Chicago’s UNO Charter Scandal Tarnishes Luster of Arne Duncan’s Hands Off Strategy
A dozen years ago, President George W. Bush and Secretary of Education Rod Paige, the former superintendent of the Houston Public Schools, brought us all the test-and-punish “Texas miracle” in the form of the No Child Left Behind Act. We all know what happened to that so-called miracle.
Now several years into Arne Duncan’s tenure as U.S. Secretary of Education, we continue to learn more about the “Chicago miracle” brought to us by Duncan, the former Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools, and the man who has infused into federal education policy the “miracles” of innovation and freedom from too much red tape. These were the signatures of the school reform he presided over in Chicago in the form of Renaissance 2010, a decade-long program that closed public schools and launched a vibrant charter sector.
We can now watch the results quietly playing out in the U.S. Department of Education. According to Education Week writer, Alyson Klein, for example, yesterday San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Southeastern Kentucky, and the Choctaw Nation were designated as “Promise Zones.” Klein notes that future funding for this program is unsure: “The roughly $60 million Promise Neighborhood program was initially pretty popular in Congress. But it has faced pushback, as lawmakers have questioned whether it makes sense to dole out a
