed under different rules, often by private
companies operating outside the authority of local school boards,
and therefore able to make up their own guidelines for hiring
and teaching.
Out of the country's 88,000
public schools, only 3,000 are charter schools--but this number
is expected to increase as the No Child Left Behind Act's strict
testing restrictions leave thousands more schools vulnerable
to closure or privatization. That, the Times discovered,
will only add to the education crisis.
According to Department of
Education data analyzed by researchers for the American Federation
of Teachers and then provided to the newspaper, fourth graders
attending charter schools performed about half a year behind
students in other public schools in both reading and math. Researchers
compared results for low-income children who attended both urban
charter schools and regular public schools, breaking down the
statistics by race and ethnicity.
In almost every case, students
at charter schools did worse. More than 80 charter schools across
the country were forced to close in 2003, largely because of
questionable financial dealings and poor performance. In fact,
just weeks before school was set to begin this year, some 10,000
California children were left without a school to attend when
the California Charter Academy, the state's largest charter school
operator, announced that it was closing at least 60 campuses.
Amid all the bad news, Bush's
Department of Education announced its own unique solution. End
the privatization scheme? Demand more accountability from charter
school operators?
No, the Department of Education
announced that it was cutting back on the information it collects
about charter schools. The White House seems to be operating
on the assumption that "what you don't know won't hurt you."
But Bush isn't the only one
to blame for this fiasco. Democrats also bear responsibility
for No Child Left Behind becoming the law of the land. For all
his complaints about Bush's education policies, John Kerry voted
for the law, and recently, he began mouthing Bush's rhetoric
about parents and teachers "taking responsibility."
Someone needs to take responsibility alright--and return the
money that's being pilfered from public education.
JESSE SHARKEY is a Chicago public school teacher
and delegate to the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). He writes for
Socialist Worker.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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