Reinvention: Local Case of the National Scheme to Degrade Community Colleges

Back in early June, a significant piece of news was lost in the midst of all the commotion created by the naming of the new colleges’ presidents. On June 8, The Chicago Tribune reported about a group of Chicago business notables who were appointed to the board of President Obama’s Skills for America’s Future (SAF). (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-08/business/chibrkbus-obama-picks-notable-chicago-execs-for-board-of-employment-program-20110608_1_manufacturing-jobs-manufacturing-sector-execs) SAF is part of a plan of the Obama administration to radically shift the focus of community colleges to perform direct training of students for an alleged abundant supply of “high-skills” manufacturing jobs that will materialize in the future. The Obama administration insists on calling this training higher education.

What is notable about these Chicago business notables is that half of them are part of the “Civic Leaders” who are the real directors (as in who really chooses the priorities) of the Reinvention. By picking these folks for his SAF board Obama has confirmed (as if we needed more confirmation) that Chicago is the laboratory for his administration’s schemes regarding education, and other critical social and labor issues.

The transformation of Community Colleges into the servants of industry

The SAF is really the brainchild of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). According to My San Antonio.com (http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/article/More-work-training-urged-for-community-colleges-1416027.php), during a speech at the Northern Virginia Community College “Obama announced Wednesday [June 8, 2011] that the National Association of Manufacturers will help 500,000 students get post-secondary certificates in the next five years to help them find work in the manufacturing sector.” (emphasis ours.) Notice how the terms switch to post-secondary education, which is acquiring the meaning of anything you do after obtaining your high school diploma, and not necessarily higher education, which is traditionally associated with the completion of bachelor’s and graduate degrees.

Furthermore, on June 30^th, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) announced the formation of the 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-national-commission-to-help-reshape-the-future-of-community-colleges-124771478.html). According to PRNewswire, this is only the third time in the 110-year history of community colleges that their mission has been reevaluated with the intention of radically changing its direction. The previous two times were when,

“the Truman Commission (1947) challenged higher education to provide universal access based on its belief that then-junior colleges could broaden and further democratize their mission by becoming community colleges. Four decades later, the AACC Futures Commission (1988) set forward a reform agenda designed to strengthen the comprehensive mission the Truman Commission originally proposed.”

Thus in 1947, and then with increased emphasis in 1988 the community colleges mission was transformed to increase the accessibility of students to (democratize) higher education. The objectives of this third change in mission of the community colleges reverts these longstanding goals. It attempts to redirect the goals of the student body to narrowly tailored job skills to fit within the schemes of what remains in the U.S. of the manufacturing industry. PRNewswire reported that

“Over the next 10 months, the 21st-Century Commission will meet in person and virtually to examine the community college mission in light of current economic realities. President Obama has challenged community colleges to educate an additional 5 million students with degrees, certificates or other credentials by 2020.”

And that AACC President Walter G. Bumphus said “We do not intend to be timid or superficial in confronting the hard choices and need for innovative thinking our leaders face in the coming decades…”

The hard choices are the restructuring of the traditional mission of the community colleges into one that redirects students away from higher education into job training programs. The reader doesn’t need to take our word for it. The June 6^th, 2011 issue of the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702304563104576355230583773702-lMyQjAxMTAxMDAwNjEwNDYyWj.html) transparently describes NAM’s agenda:

“The National Association of Manufacturers is leading a drive, partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [that selfless Reinvention “partner”], to establish standardized curricula at community colleges across the U.S. with the goal of preparing students to qualify for certification in industrial skills ranging from welding to cutting metal and plastics. The association isn't pushing for an end to liberal-arts education, but has said bright students should be encouraged to consider alternatives that lead directly to jobs.” (emphasis ours)

The business-oriented model infecting all of Higher Education

One could consider Obama’s and his business partners’ plans for community colleges ominous enough. However, this destruction of the humanistic and humane values and priorities of education is battling its way into four-year colleges and universities. For example, the flagship institution of higher education in Texas, the University of Texas at Austin (UTA) is under direct attack by Gov. Rick Perry. Perry wants to subject UTA and other Texas state universities to a business regime in which all aspects of education are treated as commodities or business costs. In an article titled “U. of Texas Adopts Plan to Publish Performance Data on Professors and Campuses,” The Chronicle of Higher Education describes the following (http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/128800/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+chronicle%2Fnews+%28The+Chronicle%3A+Top+Stories%29):

1. “The plan unveiled on Thursday designates money to create a "dashboard"—an interactive, online database—to give students, parents, and legislators access to detailed measures of departments' and colleges' productivity and efficiency. Data on individual professors will probably also be included.

2. Florida's governor, Rick Scott, recently expressed support for Governor Perry's push for a more business-oriented model of higher education that would require more emphasis on faculty productivity.” (emphasis ours)

Just like our Reinvention mavericks, the proponents of the plan claim that the process is “data driven.” So in which direction will the masters of Reinvention take us? Well, on the first day of the District Faculty Development Week, Chancellor Hyman derided the critics of Reinvention by saying that we are claiming that she wants to turn the City Colleges into trade schools. For the record, she was taking pot shots at a straw man. PEARL has never, nor has any other serious critic, made this claim. Even in the NAM statement quoted above, the NAM officers don’t dare to declare the end of liberal arts education. It is the tiers of students that will be generated (some will move on to four year schools, while many others will be herded into job training schemes), the amount of funding that will be diverted and the demotion of the city colleges’ mission that is worrisome and unfair.

To claim that a welding certificate is the equivalent of a higher education degree is not only dishonest, but very harmful to our communities. There is nothing wrong with getting trained in the trades. These are honorable jobs. These are indeed important jobs in our society that have been decimated by the greedy rush of corporations to outsource manufacturing to countries whose governments were happy to oversee cheap-labor, poor-regulation business practices. But there is a historical path to access this training that has for the most part remained outside the purview and priorities of community colleges since the 1947 Truman Commission proceeded to expand liberal education after WWII.

Furthermore, there is one key aspect that is frequently ignored in this race to please businesses’ demands. That is the attempt by corporations to transfer of the cost of training their own workers, which industry has always undertaken, and placing it on the shoulders of public education institutions and of the students themselves. Now corporations do not want to pay to train their own workers, the way they refuse to pay taxes. Remember the revelations in the past year that huge and very rich corporations like GE and Bank of America do not pay federal taxes, or that two thirds of corporations in Illinois pay no state taxes at all, as acknowledged by members of the Illinois state legislature during the summer. The catering to the rich corporations and the establishment of a full-blown business model in the administration of public higher education institutions has become the current mantra among education bureaucrats and politicians. And under the heavy burden of high unemployment rates, it is being used as a form of blackmail under the pretext of job creation while at the end of the day what will be mostly created are increasing fortunes that the corporations will take laughing all the way to the bank.

What is the hidden truth about Reinvention that they are afraid to tell?

How far will the CCC administration go down the path of making the City Colleges subservient to the short term interests of corporations is something that they have not been willing to be candid about with the public. Well, the first and foremost goal of Reinvention comes to mind: the generation of “degrees” with “economic value.” Add this to the whining of the Chancellor during her address at the Faculty Development Week alluded to above, regarding the CCC being turned into trade schools (whose inconsistencies we also set straight above), and combine it with the email, reproduced below, that was sent by the “Reinvention Team” (???) to all faculty members just 11 days before the Chancellor’s remarks, and the fishy smell begins to feel like if you live next to a tuna factory:

July 29, 2011

Dear Faculty Members:

As part of Reinvention, we have researched some of our occupational programs; we are trying to understand how successful our students will be after they complete our programs.  We, specifically our task force members, have done early research through interviews with some of you, industry groups, and employers.  Some of you may have seen the early work of the task force, but you will be hearing much more in the coming weeks and months.

We conducted these early analyses in five major areas:

1. Computer Science

2. Child Development

3. Manufacturing

4. Health Care Practioners

5. Health Care Technicians

There is a great deal of work yet to be completed: we want to work with you to discuss and vet our findings to date, to develop the underlying credentials and courses and to get them approved by the faculty councils and by ICCB. 

We would like your help!  Now that we have this initial information collected, we are looking for volunteers to help us complete the work above.  We believe that we will not be successful in the work above unless it is led by faculty.

Some of the qualities we think will be important for the individuals leading the efforts above include:

* Expertise in the subject matter and with curriculum and program development

* Familiarity with relevant industrial certification/licensing processes

* Strong relationships with industry/employers, associations, and community based organizations in related fields

* Familiarity with clinical/internship opportunities for students

* Understanding of job market trends

* Willingness to learn/experience with use of economic and job market data

* Familiarity with any relevant government regulations

Please let us know if you are interested by emailing reinvention@ccc.edu by 8/4/11 and indicating your area of interest from the five listed above. 

Thank you so much for your help.  We are looking forward to working with you!

The Reinvention Team (underlined emphasis ours)

The development of credentials and courses, especially as concerned with the major emphasis on manufacturing and job market trends is very revealing. Also the role of the Illinois Community Colleges Board (ICCB), whose approval will be required, is very significant. This is particularly true now that another of Arnie Duncan’s basketball buddies, the bankster Alexi Gioannoulias, has been appointed as the chairman of the ICCB (http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/6973641-418/gov.-taps-alexi-giannoulias-to-head-state-community-college-board). Arnie was so ecstatic that the Sun Times quoted him as saying:

“I want to commend Gov. Quinn for choosing Alexi Giannoulias for this critically important job. Alexi is a passionate believer in public education, and I’m confident that his leadership will help the community colleges of Illinois do a better job of preparing young people to compete in the global economy.”

As you may remember, PEARL reported back on March 31st that Giannoulias was being considered by Emanuel to become the Chairman of the Board of the CCC. But in the end Giannoulias turned out to be more useful at the helm of the ICCB to guarantee that the “new credentials and courses,” especially those of “economic value” (i.e., narrowly designed job-training programs) are expediently approved by the ICCB, and to extend the Reinvention logic to the rest of the state’s community colleges.

So what are the new credentials (degrees, certificates) that will be created, and which existing ones will be sacrificed in the name of “economic value”?

PEARL

The Reader Exposes Reinvention Inconsistencies

http://m.chicagoreader.com/gyrobase/city-colleges-of-chicago-cheryl-hyman-vocational-school-intellectual-inquiry/Content?oid=4360284&showFullText=true

The 7 percent solution 

Chancellor Cheryl Hyman promises student success at her—"reinvented"—alma mater, the City Colleges. Can she deliver?

By Deanna Isaacs

Michael Goss

On April Fool's Day 2010, Cheryl L. Hyman—Mayor Richard M. Daley's controversial choice for chancellor at the City Colleges of Chicago—stepped into her new job. A 41-year-old Commonwealth Edison executive, Hyman had never been a college teacher and her experience as an academic administrator was zero. Her most striking qualification for the top job at the huge, seven-college institution seemed to be the fact that she was an up-by-the-bootstraps product of the system she would now rule. A onetime high school dropout, Hyman graduated from Olive-Harvey College and the Illinois Institute of Technology, then earned two master's degrees (from North Park and Northwestern) while fast-tracking through the ranks at ComEd, where she wound up as vice president of operational strategy and business intelligence. Daley gave her the job with a mandate for serious change. It may turn out to be a good thing, but it hasn't been totally welcome.

Blame Obama. And his education czar, former CPS head Arne Duncan. With other countries outstripping the U.S. in the number of college graduates among their citizens (the U.S. ranked 12th in one 2010 study), they're campaigning to get us back into first place. In 2009, noting that the majority of community college students wind up as degree-less dropouts with nothing to show for their college experience but student loan debt, Obama declared "The American Graduation Initiative." He promised to fund programs that will strengthen the nation by keeping students on track. The bulk of the funding never came through, but Daley got the message that "a skilled workforce is necessary to compete in the global economy" and challenged Hyman to turn the City Colleges—Harold Washington, Harry S. Truman, Kennedy-King, Malcolm X, Olive-Harvey, Richard J. Daley, and Wilbur Wright—into "an economic engine for the city." Mayor Rahm Emanuel has kept her on, regularly praises her efforts, and refers to the City Colleges as the "front line of our new economy."

And that's what's making some people nervous. "Economic engine" seems to run counter to the long-time mission of the City Colleges of Chicago, which will celebrate its hundredth birthday this year and has been, since its founding, a gateway not just to a job but to broad educational and intellectual opportunity, regardless of social or economic status.

The question of whether the "People's College" (its original name) should be a vocational school was chewed over at its birth by the likes of Jane Addams and William Rainey Harper—and discarded. In America, and in Chicago, city colleges would ensure a democracy of the mind. Vocational training was eventually added without changing that principle, at least in theory. But there's a new, results-oriented trend in education that looks like it could turn community colleges into glorified job-training centers, providing a skilled workforce but "tracking" low-income students into dead-end jobs. These institutions would be run like businesses, with the decision-making power in the hands of executives rather than academics and an emphasis on efficiency. Serendipitous intellectual inquiry and academic autonomy would be luxuries and scarce.

There are logical reasons for this trend, including the ever-higher costs of higher ed, and a flurry of studies supporting it—among them, a November 2010 report by McKinsey & Company, a Washington-based consulting firm that's playing a major role in the changes at City Colleges. Titled "Winning by Degrees," it tells how to "improve productivity in higher education's core process of transforming freshmen into degree-holders."

The five practices the McKinsey report promotes for building "degree productivity" include "redesigning the delivery of instruction" (by, for example, "substituting full-time faculty with part-time faculty") and "reducing non-productive credits," which "may give students extra educational benefit," but add to the cost. If these strategies are fully and widely adopted, the report says, "the nation could produce a million more degrees by 2020" without spending any more money.

CHERYL HYMAN HAS A COOLLY COMPOSED veneer and a reputation for being forceful—qualities that likely helped her survive a punishing Chicago childhood. She was born and grew up on the city's west side, mostly in public housing at the Henry Horner Homes. An only child whose parents were drug addicts (she says they're both recovered now), she left an unbearable home at the age of 16, dropping out of high school and taking a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken to support herself before concluding that fast food wasn't a great career route for somebody pining for high tech. She returned to high school and graduated, and then made what she says is a common mistake for a young person.

"Sometimes, when you're growing up and you're faced with very tough circumstances, like I was, you look for those quick fixes: How can I quickly get educated and just get a job? That was the mind-set I was in, and I went to a six-month trade school. After six months the school closed, and I was left with a student loan and no job to pay it back."

Hyman says she promptly came to the realization that "there are no short cuts in life."

Moving in with her grandmother, she enrolled at the City Colleges's far-south-side campus, Olive-Harvey, where a math teacher and a counselor helped her carve a path to a computer science major at IIT. She joined ComEd in 1996. She's now riding herd on a City Colleges budget (for 2012) of $651 million.

Hyman says she was "humbled" by her appointment and did need some time to visit the colleges and learn about them. She was assisted by consultants from McKinsey & Company and the Civic Consulting Alliance (the consulting arm of the Commercial Club of Chicago) who worked, initially pro bono, to "dig into the metrics" with her. By midsummer she'd hired former McKinsey consultant (and Renaissance 2010 Fund official) Alvin Bisarya as vice chancellor of strategy and institutional intelligence. In March 2011, Donald Laackman, a principal at the Civic Consulting Alliance, was installed as president of Harold Washington College. And last January, McKinsey was awarded a half-million-dollar contract for work on City Colleges changes this year.

More consultants were hired to help Hyman craft her vision, and at a November 18, 2010, press conference with Daley and new board president Martin Cabrera Jr. (appointed to the board a month earlier), the trio rolled out the plan, branded in current business jargon as "the Reinvention." City Colleges, previously focused on access, would now be focused on something more elusive: student success.

The reinvention had four broad goals:
(1) More students earning college credentials of economic value.
(2) More students transferring to four-year schools after graduating from City Colleges.
(3) Drastic improvement in remediation outcomes.
(4) More students in GED, ESL, and basic skill classes moving into college-level courses.

To achieve these goals, a "collaborative" process was set up: task forces managed by Bisarya's office and made up of appointed (and paid) constituents from the college community (faculty, staff, and students) would spend a semester studying one of eight predetermined areas. By the end of the semester they would come up with recommendations that would, according to a slick, 44-page "Reinvention" brochure, be evaluated by "CCC leadership." Sixty task force members were selected from 300 volunteers; each task force worked with an external "advisory council" made up primarily of businesspeople.

The four goals quickly became a mantra, though no numerical targets were attached to them. What was spelled out in hard numbers was a case for change that made it clear that the City Colleges—at least in recent years—have been stupendous failures. One of the biggest community college systems in the country, CCC has 120,000 students on seven campuses and seven satellite locations. But, according to data cited by Hyman, very few CCC students who are seeking a degree or certificate actually get it. The City Colleges graduation rate, calculated by following first-time, full-time students for three years, is just 7 percent.

That's the most controversial figure in the reinvention story, but it's not the only bad news CCC's been spreading about itself. A video on the official reinvention website, backed by a bouncy score, notes that more than half of first-year students drop out during or after their first semester. The reinvention brochure points out, among many statistics it cites, that only 16 percent of CCC students manage to transfer to a four-year university and a mere 4 or 5 percent wind up with a bachelor's degree.

And then there's the stat that explains a lot of those dismal numbers: more than 90 percent of CCC students require remedial work. Among those coming from Chicago Public Schools, it's 97 percent.

Every faculty member I spoke with took issue with the way the graduation rate, cited frequently by both the chancellor and the mayor, was calculated. They say limiting the group to first-time full-time students, with a deadline of three years, can't be representative of schools where the majority of students are part-timers, holding down jobs and/or juggling families, and where many (at CCC about half) are in noncredit classes, not necessarily aiming for an associate's degree. And they say claims of declining enrollment, also prominently cited in the arguments for reinvention, are misleading and "erroneous," tilted by huge programs that have been phased out (including one on military bases that served 32,000 students). On the contrary, they say, relevant enrollment actually increased between 2006 and 2010 by more than 13,000 students.

One of those pissed-off profs is Wright College humanities department chair Sheldon Liebman, who notes that the same district research office that put out the 7 percent figure conducted a six-year study concluded in 2008 that had CCC's graduation rate at about double Hyman's figure: 13.3 percent. (When Hyman's team, in response to this argument, lengthened the time span to six years, they got 13 percent as well.)

"Here we are, working hard, in many cases for half the salary of university professors, teaching five courses instead of three, an earnest, dedicated staff," Liebman says. "I'm afraid that when you bring in businesspeople, they just don't understand it. There's a real disconnect between the dedication and seriousness and ability on one side, and a kind of distrust and lack of experience on the other." Meanwhile, Liebman says, "decisions that have been made supposedly in the interest of improving education have been wrongheaded."

Among them, a corporate-style push for centralization that, among other things, replaced individual graduations this spring with one unwieldy combined ceremony at the UIC Pavilion, and an expensive rebranding effort, including an arbitrary change in each school's logo and colors that many perceive as an attempt to diminish the individual identities of the colleges. Then there was the new zero-based budgeting, introduced with a nearly zero time frame.

But the most startling was the simultaneous dumping of four of the seven college presidents. (Only Laackman and another relatively recent hire, Daley College president Jose Aybar, were given a pass; the former head of internal audit at the district office is serving as interim president at Kennedy-King.) Told in February that they'd need to reapply for their jobs because of a "new job description," they were all replaced in June.

Hyman says she saved $30 million by making cuts this year. She laid off 225 "non-instructional" employees (about 40 from the district office) and is adding advisers, financial aid counselors, and 66 full-time faculty. But she's also added to the upper echelons of her staff. The Central District Office operating budget for 2012 is nearly $62 million, about the same as the budget for Truman College or Wright. And Hyman's top officials now include nine vice chancellors, a chief of staff, a chief operating officer, and a "chief advisor to the board of trustees," all drawing $100,000-plus salaries.

"Meanwhile," says Liebman, "we have classrooms of 35 to 40. And the average ACT score is 17. Reading levels are [often] fourth, fifth, or sixth grade. As far as we're concerned, we're quite successful when somebody comes back the next year."

At the June meeting of the board, with the discarded presidents lined up in front of the trustees like so many sitting ducks, All-College Faculty Council president Polly Hoover reported on the "profound disappointment of the faculty" about the process of the presidents' replacements and the "erosion" of shared governance. "We support the goals of reinvention if they reflect a nuanced understanding of the complexities of the issues," Hoover said, noting that "the faculty have been here before; we've undergone waves of reforms with little substantive change. Consequently, we are profoundly skeptical and cautious. We hope this is a brave new world. We fear it is Huxley's brave new world."

A new provost, Kojo Quartey, was hired last month without input from the faculty. Quartey is an economist and former dean of the business school at Davenport University, a private, nonprofit institution in Michigan with an enrollment of about 13,000 students. At press time, the list of task force recommendations had not yet been posted, but it's a safe bet that the reinvention will show positive results. From the baseline that's been drawn, there's nowhere to go but up. Whether the numbers will be meaningful for students is another question. Hoover says, for example, that students who are transferring to a four-year college don't really need everything that's required for the two-year degree, which is why many of them haven't bothered with it. The graduation rate went up this year, she says, "simply because we were out there pushing it."

And if those fears of colleges being turned into factories, cranking out degrees like so many widgets—faster, faster, cheaper, cheaper—seem overblown, consider the remarkable new tutoring program developed under Aybar at Daley College that's said to be doubling pass rates for remedial courses.

Its official acronym is CASH-to-ROI. 

CTU Calls for Major Rally to Defend Public Education and Demand that the Rich & the Corporations Take Responsibility for Fleecing the Rest of US

Dear CORE Friends and Activists:

 

For weeks, CPS has been talking about their budget woes, preparing to demand concessions from our union and looking for new ways to pit teachers and parents against each other, while taking from both.

Next Tuesday two things will happen:

1.       The new Board of Education will meet and decide whether CPS can “afford” our contractual 4% raise.

 

2.       At the same time, the CFOs of some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the region will be meeting downtown at an invite-only summit hosted by the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber was a major supporter of “Performance Counts,” the meeting is being held at new School Board member Penny Pritzker’s Hyatt, and many of the attendees are recipients of the corporate tax loopholes, TIF dollars, and predatory bank deals that are the real causes of our schools’ budget struggles.

We are joining a protest alongside community organizations, parent groups, labor unions and activists targeting this event. These corporate cronies, bankers and billionaires have crashed our economy and taken trillions in bailout money.  They have taken homes and jobs from millions of people; and now they dodge paying taxes themselves while demanding that teachers, students and other workers take cuts to balance the budget. We are demanding that they GIVE IT BACK.

 

Details:

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011,  gather between 3:00 and 4:15 p.m.

City Front Plaza--Downtown

on Illinois Street, 1 block east of Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611

March will begin at 4:15 p.m.

We expect thousands people to be at this event telling the real story of why our schools are broke and what has happened to our economy. Parents, housing activists and other unions are ready to be there in our defense. This is the type of event that can show how CORE wants to build a different type of union in our schools and in our community- but we have to stand up and make this happen in a big way. Three things you can do:

1.       TURNOUT:

Please spread the word far and wide in your school and to your friends and community. If there are any materials you need, just let us know. People can let us know they are coming online at https://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4013/c/468/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=2984  Any school that can sign up at least 25 to attend (including parents and allies) can have bus expenses reimbursed by the union. Email carolynfulton@ctulocal1.com for more info.

 

2.       MARSHALS:

This is going to be an exciting action with three marches and thousands of people converging on Michigan Ave. There is a planned civil disobedience and exciting visuals to really capture the imagination and press attention. We need people to help organize and lead the event. We need at least 20 marshals to help make all of this happen! Attend a training led by experienced action planners this Saturday from 10am to 12 noon. We will get prepared for Tuesday, learn about running a major event and end by running a short CTU action at a Bank of America branch to get some hands-on experience!  To attend the marshal training, email matthewluskin@ctulocal1.com.

 

3.       ART TEACHERS AND CREATIVE MINDS NEEDED!

Help with sign/puppet/banner making – get our message out! Meet on Saturday, June 11^th from 10a-2p at the UE Hall at 37 S. Ashland.  If you have any questions, email Caleb Jennings at caleb.jennings@seiu.org.  People will be making puppets and signs most of the day Saturday and Sunday.

  

Our raises, jobs, homes, and schools are on the line. We need to turn the tide on the corporate forces that put their profits before our students and our schools.

Please call if you need more info: 312-329-6226.

 

 

Rally sponsors:

Action Now * Albany Park Neighborhood Council * Arise Chicago * Brighton Park Neighborhood Council * Chicago ADAPT * Chicago Coalition for the Homeless * Chicago Jobs With Justice * Chicago Teachers Union * Grassroots Collaborative * Illinois Hunger Coalition * Kenwood Oakland Community Organization * Lakeview Action Coalition * Service Employees International Union * South Austin Coalition Community Council * Stand Up! Chicago * United Electrical Workers * Warehouse Workers for Justice

CCC Administration Refuses to Meet with Save City Colleges Coalition & Kicks them out of Malcolm X College

Save City Colleges Refused Meeting Space at Malcolm X

Watch it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PrxVy_QYY8

Part of the "reinvention" plan for Chicago City Colleges is to remove the name of Malcolm X from one of the campuses, and paint over the its wall mural image of Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. But these are just symbolic representations of much deeper attacks against public eduction in Chicago at the college level. The Save City Colleges coalition, made up of student groups, faculty members, union locals, and community leaders, arrived at Malcolm X on May 26 expecting to have a hearing with Chairman of the Board of Trustees Martin Cabrera and officials from City Hall, as was previously agreed to. But they found out that it was cancelled. And to add to the insult, Malcolm X security (the irony of it all!) kicked the coalition out of the building. The coalition has stated: "The grassroots organizers point to the dangerously reduced transparency of decision-making for the largest consolidated body of higher education in the state and claim that all of the above decisions had been made by administrators lacking in education experience and credentials and without good-faith consultations with employees, students or grassroots community representatives." Length - 3 min.

Malcolm X College security head won't allow SCC a meeting space,

and throws the coalition out of the building.

Photo: ©2011 Labor Beat

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From the Mouth of Babes: The [Business] Advisory Councils Run the Reinvention Show

Thanks to people who attended the Reinvention Task Forces presentation recently held at Malcolm X College, we gained a better perspective of who has the veto power at the Reinvention castle. A CCC headquarters employee that caters to the members of the Advisory Councils explained their role to some of the presentation attendees when asked why the Advisory Councils did not have a presentation on that day if they were listed in parallel with the Task Forces in the Reinvention website.

Paraphrasing what the employee said:

1-    The Advisory Councils (AC) are constituted by people in the business and “civic” communities, in highly placed government circles, and by the aristocracy of community leaders who have high-level connections with the business and the government powerbrokers. (Not actually her words, but the most accurate translation.)

2-    The AC meet periodically, and also hear presentations by the Task Forces and the CCC administrators, where they provide “recommendations” on what needs to be changed, added or dropped. In other words, they are the ones that give the seal of approval.

So who are the AC? According to the Reinvention website (http://reinventingccc.org/task-forces/advisory-council/):

Advisory Councils

The City Colleges Reinvention initiative also relies on external expertise to guide the Task Forces in helping to make City Colleges a world-class institution. The five advisory councils, composed of recognized leaders, are:

·         Community Advisory Council

o    Martin Castro, President and CEO, Castro Synergies, LLC

o    Phillip Jackson, Executive Director, The Black Star Project

·         Civic/Foundation Advisory Council

o    Lester McKeever, Managing Principal, Washington, Pittman and McKeever, LLC

o    Whitney Smith, Program Manager, Joyce Foundation

·         Business Advisory Council

o    Jerry Roper, President and CEO, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce

o    Omar Duque, Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

·         Academic Advisory Council

o    Brian Fabes, CEO, Civic Consulting Alliance

o    Jesse Ruiz, Board Chair, ISBE

·         Capital Planning Advisory Council

o    James Frankenbach, former President, Rush North Shore Medical Center

o    Elzie Higgenbottom, CEO, East Lake Management & Development

**********************

Careful inspection of the listed members reveals that business people comprise 70% of those listed and that they populate every single council, even the community one. We must keep in mind that an additional and key structure of business and billionaires’ control over the Reinvention are the so called “Partners.” Again as listed in the Reinvention website, they are (http://reinventingccc.org/partners/):

Partners
Foundations

We are grateful for the support Foundations are providing to fund our activities. Sponsors include the Searle Funds at the Chicago Community Trust, the Joyce Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Pro Bono Support
The Civic Consulting Alliance is playing a critical role in supporting our efforts and has recruited a number of professional services firms who are contributing to our efforts on a pro bono basis. Firms providing pro bono support include:
 

·          Accenture

·          KPMG

·          McKinsey & Company

*************************

We have spoken before about some of these so called partners, in particular the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Accenture and the Civic Consulting Alliance. We pointed out that the Civic consulting Alliance is the pro bono arm of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the most influential pack of business leaders and CEO’s in Illinois. As we will detail in an upcoming post, the Commercial Club of Chicago is the most influential force in the Reinvention tragedy and in the whole of Chicago.

So there you have it folks, the real driving and decision making force behind the Reinvention are Chicagoland’s business leaders and their allies.

PEARL

May 26 6:00 pm Meeting

Students, Workers and Community Members:

SAY NO
to Rahm and the corporations!!

　

Last week Rahm Emanuel was installed as the new mayor of Chicago. Students, workers and community members from the Coalition to Save City Colleges were there. We marched and protested the continuing legacy of corporate welfare and City Hall patronage at the expense of working class, minority and immigrant people. Emanuel's so-called "tough-minded collaboration" on issues of public education has so far only served the interests of bankers and corporations.

Rahm Emanuel and Bill Daley played a key role in fast-tracking through Congress the anti-worker NAFTA bill which has deindustrialized our economy and devastated the economies of our neighboring countries. Now Rahm Emanuel, Michael Madigan, Arne Duncan, Pat Quinn and their cohorts are trying to fast-track public sector unions and our educational system over the cliff. The attacks on unions and collective bargaining rights in the drive to replace public schools with private charters, and the "reinvention" of the City Colleges of Chicago are part of bipartisan and international strategy by the richest few. To fight back, students and working/unemployed people need to unite in solidarity as our sisters and brothers have in Egypt, Wisconsin and now in New York.

Say NO to the corporate takeover of Chicago Public Schools and the City Colleges of Chicago!


Say NO to the dismantling of public sector unions!


Say NO to layoffs of workers and the cuts to programs and services for students and our communities!


Defend union rights and civil rights! Join our coalition efforts to halt the LaSalle Street assault on the City Colleges of Chicago.

May 26 6:00pm Meeting:

Malcolm X College - 1900 W. Van Buren St.

on the "reinvention" of the 7 City Colleges†

Contacts: Jessi Choe (jessichoe@gmail.com), Steve Edwards (welfarewrkr@igc.org),
Theodore Fabriek (fabriek21@yahoo.com)

Join our coalition's efforts to halt the Lasalle Street assault on the City Colleges of Chicago

Meeting at Malcom X College

On the Reinvention of the 

City Colleges of Chicago

May 26, 6 pm

 

Contacts: Jessi Choe, Steve Edwards (welfarewrkr@igc.org), Theodore Fabriek