I CHALLENGE JEANETTE OR STEVE TO SHOW ME THE CHANGES.

I've been kicked off my blogs (see first note on this new blog). Jeanette is freaking out that I started a critical blog about her. She has bought her domain name, she signed up for every blog with "psmnow" and "jaypritzkeracademy." She is reaching out to newspapers. You used to be able to find my blog on the first page of google searching Jeanette Dibella. Now the links are down. WOW! As I said in my first blog entry, I feel flattered.

I am not keeping this blog to slander Jeanette Dibella. Jenn Sullivan called me evil in a previous comment on this post and made Jeanette look like a victim. Let's be clear about one thing. She is not a victim, and she needs to be called out. She is intimately connected to two of the wealthiest people in the entire world, and in a position of power over many teachers and students of color. She fires people without due process and conveniently claims they signed an at-will contract. This woman is not a victim, and I hope no one is fooled by her people inundating the internet with propaganda.

To be honest, I learned a lot from Jeanette. She knows a lot about how to run a classroom. She insists we use VAKT, Blooms Taxonomy, and useful technology in the classroom. She insists we make our behavioral and academic expectations clear from the start. She likes research based methods of teaching. All good things. The problem is not with Jeanette's expertise and the few moments that the expertise is used in a positive, un-abusive way.

JPA also has its positive points, like feeding the students three meals a day, giving them medical and dental check ups, giving them enough uniforms to wear throughout the year. Do you see why I would give up my comfortable life and stable job to move to a country across the world? Much at my own expense?

These positive points are what drew me to work for Jeanette. She is charismatic and exudes leadership. I was excited to learn from her.

The problem is not with her knowledge or the few teachers and students who can escape her paranoid scrutiny. The problem is with the questions that are not being addressed by Jeanette, Steve McCambridge, now Jennifer Sullivan, and definitely not the Pritizkers.

The questions still remain. Does Jeanette push students out of school to make her own graduation stats look better? Will JPA continue to cut students in the lower school? Is Jeanette allowing teachers to be fired without due process? Does Jeanette check teachers' emails? Have the Pritzkers paid people off after they've been fired unjustly? How much have they been given? Does PSM treat African American students as a stand in for Cambodian students? Is Steve really asking the Cambodian staff to not speak English? Will Dan and Karen Pritzker really not hire anyone with an accent (British/Austrailian the exceptions of course) to teach at JPA? Are teachers working in fear at PSM? Why does Jeanette insist that students have no first amendment rights?

These are not speculations. They are questions that need DOCUMENTED answers. If you are a leader of JPA or PSM and would like to show documented proof that you are improving the policies/milieu of the school, I would be happy that perhaps this blog of dissent was a part of that change. But when I read posts like Jenn Sullivan's, I have a lot of doubt that will happen.