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| Home Front: Politix |
| Arne Duncan's list and the Chicago Way |
| 2010-03-24 |
| When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ran the Chicago Public Schools for the boss of Chicago, he kept a secret list of those who hoped to clout children into the city's top-tier public schools. "We didn't want to advertise what we were doing because we didn't want a bunch of people calling," CPS official David Pickens admitted to Tribune reporters Azam Ahmed and Stephanie Banchero, who broke the story. So the schools kept a clout list. But they didn't want nobody nobody sent hassling them with calls. When the University of Illinois did essentially the same thing with Law School and undergraduate admissions, the resulting bruhaha lead to the resignation of the chancellor, president and board of trustees. Let's see if Daley takes a hit. And once again, the bright road that is the Chicago Way is paved with shiny bricks for all to see. Education in Chicago today, federalized health care for the nation tomorrow. Politicians know how to bind groups to their side. Some of you are probably expecting me to rip on Mayor Richard Daley, especially since he insisted his office had no role in the clout list. "No role, in the sense that, no role," Daley babbled on Tuesday. Does anyone actually believe that political insiders weren't favored at the expense of deserving kids? No. But today, I'm not going to rip on Daley. Instead, let's focus on his brilliance, in creating Chicago's two-tiered public school system. It bound the professional class to him and maintained him in power. The mayor knows how it works. He etched it into Chicago's civic infrastructure years ago, when he took over the public schools. Rest at link. And now, a word from your poster. My mom was a teacher in Chicago in the 1950s. Daley I made life easier for his pals in real estate by overseeing the construction of the Housing Projects, then abandoning the schools that had African-American and Hispanic students. One anecdote: She went to the supply room to get construction paper, scissors, and paste. The supply room staff said, "You can have all the construction paper you want, but we haven't seen scissors and paste for two years." The Machine did this with the full collusion of the teachers' union. Teachers used seniority to get out of having to teach classes with minority students. The city also stopped picking up trash in a neighborhood as soon as a minority family moved in. Then Daley I's real estate buddies would get on the phone to local homeowners. "See how your neighborhood and schools have declined since Those People moved in? You need to sell and move out as soon as you can, while you can get a good price for your house." The machine and the politicians in the teacher's union helped create this mess decades ago. They have no desire to change anything. As the rest of Kass's column points out, the community no longer has the will or the know how to change things either |
| Posted by:mom |