Rahm Emanuel picked an experienced technocrat to lead the Chicago Public Schools, after misfortunes with out-of-town educators J.C. Brizard and Barbara Byrd-Bennett.
Catalyst, the Chicago education publication, says that Emanuel is reverting to “the Daley way” by choosing a non-educator, in this case one who is known for cost cutting.
“Today, Emanuel opted for his own chief of staff and the former president of the Chicago Transit Authority, Forrest Claypool — who has no experience in education and says his first priority will be “making the system as efficient as it can possibly be.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why is the U.S. Secretary of Energy a credentialed physicist, but “reformers” keep putting non-educators in education leadership positions? It’s a bizarro world in the politics of education.
During Jimmy Carter’s time the Secretary of Energy was an Orthodontist. The obsession with educators in positions of management is unsupportable.
I beg to differ. Educators must be excellent managers of people and content. They also manage budgets, schedules, and materials. The managerial complexity of a dynamic classroom is unique to this profession. Experienced educators should be the people in charge of schools.
It helps.
Further evidence that you have no shame. You found one contrary example in the last 40+ years? Let’s compare how many secretaries of Energy vs. how many Secretaries of Education have not been credentialed in their fields, shall we?
Highly unlikely the same people who systematically maintain and exacerbate inequality will ever fix their own mess from outside of their field. Education will most likely evolve through the work of educators. BTW non-sociopathic deformer/privatizers have a major psychological stake in believing that the consequences of the inequality they sow is readily reversible, as by great teachers and great schools.
Raj,
Why not have a first grade teacher take charge of your Department? They would no doubt be more sensible, insightful, and valuable than your current chair.
Let’s see, Raj..what is that you are trained to do? You say are a garbage collector but the Republican National Committee chose you as their Director of PR and disruption? Now it get it.
Why choose to mount a defense for a situation that is indefensible, incomprehensible, and dangerous to society?
If your children were to attend a school district, I believe that you would be most grateful for a leader who had a proven track record in education, rather than someone from another industry. If this angle doesn’t work, imagine your parents when they were attending school and their parents having the choice of an experienced educator heading the helm for their school district, or the leader of the transit authority making decisions that he or she would be unqualified to make.
If you can argue the case for the latter, you would be speaking from a position that would be both dishonest as well as disingenuous … unless the position supported your personal agenda…then, and only then, does your decision in this matter hold any merit or value…in this case it would be for either your personal gain, or in support of a program that benefits the few at the expense of the majority.
But is it about management or governance? I think your point could hold water if you qualified that governance requires more experience than only a background in education. At points like these I find it helpful to go back and read about who created the types of degrees granted within the education field and why. And then look at who has routinely run school districts and how things went. What are the similarities at this crossroads? Why? What is new that would require a different take on things with where we are situated in history and specifically the history of education as an entity. If it’s just politics, then leave it at that. But if it is more than politics a few sentences in a blog reply won’t give the subject the thoughtfulness it deserves.
Good points Steve B.
I tend to be a fan of university chancellors who are former politicians. I think the University of Oklahoma has done well with one.
Because Cathie Black did so well in NYC…people with an education background have practical knowledge of the entire system that others completely lack.
A perfect example of this was when Black visited a class of elementary students in NYC and proposed a “take your pet to school” activity. The sheer stupidity of that comment not only made her look frankly like an idiot, but it lost her buy in from anyone who had any knowledge of a classroom or children.
Maybe this appointee will only last three months too;) http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/education/08black.html?referrer=&_r=0
Right, TE, former governor Daniels has done wonders for Purdue.
“I tend to be a fan of university chancellors who are former politicians. I think the University of Oklahoma has done well with one.”
What in the Sam Hill is going on here???
That’s the most ridiculous comment I’ve ever read.
Dienne,
University chancellor is primarily an outward facing position. The skill set needed to be successful in that position is far more like the skill set needed to be a successful politician than a successful academic.
Raj, Raj, Raj, there you go again. Just like the fellow who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, you have become an expert in education. You do know that the issue is about educating children and not creating widgets? I would suggest that the person must be a good manager who also understands education. Therefore, I must ask – why is it unsupportable? You do know that while financial management and efficiency is important even in a school, we – I must point out AGAIN – are not talking about making little widgets. BTW – does anyone know what this Raj fellow does except be a simplistic corporate neoliberal provocateur on this website? And finally, even an orthodontist has more scientific knowledge than a lawyer does about education unless PERHAPS education law is that lawyer’s area of expertise. Even then, however, the lawyer may have little knowledge about the profound world of education. Okay, I lied, I have more to say! Most decisions by an administrator in a hospital when it comes to, for example, doing operations or deciding proper way to keep a sterile operating room environment etc. are based on the expertise of doctors and professional research. Now Raj, I think even you can understand that a BIG problem today is that professional educators are being ignored when decisions are made about children! Oh MY BAD, I forgot you must have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express!
Wrong. The position of Secretary of Energy was established by Carter. Schlesinger was appointed by Carter after serving as Secretrary of Defense, head of the CIA, and on the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He came to the job with a PhD from Harvard in Economics. Also even if it were true that the guy came out of nowhere with no related experience, the argument based on a single example is childish. A person who should oversea US education should have experience in education! Duh!
Correct.
Point of inquiry: why is there a poster who was one banned from this blog for good is allowed to re-appear?
Ken,
You will have to ask Dr. Ravitch. I do not know why she is allowing me to post again.
You don’t need bother to respond. Many of us already know who you are: so easy to tell.
Welcome back teaching economist! I for one am bored by a preaching to the choir forum. We need the occasional barbed comment from another perspective to get us thinking creatively.
bethree5, teaching economist was temporarily banished for insulting comments about me. He knows the rules. If he does it again, he will be gone forever.
Appointing non-educators is so predictable. After all, what would we educators know about teaching and learning that the the former president of the Chicago Transit Authority wouldn’t know?
Isn’t the first priority of education …I don’t know….educating? Shouldn’t efficiency be a consideration but not the goal?
This sounds like a whole other efficient markets will handle the education of children approach.
Ya think?
More insulting, demeaning, paternalistic, mysogynistic behavior from a corrupt leader directed at the teaching profession. What’s new?
Is he the devil incarnate?
If he is like John Deasy and many of the other Broad Academy CEOs, he well may be Beelzabub or an offshoot, since I think that role is assigned to Eli himself.
Probably not, but Chicago has has a long string of management types running things right into the ground while still managing to ignore the most vulnerable. I doubt that any one person will make a dent in the problem; I doubt that any one person can even successfully pretend to make a dent. It would be refreshing for someone to actually speak the truth and try to begin to work with all the stakeholders to lay out a pathway to a functional school system.
Funding an underfunded pension system? Raise city taxes to cover it, cut benefits, or mix the pension system with the school operating budget and siphon off operating funds?
I’m not sure why you bring up pension funding, but if I may extrapolate from my state (NJ), public-servant pension funds have generally been first depleted by governors (borrowed into general operating funds in order to cover all manner of overpending & corruption), simultaneously ‘underfunded’ (i.e. Legally-required annual appropriations simply not made), then belatedly declared impossible fantasies imagined when economy was booming. Today the PR is aimed at all those who lost industrial pensions due to hard economic times [or was it outsourcing jobs to the 3rd world]– the message is, hey you who have no good benefits, we’re taking taxes from you to pay these slackers’ pensions!
In my experience, a “financial” person in charge of schools does not bode well for the children. This happened in my school district (I am now retired, he’s still there). Decisions are based only for two reasons: 1) playing the political game of test and punish or 2) finances.
There is lip service, but no real consideration of what is best for children. Math and reading have become the only focus. Science, social studies, art, music, and p.e. (which is the only state-mandated subject in my state) are no more than after-thoughts.
Teachers are targeted with the goal of forcing them out of the profession. Experienced (elementary) school administrators have almost totally been replaced with very young, inexperienced individuals who can be counted on doing the superintendent’s bidding. He is paid way above the state average (more than the governor). He has insulated himself with so many layers that he is difficult to make contact with. I learned he no longer attends principals’ meetings. He tapes communications so he doesn’t have to take questions. He installed a PR person (which the district never had before to handle most questions – at a cost over $100,000 per year).
It is a sad time.
Golly gee, sounds just like my district! “What’s best for students” = “what’s cheapest and looks like we care” We have the new young, inexperienced administrators with little to no classroom experience, we even have a highly paid PR guy – a district graduate, but could use some grooming. Math and reading are the only focus in our schools. Sad time doesn’t begin to cover it.
“What’s best for students” = “what’s cheapest and looks like we care”
Yes
Exactly.
And then, painfully, when teachers who actually do care object, and raise” ‘but stop pretending to care and valuing what’s cheapest’ accusations, these are deformed into/= “teachers are only concerned with their salary and maintaining the ‘status quo’ ” accusations by people like Raj.
Given who Rahm is, Forrest Claypool is not the worst we could have done. It’s a given that he’s not going to pick an experienced educator or someone who openly supports public ed. I was afraid we’d get one of the many rejects from other districts who are floating around right now. Claypool is a pencil pusher, but, I think a reasonably honest one, and I haven’t gotten the sense that he’s a complete tyrant. He’s also lived in the Chicago area for at least 15 years and I think he’s invested in Chicago, not just looking to strip mine and run. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jumping for joy. But I think we can risk a small sigh of relief.
Good to read.
Sorry for a trollish question, but I think it is a fair one, given this particular internet community’s concern for bona fides and the fact that I’ve been accused countless times of being a paid shill or a sock puppet: when you say “we,” who are you referring to? Based on your past comments, I thought you were a private school parent and not a Chicago resident.
Good question, but perhaps he is both: private school parents who are good citizens could pay for a private school and yet still support public schools. It’s being a decent person to do so in fact.
I strongly agree that every American is a stakeholder in its public schools, including private school parents, people without school-aged children, and people without children at all.
However, “we” struck me as being oddly familiar for someone who as far as I know is neither a CPS parent or Chicago resident (or a habitual user of the “royal we”). Dienne, can you clarify?
Yes, you’re being trollish. First, as pointed out, I pay taxes, so I support public education because I’m invested in it. The fact that I won’t subject my kids to top-down mandated stack and rank testing policies in no way undermines my support for public ed – I simply choose to pay for an alternative option (as opposed to insisting that the public owes me an alternative option like you do).
Second, no, I don’t live in Chicago, but I live in a Chicago suburb. Like Pierre Trudeau said about the U.S., being next to Chicago is like being in bed with an elephant – when it moves, you know it. If you think Cicero isn’t affected by what Rahm does, you’re delusional.
Third, what Rahm has done in Chicago is just plain wrong, even if I had no connection whatsoever. Anyone who supports democracy should be concerned. Closing 50 schools in one go, all in black and brown neighborhoods; underfunding schools at the expense of charters – many of which have long track records of corruption, not to mention the segregation angle; telling Karen Lewis that at least 25% of “those kids” won’t amount to anything anyway. The man is sick, but the fact that he picked someone as remotely palatable as Claypool indicates that the public pressure has had an effect.
Dienne, as an out-of-stater, I have to say, yes, I notice– especially since Rahm was in Obama’s administration– but then I always think to myself, well, it’s Chicago… Daley, & Daley Jr… So what else is nu. (Which also has always given me tongue-in-cheek about Obama, as illustrated by Duncan). But I have relatives there– I know the old score but always look to you folks to live up to the pioneers at U of Chi & overcome! Keep on truckin’ Chicago!!
I’m not sure what influence Rahm has over your suburb’s democratically elected school board, even indirectly, but I’ll take your word for it. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, only 3% of what you pay in state taxes is ending up in CPS’s hands.
Using the same logic you apply to charter schools, your choice to send your children to private schools is starving your local zoned school of funding. Schools are funded directly in proportion to how many children attend them.
I send my kids to a variety of NYC DOE traditional public schools, and I support not only charters, but also any measure that destroys the link between street address and school assignment–http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/9006651/school-quality-house-price. There is no such thing as separate and equal.
State aid may be reduced by where someone sends their children, but the vast majority of my property tax money goes to my local school district. Districts with hefty property tax bases have a lot more money to spend than those who do not. The state aid in no way compensates for that disparity. Charter schools cut into that tax base; private schools do not.
2/3 of the revenue in Dienne’s district comes from the state of Illinois. Only 1/3 of CPS’s revenue does.
So it looks like the math doesn’t support the favorite rationalization of parents who support strict district school assignment by street address for other people’s children while sending their own kids to private school. Her decision not to enroll her children at her zoned school directly leads to the loss of a state subsidy that does not come close to being offset by her property tax payments (unless she owns her town’s equivalent of the Biltmore Estate),
I find it hard to buy into district leaders without school level experience as teachers and principals – actual educators.
But we have been our own enemies too often allowing those who are only minimally competent, but with school experience, to rise to the top. So we’ve placed some folks in these positions who can’t lead, and wonder why some call for non-educators.
But Chicago is large enough to attract and pat real educators who can lead. The issue may be that that’s not what Rahm wants.
Exactly. What these people are being asked to do by deformers is against all principles of sound education, logic and common sense. So, the credential under a deformer is mere optics, and painfully ironic optics at that.
“But we have been our own enemies too often allowing those who are only minimally competent, but with school experience, to rise to the top. So we’ve placed some folks in these positions who can’t lead, and wonder why some call for non-educators.”
You are correct in your sentiments but it wasn’t a collective “we”. It has been the various school boards and/or mayors if they have that authority who have done this. As a teacher, parent and/or taxpayer of the district I’ve never come close to being part of that collective “we”.
Part of the problem is that some of the weakest teachers, those who leave the classroom with less than 10 years experience (and that should be a minimum qualification for being an administrator) do a few years of teaching, get their admin certification and then a position wherein they learn quickly whose ass from which to get a brown nose and work their way up the administrative ladder.
Yup. And these idiots get hired.
It’s the ‘Chicago Way’ – 4 CEO’s in four years.
But then don’t we have a model in D.C. with Mr. Duncan at the head of the DOE? He has absolutely no education background except that he was CEO of Chicago schools.
And. Cheryl, Arne could not even play good enough basketball to get into the NBA…nor evidently was he adept enough to be a big player on Wall Street. He must be so thankful his basketball buddy, Obama, gave him a job.
At best, he was qualified to manage a high school basketball team.
“VAM Hoops”
The water boy was fired
For Duncan’s losing year
On B-ball team at Harvard
Responsible, it’s clear
Karen Lewis hit on all the right points, when does she get to be CEO?
If a pension fund is set up like a ponzi scheme, backstopping it with the money for student’s education and not the city money is a lame move.
Looking from afar, I realize Detroit isn’t that rich, but Chicago? Looks like more of a polarization of wealth crisis than an actual budget crisis.
60 years ago, CPS did fine. The school system was full of Czechs, Germans, Jews and other European immigrants. These students worked hard, respected their teachers, and became successful. Now the majority of CPS kids (except magnet) don’t value education, don’t come to school, and don’t respect their teachers. It is not the fault of the schools or the teachers- at all. It is the faulty culture of the people living in the cities today, and it is the same story in every big city in America. Those European immigrants I mentioned earlier can now be found in the graveyards of Chicago or in the suburbs. Whole neighborhoods moved to the suburbs and vanished from Chicago. Chicago is a lost city… A lost civilization….You see buildings don’t make a city or a school district. It’s the people who live there they make it great or make it terrible. For example, the Jews of Chicago moved to Highland Park and Deerfield. Go see how their test scores are in comparison. It’s the people in the buildings, not teachers or money. It’s the values in the kids. So in conclusion, it doesn’t really matter what they do to the big city schools.
So you’re saying that white people value education more than black and brown people. Got it.
Has nothing to do with poverty and racism, of course.
OMG…Steve sounds like Scalia. Head in the sand, wishing to return to the old days.
Hang on, Steve! You could have written the same thing about NYC 35 yrs ago but things have started turning around there. There’s still plenty wrong w/ the ps system but we’ve come a ways since the SBronx was a war zone & the municipality bankrupt. If it werent for the return of $ to the city, there would be no active discussions about its public school system.
I agree with Dienne at 4:13 PM above. Forrest Claypool has been a reformer (& I mean a REAL reformer, in the good way {which is what the word “reform” always used to be}). He was a Cook County Commissioner, & he & just one other commissioner (& then he was one, when the other commissioner was elected to a Congressional seat) were fighting the good fight against a lot of machine-type hacks. In fact, he ran against a guy for Cook County Board President who really needed to retire (then he became ill, passed away, & his son became President (this is how it happens in ILL-Annoy–kind of a monarchical lineage, a willing of public offices to sons, daughters & other relatives, as it were). In fact, when Forrest ran, I was having petitions signed to get him on the ballot.
So, we’ll see…
Best of all, I would have liked to see CPS Principal Troy LaRiviere (sp.-?), caring, dedicated man everyone-wants-for-her/his-principal whose blog has been re-posted here on Diane’s. But–outspoken, truth-to-power critic that he is, that would never happen. (He’s being mentioned as a future mayoral candidate.)
If Mr. Claypool’s goal is “making the system as efficient as it can possibly be,” then the best place to start is to get CPS out of the sketchy bond deal which has CPS paying $50 million in extra interest to Wall Street.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/cpsbonds/
Gambling with public funds, nice.
Here we go again! Repeating the destructive Bloomberg / Klein model! As a veteran educator, common sense tells me any non-experienced administrator will fail. What’s wrong with our politicians brains?!
The people of Chicago voted to keep Rahm in office after he closed 50 schools. That’s the problem. Apathy on the part of the voter.
Correction, some voters…the rest didn’t bother.
I also meant to add that the one who REALLY worries me is the appointment of Frank Clark as CPS Board President–that truly is same-old-same-old,: “former ComEd. CEO…who chaired the school closing commission & supports charter schools (including ‘”a charter school w/your name on it,”‘ Karen Lewis.) Source: Friday, 7/17/15 Chicago Sun-Times. Also, according to the articles, Karen advised Claypool to “Run, Forrest, run.”
And not for office–away from the CEO appointment!
And, again, agree w/everything Dienne (she’s from the Chicago metro area &–as she said–EVERYTHING that happens in Chicago definitely has an impact on us in the ‘burbs/surrounding areas) posted at 9:42 AM today. I do believe that community pushback (from CPS parents & Chicago community organizations) has had some impact RE: the Claypool appointment–as well as, of course, all the financial woes (today’s Chgo. Trib, editorial points to a mayoral downturn in T.I.F. (Tax Increment Financing) misspending, such as for a basketball arena for a privately-funded (DePaul) university.
Also, numerous other projects–enriching already enriched Chicago neighborhoods–have been canned. This, in no small part, came–again–from citizen push-back–the progressive Chicago alderman whose “TIF controversy was a battle cry for many of you,” elected by–& for–the people.
Yes, WE have, yes, WE can & yes, WE WILL! And–keep on w/pushback w/a view toward the 2016 elections–Bernie 2016.
Don’t say we can’t.