Mayoral Control of Schools? Not So Much
A top priority of the handful of oligarchs who control federal education policy and Arne Duncan is the elimination of public governance of the public schools by ceding power to CEOs, once known as mayors, and eliminating elected school boards. Mike Klonsky gives us a rundown on how it's going in Chicago. Not well. Here's a clip, but do read it all, please at HuffPo:
. . . . Duncan couldn't deliver a victory for Fenty, even while resorting to threats of pulling millions of federal grant dollars from D.C. schools should Gray win. This left many wondering if Duncan only favored mayoral control if he could control the mayor.
But now, with Chicago's schools in a state of leaderless limbo, the problems of having a single autocrat running big-city school systems have become obvious to all. After a decade and a half of Daley's top-down reform efforts, seven of those years with Duncan as the CEO, neighborhood