(Click here to download the full report.)
Back in the middle of this past February, the Chicago Teachers Union released a comprehensive report that offers research-based policy recommendations to improve student academic performance and to strengthen neighborhood schools. Chicago Public School (CPS) parents, Local School Council leaders, clergy and educators joined the CTU in supporting this proposal. The following is the executive summary from that report:
The Schools Chicago's Students Deserve is a new Chicago Teachers Union study which argues in favor of proven educational reforms to dramatically improve the education of more than 400,000 students in a district of 675 schools.
These reforms are desperately needed and can lead chicago towards the world-class educational system its students deserve. Our study presents 46 pages of research-based details on the following 10 essential recommendations:
1. Recognize That Class Size Matters. Drastically reduce class size. We currently have one of the largest class sizes in the state. This greatly inhibits the ability of our students to learn and thrive.
2. Educate The Whole Child. Invest to ensure that all schools have recess and physical education equipment, healthy food offerings, and classes in art, theater, dance, and music in every school. Offer world languages and a variety of subject choices. Provide every school with a library and assign the commensurate number of librarians to staff them.
3. Create More Robust Wrap-around Services. The Chicago Public Schools system (CPS) is far behind recommended staffing levels suggested by national professional associations. The number of school counselors, nurses, social workers, and psychologists must increase dramatically to serve Chicago’s population of low-income students. Additionally, students who cannot afford transportation costs need free fares.
4. Address Inequities In Our System. Students and their families recognize the apartheid-like system managed by CPS. It denies resources to the neediest schools, uses discipline policies with a disproportionate harm on students of color, and enacts policies that increase the concentrations of students in high poverty and racially segregated schools.
5. Help Students Get Off To A Good Start. We need to provide age-appropriate (not test-driven) education in the early grades. All students should have access to pre-kindergarten and to full day kindergarten.
6. Respect And Develop The Professionals. Teachers need salaries comparable to others with their education and experience. They need time to adequately plan their lessons and collaborate with colleagues, as well as the autonomy and shared decision-making to encourage professional judgment. CPS needs to hire more teaching assistants so that no students fall through the cracks.
7. Teach All Students. We need stronger commitments to address the disparities that exist due to our lack of robust programs for emergent bilingual students and services for students faced with a variety of special needs.
8. Provide Quality School Facilities. No more leaky roofs, asbestos-lined bathrooms, or windows that refuse to shut. Students need to be taught in facilities that are well-maintained and show respect for those who work and go to school there.
9. Partner With Parents. Parents are an integral part of a child’s education. They need to be encouraged and helped in that role.
10. Fully Fund Education. A country and city that can afford to take care of its affluent citizens can afford to take care of those on the other end of the income scale. There is no excuse for denying students the essential services they deserve.
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Every day, teachers are pressured to compete with each other and push their students over the testing precipice, all in the name of accountability-a word that has become corporate-speak for test, test, test.
The Rogers Park Young Women's Action Team and
Project NIA are proud
to announce the launch of Suspension Stories.
DESCRIPTION: Even though students may live in a city, where the people they encounter each day come from all over, they might still be unfamiliar with any neighborhood outside their own. This lesson seeks to open the door to the exploration of Chicago neighborhoods and the unfamiliar through the use of mapping in abstract art. Students will explore the idea of creating artwork from the lines, shapes, and design of neighborhood maps. Students will select two neighborhood cutouts at random in addition to their own neighborhood, to trace and create an abstract design, exploring different techniques with oil pastels. They will utilize the elements and principles of line, shape, balance, and pattern in their composition. In the end, students’ compositions will connect the three different cutout neighborhood shapes into one cohesive design, allowing them to contemplate how these different shapes and neighborhoods exist in the same space.
A Youth-Led Action Research Curriculum Guide
The contemporary artist Robert Gober gives subversive meaning to wallpaper in an installation at the AIC.
Using juxtaposition and repetition, he turns the racist history that makes up America’s cultural background into a visual background. My lesson invites high school students to consider how to make their American cultural background visible by using Gober’s wallpaper form to juxtapose and repeat images from the mainstream news media after editing them.
Two studies were released on Tuesday Feb 17th at a GEM press conference. They can be found below at the Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education website. The first critiques CPS school closing criteria, examines patterns of gentrification and school closings, and has three case studies of schools to be closed (turn-around, phased out). The second analyzes ACT scores of charter and neighborhood high schools, and looks at differences in the student bodies. 
Preview: The bag of items represents the stomach contents of a dying, 28-foot female sperm whale found on a beach in North Carolina in December, 1992. Veterinarians concluded that none but the smallest pieces of plastic could have passed through the whale’s intestinal tract, and that the garbage was a large contributing factor to, if not the entire reason for, the whale’s death. It is assumed that sperm whales either mistake plastic for food, or, perhaps more likely, go after squid that are hiding in and around the garbage and accidentally swallow the plastic as well. Finding plastic in whales is uncommon, but this is not an isolated incident. Most whales who die do so off shore and are not found by people.
Level: Grade 4 and up
Time: 15-45 minutes
Relevant subjects: Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies
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A discussion of the importance of Rainforests and how we can analyze their health.
Writer: Pamela Krausz, Institute for Humane Education
Grades: 6 through 8
Areas: Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies
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The content focuses on the conflict surrounding labor unions from the perspectives of: the government, management, pro-union laborers, and anti-union laborers.
It should be noted that this was classwork for a college
social studies methods class and taught to college-level peers. The
lesson would need to be adapted for younger students.
Writers: Stephanie D., Gina C., and Sarah W.
Level: Elementary
Area: Social Studies
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