Peter Greene reports that Arne Duncan has landed a fat cushy gig at a huge investment firm, based on his smashing accomplishments as superintendent of the Chicago public schools and as Secretary of Education, where he reformed the American school system.
Fact check: the Chicago public schools are in deep trouble; the only federal evaluation of Race to the Top said it was a flop.
Is this the way the world works?
Professor TOm Pedroni of Wayne State University wrote the following letter after learning that Barbara Byrd-Bennett had been selected as the new Chicago superintendent. He and sent it to the Chicago newspapers. None would publish it.
“October 14, 2012
LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
“BARBARA BYRD-BENNETT FAILED OUR KIDS IN DETROIT
“Many of us in Detroit are shocked by Mayor Emanuel’s appointment of Byrd-Bennett to head CPS. Her abysmal record as Chief Academic and Accountability Auditor of Detroit Public Schools should alarm Chicago parents and educators.
“Byrd-Bennett created an academic plan for DPS that promised skyrocketing performance gains. To say the least, these gains never materialized. Her plan centered on the obstinate assertion that closing failing schools and offering parents a “marketplace of choices” would cause test scores to jump. Predictably, test scores actually declined or stagnated in DPS while they increased statewide. This has exacerbated Michigan’s statewide achievement gap.
“While Byrd-Bennett did not make her mark in academics, she did help engineer what many consider the largest textbook publisher contract in U.S. history—a $40 million partnership with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Byrd-Bennett had just resigned as Superintendent-in-Residence for Harcourt School Publishers. The Houghton Mifflin Harcourt deal necessitated a sweeping overhaul of the district’s academic program that was not vetted by any internal process.
“While we applaud the dialogue that Byrd-Bennett has initiated with CTU President Karen Lewis, Chicagoans should be concerned about her previous performance and demonstrated commitments.
“Dr. Thomas C. Pedroni, Wayne State University”
Dr. Thomas C. Pedroni 387 Education Bldg, Detroit, MI 48202 (313) 577-1730 pedroni@wayne.edu
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, once Rahm Emanuel’s choice to lead the Chicago Public Schools, was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for her role in a kickback scheme intended to gain her hundreds of thousands of dollars. She has lost her job, her career, her reputation, and now, her freedom.
One of her co-conspirators received a sentence of seven years, another got 18 months.
MORE BREAKING NEWS: Cook County judge rejects CPS lawsuit seeking more money from the state. The district may close schools June 1 because of lack of funding.
Judge rejects CPS’ state funding lawsuit, gives district option to refile
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-chicago-schools-funding-lawsuit-ruling-met-20170428-story.html
Mike Klonsky, Chicago activist, had a dream that was actually a nightmare.
It involved Arne Duncan running for mayor, Rahm running for president.
A nightmare.
Thanks to Jennifer Berkshire for tweeting out this article.
Rahm’s big idea about requiring that high school students have a college acceptance or a military enrollment or a specific job or they can’t graduate was not his own. It was suggested to him by…..guess…three guesses….one guess: Arne.
Between the two of them, they have had charge of the Chicago Public Schools for 16 years. How, exactly, have they reformed the schools and made them better for students? Other than closing public schools (Rahm did that to 50 in a single day, which ought to be the first line in his Wikipedia entry) and Arne was first to close public schools for turnarounds (some of his original turnarounds have also been closed), what has changed for most students?
Arne Duncan, same old Arne.
Mike Klonsky quotes an opinion piece that Arne wrote praising Rahm Emanuel’s proposal to withhold diplomas from seniors in high school unless they have a definite commitment for college, a job or the military.
Arne says that kids drop out because school is too easy. Mike has a few choice words on the subject.
If they had rigor…if they had grit…if they were faced with higher expectations…etc.
Miles Kampf-Lassin writes in The Chicago Reader that Rahm Emanuel’s plan to deny high school diplomas to students who don’t have a definite commitment from a college, the military, or a trade school is a farce.
He writes:
On its face, this may seem like just the kind of bold, innovative, and results-driven solution Emanuel has often said is needed to address the city’s pressing problems. But viewed within the context of a school system struggling to stay afloat, in reality it comes off as more of a Swiftian proposal that threatens the very students it’s aimed at serving.
Emanuel and CPS are calling the proposal “Learn. Plan. Succeed.” They tout it as way to get students to focus on their continued education post-high school. “If you change expectations, it’s not hard for kids to adapt,” the mayor said at a press conference Wednesday morning.
What Emanuel left out was that it’s a bit more difficult to adapt when your school is chronically underfunded and under-resourced, as is the case for the more than half of CPS students who live in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods on the south and west sides. This disparity has helped create a massive, 37-point gap in student achievement between black and white students in the city’s public schools.
Nowhere in the new initiate is there a plan to tackle this disparity, or to increase funding for crumbling schools—many of which are in such decrepit shape that principals complain about rat infestations while teachers are forced to buy basic supplies such as text books, pencils, and toilet paper.
And if their schools being mired in poverty isn’t enough motivation for students, there’s also the fact that CPS is now threatening to cut the school year short by three weeks. This follows a continued increase in furlough days in 2016-2017.
For all of the mayor’s self-praise for extending the amount of time students spend in the classroom, he never followed through on adequately funding the added time, which contributed to the growing budget crisis facing CPS. Now the system could be on the brink of taking a huge step backwards by cutting the school year nearly a month short….
While the mayor claims this will serve as motivation, it could also easily drive up drop-out rates by students who don’t have the support system they require to plan for secondary education while still in high school. CPS already has already seen a rise in layoffs of counselors due to budget cuts. Why stay in school if you might not even get a diploma upon graduating anyway?…
The plan is all but sure to be approved by the mayor’s hand picked board, another reason it’s a good idea to push for an elected school board.
But if the mayor really wants to help students succeed, he’d drop this initiative in favor of one that actually strengthens the city’s public schools. That’s something teachers, parents and students could all get behind.
If ever there is an award for the mayor who did the most to disrupt and destroy public education, it will go to Rahm Emanuel. His own children attend the highly resourced University of Chicago Lab School, but he spitefully closes public schools that he controls.
Mike Klonsky points out that the mass school closings have not saved money and have not improved student outcomes. They are part of Mayor Emanuel’s plan for gentrification.
From afar, it looks like spite work on the part of a mayor who doesn’t care about children that are not his own.
Rahm Emanuel is a textbook case in the failure of mayoral control to improve public schools. He is a textbook case in the use of mayoral control to destroy and privatize public education.
I reported earlier today that Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to require all students to have specific plans or they won’t be allowed to graduate.
Here is Peter Greene’s take on the same proposal.
That’s it– Choose college, trade school, internship, or military, or else Rahm will hold your diploma hostage.
Janice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, pointed out that any student who graduates from CPS is automatically accepted into the City College community college program. So I suppose we could see this not as a draconian, one-size-fits-all intrusion on the lives of young adults and instead see it as a really, really aggressive recruiting program for the City Colleges.
Or maybe just an aggressive recruiting program for Chicagoland charter schools.
My mind is still reeling from trying to compile the full list of life paths that Rahm Emanuel has now declared Not Good Enough.
Steady job that’s not a trade? Working musician? Stay-at-home mom? Person who just needs to spend a year or two working at a crappy minimum wage job while they figure out what they want to do next? Manage the family business? All of that and more have passed through my classroom and gone on to successful, productive, happy lives. Are you telling me we shouldn’t have given them a diploma because they didn’t do what we wanted them to after graduation?
Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago has proposed that students will not be allowed to graduate from high school unless they can demonstrate their post-high school career plans, including college acceptance, a job or the military.
Since he has been unwilling to fund what is needed to help students succeed (small classes, a full curriculum, school libraries, etc.), it does seem unreasonable to require that students achieve success without a fully funded school experience.
Here is a modest proposal: Suppose he were to fund all public schools in Chicago to match the same resources and opportunities at his own children’s school (the University of Chicago Lab School)? Higher expectations won’t get you very far without the opportunity and resources to meet them.
We will keep an eye on this.
Diane Ravitch's blog 