Comments on "The Schools Chicago's Students Deserve

I just finished reading, “The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve, Research-based Proposals to Strengthen Elementary and Secondary Education in the Chicago Public Schools” written by  authors at the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).  It is 55 pages long if you count the eight pages of “endnotes”. It has all the teacher tools: pretty pictures, snappy post-it-notes and plenty of teacher argot. I agree that Chicago students deserve some things that are better in order to educate them, and I even agree with the authors about some of those things. However I am sorely disappointed that the sub-title implies that this is a document based on extant research and not research based on serving the CTU’s purpose, which ultimately turns out to be more money and almost a cry for some top-down intervention.  Oh, I am not so naïve as to think that researchers don’t look for documentation to support their own biases, but I looked for a few citations that provided a different viewpoint, even if the preponderance of the evidence supported CTU’s premises. The lack of opposite viewpoints detracts from the rigor of the report and leaves the field open for researchers to deconstruct the report just enough for us to question the entire report and lose sight of the fact (and it is a fact) that Chicago students do indeed need better schools.

For example, one of the “essential” needs of the students proposed by the CTU is smaller class sizes. As much as we love to hate the curmudgeons against smaller class sizes and particularly Bill Gates who wants to control and privatize all of education, two credible studies should have been examined before CTU declared “despite compelling research….  One of the studies is from Education Week.  The authors stated that “researchers agree that shrinking the number of students in a class does not automatically translate into better learning …..teachers may need to alter their teaching practices” (www.edweek.org/ew/issues/class-size, 2011). The other study was conducted by Dobbie and Freyer (2012), from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).  NBER appears to be a neutral source, although skeptic that I am, I am still trying to determine where it gets its funding.  Dobbie and Freyer put it coherently, concisely and raised more doubt about the effects of class size on achievement

We find that traditionally collected input measures- class size, per pupil expenditure, the fraction of teachers with no certification, and the fraction of teachers with an advanced degree- are not correlated with school effectiveness.  In stark contrast, we show that an index of five policies ---------explains approximately 50 percent of the variance in school effectiveness.

I omitted the five policies because it may show that I need to reevaluate some of my rants.  I want to say I unequivocally support the CTU and what I hope is a sincere desire to get the best for our students’ education.  However, perhaps we need to look at some of the literature about how to educate children of color, the majority in Chicago Public Schools.  But then again, that is not the job of a union.