Chicago has some serious problems. Homicides have increased. The indictment of the Mayor’s hand-picked CEO by his hand-picked school board is bad news.
But crime and corruption have taken a back seat to the Chicago Cubs. The city is crazy for its baseball team. And Rahm is front and center at Cub games, keeping his distance from the scandals.
“Is Rahm Emanuel just about the luckiest big-city mayor in the world, or what? It’s all Cubs all the time, and the perfect look-over-there moment for a mayor with some serious issues….
“It was a blatant conflict-of-interest contract approved by Rahm’s hand-picked board of education. He’s fighting not to release all the documents — including his emails — but if Rahm didn’t OK this deal, I’ll eat my White Sox cap with sport peppers and yellow mustard.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You read my mind, Diane–I thought exactly the same thing! (But–guilty of watching the game last night–in fact, at a local restaurant at a Bernie Sanders Debate Party, which started at 6 PM CST–so, of course, the game was on all the screens that we would be later watching the debate. I’d advised my fellow watchers to make sure they pick up the quesidilllas, salad & wings BEFORE the ninth inning, as surely people would be jumping up, screaming & high-fiving; in fact, one man did so, & nearly had his plates of food knocked out of his hands!)
The Chicago Sun-Times gossip column today reports “Mayor Rahm Emanuel pulling a two-nighter watching the Cubs from a prime seat. Natch.”
This was rwo pages before the article under “The Lead”–“I Plead Guilty: Prosecutors Recommend 7 1/2-Year Sentence for Ex-CPS CEO as She Admits to Role in Kickback
Scheme.” The “Lead” article is also preceded by a full-page department store ad.
Right–guess we know where the priorities are.
P.S.–Same article also quotes ex-CPS Board President David Vitale, ‘”We got what we paid for. The whole thing was not a fraud.”
Waiting to hear from outspoken CPS Principal Troy LaRavielle on that one!
Me, again, sorry. Just thought I’d mention that there’s a pop-up on any Tribune online articles–one has to pay/subscribe to read them, so links to Trib. don’t work.
If you’re willing to share your personal information and get spam emails, you can register and receive five articles free per month.
The minutes of the Chicago Board of Ed, including past meetings are available on line. I looked at some. All were signed by BBB and two other people, not Rahm.
I get the feeling he’s bored with public ed anyway. Now that he’s set the charter machine into motion he can completely “relinquish” that responsibility to the private sector.
I studied the census figures in St.Louis and found what I thought were significant percentages of children making up the loss of 29,000 in population…almost ten thousand were children….but CHICAGO! another hotbed of reform…..charter schools are prominent…..check the stats……http://censusviewer.com/city/IL/Chicago down 200,000 from ten years before…about 7 percent. How many were children? 0 to 4 years old….close to 33,000. 15%. 5-17? brace yourself……-205,574, or 19.5 of the year 2000 figure. What does it mean if the demographics of a city are altered because huge percentages of children leave? Are they being offered lousy choices in education? Is their exit making budgeting easier for those who remain………anyone suggest a progressive city with decent schools to do the math on? I do not know….I have only looked at st. Louis and chicago.
You can find more population stats featuring children at
RECENT GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CHILDREN IN MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS
There are many explanations. The Charter industry hopes to earn profits from depleting public support for public schools, especially in “economically depressed” communities where property is cheap.
I had a feeling that racial stats were also significant. Fewer black people send their children to the private schools; In 2000 there were 1,215,285 white people and 1,065,012 black citizens….a difference of 150,000. for 2010….1,212,835 white, and 887,608 black, a difference of 325,000.
What excellent advice, Laura….I encountered this article… http://www.newgeography.com/content/005054-recent-growth-and-decline-children-major-metropolitan-areas It is a complicated subject….but…..I wish someone would focus on how many of the cities promoting charters are losing huge numbers of children, as compared to more progressive places. The scary thing about it to me…..is there an attitude of “we will be so much better off if we can cause those who burden our budgets with their kids to go somewhere else.” I noticed St. Louis and Chicago both appeared on the charts I expected them to. Many things affect population shifts…..but when those shifts indicate racial and economic manipulations, someone needs to take a look. Looking at Chicago….where so many supposedly liberal democrats have been in charge……the population differences between white and black went from 150,000 in 2000 to 325 thousand in 2010. The Chicago population decreased 200,000 in ten years……the number of citizens between the ages of 5 and 17 decreased by 205,000 in those same ten years.
Don’t stop there. Conservative rural public schools are taking a hit now days from Republican budgets. Around here, addiction and crime are becoming serious problems relative to rural population density. If it isn’t bath salts or heroin, it is disturbing cases of violence. With jobs at minimum wage and social structures crumbling, the Heartland is losing heart.
Duncan’s cranking up the private sector subsidy funding on his way out the door:
“On Wednesday the department will announce a pilot program that will allow federal grants and loans to flow to educational-technology companies that team up with colleges and third-party “quality-assurance entities” to offer coding boot camps, MOOCs, short-term certificates, and other credentials.”
“Partnering with accredited schools to deliver tech skills for credit is a dangerous back door to access federal student loans,” wrote Clint Schmidt He called for the department to put “a rigorous standard in place” before federal aid could cover boot-camp tuition.
“The risk is a short-term, money-grabbing mind-set”
Nothing could possibly go wrong there, right? Public money to ed-tech companies. They’re doing this…. because for-profit, online colleges were such a smashing success?
Is there some reason the federal government feels they have to market and fund ed-tech? Is there a shortage of salespeople at these companies or something so we have to provide publicly-paid salespeople for their product?
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Boon-to-Boot-Camps-US/233742
Right … more MOOCs. They’re nearly done destroying the public school teaching profession, have no sense of shame in loading up colleges and universities with starving adjuncts (meanwhile, they pay the football coach at U of I more than $1 million a year.) And now this …. Sigh ….
bread and circuses
exactly what i thought…
He was lucky in his re-election as well. But luck is one thing that changes. Keep the faith.
Sports are an extremely important part of channeling human aggression. Therefore, I won’t criticize the incidence and presence of sports. Certainly in schools, sports are critical to channel such energy and to maintain physical fitness.
But America is obsessed, distracted, and dumbed down by professional sports. It comes as no surprise that well paid athletes with talent dwarf well performing teachers, firefighters, engineers, and nurses. In America, big muscular jocks with swagger and bravado trump intellectuals. Thinking is perceived as weak and geeky. Meanwhile, the great thinkers are the ones who end up, generally, directing and forming policy. Well, at least, that’s how it used to be.
How many sports stadiums have been built with tax subsided money, and how many schools have crumbling ceilings, tight teaching spaces, and not enough books or highly qualified staff?
As Spiro Agnew once declared with might and hubris, “We don’t need a nation of intellects.”
No wonder America has generated this stereotype known as “dumb jock”.
A celebrity culture is a banana Republic.
People will just have to learn the hard way . . . .
Superbowls, soda, artifact foods, refined sugar, shopping malls, Walmart, reality TV, and guns are not exactly the hallmark of a civilized society. They showcase a land where substandard values and behaviors are raised as the zenith of high expression.
Connect the dots.
“dumb jock” is actually redumbdant
Agreed!!! In spades!!! About the Chicago mayor.
However the Cubs have made me their baseball fan after not watching a baseball game in years.