Their Loss

My last post, Drastic Measures, has generated a bit of controversy.

"You are making a big mistake," one friend offered.

"Don't leave your job! Don't isolate A. Peevie!" another friend worried. (She wasn't the only one who worried about socialization--it's the obligatory objection whenever the topic of homeschooling comes up.)

These comments do not offend me; I know they spring from love and concern. But they are also driven by ignorance--and I mean that in the dictionary sense of the word, and with no rancour.

We started thinking about high school for A. Peevie sometime during his sixth grade year. We knew that the Chicago Public School selective enrollment high schools were out of our reach, and we started researching other public and private high school options. We visited the Chicago Waldorf School, and I posted on my FB page that I couldn't imagine A. Peevie going anywhere else for high school.

And then, guess what? I was a little too honest about his struggles with anxiety and organizational skills, and they turned him down. Here's the letter I wrote asking them to reconsider:

I've been thinking about Waldorf's thumbs-down on accepting A.Peevie in the high school in the fall. I don't know if you have a waiting list or not, but if so, I'd like to ask the admissions committee to reconsider his application.

One of the things you mentioned is that you are looking for students who are self-motivated learners. This is exactly the reason we are looking for a non-traditional school for him. The traditional academic environment seems to crush his spirit and his enthusiasm for learning; but when he is on his own, he takes the initiative to learn many new things. For example, he was learning about Leif Erikson in school, and he was so interested in him, and in the time period and his background, that he started teaching himself to speak Norwegian.

One of his heroes is Albert Einstein. When he learned that Einstein loved geometry (when he was about 11 years old), he decided he wanted to learn it himself--so he went online, looked up related websites, and printed out 15 pages of beginning lessons. He worked through all 15 of those pages on his own because of his own interest and curiosity.

He showed you one of his unfinished games that he had started to create. He has created several different similar games, with characters that he has drawn himself; he made duplicate card packs that he distributed to friends and neighbors, and they have ongoing games and battles using his unique characters and scenarios.

Currently, he is writing an adventure story--on his own, and not for school--that is in the fantasy/adventure genre. It's already about 15 chapters long, with unique characters and names, imaginary settings, and dramatic conflict.

You also mentioned that he might need more help than what Waldorf can give him with regard to his organizational skills. But again, it seems to me that Waldorf has exactly the environment he needs, and the study skills class seems specifically designed for kids like A.Peevie. He also has two very involved and supportive parents who are determined to make sure that he learns what he needs to learn in that arena in order to be successful.

He has managed to keep his creativity and imagination alive in spite of (I'm sorry to say) the stultifying atmosphere of a school that is not equipped to handle kids that fall outside of the traditional academic mold. He struggles, but he perseveres. He has dealt with many difficult challenges in his life, and this has given him a great deal of empathy for other people who are struggling. He is a heroic, charming, beautiful soul who will someday change the world.

A.Peevie would be a great addition to your school, and I am confident that he would thrive in an atmosphere that values individuality and creativity. I hope you'll bring my letter to the attention of TPTB (the powers that be), and that they will reconsider.

I don't know how Waldorf turned him down after that inspiring (if I do say so myself) plea, but we got a two-line response saying, "No, we're not going to reconsider; good luck; try this other school." Bastards.

After I got over being angry, I felt like God was firmly closing that door so that we could move on; and we did.

Chicago High School Woes

The process for getting into one of Chicago's top high schools continues to attract investigation and criticism. Mr. Peevie, my VP of Information Management, sent me this article from the Chicago Tribune about the "complicated and secretive" selective enrollment process.

If you click on the link on the left you'll get to this graphic which charts the admission stats for each of the nine selective high schools. It indicated that anywhere from 3 percent to 9.9 percent of applicants earned one of the approximately 3,000 coveted slots. Jones College Prep, where C. Peevie will be attending in the fall, enrolled 3.1 percent of its applicants, the second lowest percentage of all the selectives.

Some complain that the federal desegregation guidelines essentially punish high-performing white students who lose out to minority students with lower scores. The guidelines stipulate that 15 to 35 percent of a selective enrollment school's students can be white, and the rest must be minority. The 2000 Census indicates that nearly 42 percent of Chicago's population is white (I wonder if that percentage has declined in nine years?), which might indicate an unfair distribution of scarce educational resources. But the mandated ratio is based on the fact that less than nine percent of Chicago Public School students are white.

The girl in the story scored in the 90th percentile "on her middle school tests," which I assume means her standardized tests. That could be one of the factors that kept her out of Payton. Most of the kids I know who are going to the top four schools (North Side, Payton, Jones and Whitney Young) scored in the 98th or 99th percentile in both math and reading.

Also, it's not clear what the Trib reporter meant by "aced the selective enrollment high school entrance exam." Does it mean she did really well? Or does it specifically mean she received all possible 300 points for her test performance? This is a critical distinction when thousands of students are competing for a couple hundred slots.

All this is not to say that things are hunky dory in the Land of Selective Enrollment. It's not right that thousands of Chicago high school students and their families have to settle for fewer educational opportunities because many, if not most, CPS high schools can't offer the kind of focus, community, and academic challenge that the selectives (and the IB programs, as well) offer.

I'm grateful that C. Peevie has essentially saved Mr. Peevie and me about $40,000 in private high school tuition by working hard enough to get into Jones. I don't really have a point in this post, except to acknowledge that many, many other kids also worked hard, and didn't get in. They'll end up at schools like Amundsen, where only 24% of students meet state minimum standards and where students average 43 absences per year; or Clemente, with a 13% dropout rate and an average ACT score of 15.5; or Marshall, where 4% of students meet state minimum standards, only 40% of freshmen graduate in five--yes, five--years, and students average 95 absences per year.

It's a sad situation, and I don't know what the solution is. Do you?

Searches Ending at The Green Room, Part II

Last year I posted a detailed analysis of Google searches that brought unique visitors to The Green Room. This year, some of the searches are the same, but there are quite a few interesting new ones that make me shake my head at the strangeness of the World.

First of all, why are so many people asking about butterfly poop? Seriously. I get at least five, often more, inquiring visitors every week asking the age-old question, "Do butterflies poop?" There is an astonishing dearth of information about this topic on the otherwise knowledgeable Internet; and so the Internet sends them to me for answers. The answer is Yes, butterflies poop. Read all about it here.

Many stumble into The Green Room seeking book reviews, and sometimes they're looking for a specific kind of review. Some have searched for a bad review of Joker One--which they certainly did not find here. Some arrived looking for a dissertation on the themes or chapter summaries of Danny Gospel.

More than anything, new visitors want to know about a certain company that goes door to door trying to get unwitting customers to sign up for a long-term contract for the delivery of natural gas, promising budget-conscious consumers protection from future natural gas price increases. When I last updated this expose, I reported that my price-per-therm had averaged well-below the price that the company had tried to get me to lock in. Since then, my price-per therm has ranged from $112.84 in September '08 to $39.40 in April '09, with an 11-month average per-therm price of $73.09, still well-below the $1.13 lock-in price.

An alarming number of people want to know about sociopaths: "sociopathic husband laziness," "sociopath control cross," and "sociopath brain science," for example. The search engines direct them here because of my review of The Sociopath Next Door, a scary book that made me start seeing sociopaths every time I turned the corner. When I visit my family.

This blog does not pretend to be a food blog like some of the really great sources of food euphoria out there (Elise's Simply Recipes is one of my favorites, as is Chris' Ordering Disorder). And yet! Virtual visitors have uncovered some delicious recipes in The Green Room kitchens: authentic sopes rusticos; texture-and-flavor-rich corn, wild rice and sausage soup; and fresh summer salsa, for example.

Apparently I performed a service for Chicago families learning to navigate the Chicago Public School selective enrollment high school system when I narrated C. Peevie's journey to high school.

Night at the Museum 2: Battle for the Smithsonian got people to the Green Room with amusing searches for "Bobblehead Einstein that's the way I like it," "Einstein bobblehead conversation," and "watch Albert Einstein bobbleheads singing." I can't blame them--that was my favorite scene in the movie (reviewed here) as well.

Apparently many folks are interested in taking care of an unsavory little league situation--perhaps like the one I described here. They searched for "how to get rid of a bad baseball coach," "how to get rid of a little league coach," and "bad little league coaches."

I'll close with random selections from the site meter reports that offer secret insights into the weary travelers that stop by the Green Room for a brief visit:

• Marriage is hard work
• I believed that prayer would work without fail joker one
• plucky people
• what coral should I get for goldfish
• how to get along at dinner table book
• good boy movie dinner table
• what is reading enrichment
• senator burris vain nightclub
• a boy touch a girl breast
• your own word will turn around and bit
• agent freckles
• onesimus and philemon forgiveness drama skit
  

Thank you, visitors to The Green Room, for making this blog the 889,960th ranked blog on Technorati. I'm so proud.

Magical Moments

Have you ever had one of those moments when time slowed way down and you felt like you had entered a magical alternate dimension where you were eternally young and you were surrounded by happy children, friendly adults, sounds of laughter and cheering, and there was cake, too?

Me neither.

However. This week we came pretty close to that moment. The eighth-graders challenged their parents to a softball game to celebrate their emancipation from grade school and to demonstrate their "superior" athletic ability.

We creamed them. It was awesome.

But wait: let me backtrack for a moment. First of all, we (and by "we" I mean Poor Man's Ricardo Antonio Chavira (PMRAC), who is a 4th grade parent; yay, PMRAC!)) reserved a field at Thillens Stadium for two hours on Wednesday night. Thillens Stadium is an iconic part of Chicago history, where generations of Little Leaguers played under the lights, and Jack Brickhouse announced the play-by-play during the 1950s.


To play under the lights at Thillens is to be a part of something bigger than yourself. To play third base at Thillens as a 48-year-old, mini-van-driving, capri-pants-wearing mother of three, against about 40 eighth-graders and their younger siblings and schoolmates, and to throw your own son out at first base* in a slo-mo-replay moment, is to make history that will never be written, but will also never be forgotten.

After we shut the kids down in the first half inning, we grabbed our bats and took the kids to school. I put myself first in the grown-ups' line-up because I got there first, and the dads were too polite to object. I smashed a single between the cocky teenaged infielders, who were no doubt thinking to themselves, "Sink in, boys, sink in; it's just C. Peevie's mom; she can't hit!"

I rounded the bases when Eddie "The Babe" sent one into orbit, and crossed home plate gasping for air and begging for the paramedics to administer oxygen. "I need a defibrillator!" I wheezed, and Mr. Peevie said, "You need a work-out program." Like I have mentioned in the past, he has a bit of a mean streak.

Since there were little kids playing on the kid team, we let them have five outs per inning. We let them swing until they got a hit, and we "accidentally" fumbled the ball in the field. See, we wanted the little ones to have fun and success, but we had no such concern for the big kids.

O-Daddy and I formed an unbreachable wall covering third and short. I think he took one look at my out-of-shape self and thought to himself, "Oh well, it's just a game." But then! Then I fielded a short-hopper to third and threw to first with precision and grace (if I do say so myself), and O-Daddy's jaw dropped to the ground.

"Wo, Momma!" he said with admiration. "You got some mad skilz!"

"Yes, O-Daddy," I said. "I may look like a zaftig, past-her-softball-prime mama, but when I'm in ready position in the infield, I am still 17!"

The rest of the Mamas and the Papas did great as well, recalling the skills of their lost youths ("yutes," for those of you who are fans of My Cousin Vinny, one of the funniest movies of all time), some of them more lost than others.

The bleachers were filled with additional moms, dads, siblings, and friends who opted to watch the game in the comfort of their blankets (yay! Chicago in June!), coolers, and snacks. I joined them after the first game, having already caused enough damage to my so-called muscles and joints to keep me sore for three full days.

We beat the kids soundly in the first game, and then we sang "Happy Birthday to" C. Peevie because it was his actual b-day, and then I served homemade sheet cake, passing the slices around the bleachers and to the players on the field. The playing, the talking, the trash-talking, the celebrating, the remembering, the laughing, the hanging out in a truly cool locale--these were all gifts of grace and beauty in a troubled world.

It was magical. In the Presbyterian sense of the word, of course.

*My son remembers this differently. In his version, I bobble the grounder, and he's safe at first. But he's been known to have a distorted view of reality.

High School Drama: The final chapter

Saturday morning the phone started ringing with calls from C. Peevie's 8th grade buddies.

"Did you get your letter yet?" his friends asked. "Where are you going?" Many of them had gotten perfect scores on their entrance exams, and had garnered the full 1000 points in the selective enrollment horse race. C. Peevie did not have a perfect score, but he's a bright boy and he had worked hard. We were optimistic that he had a good chance of getting accepted at several of the schools where he had applied.

We waited...and waited...and waited. The phone kept ringing with more happy news from classmates. The mailman kept not showing up. We waited some more. It was like giving birth, only without the agonizing abdominal cramps.

Mr. Peevie and I had plans that night, and we were hoping to be out of the house by 5:30...but still no mailman. Some days our mail doesn't come at all, and we started to figure that this would be one of those days, on the worst possible day.

Fiiiiiiinally, at 6:10 we saw the U.S. Mail truck on the street. We hovered by the front door, waiting as he slooooowwwwly delivered catalogs, bills and other extremely unimportant mail three doors down...two doors down...next door. AHA! We met the letter carrier at the front door, hands outstretched. He probably only gets that kind of reception from fat guys in wife-beaters waiting for the new Victoria's Secret catalog*.

I was ready to rip into the letter the moment we identified it in the packet of third class junk-- but Mr. Peevie rightly held me back. "Let C. Peevie open it," he said. "He's been working hard, and he deserves to be the one to open it." Oh, fine. Be mature.

One letter, four high school choices--three acceptances. I am proud and happy to report that C. Peevie was invited to attend his first choice selective enrollment high school, Jones College Prep.

It's challenging (read: nearly impossible) to find real stats on the number of kids applying for the selective enrollment high schools, the number of slots available, and especially the number of applicants for each slot in a particular school. One blogger and parent of a successful selective enrollment applicant (who also happens to be NY Times best-selling author James Finn Garner) suggests that "CPS keeps a lid on [the real numbers] because the system would look even more ridiculous and unfair than it already does."

This Chicago-based "elite educational coach" reports that only 7% of the 5730 students who tested for 214 slots at Jones were invited to attend. This compares to 6% at Northside, 4% at Walter Payton, and 8% at Whitney Young. The Coach sources her information from Chicago Board of Education, but I could not find a primary source online. Here's another really interesting post about the selective enrollment admission process last year, including a transparent discussion of the role of race and other preference statuses (scroll down to the February 29 entry).

C. Peevie was also accepted at Lincoln Park IB and Lane Tech. Now he just has to decide if his first choice is still his first choice. I asked him about this the other day, and he said that one reason he was leaning toward Jones was that he'd get to ride the train with his dad every day. Since he can't make a bad choice here, I'm thinking that that's a pretty sweet reason to choose a school.

Anyway, we're breathing again, now that the high school drama is over. When you see my boy, give him a high-five.

In three years, we'll be doing it all over again.

*Did you really think I would link to that? Gotcha!

You can read the first two chapters of High School Drama here and here.

High School Application Primer

I mentioned in an earlier post that we have been traveling the road to high school with our oldest spawn, C. Peevie. It's a stressful and time-consuming process--and at the end of the road, our child either receives an offer to attend one of Chicago's top tier public high schools, or I will end up selling my own flesh by the pound down on Rush Street in order to pay for private high school. You can guess which option we--and, let's be honest, all of Chicago's residents--prefer.

CPS reports that every year they receive applications for selective enrollment high schools from more than 12,000 students--but they have only 2,500 slots available. The pressure is on!

Here's where our process has taken us to date:

• Researched the selective high school options. Some we eliminated as possibilities because of location, others because of the extreme unlikelihood that C. Peevie (I just typed C. Poovie by accident--hee!) would gain admittance based upon the thousand-point scale.
• Researched and discussed how to rank the selective high school options for the application form. If you aren't careful, you might rank yourself right out of a selective enrollment option because you aimed too high or too low. Many of the selectives, we heard, would not put a student at the top of their admit list if they listed the school as anything but their first choice.
  
• Completed and submitted the selective enrollment application, indicating Jones, Whitney Young, and Lane as the top three choices.
  
• Meanwhile, C.P. also completed a separate application for the International Baccalaureate program at Lincoln Park High School (LPHS), which is "designed for students who are highly motivated and desire a rigorous academic program." This highly regarded program received silver medal status from U.S. News and World Report in its Best High Schools report in December 2008. The only question is, is C. Peevie highly motivated. Motivated to play? Yes. Motivated to watch Frasier and Angel on DVD? Yes. Motivated to study for four hours a day? Not so much.
• Nevertheless, we still decided to continue in the LPHS/IB application process. The next step was a three hour test on a Saturday morning.
• The application process for the three selective enrollment schools also included a three-hour test.
  
• Then we went to open houses for each of the four high schools he was interested in.
  
• In addition, C.P. attended a half-day shadow day at Whitney Young.
• Also, C.P. and I attended a three-hour IB tour at LPHS, where we learned about the IB curriculum in great detail. We were really impressed with the fact that the teachers were excited to be teaching at LPHS, and very proud of the IB program there.

LPHS has one of only three Arabic programs for high school students in all of CPS. The Arabic teacher walked into the classroom and said, "Salaam 'Alaykum!" There was silence, and then one brave and brilliant mom replied, "'Alaykum As-Salaam!" It was me, of course. C. Peevie and I were both impressed with and interested in the Arabic program.

• Unfortunately, this good experience was followed up with a bad one. C. Peevie was invited to do a personal interview at LPHS; here's how it went:

Interviewer, handing CP a list of activities: What extra-curricular activities do you like?
CP: Baseball, basketball, football...
Interviewer, interrupting: Good, good. What kind of books do you like to read?
CP: Fiction, and...
Interviewer, interrupting: Good, good. Keep reading fiction. What is your favorite subject?
CP: I'd choose two, social studies and literature.
Interviewer: Literature, huh? Well, you didn't do well on the essay part of the exam.
CP: Um...
Me: Grrrrr...
Interviewer, oblivious: Do you have any questions?
Me: Where do your students go to college?
Interviewer: Everywhere.
Me: Oh. That's helpful.
Interviewer: Well, thanks for coming in.

I'm not sure what the purpose of the interview was, except perhaps to see if C. Peevie would even show up--because the interviewer, who I believe is the primary decision-maker, did not learn anything about C. Peevie that would inform her decision one way or another. In what possible way was it constructive for her to tell us that he didn't do well on the essay? Like I said: oblivious. Which is not a really great characteristic for a dean of admissions.

So now we wait. Letters go out on February 20 to let students know where they've been accepted. After that, I think we have two weeks to make a decision.

This whole crazy process is more complicated and stressful than the college admission and application process, and I cannot wait until it's over.

Salaam Alaykum!

Update: We're in!

The Road to High School

When I went to high school, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, there were no decisions to be made, no entrance exams to take, no open houses to visit, no applications to fill out.

I just walked two blocks up the street, walked in the front door of William Tennent High School, and that was that. Even when my parents rudely picked up our lives and moved them to Broken Arrow ("Arruh"), Oklahoma, there were still no complications. There was one huge high school in town, and I attended it--even though the school only offered first and second year Spanish, and I was hoping to take fourth year. And even though the girls basketball team played using archaic half-court rules for girls. (I am not even kidding. It was like we had not only moved halfway across the country, but backwards in time as well. To the Victorian Era.)

Here in Chicago, the road to high school is a bit more complex. The eight selective high schools in Chicago use a thousand-point rating scale to weed out losers less-qualified applicants. The scale combines points for seventh grade final grades, ISAT scores, and attendance. If you get straight As in seventh grade, deliver top scores on the ISATs, and don't get sick, you will have your pick of any selective high school in the Chicago Public School system.

The selective high schools, plus a few non-selective schools are the ones that you want to aim for in the public school district that Secretary of Education William Bennett labeled the worst in the nation in 1988. Things have improved since then: last year the State Board of Education ranked three CPS schools (Northside, Payton, and Young) as the top three high schools in Illinois.

The selective high schools accept fewer than one out four applicants; the process is more competitive than most colleges. My talented son, C. Peevie, although a stellar human being and an excellent student, will none-the-less not have his pick of any high school. He will have to go through the lengthy process of visiting, applying to, and testing for any school he's interested in attending, including up to four selective schools. We've been told to apply to a minimum of four high schools to ensure that at least one gives us the thumbs-up.

Our weekends for the next six weeks are booked with high school open houses. Most of the selectives won't even put you on the short list unless you list them as your number one choice--which puts even more pressure on us to do the application process exactly right. If C. Peevie is borderline qualified for a couple of the top schools, he could theoretically lose out on both of them by listing the wrong one first.

No matter which high school C. Peevie enters, he will be navigating public transportation to and from school. Barely 14 years old, he will be riding the bus with cubicle-dwellers, barristas, homeless people, maids, artists, and college students. He might sit down next to a gang member, a really smelly guy, or a stock broker. He'll be exposed to a lot more Life than I ever was at age 14--or age 24, for that matter.

Actually, he's already doing this once or twice per week, to get home from his relocated middle school after flag football practice. I probably should have been worried sick the first time C. Peevie hopped aboard the Foster bus all by his lonesome--but I wasn't. When I learned that he actually got on the wrong bus, headed east instead of west, I retroactively worried--but there he was standing in front of me, telling me how he asked the bus driver if he was headed in the right direction; hopped off a half-block later; and eventually, two buses and a short walk later, made it all the way home.

C. Peevie is resourceful, smart, cautious and brave, and I could not be more proud of him. And in ten short months my sweet baby boy will be a big-shot high school kid, and that, my friends, is a punch in the gut. In a good way, of course.

Cash for Good Grades

Some high school students in Chicago will be earning cash rewards for good grades this fall. The program, called Green for Grades, is targeted to 5000 freshmen at 20 CPS high schools with very high poverty rates. It's funded by private donations, not tax dollars.

Students will be measured every five weeks in math, English, social sciences, science and physical education. An A nets $50, a B equals $35 and a C still brings in $20. Students will get half the money upfront, with the remainder paid upon graduation. A straight-A student could earn up to $4,000 by the end of his or her sophomore year. ("Earn An A? Here's $50." Chicago Tribune, September 11, 2008)

The kids will get half of the money up front, and the rest upon graduation from high school--providing further incentive to stay in school and get that diploma.

I know what you're thinking, but HOLD YOUR HORSES, THERE, KEMOSABE. Try to stop your eyes from rolling into the back of your head, and keep reading.

Many Chicagoans are irate about this program as though the schools are giving away their own hard-earned money instead of (probably) Oprah's. They're irked because the students don't want to learn just for the sake of learning, and their righteous undies are all in a bunch because the teachers and parents are not doing their job and motivating the kids to stay in school.

The comments at the bottom of this Chicago Tribune article were running four to one opposed to the cash incentives.

One poster commented, "With the poverty level in Chicago, I bet a lot of parents are going to be buying food, gas and paying rent with this money, or putting undue pressure on their kids to get the money. Not good." This type of thinking is self-righteous and elitist. She is concerned that parents are going to put pressure on their kids to get good grades. And that is bad why? And she's also concerned that poor parents are going to use the money to buy food or pay rent. And again, why exactly is that bad?

She doesn't even take the normal knee-jerk anti-social-service reaction and suggest that the parents will be using the money to buy drugs or alcohol. No, she's critical of people living at poverty level using money to buy food or pay rent.

I confess that when I originally heard this idea discussed on the radio about a year ago, I had the same WTF reaction that many of you just had: You are freaking kidding me. We're going to pay kids to stay in school and get good grades? It's crazy! It's insane! It's a sign of the apocalypse!

But now that I've taken some time to actually think about it, I've changed my mind. I invite you to do the same.

My perspective, having worked with social service agencies in Chicago, is that there are a whole lot of parents out there who are working hard but are just barely able to pay rent and put food on the table. They live paycheck-to-paycheck, and if their car breaks down, or their kid gets sick and they need to spend $100 on prescriptions, they're screwed. So my feeling is, if their kids can contribute a few bucks to the household by staying in school, and studying hard enough to earn good grades, good for them.

Many--not all--of the kids who will receive incentives already have the odds stacked against them. Did they get a healthy breakfast in the morning? Did they get enough sleep the night before? Do they have a parent at home in the afternoon to make sure that they eat a healthy snack and do their homework? Do they even have a healthy snack waiting for them?

Are they responsible for younger siblings when they should be focusing on their math problems? Are they surrounded by children and families who value education, or do they live in a neighborhood where half of the adults don't even have a high school diploma themselves? Are they afraid when they're walking home from school?

And it's true that some of the kids have parents that are not equipped even to parent them, let alone to provide a home learning environment, or to make sure they get breakfast in the morning. Yes, it's likely that some of the school problems are the direct result of inadequate parenting. But it doesn't matter whose fault it is. What matters is, they are having a hard time, and what we're doing to fix the system is not working.

Maybe it's time to try something new and radical, something that, on the surface, defies common sense: cash for good grades.

If you look at the 2007 School Profiles and State Report Cards for each of the 20 schools, you will find

• The percentage of low-income families ranges from 82.6% to 98.8% (median 93.65 percent)
  
• With the exception of Uplift, which has relatively high-performing readers, 13.8 - 55 percent of students are making adequate yearly progress (AYP) in reading (median 22 percent)
  
• 2.3 - 36.3 percent of students are making AYP in math (median 12.3 percent)
  
• Average days absent per student ranges from 14.9 to a shocking 42.5 (median 26.4 days)
  
• Dropout rates range from .8 to 16.4 percent (median 10.5 percent)
  

These are kids who, for whatever reason, need drastic intervention to turn their "educational expectancy" around! With the truancy rates so high, it's remarkable that the drop-out rates aren't two or three times higher.

The Trib reporter quoted an egghead from Swarthmore College whose argument against the cash incentives amounted to "but they won't learn to love learning." Seriously. We are talking about kids in schools where you get an attendance award if you've only missed 15 days of school!

He added, "They'll do well in school, maybe, but they won't take any of it out with them. Instead of trying to cultivate an interest in learning, curiosity...you are just turning this into another job." Honestly, if this is the best argument against cash incentives for good grades, then the debate is over before it has even begun. I have used the job analogy with my own kids, and I don't think it's a bad one. School IS their job right now, and this is a good attitude to cultivate.

If you are concerned that this privately-funded pilot program will eventually become a taxpayer liability, I'd like to point out that taxpayers are going to be putting money into these students at some point, either way. The incentive program has the potential to reduce the number of social service and criminal justice dollars needed in the future to deal with kids who became adults with no HS diploma, no job skills, and limited employment opportunities.

Is it ideal to pay kids cash money to get them to do what they should be doing anyway? No. But Chicago is facing an educational crisis, not an ideal North Shore situation, where mom and dad both have advanced degrees and there's not a guy selling crack on the corner. I'm just saying.

I'm not a big fan of Arne Duncan, you might remember; but in this case, I'm in his corner.

Are you?

Give Process a Chance

We had a public hearing tonight about the recommendation of the Chicago Public School Superintent Arne Duncan to relocate Edison Regional Gifted Center into a facility that will be shared with another (middle) school. The gym was packed with Edison blue, and also with neighborhood residents, many of whom favor the move so that the building can be used as a neighborhood school.

Edison parents spoke with eloquence and passion about why this proposal is bad news. Some came prepared with reams of documentation and research about gifted education in stand-alone programs. Some spoke with tears, some with sarcasm, some with anger--but everyone behaved (for the most part) with civility and respect.

(There was a tiny shouting match when one Edison speaker suggested that perhaps the neighborhood kids should be bused to Albany Park; and the neighborhood speaker who claimed that Edison parents accused neighborhood residents of being racist was vociferously contradicted.)

Some local residents were unhappy and walked out of the meeting because after an hour and a half, none of them had been called on. Sign-up for speaking started at 4 p.m., and they took the speakers in the order in which they signed up. I signed up at about 4:35, and I didn't get to have my say until 2 1/2 hours into the meeting.

I argued, of course, for a fair and inclusive decision-making process. Here's my speech:

Abraham Lincoln was arguing with a political opponent. "How many legs does a cow have?" he asked his adversary.

"Four, of course," came the disgusted reply.

"That's right," agreed Lincoln. "Now suppose you call the cow's tail a leg; how many legs would the cow have?

"Why, five, of course," was the confident reply.

"Now, that's where you're wrong," said Lincoln. "Calling a cow's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."

Calling this last minute forum a “process” does not make it a process. Calling something fair when it’s not does not make it so. Saying that a decision is for the good of the children does not make it good for the children.

Giving something the right spin and making it sound good does not make it right and good. What makes it right and good, especially when honest and fair-minded people disagree, is the process that you used to arrive at the decision.

In government, in management, in human relationships—pretty much in all of life, fair process is the bridge that turns war into peace, mutiny into morale, and personal conflict into reconciliation.

Husbands and wives—at least those in healthy relationships--rely on process to make their marriages work. Successful businesses rely on inclusive, transparent processes to motivate their employees and remain profitable. Freedom-loving governments—and their governmental bodies like public school systems—are established based on the principles of fair process.

In this battleground over our little school, it does not matter if you are in favor of the move to Albany Park or opposed to it. Frankly, I myself am a tiny bit ambivalent—I can see both positive and negative points about it.

But what I am NOT ambivalent about is the process that got us to this point where unelected administrators get to make decisions about the future of my child’s education in the absence of a fair and open process.

I am NOT ambivalent—and in fact, I’m livid—about the comments of Peter Cunningham who was quoted as a spokesman for CPS in a recent article in the Reader. He said we are getting off the issue by focusing on what he calls “parental notification.” He said, “Are you pissed off how we rolled it out? Fine. But to make a big issue out of who knew what when is silly. The real issue is whether this is right for the kids.”

This is wrong on so many levels it makes me want to drink gin straight out of the bottle. What Peter Cunningham refers to as “parental notification” and what he means when he says “how we rolled it out” is PROCESS. He is saying that process is silly; that process does not matter.

He sounds very noble when he says that the real issue is whether “this is right for the kids.”

But Peter Cunningham and Arne Duncan and the rest of the bureaucrats at CPS are really and truly missing the boat on this one, because guess what? It’s my child and your child that they are making unilateral decisions about, and it is not silly or unimportant to care about the process and the rationale and the politics that goes into those decisions.

In fact, it’s my job as a parent. And when you suggest that we’re doing this because we’re ‘pissed off’ and that we’re not focusing on whether this is right for the kids, you are walking on very thin ice, my friend. You do not even want to go down that road.

Yes, this is about what is right for the kids. And how do we determine what is right for the kids? You got it. Process.

Process matters when adults disagree and need to reach consensus. Process matters—and tea gets dumped into harbors—when governments try to impose taxation without representation.
And process matters when one tiny school in one large and bureaucratic public school system gets shuffled around like a tune on an I-pod.

So here’s what I recommend: Stop this bulldozer of a plan to move Edison. Instead, set up a process that includes all the stakeholders—Edison parents, north side residents, Albany Park residents, CPS—and gives everyone a chance to have their say, ask--and get answers to--their questions, and solve problems together. Build in enough time so that parents have choices about where their child will attend school. Make sure that everyone feels heard and no one is marginalized in the decision-making process.

At the end, we probably still won’t all agree. That’s OK. But ultimately, you’ll have more understanding, more consensus, more and better ideas. Whatever the final outcome looks like, it will be fair, because the process will have been fair. And then the decision-makers can legitimately say that they’ve done what is best for the children.

Give Process a Chance.

Rare Parents Who Care

Like that alliteration? Me too.

My oldest son, C. Peevie, goes to a Chicago Public School, Edison Regional Gifted Center. It's been, for the most part, a successful academic setting for him. Edison has attracted some really wonderful teachers that have nurtured C.P. both mentally and emotionally; and he's certainly been challenged to learn and perform at an accelerated pace.

I love the diversity of the families at Edison. The school is racially and geographically integrated, with kids coming from all different parts of the city to be a part of this educational community that consistently rates among the top three in the entire state year after year. (It's not, however, terribly economically diverse, being the school with the smallest percentage of kids that qualify for subsidized lunches in the CPS system.)

But here's what's really outstanding about this school: the parents. Especially the parents of the kids in C. Peevie's class, but many of the other parents as well. They are involved in their kids lives, motivated to participate in the life of the school, generous, kind, helpful. They know their kids are smart, but they see them as so much more than just little brains. C. Peevie has classmates who volunteer in nursing homes, clean up the beaches on Earth Day, and serve meals at homeless shelters. They pull together to help each other out with big things, like when a family has a crisis, or in little things, like when a kid needs a ride home after school.

Every year these public school parents put on a fund-raising event that collects tens of thousands of dollars. I think they've raised $70K or $80K every year in the last few years. They solicit local businesses for goods and services, they donate valuable items, they bid hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for kid-created artwork and unique teacher-sponsored activities. They are committed to getting a good education for their kids, and they put their money, time and energy where their mouths are.

So now the CPS big shots, in all their wisdom, have recommended moving this perennially successful school from its current building to a different location in order to make room locally for neighborhood kids currently attending overcrowded schools. The Edison parents are moving mountains to make sure their voices get heard about this poorly-planned, poorly communicated proposal.

Not every parent is opposed to the move, but most of us can understand the concerns that others have expressed about the process, the issues with the new location, and the resources that we have poured into our current space. What's remarkable to me about this whole situation is how invested and involved these public school parents are. Not just the members of the PTO and local school council, either. They're writing letters, making phone calls, mounting PR campaigns, using vacation days to attend school board meetings, making speeches, and attending Saturday morning meetings to strategize and write position papers.

They're doing everything short of challenging the Superintendent of CPS to a duel to the death--but there's one guy, the parent of a kindergartener, who is headed in that direction.

Technically, the fate of Edison has yet to be decided by the vote of the school board. Technically, there is still a public forum where citizens can voice their concerns. But the technicalities seem like after-the-fact formalities that won't actually influence the decision. If this is really the case, then it's just not right.

I'm not one of the ardent nay-sayers opposed to the move in general. I am, however, vehemently opposed to bad process. Process is what keeps us civil and civilized. A fair process by definition results in a fair outcome, and this is what these committed, energetic parents--and their children--deserve.

So, Arne Duncan, and the rest of the Chicago Public Schools board, if you're listening, and I hope you are, here are my questions: Has this process been fair? Has it been unduly influenced by politics? Have parents really had a fair chance to be heard? If not, then what's the harm in postponing the decision until later this year, after there's been time for real and true citizen and parent input?

I look forward to hearing from you.