Union busting by CTU leadership a bad reality in the post-Janus era...

By George N. Schmidt

While the majority of working-class leaders in July 2018 are going to work hard to build (and in some cases rebuilt) unions for both the public and private sectors, a radical problem (or "issue" as some may call it, looms when the unions (in this case the leadership) works to bust their own unions. And in Chicago union women and men need go no further than the current leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union to find examples of union-busting by the unions themselves. So while the leaders of my union (I've been a CTU member since 1969) issue regular press releases against Janus and the anti-union spirit behind all the Janus work across the USA, it's also true that the CTU leadership has been working for more than two years to bust the union (the Teamsters) that represents two groups of people who work in the offices of the CTU. And the most recent examples of that attack come with the decision (affirmed by the CTU House of Delegates) to approve a CTU budget which can only be described as "anti union."

A bit of background is necessary here. Complex as it is, the present situation needs to be both reported and analyzed by those who continue to try to build unions.

For more than a decade, through three CTU presidents, the majority of people working for the CTU have been represented by two locals of the Teamsters union. Clerical staff have one local and the field reps have another. Both "sides" (CTU officers) are required by law to negotiate contracts in good faith, following the same collective bargaining rules that apply to the bargaining between the CTU itself and the Chicago Board of Education.

While labor management relations within the Chicago Teachers Union have at times been strained, it is only since the current leadership took over in July 2010 that they have gotten really heated. From the point of view of "labor" (in this case, the workers who work for and at the CTU), the current leadership has been as adept at boss tactics as management over at CPS has been against those represented by the CTU.

Test sanity increases as University of Chicago drops SAT and ACT as an application requirement...

Some of the biggest news to hit the Education in the USA in June 2018 is that the University of Chicago is eliminating the requirement that students applying for admission to the College of the University (one of the smallest undergraduate programs among the nation's elite universities) no longer have to provide their ACT and/or SAT scores. 

Disclosure: this reporter was admitted to the University of Chicago during the summer of 1966 as a transfer scholarship student and graduated from the College in 1969. At the time and since he has noted the importance of the essay for undergraduate admissions and still believes that an Admissions Department at a major university should devote time and resources to actually reading (and viewing where necessary) an applicant's complete application -- and not just making "two piles" based on flawed test scores stuff.

Our friends at FairTest issued the following announcement:

FairTest...National Center for Fair & Open Testing

for further information, contact: Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773 / mobile (239) 699-0468

for immediate release Thursday, June 14, 2018

ACT/SAT NO LONGER REQUIRED AT UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO;

TEST-OPTIONAL ADMISSIONS MOVEMENT NOW TALLIES 1,000+ SCHOOLS

INCLUDING 310+ "TOP-TIER" COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES;

111 INSTITUTIONS DROP ADMISSIONS EXAMS IN PAST FIVE YEARS

Today's announcement by the University of Chicago that the school will no longer require ACT or SAT test scores from applicants is a major milestone for the test-optional admissions movement. According to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), which maintains the master database, more than 1,000 accredited, four-year colleges and universities now will make decisions about all or many applicants without regard to ACT or SAT test scores.

FairTest Public Education Director Bob Schaeffer assessed the implications. "The University of Chicago's test-optional announcement should be a huge 'ice-breaker' for ultra-selective institutions. Other schools in this category are re-examining their admissions exam requirements but have hesitated to go first. Because Chicago has long been recognized as an admissions reform leader, it is now much more likely that peer national universities will follow suit."

Schaeffer continued, "Chicago's decision expands test-optional momentum from top-tier liberal arts colleges, where more than half no longer require ACT/SAT scores, to a broader range of nationally known schools. An accelerated trickle-down effect is likely -- FairTest's internal 'watch list' includes about three dozen schools that we know are considering dropping ACT/SAT scores. In the past five years alone, more than 110 colleges and universities reduced standardized exam requirements."

All told, U.S. News ranks more than 300 test-optional and test-flexible schools in the first tiers of their respective categories. Among leading national universities, the University of Chicago joins American, Brandeis, George Washington, Wake Forest and Worcester Polytechnic as ACT/SAT-optional. Top-rated test-optional colleges include Bates, Bowdoin, Furman, Holy Cross, Pitzer, Sewanee, Smith, Wesleyan and Whitman.

There are many reasons for the test-optional surge, according to FairTest. Schaeffer explained, "By going test-optional, colleges and universities increase diversity of all types without any loss in academic quality. Multiple studies show that an applicant's high school record predicts undergraduate success better than any standardized exam."

"Eliminating testing requirements is a 'win-win' for both students and schools," he concluded.

The nation's major newspapers began speculation as to whether other "elite" universities will follow. Here is from The Washington Post:

Now that the University of Chicago dropped its testing requirement for applicants, will other elite colleges follow? By Jeffrey J. Selingo, June 16

Harper Memorial Library at the University of Chicago. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Talk to any high school counselor advising students applying to a top college these days, and they will probably tell you the same thing: It’s like playing the lottery. In the admissions cycle that ended last month, a record number of applications and historically low acceptance rates at many selective schools have shifted the conversation about what it takes to secure a spot on the nation’s most elite campuses.

That confusion among applicants is likely to grow with the announcement Thursday by the University of Chicago that it will no longer require SAT or ACT scores to admit American students. By doing so, Chicago became the most selective institution so far to go test-optional. It’s likely selective campuses that compete with Chicago for applicants will follow in its footsteps so that they’re not at a disadvantage in recruiting prospective students.

In the past few weeks, I’ve talked to several admissions deans at elite colleges. Some, hearing rumblings that one of their counterparts was considering going test-optional, were weighing what they would do in response. A few still like the option of SAT and ACT scores as a check against inflated high-school grades; others say test scores already play a diminished role in their admissions processes.

Standardized test scores “are not as much of a signal as they were before,” Rick Clark, director of undergraduate admission at Georgia Tech, told me in an interview recently. “There’s a lot of noise surrounding them.”

For instance, Clark noted that the average SAT score of last year’s applicant pool at Georgia Tech was on par with the students who were actually accepted to the university a decade ago. (Disclosure: I’m a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities.)

As a result, like other top universities, Georgia Tech is increasingly considering other factors in making admissions decisions. Rather than just looking at high school grades, Clark said, “we’re now looking at actual course selection” to see how an applicants’ classes line up with their intended majors.

“For us, in the last five years, we’re looking for that forward-looking student who is not just smart,” Clark said.

Clark acknowledges it is more difficult to tell students and parents what it takes to get into Georgia Tech these days — a dilemma likely only to worsen for admissions deans as more schools join the test-optional movement.

More than 70 schools have dropped their testing requirement since 2013, when the College Board announced plans to redesign the SAT. (The new SAT was first given in spring 2016.) As more colleges go test-optional, the College Board has attempted to defend its core business with evidence that the best approach to predict success in college is to consider both grades and test scores.

The test-optional debate is fierce, and each side produces its own studies that usually arrive at opposite conclusions. Take, for example, a report released in April that was generally sympathetic to test-optional policies at the 28 institutions studied. It found that the schools increased their numbers of applications and their enrollment of minority students without any corresponding “signs of academic slide,” such as graduation rates. That study followed a book released last year, “Measuring Success: Testing, Grades and the Future of College Admissions,” which was edited by three people with ties to the College Board and largely challenged test-optional policies.

“There is so much deep distrust on every side of this debate,” said on of the editors, Jack Buckley, a former College Board official who helped redesign the SAT.

In Buckley’s opinion, the weight given to grades and test scores is unique to every institution and serves one important function in admissions: Will the applicant be able to do the level of work expected at the college? How much those two factors are considered as opposed to others, such as essays or interviews, sends an important signal to applicants, he said.

Often, students change their behavior in response to what schools want, he added, making it difficult to adequately define merit across the board because each side of the admissions equation is tweaking its behavior every year.

“This is a system with high stakes, so it will always be messy,” said Buckley, a senior vice president at the American Institutes for Research. “It’s not like studying the effects of climate change on trees that don’t change in response to me looking at them. Students know they are in a system. They respond accordingly.”

Like others I interviewed, Buckley reminded me that the vast majority of colleges accept most applicants, so defining merit is less of a problem. Indeed, 80 percent of colleges accept more than half of their applicants, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

But counselors said no matter how many times they tell parents that, the conversation quickly returns to what it takes to get into an elite college, especially if parents went to one themselves. What’s often difficult for those same parents to understand is just how much the admissions system has changed in a few decades. When they applied to college, the prospect of getting in — even to a selective college — was so much easier than it is for their children. In 1988, for instance, Johns Hopkins University accepted more than half of its applicants. This year, it accepted fewer than 10 percent.

Inspector General's latest report shows more about the corruption of Rahm's CPS administration under 'BBB'...

By George Schmidt

The corruption of the administration of Barbara Byrd Bennett, the second "Chief Executive Officer" of Chicago Public Schools appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has been further exposed in a report by the CPS Inspector General, widely reported in the Chicago Sun-Times and less so in other media.

The latest revelations of the IG show the corrupt relationship between BBB (now serving a prison term) and Board member Deborah Quazzo (both of whom were appointed by Emanuel).

The Sun-Times article appeared in the May 29, 2018 print edition:

CPS inspector blasts former CEO, ex-board member for ‘horrible’ ethical lapses

A company linked to then-Chicago Board of Education member Deborah Quazzo (right) got a big Chicago Public Schools contract after wining, dining then-CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett Lauren FitzPatrick @bylaurenfitz | email

Disgraced former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, now in prison for a kickback scheme involving millions of dollars in school contracts, accepted lavish meals at some of the city’s priciest restaurants from a CPS vendor whose investors included Deborah Quazzo, who at the time was a Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointee to the Chicago Board of Education.

That’s according to a new report from CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler, whose investigation led the FBI to Byrd-Bennett.

Among the findings Schuler has reported confidentially to the school board:

• Byrd-Bennett steered a $6 million contract to Think Through Math, a company in which Quazzo was invested.

• Byrd-Bennett and the coterie of top aides she brought with her to CPS had a series of expensive meals on that company’s dime during the bidding process for that deal.

• Quazzo violated the school system’s ethics code by talking up her companies’ products to CPS principals and introducing them to company representatives — which she at first denied to Schuler she’d done but acknowledged after being shown emails proving that.

“While Quazzo’s ethical violations were arguably less egregious than Byrd-Bennett’s violations involving her dealings with TTM,” Schuler wrote in the 26-page memo, obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, “Quazzo’s violations were significant, nonetheless.”

According to the inspector general’s memo, CPS’s ethics policy violates state law and needs to be changed. Schuler wrote that it’s not enough for board members to decline to vote on matters in which they have a significant financial interest. He says CPS can’t do business at all with those companies — unless the board member with an ownership stake either divests or resigns.

In 2015, Quazzo said she saw no conflict of interest but asked Emanuel not to reappoint her after a Sun-Times investigation revealed that companies in which she had a stake had seen their business from CPS triple in the year since her appointment, taking in more than $3.8 million from deals with the city’s schools. Also, the Quazzo companies had gotten $1.3 million from CPS-funded charter schools.

Schuler says Quazzo had financial interests in eight companies doing business with CPS while on the board.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Mayor Rahm Emanuel. | Max Herman / Sun-Times files

Emanuel defended Quazzo in the wake of the Sun-Times reports in 2014 and 2015, which led to calls for her resignation and prompted the recently concluded investigation by the inspector general, saying, “The city was lucky to have her.”

Quazzo was Emanuel’s third top-level schools appointee to leave under an ethical cloud. Byrd-Bennett is now in a federal prison serving a 4½ year sentence after she was caught steering more than $20 million in no-bid contracts to her previous employers at SUPES Academy and promised kickbacks. Her replacement, Forrest Claypool, was pushed out in December after lying to Schuler to cover up an ethical violation involving CPS’ top attorney.

According to Schuler’s report, Quazzo “appears to have at least facially violated the Illinois School Code’s prohibition on school board members having an interest in board contracts,” which would be a Class 4 felony.

Nicholas Schuler.

Nicholas Schuler. | Sun-Times files

Schuler stopped short, though, of seeking criminal charges because he found Quazzo was told by CPS and mayoral staffers that she could serve on the Board of Ed as long as she disclosed her interests, abstained from voting on any deals involving her businesses and refrained from taking part in board discussions of them. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office agreed that no criminal prosecution was warranted.

Asked about Schuler’s findings, Quazzo responded: “As you know, the report you reference has not been made publicly available. From what I have been told by CPS, the Office of Inspector General concludes that no laws have been violated and no further action is being taken related to me. I consistently adhered to the board’s professionalism and ethical standards. I am proud of my service on the Chicago Board of Education and the collective strides to support and provide a high quality education to CPS students.”

Her lawyers told Schuler she didn’t take part in the school board discussion of the $6 million contract with Think Through Math.

CPS will change its ethics policy, spokeswoman Emily Bolton says.

“CPS has delayed sharing those revisions at the request of the inspector general, and we hope to present our recommendations to the board in the near future,” Bolton says. “Quazzo served CPS with the best of intentions, and we appreciate her work on behalf of students.”

Shortly before the FBI came knocking on Byrd-Bennett’s door, the then-CPS CEO came to Quazzo’s defense, telling her at a board meeting, “My experience with you is as a woman of impeccable integrity, and I really regret that you unfortunately have to go through this kind of rigmarole.”

While Byrd-Bennett was emailing her former employers at SUPES about the money they would have set aside for her and her grandchildren once she succeeded in landing them millions in no-bid deals, she was also enjoying Chicago’s steakhouse scene, with Think Through Math paying the tab.

A top official for the online math-tutoring company paid for 23 dinners costing $8,108 involving CPS staffers at Gibson’s, Morton’s, Chicago Cut and III Forks, among other dining spots, Schuler found. He said Byrd-Bennett participated in meals worth at least $6,100 through March 2015, weeks before she resigned.

Unlike the SUPES deals, the tutoring work was put out for competitive bids.

But Schuler found that Byrd-Bennett and her chief of staff tailored the services CPS was asking for to fit Think Through Math after meetings and dinners with a company representative.

“This is what we have been waiting for,” the official, Traci Burgess, said in an email to her staff on the day CPS’ request for proposals was released.

Burgess and Byrd-Bennett continued to email each other during the “quiet period” before a bid is awarded, according to Schuler’s findings, when such communications are typically prohibited.

A week after the board approved what was supposed to be a $6 million contract but which ultimately paid out about $1.9 million, Byrd-Bennett was treated to dinner at Gibson’s.

Think Through Math also paid $50,000 to sponsor SUPES events from 2012 to 2014 after Byrd-Bennett recommended doing so as a way to access “key decision makers.”

According to Schuler, Burgess was later offered a job at SUPES by co-founder Gary Solomon, who now also is serving a prison sentence. She declined that offer.

Burgess has been barred from any CPS accounts and contracts held by the company she has since moved to, BrightBytes Inc.

CPS says it temporarily suspended purchase requests for the company that has bought Think Through Math — Imagine Learning, paid about $70,000 this school year — but won’t suspend it outright to avoid disruptions.

“Debarment” notices have been sent to MasteryConnect, another of the companies Quazzo invested in and to its CEO, who declined to answer any questions. MasteryConnect was paid $48,209 last year.

The night before the school board voted to give the contract to Think Through Math, Quazzo had hosted Byrd-Bennett at her Gold Coast home for dinner. Afterward, Quazzo emailed Think Through Math’s CEO — the same man she had earlier vowed to help “get more traction in CPS.” She told to tell him the schools chief told her over dinner she was “thrilled” to have the company working for the school system.

Quazzo told the inspector general’s office that, by the time she discussed Think Through Math with Byrd-Bennett, the deal was “in the board agenda and, therefore, was a ‘fait accompli.’ ”

Schuler said Quazzo maintained that her discussions with Byrd-Bennett at that point were understandable because the contract was already “baked.”

“Quazzo’s understanding cannot be correct because it implies that the board is simply service as a rubber stamp on all deals presented by CPS personnel,” Schuler wrote.

He found that Quazzo didn’t promote any products “with the purpose of advancing her own finances to the detriment of CPS.” Nor did she influence the bidding process.

But her discussions with the CEOs of the company and the school district “demonstrate that she did not fully recuse herself from the matter,” according to Schuler.

When he first questioned Quazzo in 2015, he wrote that she told him it would be “unconscionable for her to push for CPS to purchase these companies’ products.”

In fact, she had directly contacted CPS principals including the principal of Brooks College Preparatory Academy, telling him they “needed to help” another test prep company’s chief executive “sell Brooks’ results to other schools.”

“While Quazzo — a large TTM [Think Through Math] investor who had just doubled her investment in the company — was trying to help TTM get more traction in CPS, TTM was actually engaged in improper dealings with the CEO,” Schuler wrote. “TTM should not have been awarded the district-wide contract, and Quazzo should not have been pushing that company. The combination of the two is horrible.”