CPS CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett wants teachers evaluated on how anti-immigrant their immigrant students are.
Chicago Public School 7th grade students are being given a test that asks them to evaluate two anti-immigration positions and write a defense for one of them.
Their teachers are being evaluated on how well their answers are scored.
No.
The district temporarily yanked the controversial question—part of a new battery of tests meant to determine the effectiveness of teachers—with schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett issuing an apology for it. But WBEZ has learned that the district has quietly put the question back in its testing database with an “addendum” for teachers to read aloud to students before they take the exam.
The question asks pupils to read two commentaries—both opposed to undocumented immigrants becoming U.S. citizens—and evaluate the text and the authors’ biographies to determine which is “the most authoritative and relevant to support your argument OPPOSING a pathway to citizenship.”
“I think it’s best to keep America for Americans and those who know how to speak English properly,” says the first text. “Save America for those of us who know how to behave in law abiding ways.” The article says undocumented immigrants “should go back to where they came from,” and the author says he “dream(s) of a time when we ban all new immigrants to America both legal and illegal.” The author is pictured as a black man named Arie Payo, identified as a former aide to “President Bush’s Immigration Taskforce” and a contributor to the “Conservative Journal.”
But it turns out that Payo, his opinions, his credentials and even the “Conservative Journal” are all made up; so is the second text, in which small business owner “Stella Luna”— coincidentally the title of a children’s book—is identified as the author of “The Dream Act is a Nightmare.” She worries that giving citizenship to immigrants “will increase the number of poor people in town.”
Nobody from CPS, including CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett has explained why the racist question has returned as a teacher evaluation tool.
CTU, Chicago’s Latin Policy Forum and others have inquiring minds, however.
CPS serves a huge immigrant student population.
Fred Klonsky 
Does the idiocy never end?
A large part of the illusion of democracy is “manufactured consent” – a process whereby the debate is intentionally so narrowed that there are seemingly only two very narrow viewpoints to be had. For instance, either we invade [pick your favorite predominantly Muslim country] with “boots on the ground” or we implement drone bombing/special ops. There are no other “serious” choices – the possibility of not intervening is just laughable. The question on this test is especially pernicious because not only is it cutting off vast swaths of the possible range of debate, it’s actually forcing students to actually argue in favor of one of two nearly identical – and equally horrid – choices.
Dienne, the point you make is absolutely at the crux of the matter. Now they’re into giving tests whereby it would “appear” that students are being given a chance for creative debate but, in fact, are not–as you put it, “cutting off vast swaths of the possible range of debate…forcing students to actually argue in favor of…equally horrid–choices.”
You know, now that I think about it, do you think CPS is actually trying to help the students be prepared for the “real” world?! I’m making an analogy to “one of two nearly identical–and equally horrid–choices.” Sounds a lot like our gubernatorial elections!
(In fact, sounds like 2012 national elections, & other unfortunate, upcoming elections, to be sure.)
Dienne, I totally agree. That question is particularly offensive, because of its proximity to the discourse of known hate groups.
CPS has so few libraries and even fewer librarians. This particular “performance task” may not be given to many students anyway. See http://www.wbez.org/news/chicago-public-schools-demolishes-ramshackle-symbolic-field-house-108446 and http://www.progressillinois.com/news/content/2013/10/03/ctu-delivers-books-cps-schools-without-libraries
This is the reply I received from CPS’ Claudinette (Didi) Swartz on this issue :
“Hi Ms. Guerrero,
Thanks for reaching out with your concerns. I fully understand and agree that the arguments presented were offensive and not appropriate in the context of the Performance Tasks. This is why we have removed them from our internal educator website and replaced them with an alternative task that focuses on a different topic but measures the same skills. I personally reached out to all the librarians who were scheduled to give this assessment and their administrators and included the attached and the alternative task.
As background, the REACH Performance Tasks are teacher created, with our office having training and supervisory duties. Teams of 3-4 teachers/librarians per task got together over the course of 3-4 months last year to create both a beginning and end of year task that asks students to do an activity that is similar to a typical activity for that given class.
As we state in the attached, the CPS librarians who created the beginning of year task (which was strongly pro-immigration) created the end of year task at the same time, but perhaps did not consider that students would not remember reading the opposing viewpoint 8 months before. More importantly we recognize that these topics are better handled in the middle of a unit of instruction (where students can reflect on what they’re learning, debate, research….etc) and not in the context of a twice yearly performance task. We try to strike a careful balance between autonomy of teacher design in the Performance Task process and standards of quality, and in this case did not do enough. We won’t let this happen again.”
Looks like BBB changed her mind about it all. I thought Ms. Swartz response made more sense.
@Maria, yes, that’s what Didi told me as well—i.e. that it had been removed. I suspect that they stuck the test back in because otherwise they would be admitting that it was illegitimate for the teachers who had already administered it and who are now going to be evaluated on it. It was administered at at least two schools, but Didi was told by the Law Department that she couldn’t reveal which schools because it was a personnel matter, i.e. these tests are being used to evaluate teachers.
In other words, our children taking REACH tests (as young as 3 years old!) are involved in super-secret job personnel evaluation procedures.
Truly sick.