Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The real Chicago "miracle" -- Arne Duncan still has a job

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The real Chicago "miracle" -- Arne Duncan still has a job:

The real Chicago "miracle" -- Arne Duncan still has a job

by Mike Klonsky

The only miracle emerging from the past decade of Chicago's corporate-style school reform is that former CEO and current Sec. of Education Arne Duncan hasn't resigned from either posts out of sheer embarrassment.

The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) once again put Chicago near the bottom compared to other large urban districts with similar demographics and concentrations of poverty (85% of CPS students live in poverty). Significantly, the biggest drops in reading scores came during Arne Duncan's time as CEO when the media was spinning the myth of a Chicago "turnaround miracle." That myth formed the basis for current administration school-reform policies, including Race To The Top.

A new report on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress taken by 21 big-city districts was the second analysis in less than a month to indicate that, despite more than a