I’ve met Arne Duncan. I found him to be an earnest champion of the Chicago Public Schools. I have seen his compassion and his dedication to improving the education of those students.
I’ve met Arne Duncan. I found him to be an earnest champion of the Chicago Public Schools. I have seen his compassion and his dedication to improving the education of those students.
But, for the life of me, I don’t understand how he became Secretary of Education.
I know he is a buddy of President Barack Obama. He turned some heads with some of the innovations he brought to CPS. He was Mayor Richard Daley’s choice, and, despite his lack of experience as an educator, he was highly regarded as a “manager.”
But the elevation of Duncan to head the federal Department of Education seems like some macabre manifestation of the Peter Principle – promoting a person to the level of incompetence.
President Obama obviously gives Duncan high marks for his stewardship of the Chicago Public Schools. He obviously saw something in Duncan that he felt warranted bringing him to the highest levels of government.
But whatever he sees in Duncan, he didn’t see it in the Chicago Public Schools. He didn’t see it in increased test scores or graduation rates. He didn’t see it in increased confidence in Chicago Public Schools. He didn’t see it in the white flight that has CPS with a student population that is 90 percent minority in a city that is only 60 percent minority. Those thousands of white families who have fled Chicago Public Schools to private and parochial schools obviously weren’t that impressed with Duncan.
I’ve always thought that the job of a school superintendent, beyond making sure all the kids have books and all the chalkboards have chalk and there are enough chairs for the students, is to make sure the children get a good education.
Duncan, for all of his affable demeanor, failed that job.
Fenger High School had only 34 percent of its ninth graders graduate in five years. That is a 66 percent dropout rate. It means that 66 percent of the kids who started ninth grade weren’t around for graduation. Two-thirds of the children did not get an education.
Manley High School had only 36 percent of its ninth graders graduate in five years. Robeson High School has shown marked improvement, going from 34 percent not graduating, to 42 percent. That is progress, but pardon my glass-half-empty perspective – 58 percent of the students didn’t graduate.
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