Mike Klonsky writes that it was another horrendous weekend of youth violence and murder in Chicago.
And Rahm Emanuel, the mayor who will go down in history for closing 50 public schools in one day, is going to speak at the National Pres Clob about his punitive plan to withhold high school diplomas from students who can’t produce evidence of college acceptance or a job or enlistment in the military. Those who can’t do so presumably will drop out. Some reformer.
“After a Chicago weekend with 50 more shootings of mostly young people, eight of them fatal, Rahm Emanuel responded symbolically by laying off 50 more Head Start aides on the eve of the last day of school. Then, pirouetting past the graveyard, the mayor boarded a plane to D.C. where he is set to take the stage at the National Press Club, touting his latest plan to make it more difficult for African-American and Latino students to graduate from ravaged Chicago high schools.
“His speech, being billed ironically as “Moving Forward in Chicago,” will detail his plan to require all public high school seniors to provide a college or trade school acceptance letter, proof of military enlistment or a job offer in order to graduate. It’s another one of those “reforms” that would be mocked to death if proposed in the rich white suburban schools Rahm attended or in the private school where he sends his own children.
“Mainly poor, black and Latino Chicago students students will have to comply with the new mandates without the benefit of the hundreds of counselors and school social workers recently fired by CPS.
“The students, having persevered to overcome the devastating instability caused by Rahm’s mass school closings, having been forced to shift from school to school, from teachers who know them to teachers who don’t, having risked increased street violence just to make it to school every morning, will soon have another major bureaucratic hoop to jump through or risk being denied their earned diploma.”
A question for the press conference: Mayor Emanuel, you have consistently underfunded the public schools while your own children attend the University of zchicago Lab School. You have made no effort to provide equality of educational opportunity. How do you sleep at night? Do you think your mass school closings have any bearing on the violence in the streets of your city?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
People should protest his appearance. How can he claim to being moving Chicago forward with the unbelievable murder rate in the city?
Because to Rahm, getting rid of Those People is moving forward.
bingo; ruthless gentrification and segregation well under way
Yes, it’s part of the plan. Close public housing (provide not enough low income mixed housing – to be fair that was Daley but it’s the same neo-liberal playbook), close neighborhood schools, close mental health clinics, cut African American middle class jobs (teachers, CTA) – no investment in neighborhoods on the South and West sides. People don’t have a decent place to live, a job, adequate health care (esp mental health) and a neighborhood school – they leave.
200 thousand African Americans left Chicago between 2000 and 2010. Success! It’s about real estate.
This guy shouldn’t even be the city dog catcher. My apologies to dogs and dog catchers.
Rahm is EVIL.
Additionally, Rahm got his undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College, where students work with the faculty to highly individualize their studies. Sarah Lawrence is one of the most expensive colleges in the country. When he attended, there were no formal majors. He took a lot of dance classes.
This man, as the saying goes, is a legend in his own mind.
Just like most of the other “reformers!” They can fail, cause chaos and get lousy results. Since they only care about, scores, they report on selective schools’ test results and declare victory! Then, they go on their publicity tour to share their “miracle,” totally oblivious to the damage they inflicted on people.
Ugh. He’s readying re-launching his national career. Chicago was just so he could lay low for a while and claim executive experience. He’s no more of that city than I am. I give him credit for reading the political winds better than a lot of Democrats. He knew they would be out of power nationally. Time to go “home” for X years!
Surely there are talented young people with an actual commitment to that place. It seems like 3/4’s of Ohio young people head there the minute they can get out of this state. Two of my grown kids ended up there after college. They basically flee there 🙂
Emanuel Rahm is the biggest fake since PT Barnum Bailey circus. I mean is this guy for real?? How is it that this guy continues to parade around and get away with such mismanagement it is quite serious and sad. Chicago is now the murder capital of the US and even Trump wanted to “intervene” in Chicago as Trump noted that if Rahm cannot do the job then the federal gov will have to take over. Yet Rahm walks around like his crap does not stink….As they say…only in America.
Do you mean Rahm is a bigger fake that Trump?
Cannon fodder–Rahm’s new production goal. The US military has trouble filling its ranks. Look at the international identities of the 7 sailors tragically drowned in the recent collision with a gigantic freighter off Japan. Dying in illegal, futile wars is job no.1 for the millions of throwaway kids abandoned in the public schools. NYC itself has 33,000 homeless students in its public schools. They can grow up to get blown up in Afghanistan or Iraq or North Korea. Or, they could work at Walmart or Burger King for sub-living wages. This distressing and disgraceful outcome is a bipartisan product of the Dems and the GOP. Until we build an opposition party independent of the two Wall St. parties, we won’t have leverage or traction to rescue the kids of Chicago, our own kids, or ourselves.
More bad news on Ohio vouchers:
http://10thperiod.blogspot.com/2017/06/ohio-data-vouchers-failing.html
Ed reformers expand them every year, as they’re doing all over the country and now at the federal level.
Question: if test scores don’t matter for public funding of private schools why do test scores matter for public funding of public schools?
Will there be any effort in the “movement” to at least make their policy choices APPEAR rational and equitable? I got news for them- this thing doesn’t hang together in any coherent way. The only thing they’re consistent on is expanding privatization and harming kids in public schools. That’s not innovative at all. It’s boilerplate conservative ideology. It’s as old as Barry Goldwater.
They’re getting ready to capitulate on vouchers. DeVos offered a blatant quid pro quo at the charter schools conference.
No one mentioned public schools. Utterly and completely ignored. To listen to these people one would think public schools have already been eradicated. 6 months of charter proponents wheeling and dealing with the voucher caucus. No one has lifted a finger for public schools.
Chicago is arguably the most violent city in the U.S. — Chi-raq *as they call it. Each year since Rahm became mayor, the city’s murder rate surpasses the prior year’s *“record high.”
And you know what? It’s all the fault of those greedy unionized teachers.
Yeah, that’s what Jim Reynolds, an African-American banker and manager of the the City of Chicago’s tax revenue bonds, recently said. (excerpt just BELOW)
That’s like blaming the FEMA rescue workers for causing Hurricane Katrina or 9-11.
Personally I would think that the proliferation of money-motivated charter schools, staffed by short term, less qualified teachers from outside Chicago — educators who replaced long-time veteran teachers / respected residents of the community — might be part of the problem. Once those kids are kicked out of these “No excuses” high-student-attrition charter schools — schools whose expansion was backed by Reynolds and other in Chicago’s business community — those kicked-out students’ limited options may have led to the violence about which Reynolds spoke.
Needless to say, Karen Lewis wasn’t havin’ it, pointing out how school funding has been repeatedly cut to allow bankers like Reynolds and billionaires to keep receiving huge tax breaks:
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CHICAGO SUN-TIMES:
“Jim Reynolds Takes on Teachers*
“Businessman and civic leader Jim Reynolds took Chicago Public School teachers to task the other day for focusing more on finances than curriculum. He went so far as say the (teachers’) focus on finances is to blame, in part, for violence in the city.
”I hear the teachers union talk a lot about pensions, but not about what’s going on in the classroom. They need to agree on how kids are going to learn. The curriculum has to be changed so a young person out of high school is qualified to get a job or go on to college,’ the CEO of Loop Capital Markets said during the Driehaus Symposium. Kids who can’t find jobs resort to crime, he said.
“Reynolds, who also heads a business effort to help get kids off the streets, was the featured speaker at the event for business and civic leaders.
“Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis didn’t attend, but had a sharp response to Reynolds’ thinking.
“ ‘Parents have watched class sizes grow, after-school programs close, and experienced teachers get laid off while bankers like Mr. Reynolds and billionaire tax loopholes were protected,’ she said in an emailed statement. ‘It’s no wonder he’s so committed to avoiding the subject of school funding. I would change the subject, too, if I was head of one of the banks that profited at the expense of Chicago Public Schools students, educators and families.’
“Reynolds’ Loop Capital has served as a manager for the city’s sales tax revenue bonds.
“For attendees, the straight talk about crime was illuminating. ‘We have to do more than want for a solution and expect our city to deliver it,’ said Eli Boufis, the co-founder of Driehaus Private Equity. It means, he says, businesses need to “get involved.”
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It’s the second item BELOW … jog down to read it:
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/at-the-union-league-club-its-ok-to-dress-like-you-do-at-work/