Wednesday, December 1, 2010, I went to a No Child Left Behind meeting at Smyth School in my old neighborhood, 1059 W. 13^th Street.  Back in the day, that neighborhood was a Chicago Housing Authority complex named ABLA; now it’s University Village.  Smyth is the last remaining community school serving CHA residents of that area.  

At that No Child Left Behind meeting, which started on CP time, a woman, Carmella, from Jackson Language Academy, revealed that their selective enrollment, magnet school was slated to become an expanded community school and the Board of Education would spend SEVEN  million dollars to make it so.  The initiative to expand Jackson was started, according to Carmella, by a group of white parents in the University Village Association.  Now, if Jackson Language Academy became a community school, it would have to take neighborhood children; its demographic would change and include generational CHA residents.  Not standing for this, Carmella mobilized 500 parents to stop the Board and the University Village Association. They did! Jackson Language Academy will remain a selective enrollment school, and Smyth students of the CHA housing project will stay where they are, behind. Which just goes to show: the more things change, the more they stay the same; Andrew Jackson School was never welcoming of CHA residents, not thirty years ago, not now.

However, Carmella suggested Smyth get the seven million to expand, but no one is looking to expand Smyth.  So I piggy back off Carmella and suggest Smyth parents mobilize to get the seven million for improvements.  At this point, the principal appears (in sweats) and puts the kabash on that. The principal then asks are there other suggestions for improvement. Knowing big improvements are out of reach, I try for little ones and say, “OK, here are two suggestions for easy improvement: 1) If you can’t start the meeting until 3:45 P.M., don’t advertise that it will start at 3:00 P.M.  2) There is a sign at the main door greeting parents and visitors that says, ‘To Get Respect, You Have To Give It.’ Take it down.”  I declared that respect is nonnegotiable: Everyone gets it.  A small debate follows, and the principal is neither sure of the sign nor of the inappropriateness of its content.  However, he continues to conduct the meeting in keeping with the Board’s talking points:  Their test scores have improved; they’re proud to be an IB school, each child has a lap top (but I didn’t see any children taking home lap tops) they were starting a reading clinic, etc.  At some point in the meeting, Carmella suggests that Smyth start a parent group (and here it is revealed that the same parents who are part of NCLB also sit on the Local School Council), but the principal puts the kabash on that too by determining the only reason for parents to come together is to raise money for the school and Smyth gets plenty of money from the Board and outside sources; he references the brand new fish tanks in the lobby to prove the point. The meeting ends with the raffling off of turkeys.

This story conveys a problem of urban education and school reform.  Local School Councils in poor communities don’t work because poor people can easily be manipulated.  Slogans like “Children First,” “Leave No Child Behind,” and “Raise Expectations” mask problems of generational poverty and its disastrous effects as evidenced by a debate on who deserves respect in a school.  On a recent Oprah episode, Michelle Rhee, Oprah, and her guest declared  that “The Children are not the problem; the adults are.” Look, when a four year old threatens to shoot his teacher that symptom of a sick village is a problem in the classroom and higher test scores don’t answer how we live together in peace and prosperity.