By Ben Joravsky
In many ways Schmidt’s showdown with central-office chieftains was no surprise, since he’s been a major pain in their necks for a long time. In addition to teaching English and journalism, Schmidt is the editor of Substance, a muckraking monthly teachers’ newspaper that hammers hard at schools CEO Paul Vallas, Mayor Daley, and Chicago Teachers Union president Thomas Reece, whom the paper all but accuses of rigging a ratification vote in the rank- and-file election on the teachers’ contract.
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Public school students take two standardized tests each year, a state test and a national achievement test. Starting this January, high school freshmen and sophomores must also take a third: the Chicago Academic Standards Examinations.
It’s not certain exactly who wrote the test (central-office officials didn’t respond to phone calls). In the past Vallas and other officials have told reporters that the test was created by 20 public school teachers, none of whom has been identified. But in its suit against Schmidt, the board says at least $500,000 was spent “to pay for the professional testing design services of the Center for Research and Educational Testing at the University of California at Los Angeles to assist…in designing CASE.”
The paper also printed the title page, where the board warns against “any reproduction in any form…without prior permission in writing.” Responding to that warning, Schmidt wrote in the margins, “Chicago’s public school marketing executives are so arrogant they’ve even tried to copyright public materials developed at enormous public expense, as if the CASE materials were corporate properties like Ronald McDonald or the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
The suit seeks to “enjoin Schmidt from disseminating” Substance and to force him to “retrieve from all subscribers and other recipients all copies of the January-February issue.” It also asks the judge to report Schmidt’s conduct to the U.S. attorney and to award the school system whatever “damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and costs” he “deems appropriate.” In other words, Schmidt is facing at least $1 million in fines for replacement costs alone.
While both sides file pretrial papers, Schmidt spends his days sitting in “Camp Beverly,” the central-office detention center where staff are sent while their alleged misconduct is investigated–“the room for lost souls,” as Vallas once put it. Most of the time Schmidt sits alone at a desk with nothing to do, though last week he received an odd assignment. “They put me in charge of sorting through the Academic Decathlon exams, which will be given sometime soon,” he says. “That’s pretty ironic, don’t you think?”
