Oak Park IL progressives at it in the '90s, fussing about with beaucoup de newspaper support, 4/24/96

Wednesday Journal gives them lots of ink. Textbook case.

Puffery revisited: the District 97 saga . . .

Wednesday Journal does not attend board meetings of Oak Park elementary school district 97. It doesn't have to, because it already knows what's happening. It just does.

Attending no meetings, WJ writes long articles that, alas! come off as news releases.

That is, they depend exclusively on district sources. Supt. John F and board president Eric G, joined at the hip as they are, get a combined 20 inches of the huge 37-inch main story. Elizabeth L, cast as board skeptic, gets 2.5 inches and is immediately rebutted by G, who says there is "no one magic answer." Yes there is, it’s "there’s no magic answer."

Beye School principal Susan G gets 1.5 inches at the end, using them to make an astonishing reference to "the elite" whom schools used to get by with educating. Not now, says she: "You have to educate every kid," apparently because "the world is uglier and more dangerous." Susan, I hardly knew you.

All in all, WJ continues to make itself a mouthpiece for the district. In addition to the supt.-president space, used to shoot down even the mildest objections or even to blame recalcitrant principals, almost all the rest of the story explains district policy in glowing or at least generally favorable terms.

Why is WJ doing this? Because of its gut-level affiliation (not too strong a word) with this district's leadership. The party in power (not too strong a word) has for many years been beneficiary of WJ largesse.

More recently, WJ last fall endorsed or all but endorsed high school board candidates who were closely tied to that ruling party, with its emphasis on experimentation and its devoted lip service to the African-American cause.

In that election, which became a sort of referendum on District 97 policies and practices, the 97 people came a cropper, losing badly in River Forest, the other high school constituency, and badly enough in Oak Park.

So WJ lost that election. Smarting from the defeat, it is rushing us all along to favorable judgment about its favorite school district, shamelessly as usual, with two more installments coming.

Some funny stuff about all this:

Was WJ allowed to talk to District 97 principals singly? You realize, I assume, that the League of Women Voters was not allowed to do that. In its study of the district of a year ago, its people were told by district authorities that League interviewers could talk to no fewer than three principals at a time. Apparently it was to keep any of them from telling tales out of school. Now that's information control.

Another thing: Supt. F's predecessor, Ernest Mueller, is said to have interrupted the reportedly local-option approach with his "top-down" management of the district in the '80s. But under Mueller each school was free to work out its own "rescheduling," and one of them, Beye School before Susan G, chose not to have it at all. Beye School was free to have it or not, in other words. Top-down?

Rescheduling was a way to shuffle teachers around and come up with appreciably smaller classes, by the way. At least one librarian complained loudly at having to do classroom teaching and got a lot of local coverage, as does happen some times. Really? Yes, it does.

Another thing: There's nothing like a call for consensus to inhibit action. It can cover a multitude of buck-passing sins. Manipulation is achievable at all levels. Are we to believe that principals and superintendents who know their way around can't get what they want? Or board presidents?

Finally, bottom-line considerations: Where in all this does academic achievement come in? Mueller had test scores that showed great improvement in his regime, especially among bottom-quartile kids. But classes weren't adequately (racially) diversified by some standards. Question: is classroom diversity more important than academic achievement?