Chicago parent/lawyer posts pretend questioning of billionaire ed reformer Penny Pritzker. Powerful.

This is a powerful video from last year of a Chicago parent and lawyer holding a pretend interrogation of one billionaire school member who refused to answer a sensible question.

Chicago's Substance News wrote about it and included a transcript. Farmer is a powerful speaker who is pretend questioning Penny Pritzker. He points out all the real in depth learning experiences that her own children experience....experiences which have been taken away from many public schools. As the money leaves the public schools for the charter schools, there is less money available for art, music, PE, and the finer more enlightened parts of education.

Matt Farmer cross examines 'Penny Pritzker' at May 23 Auditorium Theater rally

Farmer’s method for exposing the hypocrisy that exists between the rhetoric and the reality of power brokers making public school policy is dramatic and effective. Farmer puts billionaire Chicago Board of Education member Penny Prizker on trial at this CTU rally. By all accounts, the University of Chicago Lab School, where Professor John Dewey first began testing his educational theories in 1896, is indeed an excellent place. The point here is that it offers the model for what politicos, phony philanthropists, and power brokers should want for all children, not just their own. We need to put all politicos, phony philanthropists, and power brokers on trial, exposing what they give to their own children but withhold from everybody else’s

One of the more telling parts of the imaginary exchange is how much the schools of the elites have in comparison with what public schools now have.

And in June 6, you told your old college newspaper the Harvard Crimson, “I always say fine arts opened my eyes and gave me a new sense, and I carry that passion with me”

And that’s why the University of Chicago Lab School has seven --count them—seven art teachers —on its faculty. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Pritzker?

But you’re aware, Mrs. Pritzker that Dyett High School a school you just voted to close a few months ago, had zero art teachers on its faculty in 2011. Isn’t that right?

Yes.

I can not quote more from that article because of copyright issues, but In These Times Mike Elk posted the actual quotes of Dr. Magill of the Lab school. He believes all schools should have what the Lab School has, and he speaks in support of unions.

Director of Private School Where Rahm Sends His Kids Opposes Using Testing for Teacher Evaluations

“Physical education, world languages, libraries and the arts are not frills. They are an essential piece of a well-rounded education,” wrote University of Chicago Lab School Director David Magill on the school's website in February 2009.

Writing on the University of Chicago’s Lab School website two years ago, Magill noted, “Measuring outcomes through standardized testing and referring to those results as the evidence of learning and the bottom line is, in my opinion, misguided and, unfortunately, continues to be advocated under a new name and supported by the current Obama administration.”

“I shudder to think of who would be attracted to teach in our public schools without unions,” Magill wrote on the school’s website in February 2009, adding that, even with unions, many teachers "have had no choice but to take on second jobs to make ends meet.“

In spite of the voices like those of Matt Farmer, there is not even a little bit of support from the leaders of either party for public education and teachers.

Crossposted at Daily Kos