Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Friday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“Thousands of Chicago drivers have been tagged with $100 red light fines they did not deserve, targeted by robotic cameras during a series of sudden spikes in tickets that city officials say they cannot explain, a Tribune investigation has found.
“The Tribune’s analysis of more than 4 million tickets issued since 2007 and a deeper probe of individual cases revealed clear evidence that the deviations in Chicago’s network of 380 cameras were caused by faulty equipment, human tinkering or both.
“Chicago transportation officials say they had no knowledge of the wild swings in ticketing until they were told by the Tribune – even though City Hall legally required the camera vendor to watch for the slightest anomaly in ticketing patterns every day. Many of the spikes lasted weeks.”
Set aside some time to dig into this exhaustive report.


CPS’s Sordid Sorting
“WBEZ found few schools in the city enroll the full span of students,” Linda Lutton reports.
“Instead, low-scoring students and high-scoring students in particular are attending completely different high schools. Other schools enroll a glut of average kids.”
This is what happens in a “district of choice,” and it’s quite damaging. In a district based on neighborhood schools, you certainly will lack socioeconomic diversity in a segregated city, but you will will also have classrooms filled with students of varying ability, which can benefit everybody. Consigning whole schools to slots on a totem pole only creates a death spiral for those on the bottom.
Another benefit to neighborhood schools is creating and maintaining a sense of community, which is vital if we are going to have a public sphere. In the sorting world, it’s everyone for themselves, much like national universities and similar institutions where the elite separate themselves from the vast majority of the citizenry, which just happens to describe Rahm Emanuel’s path through life.
I’d love to live in a world where everyone went to State U and there was no Ivy League. Now we’re re-creating that dynamic in our high schools – and in some instances among crazed parents in elementary and pre-schools. Stop the madness, please.
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One consequence is losing any notion of a public interest. Again, Rahm is a case in point. Privatized (sorted) systems pit everyone against each other, inevitably creating a few winners and a lot of losers. That kind of system is unsustainable. Public systems put everyone on the same team. That kind of system is unassailable. It’s also the only way democracy can last.
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Noted:
“If you get straight As and you do really good on testing, the school you’ll probably get accepted into is Northside, Walter Payton, Whitney Young,” says freshman Amber Hunt.
“Schools with IB programs sometimes take solid Bs. Charter schools are kind of like if you’re average, or slightly below average.”
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Also:


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Sneedlings
LOL.
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TrackNotes: Miracle And Wonder
Real horse racing at real horse palaces.
Beachwood Photo Booth: Clark Stop
Hand-to-hand combat.
The Week In Chicago Rock
Featuring: Young Buffalo, Mannequin Men, OOIOO, Yoko and the Oh No’s, Miss Tess & The Talkbacks, Protomartyr, Death, Turquoise Jeep, and Jon Langford with Sally Timms and Robbie Fulks.
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BeachBook
* Snowden Says Drop Dropbox, Use Northbrook Company Instead.
* Brunswick Sells Bowling Business.
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TweetWood


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The Beachwood Tip Line: Oompah, Opah, Uffda.

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Posted on July 18, 2014