Duncan Brings Comedy Improv to Denver to Sell Evaluation for All Based on Test Scores

In the looming shadow of a Chicago scandal that is in the process of sinking any minor mayoral hopes of Gerry Chico in Chicago, the Billionaire Boys' Club (BBC) brought Arne Duncan and some Second City comics to Denver for a big feel-good feed for school board members, school administrators, and teachers from around the country.  While reiterating the U. S. Chamber's corporate education reform plan, Duncan urged school boards, administrators, and teachers to put their differences aside for the sake of test scores and to agree to advance the corporate reform agenda.  No questions, please.

In a garish and cynical ploy not-so-clerverly disguised as a concession to teachers, the BBC's real goal for the Denver conference was to introduce new mandates for the same kind of evaluation by test score results for school administrators and even school boards (at least until school boards can be eliminated).

Are teachers really supposed to feel better about being unethically evaluated based on invalid and unreliable testing methodologies if their bosses are treated the same??

Stacy Khadaroo at the Christian Science Monitor, who is obviously trying take on the role that Ben Feller played for Margaret Spellings, has this:

Secretary Duncan called on them to take on tough issues such as teacher benefits, layoff policies, and the need for more evaluations of administrators and school boards, not just teachers. “The truth is that educators and management cannot negotiate their way to higher [student] performance. The [labor] contract is just a framework. Working together is the path to success,” he said in opening remarks Tuesday.

All of these kumbaya moments were unfolding just as the other wing of the Corporate Socialist Party, the Republicans, were initiating a state by state blitzkrieg beginning in Wisconsin to make the possibility of labor negotiations a thing of the past.  So with the democratic right of workers to organize and bargain at stake, the Democratic Secretary of Education is meeting with educators from around the nation to downplay the need for bargaining.  Does this make anyone else feel a little creepy?

Of course, if teachers and school boards stop bickering and get all the kids test scores up and into college--the poor ones in the online diploma mills and the rest in brick and mortar colleges--then, hey, we can all be or pretend to be management, even though most will be underemployed or unemployed like the Ants in China and India.  Crazy talk, right?  And the untouchables poor people, well, someone has to pick up and/or eat the garbage.

But don't worry, AFT and NEA.  Arne is on it--he said day before yesterday that he was going to call Gov. Scott "Hosni" Walker in Wisconsin.  What was he going to say?  We don't know what he said because he wouldn't say, but the promise to call is apparently enough to calm the nerves of AFT and NEA leaders, while protecting their "place at the table."

DENVER--U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says that the move in Wisconsin and other states to strip teachers of bargaining rights worries him.

Duncan said Wednesday at a Denver conference of teacher unions and school administrators that he'd make a personal call Thursday to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Duncan didn't elaborate on what he'd tell the GOP governor, but he promised the educators that he'd put pressure on governors to work with unions, not antagonize them.

The head of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents about 1.5 million members nationwide, praised Duncan's vow to stick up for teachers' unions.

All praise! Arne Duncan for his post-partisan pandering--at least until his involvement in the former fraudulent enterprise, SALF, hits the New York Times--or the Christian Science Monitor.  How likely is that!

Photo shows Arne Duncan (right) and Ronald McDonald (left) with SALF (Save a Life Foundation) Director, Carol Spizziri, before exposed fraud finally sank an organization that lies could not keep afloat.

From HuffPo:

The collapse of the foundation was politically uncomfortable for a number of major figures in Illinois, from President Barack Obama to now-Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who were connected to it in some way.

What Does Arne Duncan Know About Carol Spizzirri, And When Did He Know It?

Huffington Post just lost a last great post by Jerry Bracey, submitted posthumously by Susan Ohanian. Seems HuffPo will put up any meaningless mush by Tom (Elwood Blues) Van der Ark, but when there is real story about a real neolib icon like Arne, well, not so much.

Note by Susan Ohanian: Jerry Bracey had just finished this column when he died on Oct. 20. He had planned to release it at his Huffington Post blog on Halloween. Hence the rattling skeletons theme. I found out about it and posted it at my Huffington Post spot on Nov. 18, where it still waits "approval" by the Chicago editor.

News delayed is news denied.

The Skeleton in Arne Duncan's Closet

By Gerald W. Bracey

Halloween season is an appropriate time to talk about rattling skeletons in the closet. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appears to have a noisy one dating from his years running the Chicago Public Schools.

Her name is Carol J. Spizzirri.

A little background.

Spizzirri (pdf) is a convicted shoplifter. According to a sworn affidavit by her ex-husband, a court ordered psychological evaluation (pdf) diagnosed her as a paranoid schizophrenic and pathological liar. Spizzirri claimed to be a registered nurse and a renal specialist. Her alma mater, now defunct, denied giving her an RN and reportedly she has never been a registered nurse in either Wisconsin or Illinois, as she had claimed. One of her daughters filed a protective order against because of alleged abuse.

This same daughter died in a car crash in 1992 after which Spizzirri started the nonprofit Save-a-Life Foundation (SALF) whose charter was to teach first aid skills like CPR and the Heimlich maneuver to school children using EMTs and firemen as in-class trainers. According to Spizzirri, her daughter was the victim of a hit-and-run driver and bled to death because the ambulance took a half hour to reach the scene and no one at the scene knew how to stanch the flow of blood. Spizzirri claimed her mother's grief motivated her to start the foundation which attracted political and financial support, including about $9 million in IL state and federal dollars. Famed doctors Peter Safar (who developed CPR) and Henry J. Heimlich (known for the maneuver) served on SALF's medical advisory board.

But official records indicate that the daughter's alcohol level was twice the legal limit, that she flipped the car, and died a half hour after reaching a hospital. Confronted with these facts by Chicago TV investigative reporter Chuck Goudie in 2006, Spizzirri terminated the interview and stomped off the set. Over the next year, Goudie did another three reports raising more questions about SALF.

Those stories appear to have been the first time a Chicago reporter did any fact checking about the foundation. For instance, in an uncritical 2002 Sun-Times article, Spizzirri claimed that her foundation trained 400,000 Illinois school children in 2001 alone. Do the math. In a 180-day school year, that's 2,222 children per day.

During his years as CPS big dog, Arne Duncan was apparently close to Spizzirri. He was a featured speaker at a 2003 SALF conference and a 2006 press statement has him receiving a SALF "Sponsorship Award" from Spizzirri, his second such prize. Duncan is quoted saying, "Carol is one of my heroes. I really appreciate the partnership." Duncan even appeared as an animated pitchman on SALF's website, cheerily hyping kids on the program: "Hi, friend, I'm Arne Duncan ... Ask your school teacher today if the 'SALF-Town' heroes can visit you!"



Before she huffed out of the interview with Chuck Goudie, Spizzirri said SALF trained 67,000 Chicago Public School (CPS) children in first aid the year before and that the training was free to the children. In fact, records show that CPS paid the foundation a considerable amount.

After Goudie's reports, Spizzirri filed a defamation suit against three people who criticized SALF (including Dr. Heimlich's son), claiming the criticisms cost it 11 contracts, including CPS. But the lawsuit resulted in only more scrutiny. For example, in response to a subpoena from the defendants' lawyer for all their SALF records, CPS produced a grand total of 19 invoices from 2000-2007 totaling $12,855.

Three more invoices from 2004/2005 -- which CPS failed to provide to the defendants' attorney -- have since turned up via a public records request. The first 19 invoices produced by the subpoena appear to have gone through regular CPS payroll. But the three later invoices, totaling $49,000, were processed and signed off by CEO Arne Duncan's office. One includes this handwritten notation: "per AD per Ann Whalen 9-14-05." Whalen was Duncan's personal assistant. She now works for him in Washington (see docs here).

The $49,000 was for "training elementary school students in life supporting first aid skills which will take place in approximately 15 schools with approximately 2,400 students." But the subpoena to CPS didn't produce any records showing the training ever happened.

What about all those CPS students allegedly trained by SALF? If you train 67,000 children in a single year and there are, let's say, 25 children per session, that's 2,680 sessions, 15 per day if evenly distributed across a 180-day school year. As any overworked administrator can testify, that's likely to produce a mountain of paper work -- work orders, reports, employment records, evaluations, etc. Twenty-two invoices over a seven year period do not a mountain make.

On July 9, a federal judge in Chicago granted SALF's request for voluntary dismissal and the lawsuit was dropped. A few months later, SALF filed dissolution papers with the Illinois Secretary of State's Office. But questions remain about the organization's 16-year history, their funding, and their relationships with powerful public officials -- including Arne Duncan.

Why did CPS pay SALF over $60,000 for a "free" program? What happened to the more than $1,000,000 SALF received from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for one year (there were other CDC contracts)? What about the millions SALF received from Illinois taxpayers? In the case of the Illinois State Board of Education, it's a guessing game. ISBE's complete records consist of a form showing a disbursement of $600,000 to SALF -- no application, no review, no evaluation, no nothin'.

According to an Oct. 11 Chicago Tribune article, "[Spizzirri] estimates 2 million children took the classes, many of them from the Chicago Public Schools ... City school officials did not respond to inquiries about how many students received emergency training."

Looks like this tale is so spooky that CPS won't even talk about it to a reporter. But the public may feel entitled to know whether their money went for tricks or treats. For example, the $60,000+ CPS gave SALF was apparently spent on first aid training for hundreds of thousands of ghosts. I'd say it's time to knock on the door of someone who can get to the bottom of this money mystery. He lives in that big house down at the end of the street, the one marked, "Secretary of Education."