>Chicago ends CASE tests
>
>By George N. Schmidt
>
>[This article may be reproduced in whole or in part. Please credit Substance 
>News, 5132 W. Berteau, Chicago, IL 60641. For further information, contact 
>Substance, 773-725-7502. A history of the CASE controversy is available on 
>the Substance website, www.substancenews.com]
>
>Additional information on CASE and the Substance litigation can be gotten 
>from:
>George N. Schmidt, Editor, Substance (773-725-7502)
>Alan Barinholtz, Attorney, 312-704-4000
>Mark Barinholtz, Attorney, 312-704-4000
>Elaine Siegel, Attorney, 312-236-8088  
>
>(Chicago. December 6, 2002). Top officials of Chicago's public school system 
>told the press and others late on the afternoon December 5 that they are 
>immediately suspending the controversial CASE (Chicago Academic Standards 
>Examinations) tests. School officials also indicated that the tests will not 
>be administered in January 2003 as previously announced by the school 
>system's testing officials.
>
>Word of the termination of the hotly debated six-year-old testing program 
>began spreading throughout the city's education community on the afternoon
of 
>December 5 after staff members of the Chicago Board of Education's public 
>relations department informed reporters for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago 
>Sun-Times that the CASE was being dropped. 
>
>The quiet announcement, which came in the form of confirmations to
individual 
>reporters late on the afternoon of December 5, was made by Chicago's Chief 
>Education Officer Barbara Eason-Watkins, according to informed sources. By 
>day's end, reporters were interviewing teachers from Chicago's Curie High 
>School, who had vowed to boycott the CASE when it was scheduled to be 
>administered on January 22 and 23, 2003. Reporters were also getting 
>statements from members of the staff of the monthly teachers' newspaper 
>Substance, which is still facing a $1 million "copyright infringement" 
>lawsuit for publishing six of the 22 pilot forms of the CASE exams in the 
>newspaper's January-February 1999 issue.
>
>"I first learned of this when our teachers were told not to go to a CASE 
>coordinators meeting," said Curie High School English teacher Martin
McGreal. 
>"By late afternoon it was confirmed." 
>
>McGreal had been serving as spokesman for the group of 12 teachers who vowed 
>to boycott the CASE in a September 23 letter to Chicago schools Chief 
>Executive Officer Arne Duncan. The story was originally reported in the 
>October Substance, which published a copy of the Curie teachers' letter. 
>Teachers at more than a dozen other Chicago public high schools were 
>considering similar actions or support for the Curie teachers at the time
the 
>CASE was abolished. 
>
>According to reliable sources, Chicago school officials state that they will 
>replace CASE with some other form of assessment. They confirm that CASE has 
>been terminated, and that no CASE tests will be administered in January 2003.
>
>The CASE tests had been administered every semester in the city's nearly 100 
>public high schools and in dozens of elementary schools since they were
first 
>piloted in January 1998. By January 1999 with the implementation of a 
>citywide pilot program, CASE became a routine part of the annual testing 
>regimen for Chicago's 7,000 high school teachers and nearly 100,000 high 
>school students. 
>
>The CASE tests had been given in 11 subject areas -- English I, English II, 
>World Studies, U.S. History, Algebra, Geometry, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, 
>Earth and Space Science, and Environmental Sciences. Each CASE test
consisted 
>of a multiple choice section (usually consisting of 30 questions, but
varying 
>according to the year and test) and a "constructed response" section. Thus a 
>total of 22 CASE examinations were administered each semester, or 44 each 
>school year, by the Chicago Board of Education.
>
>According to Chicago school officials, the CASE tests were developed to test 
>whether Chicago students were learning content area material based on the 
>Chicago Academic Standards (CAS). Between 1998 and the end of 2002, the 
>Chicago school system spent more than $10 million developing, printing, 
>scoring and analyzing the controversial tests. Teachers also charged that
the 
>CASE took eight school days out of their teaching calendars at a cost of 
>hundreds of millions of dollars in what most called wasted test prep and
test 
>time. The multiple choice sections of the examinations were machine scored
by 
>Chicago school board employees. Classroom teachers were responsible for 
>scoring the constructed response sections of each of the tests. 
>
>The tests became controversial from their inception. After initial pilots at 
>a small number of schools in January and June 1998, Chicago hired at least 
>six full-time staff members in its central offices to coordinate CASE. All 
>CASE coordinators worked in a complex structure under the supervision of 
>Chicago's Chief Accountability Officer Phil Hansen and the director of 
>citywide testing, Carole Perlman. By late 1998, CASE became a central part
of 
>the annual testing program of former Chicago schools CEO Paul J. Vallas, who 
>vigorously defended the tests in the public media and authorized what many 
>considered to be draconian steps to continue the program.
>
>By the summer of 1998, more than 40 teachers were also involved in the CASE 
>program as summer test item writers. Each was paid between $3,000 and $5,000 
>per year to write test items under the supervision of the "CASE
coordinators" 
>at the central office. Additionally, Chicago secured grant money (which 
>ultimately totaled more than $1 million) from the MacArthur Foundation to
pay 
>for professional assistance in the CASE program.
>
>During the summer of 1998, individuals involved in the program began 
>questioning it and provided Substance with some early materials indicating 
>the weaknesses of both the concept of CASE and its execution. Throughout the 
>month of September, October, November and December 1998, teacher opposition 
>to CASE became more vocal as the school system moved towards the first 
>citywide implementation of the program in all high schools. By December
1998, 
>every high school in Chicago had to have a "CASE coordinator" in each
subject 
>area, as well as a school-wide CASE coordinator. 
>
>In the context of Chicago's move towards expanded high-stakes testing in
both 
>the elementary and high schools, CASE was only one of three or four major 
>tests that grew in importance during the "Vallas years" (1995-2001). In 
>addition to CASE, by January 1999 Chicago high school students were required 
>to take the Illinois Goals Assessment Program (IGAP) tests and the Tests of 
>Achievement and Proficiency (TAP). 
>
>During 1999 and 2000, CASE was still in a pilot phase and did not have 
>"accountability consequences" for teachers or students.
>
>For what school officials called school-wide "accountability," the TAP test 
>was the most important for the high schools during the latter part of the 
>1990s. In 1997, seven Chicago high schools had been placed on 
>"reconstitution" based solely on TAP test scores in reading and math. 
>Ultimately, Chicago fired 137 tenured high school teachers following the 
>reconstitution. In June 2000, Chicago placed an additional five high schools 
>on "intervention" (an equally draconian form of sanction against schools) 
>because of what school officials called "low" TAP scores. (High school 
>teachers were not the only ones to suffer from test-based "accountability" 
>programs in Chicago. In April 2002, Chicago closed three elementary schools, 
>citing low scores on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills as the main reason, 
>displacing more than 200 teachers and 1,500 students).
>
>By January 1999, with the first citywide implementation of the Pilot CASE, 
>teacher and student criticism had reached a peak. The January 1999 CASE test 
>was administered in all of the city's high schools between January 15 and 
>January 19 of that year. (The testing program had originally been scheduled 
>for the first week of the month but was postponed because of a blizzard
which 
>closed the city's schools). On January 14 and January 15, 1999, anonymous 
>sources provided Substance with copies of what appeared to be all 22 of the 
>"Pilot Form B" CASE tests, and Substance confirmed their authenticity. On 
>January 19, 1999, Substance published six of those tests in full in its 
>January-February 1999 edition.
>
>On January 26, 1999, the Chicago Board of Education (then called the
"Chicago 
>School Reform Board of Trustees") sued Substance in the U.S. District Court, 
>charging "copyright infringement" and claiming more than $1 million in 
>damages. In a highly controversial decision, U.S. District Judge Charles 
>Norgle, Jr. issue three extraordinary orders that afternoon in response to 
>the Board's complaint against Substance -- a temporary restraining order; a 
>protective order on the CASE tests; and a writ of seizure empowering the 
>school board to call upon federal marshals to seize all copies of the 
>newspaper Substance. In their motion for the writ of seizure, Chicago Board 
>of Education lawyers stated that they should be given the power to go to the 
>homes of Chicago teachers if they wished to seize copies of the newspaper.
>
>For two days, on January 26 and January 27, 1999, the CASE lawsuit became a 
>major subject of public discussion in Chicago. All of the city's television 
>news stations reported the story, quoting CEO Paul Vallas, school board 
>president Gery Chico, and Mayor Richard M. Daley on behalf of the lawsuit
and 
>quoting this reporter (who has been serving as editor of Substance since 
>1996) in opposition to the school board's legal attack.
>
>While school officials and their lawyers moved against Substance in court, 
>others warned the rest of the city's media to stop quoting the more 
>ridiculous examples of bad questions from the CASE tests that had been 
>published in Substance. In briefings to the editorial boards of the Chicago 
>Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, school board officials warned the newspapers 
>editors that they would move against other media were further discussion of 
>the CASE tests to continue. Electronic media journalists also received 
>similar warnings, and the public discussion of the CASE tests' content had 
>been effectively suppressed by the morning of January 28, 1999, when both
the 
>Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times editorialized against Substance and 
>this reporter.
>
>During January and February 1999, Chicago's policies of high-stakes testing 
>had reached flashpoints with several community and students groups, as well 
>as the teachers represented by Substance.
>
>On January 27, 1999, PURE (Parents United for Responsible Education) held a 
>press conference to denounce the misuse of the Iowa tests by the Vallas
admini
>stration. PURE continued its opposition to the use of the Iowa test for 
>student retention decisions in third, sixth and eighth grades in Chicago 
>elementary schools.  
>
>A few weeks later, a group of students from the city's elite public high 
>schools announced that they were deliberately failing the Illinois test, the 
>IGAP. Calling themselves Concerned Students of Chicago, the students cited 
>CASE and the IGAP as examples of out-of-control testing programs that were 
>undermining teaching and learning.
>
>But the ruthless use of expensive legal work and the suppression of public 
>discussion of the CASE test themselves following Judge Norgle's rulings and 
>the editorials that appeared on January 28, 1999, in both Chicago daily 
>newspapers effectively ended much of the public criticism of CASE from 
>Chicago's teachers. The failure of Chicago's media (with a couple of notable 
>exceptions, most notably the weekly newspaper Reader) to support Substance
in 
>its First Amendment defense against the school board's lawsuit allowed the 
>controversial testing programs to continue unchallenged. On March 5, 1999, 
>the Board of Education suspended this reporter without pay from a teaching 
>job at Bowen High School, and in August 2000, the Board of Education voted 
>unanimously to fire me despite a report from a state hearing officer which 
>said, in part, that Chicago's students needed more public school teachers 
>like me.
>
>In addition to approving the Board of Education's controversial "copyright 
>infringement" claim and giving it the sanction of the federal court, Judge 
>Charles NorgleJr., dismissed Substance's defense under the First Amendment
of 
>the U.S. Constitution and under the "Fair Use" provisions of copyright law. 
>By late 2001, Substance was in court merely to defend itself against the 
>damages claims brought by the city's public school system. Between December 
>2001 and October 2002, Substance rejected a number of offers by the Board of 
>Education to "settle" the case by reducing the "damages." In October, I told 
>the judge that we had to have our day in court, even it at first it was only 
>on the damages issue, because the constitutional issues involved in the 
>proceedings were too important. If government officials are allowed to use 
>copyright to suppress the news and the publication of government documents, 
>then all of the press are in trouble, even if Chicago's major media have
been 
>silent in the face of the attack on me and Substance. And if a newspaper 
>can't invoke "fair use" as a defense, they the public's right to know is 
>severely chilled.
>
>Throughout the four years that Substance confronted the CASE tests and 
>criticized Chicago's high-stakes testing programs, support from people 
>locally around the country was key to the newspaper's survival. Fair Test's 
>Monty Neill and education writer Gerald Bracey both served as expert 
>witnesses on behalf of Substance and this reporter, while more than 2,000 
>individual contributions were received to sustain the growing legal costs 
>that burdened Substance and its editor. By November 2002, Substance had
spent 
>more than $120,000 on legal costs arising from the various CASE claims and 
>counterclaims. Substance also estimated that the Board of Education by then 
>had spent more than $500,000 on its legal attack on Substance, including 
>nearly $250,000 for expensive outside lawyers (including Patricia Felch and 
>Fred Bates) who joined with more than a dozen board lawyers at various
points 
>in the legal work to suppress the CASE debate.
>
>Thousands of people rallied to Substance's defense during the four years 
>since the litigation began. When the Curie teachers announced their plans, 
>Substance organized donations to a special library of materials on
education. 
>By November 10, the Curie teachers received autographed books from Peter 
>Sachs, Richard Allington, Walt Haney, Monty Neill, Alfie Kohn, Susan
Ohanian, 
>and Gary Orfield, each thanking the teachers for their courage. Education 
>writers Linda McNeill and Angela Valenzuela reportedly sent their books to 
>Curie High School directly. 
>
>The books were presented to the teachers on the stage of Chicago's world 
>famous Second City by Substance editors George Schmidt and Sharon Schmidt 
>during the intermission of a benefit performance of Second City. The annual 
>Second City benefit has been part of Substance's legal defense and survival 
>fund. Since November 10, books by Ken Goodman and Yetta Goodman have also 
>arrived for the fund. A photograph of the event will appear on page one of 
>the December 2002 Substance, which has been postponed for one week and will 
>be mailed to Subscribers on December 11, 2002.
>
>Teacher opposition to CASE in particular (and to Chicago's high-stakes 
>testing programs in general) did not end with the attack on Substance (and 
>the public's right to know) in January 1999. It went underground.
>
>By September 2002, it had resurfaced, this time organized by a dozen high 
>school teachers, some of whom were just beginning college when the original 
>CASE controversies erupted four years earlier. When the "Curie 12" announced 
>their intention to boycott CASE in their September 2002 letter to Chicago 
>schools CEO Arne Duncan, all of the issues that had been suppressed from the 
>public since Paul Vallas took Substance to court in January 1999 were back
in 
>the public domain, and CASE was again under close scrutiny.
>
>Despite the controversies, the school board continued to pursue its 
>controversial copyright infringement claims against Substance. 
>
>One of the ironies of the December 5, 2002, announcement that CASE was being 
>ended was that on the morning of December 5, lawyers for Substance and the 
>school board appeared in the courtroom of Magistrate Judge Edward Bobrick to 
>discuss pretrial discovery in the "copyright infringement" lawsuit, which is 
>expected to go to trial in April or May 2003. Although the Chicago Board of 
>Education has reduced its claim of damages from a high of $1.4 million to 
>$400,000, the case is still going before a jury in federal court, and the 
>expensive legal work continues. Substance attorneys Alan Barinholtz, Mark 
>Barinholtz, and Elaine Siegel, told Judge Bobrick on the morning of December 
>5 that they would be deposing board test officials Phil Hansen, Carole 
>Perlman, and Bert Kouba during the week of December 9 and that they would be 
>flying out to California to take depositions from officials of the UCLA 
>CRESST center during the week of December 16.
>
>Chicago Board of Education attorney Nancy Laureto told Judge Bobrick that 
>morning that she intended to take the deposition of this reporter on
December 
>12, who continues to edit Substance. At no point during the court 
>proceedings, which lasted 20 minutes, did Laureto indicate to the judge that 
>her employer, the Chicago Board of Education, would be terminating the CASE 
>program less than five hours after she stood before him.
>
>Additional information on CASE and the Substance litigation can be gotten 
>from:
>George N. Schmidt, Editor, Substance (773-725-7502)
>Alan Barinholtz, Attorney, 312-704-4000
>Mark Barinholtz, Attorney, 312-704-4000
>Elaine Siegel, Attorney, 312-236-8088  
>
>MORE TO COME