Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?

[Hannah Bell]

...it is important to describe the agenda in which Duncan is complicit. Two powerful, interconnected forces drive education policy in the city: 1) Mayor Daley, who was given official authority over CPS by the Illinois State Legislature in 1995 and who appoints the CEO and the Board of Education, and 2) powerful financial and corporate interests...whose reports and direct intervention shape current policy...operating from a larger blueprint to make Chicago a "world-class city" of global finance and business services, real estate development, and tourism... Schools are also anchors in gentrifying communities and signals to investors of the market potential of new development sites. For Chicago's working-class and low-income communities, particularly those of color, this has meant gentrification and displacement...

Let's separate myth from reality. The myth is that Chicago has created a new, innovative way to improve education—Renaissance 2010...touted as the future of education in Chicago, with a plan to close 60 schools and open 100 new, state-of-the-art, 21st-century schools. These schools would be either small, charter, or contract schools. Renaissance 2010 was (and is) marketed as an opportunity to bring in new partners with creative approaches to education. That's the myth.

There is a completely different reality on the ground...Arne Duncan has overseen the beginning destruction of neighborhood schools with neighborhood students... When CPS closes schools and reopens them as Renaissance 2010 charter or contract schools, there is no guarantee or requirement that students who attended the old schools will go to the new ones—and many don't. For example, not all new schools are the same grade level as the old schools...

Families with multiple children who used to attend one school have had to scramble as schools close and their children are split up. Young children who walked to their neighborhood school have had to leave their community and cross heavily trafficked streets. Schools that are "turned around" terminate all adults in the building, including security, custodial, clerical, paraprofessional, and kitchen staff...causing severe dislocation and job loss in the community. Tenured teachers who are released are reassigned for 10 months...At the end of the 10 months if they have not found a position, they can be "honorably terminated..."

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/23_03/arne233.shtml

[madrchsod]

1. a big fat myth that`s going nationwide

the chicago school system is still crashing under the leadership of another duncan clone.

until someone figures out the social and economics of the surrounding communities is the biggest factor in education the problems will still exist.

going to and coming home from school in a war zone is`t conducive to educating children