Arne Duncan’s VIP List of Requests at Chicago Schools and the Effects of his Expansion of Charter Sc

[Jefferson23]

From Democracy Now:


When President Obama’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, was the head of Chicago’s Public Schools, his office kept a list of powerful, well-connected people who asked for help getting certain children into the city’s best public schools. The list—long kept confidential—was disclosed this week by the Chicago Tribune. We speak with the Chicago Tribune reporter who broke the story and with two Chicago organizers about Duncan and his aggressive plan to expand charter schools.

snip* JUAN GONZALEZ: When President Obama’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, was the head of Chicago’s Public Schools, his office kept a list of powerful, well-connected people who asked for help getting certain children into the city’s best public schools. The list—long held confidential—was disclosed this week by the Chicago Tribune.


The paper reports that the nearly forty pages of logs show admissions requests from twenty-five aldermen, Mayor Daley’s office, the state House Speaker, the state attorney general, the former White House social secretary, and a former United States senator. The log noted “AD”—initials for Arne Duncan—as the person requesting help for ten students and a co-requestor about forty times.


A spokesman for Duncan denied any wrongdoing and said Duncan used the list, not to dole out rewards to insiders, but to shield principals from political interference.


AMY GOODMAN: Duncan was chief executive of the Chicago schools, the nation’s third-largest school system, from 2001 to 2009. During that time, he oversaw implementation of a program known as Renaissance 2010. The program’s aim was to close sixty schools and replace them with more than 100 charter schools. Now as President Obama’s Education Secretary, Duncan is overseeing a push by the administration to aggressively expand charter schools across the country.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/26/a_look_at_arne_duncans_vip

[mopinko]

1. i believe the whole framing of this discussion is wrong.

the schools are not "elite". every child in america is entitled by federal law to an appropriate education, except for one class of children whose needs are often ignored and misunderstood, or outright denied. those children would be the ones with very high intelligence. they are not better than other kids, just as kids with cognitive impairments are not worse than others. they are just different. they think differently. they are often not as emotionally mature as other kids their age. they are often not what you would call neurotypical.
having a child who falls in this range is often influenced by the resources that the family has to offer, and one of those things is often just shear physical resources of good prenatal care, good child care, often a full time parent, and rich learning experiences. you don't have to have a lot of money to provide those things, but it helps. that investment in their children, financial, emotional, whatever, certainly carries over to choice of schools.
this was the leading factor driving white flight from the city. this was the major factor in daley taking command of the school system. those most able to support the city with their taxes and their civic contributions were leaving the city over one issue- getting the most appropriate education for their kids. daley knew he would never stop this flight without giving these children an appropriate education. and without giving these parents choices.
before daley, there were only a couple of schools in the system where these kids got the kind of challenges and the kind of support that they needed. and that they were supposedly entitled to. (there is quite a bit of legal history to this that i am not the person to relay. in a few states, this right is enshrined in the state constitutions. the case has not been successfully made at the federal level.)
the rate of white flight has, indeed, declined as more schools for the gifted and talented were opened. but the purpose of r2010 is to expand the options for kids with other sorts of talents, and deficits. there are language academies, math and science academies, and high schools for at risk kids. there are teacher's union run charters, and charters run by universities. there are charters built around leadership education for young women, and the all boys charter that was the subject of a thread here a week or so ago where at risk african american boys not only all graduated, but were all accepted into colleges. there is even a school called 'namaste', which is what it sounds like.
i could go on.
but the point is that afaik, none of the charters is run by a for profit company, and none use non-union teachers. what they do do is recognize that no 2 children are the same, so there is no one size fits all. really large schools can often offer more choices to more kids, but that comes at a price. so in the end the point is to give an appropriate education to all kids, and to give parents the kind of choices so that the city can keep tax dollars that would otherwise have fled to the suburbs.
yes, it is political. it is practical. it is what needed to be done. and most importantly, it has worked.

now, as to the list. the application process for these schools is very fair. almost all the seats are filled through a blind process. but a few slot always are left open for the good candidate that falls through the cracks. those are the kids who are the subject of those phone calls. not all those slots are filled by the kids of the powerful. not everyone on the list was powerful.
i know that, because my kid was one of them. due to a clerical error on her record, my very bright good student got no offers from the 3 choices that everyone gets to make, nor a choice through a different system. her record showed her as missing 45 days of school. she in fact missed 3.5 days of school. i suppose the principal of her school might have been a little less forceful in her effort to get her where she needed to be had she not known me and DH as staunch supporters of the school over her 8 years there. but i think she would have done the same for any other kid in that position. she called the principal of the high school as soon as the error was discovered, which turned out to be the last day of the enrollment period.
fortunately, there was still a seat available for this discretionary pick. she has performed fantastically, getting straight a's, and successfully completing ap classes and earning college credits in her junior year, even though she has battled some health problems along the way. her local school could not have offered either.
all kids are different. some kids don't test well, even tho they perform well in school. some kids grades don't represent their potential. there has to always be some wiggle room. it sounds as tho being carol mosely braun does not get you too much farther than being mopinko, good mom.

and one more time i must repeat. these schools are not "elite". they are full of ordinary kids from ordinary families, and even poor kids from troubled families. there are a few kids there that are the offspring of alderman and senators. i think that is a pretty representative slice of a working, thriving city. your kids should all be so lucky as to go to schools as good as we have in chicago. mine certainly have been.

[truedelphi]

2. You do bring up a very good point.

It is very hard to watch children who have special gifts and talents fall through the cracks because no school program is enabling the development of their talents.

And much of what you say about the "white flight" is very true. And although labeled "white flight" it is also true there were people of all colors flocking to suburbs just to have a piece of backyard and safe streets for the kid to play on, as well as better education.

One thing I notice, as I live in California and I watch what initiatives are on our ballots (in terms of schools), there are always ballot initiatives for building. But I have yet to see a ballot initiative to keep school programs like music and art on board the affordable curriculum of the schools. Why the public thinks that kids need only bricks and mortar, I don't know and cannot tell you.

And yet the politicians repeat that to the people. Someday, maybe we will have politicians in this state who speak up for the arts as much as they speak up for construction.