And the guy they're bringing, like Obama is mostly a nice man with a Harvard Education and not much more to show for it than Obama has, lots of hope and dreams for Chicago schools mostly unrealized but touted as successes without much results. One must be fair in stating that no one man can change a mess of a system here in Chicago nor in Washington.This young wiz at the time he was brought in to the Chicago School Districts in 2001 from playing Pro basketball in Australia has led the Chicago Schools now for 7 years and this is where they stand today under his so so to what Daley describes as wonderful leadership:
A school district so filled with corruption that even the Huffington Post wrote this about it having to settle lawsuits about old Chicago style politics in 66 different cases of political patronage. You non Chicagoans may want to get used to that word because it'll be used quite often to explain Obama's administration in a few months from now, as patronage is how is presently staffing all the Washington appointments, raiding Chicago business and government positions with mostly friends and heavy supporters with the green throughout the years, in other words old style patronage, you scratch mine I'll scratch yours.
Chicago's school district came in at #74 in the top 100 in a "Most bang for your buck " school district study done by Forbes magazine and these are the numbers
They spend almost $10,000 per student in Cook county, an 18.8 average score on college exams if you can believe that, and an 83% graduation rate or 8 out of 10 which isn't terrible but we all know the standards have been so lowered that just about anyone graduates today with diploma sho shows up 75% of the time and that's the honest truth.
He's brought America change alright, he's trying to make the country the spitting image of Chicago, which should scare most people out there since we citizens are are warning you of the pitfalls but of coarse no one's listening. Rod Blagoyevich is just the grease on the skids of this group so get ready.
More school children have been killed in Chicago under Duncan's watch than any other in the past 50 years, 27 in 2007, AND ALREADY 20 THIS YEAR ALONE SINCE SEPTEMBER leaving Chicago as one of the most dangerous city for children in the country, along with Obama's former senatorial district in Chicago, the most blighted and dangerous area in the entire city of Chicago.
In fact they are so bad that a Chicago Democratic senator James Meeks this school year was planning to take busloads and busloads of inner city kids out of school to suburban schools to register because the Cook County schools which spend by the way 10 grand per student no small number are so inadequate in most peoples assessments.
A great job being done by Arne Duncan, not exactly. No wonder he's bailing out to got to Washington.
From New Geography in just this past June come these little factoids:
Before Duncan took over as school chief Chicago schools were indeed the worst in the nation in 1987 and in the years between have solidly remained at the bottom of the heap. It is a district that is 91% African American and what is even more pronounced is the lack of white children in the public school system. The entire Chicago Public School System is only 9 percent white. Not a single public high school has a population that is majority white. Not one.
Recently, the stubborn facts of Chicago’s population decline made news. As CBS TV Chicago reported in January of 2008:
Half-empty schools are ‘unacceptable’ because they don't serve their students or the communities they're supposed to anchor, Mayor Richard M. Daley said Thursday, setting the stage for the biggest wave of school closings in decades.
Officials contend 147 of 417 neighborhood elementary schools are from half to more than two-thirds empty because enrollment has declined by 41,000 students in the last seven years. A tentative CPS plan calls for up to 50 under-used schools to close, consolidate with other schools or phase out over the next five years.
Most of the underused schools are on the South and West Sides, often where the student population is largely African-American, and in lakefront neighborhoods that include Lincoln Park, Lake View, Uptown and North Center.”
Chicago’s political elite love to give speeches about the importance of public education, but not for their children. Mayor Daley sent his children to private schools. Deborah Lynch, the former head of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, sent her kids to private schools.president elect, Barack Obama, sent his kids to private schools too. With the exodus of the rich from Chicago’s public schools, 69 percent of the children in the Chicago Public School system are poor. (duncan and his fine family marching in a parade)
The horrible public schools, high taxes, and crime have driven families out of Chicago. The city’s job base cannot compete with anti-union places like Houston and Phoenix.
One thing for sure is that Obama is not making any friends with this appointment back home as this guy is loved by Mayor Daley and He even warned Obama back in October to not take Duncan away just yet as he still has work to do in Chicago cleaning up this mess like he promised, just like Obama does. They never finish one job before taking on another.
This is a link to a blog dedicated to the city schools and their performance with quite a treasure trove of information both good and bad independently run from the naturally biased Chicago School board called Catalyst Chicago if your interested in reading more. A Arne Duncan Pros and Cons list can be found on that blog here
And Here's the Wall Street Journal's take on this appointment for Tuesday's online and paper editions:
Obama Is Poised to Name Duncan Education Chief -
WSJ.com: "President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan as his education secretary on Tuesday -- choosing a hometown friend who has introduced some education reforms popular with conservatives without alienating teachers unions.
The announcement will come at a news conference in Chicago, a transition aide said. Mr. Duncan, who has been Chicago's top school official for seven years, has overseen the closure of struggling schools, advocated merit pay for better teachers, and adopted a program to use private money to reward children for better grades.
He has straddled two competing factions of the education community: the teachers unions, who push for more funding and smaller classes, and a movement that favors accountability and free-market-style incentives and looks to hold schools and teachers more accountable for student performance.
Those within the Democratic party who supported him say he has improved student achievement, graduation rates and college-going rates in the nation's third-largest school system, which was called the worst in the nation by former Education Secretary William Bennett in the late 1980s.Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Duncan, 44 years old, is Harvard educated and loves basketball. The two are personally close, with the pair sometimes playing pickup basketball together. In fact, Mr. Duncan, as an undergraduate, was co-captain of the Harvard basketball team and briefly played professional basketball in Australia.
The choice of Mr. Duncan comes as the Education Department faces a debate next year over the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, President Bush's controversial education law. NCLB, which took effect in 2002, mandates that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014 and requires that school systems show steady progress toward meeting that goal or face sanctions.
Mr. Obama has called for increased funding for NCLB programs such as teacher training and better testing. He has said he wants to increase spending on early-childhood education by about $10 billion annually and provide a $4,000 annual tax credit to college students who perform 100 hours of community service. continued
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