“A Tale of Two Missions” – a film by Juan Williams and Kyle Olson (and directed by Chicago-based Andrew Marcus) – tells the story of competing cultures in American education through examples from Chicago.

See the internet-only abridged version here:

While the fight for school choice rages across the nation, perhaps no better example exists than that of the Windy City.  Traditional alliances are breaking down.  Both political parties are pushing for education reform and expanded school choice.  The status quo is under attack, because most reasonable people understand that thousands of Chicago students are trapped in failing schools.

But the education establishment, led by the radical Chicago Teachers Union, is not willing to give an inch to allow better choices for underserved students. And the union still has enough money, influence and legal standing to make reform efforts difficult to implement.

The film features the Noble Street College Prep charter school and the amazing results its teachers and leaders are delivering for students and parents of Chicago.  It also exposes the entrenched educational establishment bent on stifling school choice options and preserving its monopoly on state education dollars.

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No wonder Chicago Public Schools have a dropout rate near 50%: now the government school system is telling kids what to eat.

Fearing that mother’s lunches will be inferior to bureaucrats’, Chicago schools are now banning lunches brought from home.  And kids ain’t happy about it.  The Chicago Tribune reports:

Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.

“Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?” the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.

Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: “We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!”

Fernando waved his hand over the crowd and asked a visiting reporter: “Do you see the situation?”

The last thing failing schools should be worrying about is what kids are eating for lunch.  With miserable track records at educating children, how can we expect them to get nutritional needs right?

Government schools do not run our lives.  Some things should still be sacred including, yes, a home-packed lunch.

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When EAGtv’s reporting team got back from covering a school choice rally in Chicago, they mentioned how impressed they were by one of the event’s speakers – a Father Michael Somethingorother.  They appreciated Father Michael’s no-holds-barred support for school choice, but being journalists, they were especially grateful for his colorful sound bites that could be used to spruce up their story.

Intrigued by reports of the crusader’s fiery performance, the EAG staff gathered around to watch the video.  It only took a couple of seconds for the most politically aware members to recognize the speaker as Father Michael. . . . Pfleger!

You remember him, right?  It was Father Pfleger (Barack Obama’s other nutty “pastor”) who said this about Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign:

“I believe she always thought, ‘[The Democratic presidential nomination] is mine.  I’m Bill’s wife, I’m white, and this is mine.  I just gotta get up, and step into the plate.’  And then out of nowhere came, ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama,” and she said, ‘Oh damn! Where did you come from? I’m white!  I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!’”

It’s all coming back now, isn’t it?  Well, imagine our surprise when we heard Pfleger say this about school choice at last week’s rally:

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Chicago parents are fed up with the shoddy education many of their kids are receiving in Chicago Public Schools and they’re no longer being silent.

As a part of the DoneWaiting.org coalition – a collection of hundreds of organizations that joined together after the release of the unflinching documentary film “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” parents protested outside the school board meeting last week.

Parents are fed up with the ineffective teachers, violence and adult-first attitude that is pervasive in many public schools.  But instead of demanding more money be spent, they’ll calling for options.  Instead of fixing it with money, they want out alltogether.

Father Michael Pfleger, who, as a Barack Obama ally, gained notoriety during the last presidential election for saying some eyebrow-raising defenses of Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan, is leading the call for parental choice.

This shows this is an issue that cuts across partisan and ideological divides.

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Recently, Big Government told of a proposed fiscal year 2009 federal budget earmark intended for the Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF), a Chicago-area nonprofit that went belly-up late last year. The article questioned why IL Democrat Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who introduced the appropriation, wanted to fund SALF years after the charity was the subject of a string of media exposes, including four hard-hitting ABC7 Chicago I-Team reports.

Rep. Schakowsky eventually cancelled her earmark for SALF, perhaps in response to scrutiny last January from a conservative blogger, Doug Ross. She wouldn’t answer his questions then, and, according to Big Government, she still won’t now.  Here’s what Ross and Big Government wanted to know:

1. What was the dollar amount of Schakowsky’s intended 2009 earmark for SALF?

2. Why was Rep. Schakowsky funding a non-profit years after it was the subject of four ABC7 News Chicago exposes?

3. What’s the relationship between Rep. Schakowsky and the charity’s founder/president Carol J. Spizzirri, whose organization obtained “at least $8.6 million in federal and state grants”? (Chicago Tribune)

4. Does Rep. Schakowsky think SALF should be investigated in order to determine if those millions were properly spent?

Since Rep. Schakowsky’s 2009 SALF earmark didn’t get funded, do these questions matter? Why not let this sleeping dog lie and…move along, nothing to see here?  On the other hand, one might ask if this illustrates the degree of due diligence Rep. Schakowsky applies to all her funding requests.

But this article isn’t about those questions, it’s about this question: Since the money didn’t go through, why should Schakowsky refuse to disclose the facts or answer whether or not she thinks the organization should be investigated? Since the ABC7 series, others have raised more questions about SALF and what happened to all the money they received? (And so will we, in a later article.)

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The power to make money, and the ability to receive a reward for assuming risk, have been cornerstones of America’s economic success.  A free-enterprise system made the U.S. the world’s only remaining superpower.

Sadly, all of the above are foreign concepts to the government-run public education system.  Karen Lewis, the new president of the Chicago Teachers Union, recently fired this shot across the administrators’ bow:

I’m giving notice to [Chicago Public Schools’ CEO] Ron Huberman and the board: you’ve met your match.  We will no longer be played.

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We’re going to put business in its place: out of our schools.  These corporate heads and politicians seem willing to trade off our childrens’ and educators’ futures to pad their bottom line.

Her speech goes on with one-liners that would make Mao Tse-Tung (and Karl Marx) blush.  Anita Dunn, call your office!  This is the type of person we should expect to teach students an appreciation of what’s made America great?  Perhaps Ms. Lewis would fit better in the Havana Education Association than any teacher group in America.

The National Education Association recently considered a New Business Item at its annual convention which called for bouncing Education Secretary (and former CPS CEO) Arne Duncan and replace him with “a person who is aligned with the interests of the NEA, its members, and especially the students it serves.”  The reason?

The D.O.E. must be led by someone who sees all students as deserving of an excellent public school and the federal funding it requires, not just those in states that can win resources by best adopting  Sect. Duncan’s competitive philosophy.

Leaving aside my quibbles with the reform competition known as “Race to the Top,”  what has made it successful is the fact that states have had to one-up each other in terms of legislating reforms to in order to compete for the money.  I can see why that wouldn’t fly in the public schools of say, Cuba.  But apparently it’s just as unwelcome in the union halls of Chicago and elsewhere in America.

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In last year’s federal budget, Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky introduced and then withdrew what appears to have been a multi-million dollar earmark for the Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF), a now-defunct nonprofit that claims to have provided first aid training for nearly two million students, many of them in the Chicago Public Schools.

Problem #1: Three years earlier, SALF had been the subject of a series of hard-hitting ABC7 Chicago investigative reports that raised serious questions about every aspect of the organization: its founder, its operations, and its funding.

Problem #2: The Chicago Public Schools can’t or won’t produce records that support SALF’s claims.

Problem #3: Rep. Schakowsky won’t answer easy questions like these:  What was the dollar amount of her intended earmark for SALF? Why was she funding a non-profit that years before had been the subject of four scorching ABC7 exposes? What’s her relationship with the charity’s founder/president Carol J. Spizzirri, a convicted shoplifter who obtained millions in federal and state funds over the years? Does Rep. Schakowsky think SALF should be investigated in order to determine if those millions were properly spend?

The Progressive Politician

Jan Schakowsky’s district is north of Chicago and includes Evanston, Skokie, and west to Des Plaines. She’s the Democrat’s Chief Deputy Whip in the House and serves on the Steering and Policy Committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee, and chairs the House Select Committee on Intelligence’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. A member of the Democratic Progressive Caucus, she’s considered one of the most liberal members in Congress.

The Discredited Foundation

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The race issue refuses to disappear from American politics because problems tied to race persist.

Just as children are often the best witnesses to the shortcomings of parents, so the ill treated are often testimony to a nation’s shortcomings.

Sen. James Meeks (left)

The civil rights movement showed that in a nation which is free, civil, and moral, a few can create a non-violent revolution and change the world when their claims are just and moral, and when they are willing to fight and persist.

Just as that movement, starting with a few black leaders in the 1960’s, showed that our nation was sick and needed to be healed, the same thing is happening today.

A superb example is the remarkable leadership of Rev. James Meeks in Chicago.

Pastor Meeks, the spiritual leader of one of Chicago’s largest black churches, is also a Democrat senator in the state legislature.  Working with both Democrats and Republicans, and with the help of a free market think tank in Illinois, Meeks put together legislation to provide vouchers for kids in Chicago’s worst public schools to escape and attend a private school.

Increasingly, school choice initiatives around the country are being championed at the grass roots by local black leaders, often Democrats, for whom the truth is too straightforward to deny.

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Earlier this year the federal government sent $3 billion tax dollars to the state of Illinois to provide financial support for education as part of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, a.k.a. “the stimulus,”.  Not for building schools, mind you.  There is money for that elsewhere in the $787 billion spend-a-thon.  This is for good old-fashioned reading, writing and arithmetic.  Of course, there are many reasons this is antithetical to the temporary economic jump-start concept behind the stimulus, but that is not the point here.

The State of Illinois dutifully began doling out this newfound largess to boost funding for low income schools under the Title 1 program, and to fund special education under the IDEA Part A program.  One can see the rationalization to increase funding for schools in poor areas in a recession, but it’s a bit of a stretch to see how the economic downturn has increased demand for special education.  But, again, that is not the subject of this piece.

As the Obama Administration has ramped up its efforts to portray the stimulus as an unqualified success that has rescued us from certain doom, they have resorted to the kinds of shoddy claims that smack of political desperation.

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