Raising the bar in reading February 27, 2001 Just what is a deputy chief of staff for human infrastructure anyway? And who is this $120,000-a-year bureaucrat sticking her nose in the Chicago Public Schools? Those questions--and more--have surfaced at the Board of Education in recent days as mayoral aide B.J. Walker has taken an increasingly aggressive role in prodding the schools to do something dramatically different to improve reading. Actually, Walker isn't saying anything that her boss, Mayor Daley, hasn't said directly to Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Board President Gery Chico. The mayor is trying to light a fire under his handpicked school team because two-thirds of Chicago students still don't read at grade level. He has repeatedly insisted that officials should "think outside the box." "Anybody's who's here who's breathing would need to pay attention to reading . . . because it is the first and foremost issue . . . with the mayor," said Walker, wife of Aviation Commissioner Thomas Walker. "I have a boss who wakes up every morning and moves the bar . . . He challenges me every day to do more and think more about the work to be done . . . There are none of us who escape that." Beverly J. Walker, 51, was a key player in the state's welfare-to-work movement under former Gov. Jim Edgar. In December 1999, she was recruited by Daley chief of staff Julia Stasch to fill a new deputy's job overseeing the "people departments" of Aging, Health, Human Services, Housing and Workforce Development. It was Stasch who stuck Walker with the not-so-catchy title of "deputy chief of staff for human infrastructure." When Phillip Jackson resigned as the mayor's chief education adviser, Walker added the Board of Education to her full plate. She already had clashed with key department heads over her controversial idea to pay 14-year-olds a summer stipend of just $400 to stretch the city's limited summer job resources. "Whenever you have to make changes in a program that's been the same for years, it's hard. Everybody's going to have issues. I respect that. But sometimes you do have to change things because the situation that was there before is no longer there. We don't have any federal money," she said. In the 12 days since Daley made reading improvement the centerpiece of his annual State of the City address, Walker has ruffled plenty of School Board feathers. She has touted two reading programs, one of them managed by Walker's former boss at the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, a federally funded research center. Vallas was openly skeptical of both programs. "Call us doubting Thomases," Vallas said. Walker said City Hall is compiling a list of reading experts from around the country to possibly lay the groundwork for an unprecedented summit to be convened by the mayor's office. Vallas initially called the concept a "great idea," then became somewhat defensive about it. "I'm not going to comment on something that's coming from the [city] hall," he said. Among those invited to join the panel of reading experts is Timothy Shanahan, director of the Center for Literacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-author of a National Reading Panel report on effective reading strategies. Shanahan said he was delighted to get the call but puzzled that the list of experts was being compiled by City Hall--not by the Board of Education. "I have no idea who's in charge," Shanahan said. "Clearly, there is some kind of rift over reading--over what's been done or what's being done. . . . The question is, are Chicago schools doing what's necessary to fix it? My guess is, [Daley] must think they are not, which is why he is involving himself more." Walker stressed that any forum with reading experts would be conducted "in partnership" with the schools. "This conversation is about all of us understanding the issues better and understanding what's out there in terms of how can we do this better. It wouldn't be, `The mayor is going to get smart over here and you're out in the cold.' It's all of us in a room talking to these folks," she said. Across the nation, schools, superintendents and states have been struggling with the most fundamental skill in school--the ability to read. A battalion of vendors has rushed in with textbooks, computerized programs and teacher training. "It's a booming business . . . Everything is buyer beware," said Kathy Christie, director of the information clearinghouse at the Education Commission of the States. So far, Vallas and Chico have answered the mayor's reading challenge with a plan to either offer low-scoring schools a range of "accepted" curriculum models--only some of which involve reading--or help from other successful schools. They also have outlined plans to dramatically increase the number of students attending mandatory summer school, while touting the reading gains already made under their leadership. The percentage of third- through eighth-graders hitting national reading norms rose from 26.5 in 1995 to 36.4 on the 2000 Iowa Test of Basic Skills. During the same period, the number of poor readers--city students testing in the bottom quartile of the nation--declined from 42.8 percent to 28.5 percent. Still, Daley reportedly considers the initial response to his reading ultimatum to be "half-baked." Only time will tell whether his latest involvement in the nation's third-largest school system signals the beginning of the end of the Vallas-Chico era. "The mayor is growing impatient with their extended [self-congratulatory] bows and defensiveness in the wake of the question, `What's next?' " said a mayoral confidante, who asked to remain anonymous. "He doesn't want to hear defensiveness. He wants to hear, `Here are the plans to get the schools to the next level.' He's wondering if they have hit a plateau or are they just catching their breath . . . One thing the mayor won't tolerate is caretakers." If Daley is losing faith in Vallas and Chico after spending five years basking in the glory of their accomplishments, some observers wonder whether Walker, a former adjunct professor at Northwestern, Loyola and Northeastern Illinois universities, could be the heir apparent as schools CEO. Walker says she has "no interest in that job. . . . I like this job." -- This is the CPS Science Teacher List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. 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