Arne Duncan's VIP list.

[hay rick]

Article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/education/24chicago.html

"When Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, was chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, his office kept a log of nearly 40 pages listing the local politicians and business people and others who sought help getting children into the city’s most selective public schools.

According to an article Tuesday in The Chicago Tribune, which first obtained and reported on the confidential log, those who sought such help included 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s office, the State House speaker, the state attorney general, the former White House social secretary and a former United States senator.

A spokesman for the Department of Education said Tuesday that the log was a record of those who asked for help, and that neither Mr. Duncan nor the aide who maintained the list, David Pickens, ever pressured principals to accept a child. Rather, he said, the creation of the list was an effort to reduce pressure on principals.

“Arne Duncan asked David Pickens to respond to all of these requests, some of which came from him, some from lots of other people, as a way to try to manage a process that was putting a lot of pressure on principals,” said Peter Cunningham, who handled communications for Mr. Duncan in Chicago and is now assistant secretary of the Department of Education. “This was an attempt to buffer principals from all the outside pressure, to get our arms around something that was burdensome to them. It was always up to the principal to make the decision. Arne never ever picked up the phone.”...

According to The Chicago Tribune, about three-quarters of those in the log had political connections. The log noted “AD” as the person requesting help for 10 students, and as a co-requester about 40 times, according to The Tribune. Mr. Duncan’s mother and wife also appeared to have requested help for students.

“The fact that his name might be next to some of these names doesn’t mean he was trying to get the kid in a school,” Mr. Cunningham said. “He was only asking after someone said, ‘Hi, Arne, is there any way to get into this school?’ ”

Mr. Cunningham said he did not believe principals would have felt any special pressure because Mr. Duncan was the source of the inquiry. “We were always very clear with them that it was up to the principal to make the decision,” he said.

<SNIP>

No special pressure, just a personal request from the school system CEO...

I think if I'm the school CEO and someone asks me "is there any way to get into this school?" I'd tell them how to get an application. If I did anything more, it could only be construed as facilitating- and therefore favoring- certain applicants.

[frazzled]

1. I don't think there's much of a story here

In today's Tribune, there's an article about how Mayor Daley's nephew, Patrick Daley Thompson, was on the list, trying to get the daughters of an important ward member and Daley contributor into prestigious Whitney Young high school. They were rejected:

Logs indicate Thompson contacted then-CPS schools chief Duncan in April 2008 in the hopes of securing two spots at Whitney Young Magnet High School for the daughters of a ward loyalist. The girls' father, a high-ranking city supervisor, has donated about $2,500 to the Daley family's 11th Ward Democratic Organization in the past decade.

The father's name also appears on another once-secret government log. He was listed as the sponsor of three people who sought city jobs for their political work, according to a clout list once kept in the mayor's office that was entered into evidence during the 2006 federal trial of Daley's former patronage chief, Robert Sorich.

The man has worked as a voter registrar in the ward and lives on the same street as Thompson, who now owns the Bridgeport bungalow where his grandfather, Mayor Richard J. Daley, once lived.

Heard denied Thompson intervened because he wanted to reward an 11th Ward foot soldier, and noted the children were not accepted into their top choice.

"It had nothing to do with the political connections," she said. "It was because he was a longtime friend."

The logs obtained by the Tribune indicate the students were denied a place at Whitney Young because their scores were too low. Instead they were enrolled at Lincoln Park High School, which is not a selective-enrollment school but has several highly regarded magnet programs.

The Tribune revealed Monday that Duncan ordered his office to track admissions requests over several years. The lists, used mostly in appeals cases, include politicians and influential business people but also show inquiries from unconnected parents looking to place their children.

There is no evidence that principals were forced to admit unqualified students. Indeed, many students were rejected even after Duncan's office intervened.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-0325-cps-vip-list-20100324,0,4574716.story

The Tribune has been on this admissions kick all year long. I swear, for 3 months running the front page every day was about favoritism at the University of Illiinois. Seems like 300 kids of the rich and famous, who had contacted trustees, got in--over ten years. In a school of 42,000 students. I thought it was the biggest nothingburger "expose" I'd ever seen. But it got the president of the University and a bunch of trustees to resign, the drumbeat was so relentless. To me it was like being shocked there was gambling in Casablanca.

This seems even less a story, because there doesn't seem to have been a strong pattern of favoritism or strings pulled--just a list.

[hay rick]

2. Santa Claus is coming to town.

He's making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty or nice...

But seriously, why make a list if you're not going to ever use it? A "not to do" list perhaps?

The fact that some kids, or even most kids on the list (if that's the case) didn't get in doesn't demonstrate that the list was ignored. I would expect that clearly unqualified candidates would not be helped by inclusion on the list. I would also expect that somewhere between the small number of highly-qualified shoo-ins and the much larger number of clearly unqualified candidates, there is also a pool of plausible candidates who might or might not gain acceptance to the school of their choice. For students in that situation,I would be very surprised if those with "AD" next to their name didn't fare better on average than their comparably qualified peers...

[frazzled]

3. There were names of totally unconnected people on the list, too ...

Just pushy or desperate parents who wanted to get their kids into a school. Why keep such a list? I don't know: to record all requests? Why the AD? To record to whom the inquiry was made? My husband used to be dean of a college and would get such inquiries from a variety of people regarding their son, or their friend's daughter, a famous person's nephew, etc. He had absolutely no relation to the admissions process but had to be polite and sometimes noted he had been contacted. But he never made a call to say "get this person's kid in." He didn't even have that power.

[DailyGrind51]

4. The Daley administration has a history of favored treatment for "insiders".

There is a white male mob (and Daley) connected contractor presently doing 10 years for fraudulently obtaining 100 million dollars in MINORITY contracts.