Blowing up bad Chicago schools did not work for Arne the Duncan:
"U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan shut down 61 schools in which students failed to perform at a basic academic level and opened 75 new schools while serving as Chicago’s school superintendent for seven years. The University of Chicago has released a study saying most students who moved to other schools following school shutdowns showed no change in performance. Duncan countered by saying, ‘The reason was that the students moved to a similar level of schools, and students who moved to better schools saw their performances improve.’ All right Mr. Duncan, since you seem to understand this problem, why didn’t you prevent it? Were you just the superintendent for the better schools?"
There are 662 schools in the Chicago Public School (CPS) system. Duncan claims he led a successful school reform initiative by shutting down ten percent of its schools and tossing those kids into other schools that probably should have been closed as well. He closed Carver High in Altgeld Gardens and send the refugees to Fenger. Fine. Nothing in Chicago government works as it should; everything is either broken, like our pothole-laden streets, or costs us more than it does other Americans, like our gasoline. So it is incredible that anyone would expect our schools to be anything other than what they are, abysmal. Fine. There is no crime in being Chicago inept and Cook County obtuse, indeed that is what the body politic here expects. But spreading our convoluted and ineffective methodology to other municipalities makes Duncan the sociological equivalent of Typhoid Mary.
"U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan shut down 61 schools in which students failed to perform at a basic academic level and opened 75 new schools while serving as Chicago’s school superintendent for seven years. The University of Chicago has released a study saying most students who moved to other schools following school shutdowns showed no change in performance. Duncan countered by saying, ‘The reason was that the students moved to a similar level of schools, and students who moved to better schools saw their performances improve.’ All right Mr. Duncan, since you seem to understand this problem, why didn’t you prevent it? Were you just the superintendent for the better schools?"
There are 662 schools in the Chicago Public School (CPS) system. Duncan claims he led a successful school reform initiative by shutting down ten percent of its schools and tossing those kids into other schools that probably should have been closed as well. He closed Carver High in Altgeld Gardens and send the refugees to Fenger. Fine. Nothing in Chicago government works as it should; everything is either broken, like our pothole-laden streets, or costs us more than it does other Americans, like our gasoline. So it is incredible that anyone would expect our schools to be anything other than what they are, abysmal. Fine. There is no crime in being Chicago inept and Cook County obtuse, indeed that is what the body politic here expects. But spreading our convoluted and ineffective methodology to other municipalities makes Duncan the sociological equivalent of Typhoid Mary.
