Chicago 'school reform': Source of record youth violence, by putting rival gangs in same classrooms?
Last edited Tue Sep 11, 2012, 09:23 PM - Edit history (2)
IMO the main goal of education should be positive outcomes for students. But success is hard to measure, even when all outcomes other than test score gains are put aside. Gentrification of schools--replacing poor students with few resources at home with prosperous middle class students--is the easiest way to produce apparent test score gains. Schools stripped of middleclass students then are closed and the poorest students from different neighborhoods are dumped into consolidation schools.
Recklessly pursuing such fraudulent test-score "success" without regard for community concerns can have surprisingly devastating unforeseen effects.
In particular, closings and consolidations of high schools across gang boundaries since 2005 have put hundreds of rival gang members in the same classrooms for the first time. Spikes in youth violence, rare before the school closings, have occurred since then.
Have disputes in school (where weapons are excluded by airport-style scanners) spilled out into the streets?
Here are snippets from two articles, one from two years ago and one from yesterday.
WHAT'S YOUR OPINION?
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From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/06/chicago-teen-deaths-viole_n_311877.html :
"Chicago Teen Deaths, Violence Tied To School Reform Plan?
KAREN HAWKINS, Associated Press, 10/ 6/09
CHICAGO — Even in the cold rain, Danielle Jones would rather stand on the street and wait for her father to pick her up from her high school on Chicago's South Side than walk or take the bus, fearing the fights that start in school will be settled later on the streets. That violence has increasingly turned deadly – including the vicious fatal beating of her classmate, 16-year-old Derrion Albert, whose after school death was captured on a cell phone video. ...
Activists say the escalating violence among Chicago's teens may have roots in an unlikely place – an ambitious plan to improve education that's also thrown rival gangs together in an often-volatile daily mix. Since 2005, dozens of Chicago's public schools have been closed and thousands of students reassigned to campuses outside their neighborhoods – and often across gang lines – as part of Renaissance 2010, a program launched by Mayor Richard Daley when Duncan was Chicago Public Schools chief. ...
Before the 2006 school year, an average of 10-15 public school students were fatally shot each year. That soared to 24 deadly shootings in the 2006-07 school year, 23 deaths and 211 shootings in the 2007-08 school year and 34 deaths and 290 shootings last school year. Few deaths have occurred on school grounds, but activists say it's no coincidence that violence spiked after the school closures.
'You have a trail of blood and tears ever since they launched (Renaissance 2010),' said Tio Hardiman, director of the anti-violence organization CeaseFire Illinois. 'There's a history of violence associated with moving kids from one area to another.' ... Others believe many of the problems could've been avoided if they'd been given time to prepare for the changes. In the largely African-American Austin neighborhood, about half of the 7,000 high school-aged students were forced to travel outside the community to other schools after Austin High School was shuttered in 2007. Some ended up at the mostly Latino Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School, where school officials weren't given 'any kind of a warning,' said Idida Perez, a community organizer with West Town Leadership United. The result was near daily fights between the newcomers and the neighborhood kids, she said.
Administrators responded by holding student focus groups and social events. Police also did roll calls outside the school, and the Chicago Transit Authority sent extra buses to pick up students so they wouldn't linger outside the school, Perez said. 'Today, Clemente has a really good plan in place,' she said. Jones hopes something similar is done at Fenger, where fighting this year seems worse after staff and faculty were replaced over the summer in an effort to improve performance there. 'I'm an honor student, I come to school to learn and do work,' Jones said. 'I don't come to school just to see fights all day.'"
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From http://www.reuters.com/article/video/idUSBRE8890VS20120910?videoId=237636645
"School is out in Chicago as teachers strike
By Stephanie Simon and James B. Kelleher
Mon Sep 10, 2012 4:15pm EDT
... Many teachers, however, see the new policies as a brazen attempt to shift public resources into private hands ... and to reduce the teaching profession to test preparation. Arne Duncan ... closed scores of schools with poor test results. He remade others by firing the staff and hiring private turnaround specialists to run the schools. Duncan also encouraged the spread of charter schools.
Results have been mixed. High-school graduation rates have improved and high-school test scores are up, according to an analysis last year by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. But test scores have barely budged at the elementary and middle grades. And two decades of reform have done nothing to close the racial gaps in achievement levels. On the contrary, black students have fallen farther behind than ever, the consortium found.
Chicago also fares poorly compared to other cities. On the most recent national exam, Chicago fourth-graders didn't come close to the average scores posted by students in other large urban districts, in either reading or math. There are some bright spots. Some elementary schools taken over by private turnaround specialists - and bolstered with millions in additional public and private funds - have boosted test scores significantly.
Some charter high schools, too, have dramatically raised scores and college matriculation rates among their low-income students, who must commit to spend hundreds more hours in the classroom than their peers and follow a rigid code of behavior. ... Yet teachers, backed by some civic activists, contend that while some charters stocked with highly motivated students have flourished, Chicago's reform policies have hurt public education overall. They complain that regular neighborhood schools suffer with crumbling facilities and overcrowded classrooms while privately run charters and turnaround schools get pricey renovations, new equipment and additional staff.
And they argue that closing schools has destabilized poor neighborhoods and even sparked violence, as rival gangs end up crammed together into the schools that remain. ..."
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