Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rahm and Byrd-Bennett lied about shrinking suspenstion rate. It's worse than ever.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rahm and Byrd-Bennett lied about shrinking suspenstion rate. It's worse than ever.:

Rahm and Byrd-Bennett lied about shrinking suspenstion rate. It's worse than ever.

Rahm & Byrd-Bennett claim a 23 percent drop in suspensions. Really?

I didn't think it could get any worse. I thought the Daley/Duncan era of schoolhouse-to-jailhouse, Zero Tolerance and mass suspensions of African-American children in Chicago was drawing to a close. Why did I think that? Because the Mayor and his schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett told us so just yesterday and you know that Rahm and BBB always tell the truth. Right?

Byrd-Bennett claimed a 23 percent drop in suspensions districtwide over three years, from 46,803 in the 2010-11 school year to 36,046 last year. This school year, through January, suspensions are down 36 percent from three years ago, according to CPS.

It didn't take Catalyst's Sarah Karp long to deconstruct that B.S. She got hold of someconfidential data which paints a totally different picture than the one being spun by CPS leaders.

Writes Karp:

The statistic that officials are playing up is a 23 percent decline in high school