Fact check: Emanuel, Brizard, Pritzker

Ohanian Comment: Ah, Chicago. What other city's politicos would see a 95% disapproval vote from teachers as a positive part of a superintendent's vita?

SubstanceNews has been telling us about Penny Pritzker before Emanuel appointed her to the school board.

And here Substance shows how the Wall Street Journal used graph spin on the story.


by Curtis Black

"We will have to come together as one" to solve Chicago's school problems, said mayor-to-be Rahm Emanuel.

Then he announced the selection of a new schools chief who got a 95 percent disapproval vote from teachers at his current post. Catalyst cites sources in Rochester who say schools chief Jean Claude Brizard talks about collaboration but operates as an autocrat.

The rhetoric continues to outpace the reality: Emanuel praised Brizard for raising the graduation rate in Rochester schools. In fact, though, the 12 percent increase claimed by Brizard occurred before he took his post, according to his predecessor.

Chicago News Cooperative reports that Rochester's graduation rate has actually declined over four years. A Rochester reporter notes that Brizard seems to confuse graduation rates with absolute numbers -- not a good sign in a top executive, whether he's spinning or not. (PURE points out the Tribune seems to have the same problem.)

On Emanuel's part, his false claim continues a reign of error, with repeated misstatements regarding performance and graduation rates at charter schools.

Brizard is a product of the Broad Foundation's superintendent training program, which has recently placed trainees at the top of schools systems in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Denver. (Eli Broad donated $25,000 to Emanuel's campaign, Ramsin Canon points out.) Broad trainees have also been run out of several towns, according to a new guide from Parents Across America:

"A hallmark of the Broad-style leadership is closing existing schools rather than attempting to improve them, increasing class size, opening charter schools, imposing high-stakes test-based accountability systems on teachers and students, and implementing of pay for performance schemes. The brusque and often punitive management style of Broad-trained leaders has frequently alienated parents and teachers and sparked protests. . . .

"Parents Across America considers Broad's influence to be inherently undemocratic, as it disenfranchises parents and other stakeholders in an effort to privatize our public schools and imposes corporate-style policies without our consent."

Broad has published a guide to closing schools. The group came up with the idea of the parent trigger, which Emanuel has praised. Its philosophy of management is to promote instability in a system in order to generate "innovation."

Exciting times ahead.

Brizard clashed not only with teachers but with Rochester's board of education, which unfortunately for him was elected by Rochester voters. He won't have that problem in Chicago.

Perhaps Emanuel's most noteworthy appointment to the board of education is Penny Pritzker, scion of the Hyatt hotel family that's currently under pressure from religious and community leaders for mistreating its workers.

It's worth recalling Pritzker's recent notoriety as a subprime lender, which was probably a factor in her withdrawal from consideration as President Obama's commerce secretary, after chairing his campaign’s finance committee. After the Pritzkers took over Superior Bank, she headed the board as they plunged into the subprime mortgage market, which eventually swamped the bank. And under her lead, the bank played signal role in developing the mortage-backed securitization instruments which eventually swamped the nation’s economy.

These securities were call "innovations" at the time.

David Moberg's 2002 piece has the best overview of Superior's collapse, which he says was "tainted with all the hallmarks of a mini-Enron scandal." When Penny Pritzker was getting bad press a couple years ago, her lawyer said the bank did subprime lending but not the "predatory" kind. According to Moberg, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition accused the bank of "engaging in a variety of predatory practices."

It's particularly worth recalling because, as the Tribune recently reported (thanks to PURE for the link), Penny Pritzker is now founding a private equity firm that will focus on buying distressed property.

It's nice to have money.

In other management feats, Pritzker chaired the Olympic Village subcommittee in the city's ill-fated bid for the 2016 games. She bears some responsibility for the $100 million debt incurred in that disaster, which Emanuel is going to have to start paying off in a couple of years.

Pritzker is a major backer of Stand For Children, which pushed union-busting legislation in Springfield. While serving on Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, she split from the president by opposing card-check labor reform he backed. Add Hyatt to the mix and her anti-union record is complete.

It's highly unlikely that these people will "bring us together as one."

— Curtis Black
Newstips

2011-04-19

http://www.newstips.org/?p=3656

IL

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