There is a school of thought–one that Mayor Richard Daley subscribes to–that says that if you are a good manager, you can manage anything. That is the announced basis for Daley choosing Ron Huberman to head up the Chicago Public Schools, repla
There is a school of thought–one that Mayor Richard Daley subscribes to–that says that if you are a good manager, you can manage anything.
That is the announced basis for Daley choosing Ron Huberman to head up the Chicago Public Schools, replacing Arne Duncan, who is now serving President Barack Obama as the Secretary of Education.
I have no doubt that Huberman, 37, who formerly was in charge of the Chicago Transit Authority, is intelligent. I have no doubt that Daley is a huge booster.
I have serious doubts, however, about Huberman’s fitness to lead the Chicago Public Schools.
The mayor pats himself on the back for choosing Arne Duncan, and before him, Paul Vallas. He says that the schools were in horrible shape in 1995 when the law was changed to allow him to take control of the school district. He said that “educators” were in charge of the district then, and it was an abysmal failure.
I don’t know if Daley has been paying attention, but if the district got an “F” in 1995, it has only moved to a “D” grade now. Yeah, it is some improvement–test scores are higher–but after 13 years of Daley’s experiment, half of the African American students who enter ninth grade don’t graduate four years later. The numbers are pretty much the same for Hispanic students. The district is more than 90 percent minority–46.5 percent Black, 39.1 percent Hispanic, 3.3 percent Asian/Pacific Islander–and it is your guess where the city’s white students are going. Maybe Daley knows. Maybe Huberman can find out.
Duncan’s selection by Obama seems to validate his work with the schools, but it really seems as if Duncan, who has no educational background, has never taught students and never graded a term paper, was chosen as much for his basketball skills (he’s an Obama basketball buddy) as he was for his managerial skills. Give Obama a “D.”
Duncan never got a handle on the violence. It seemed to catch him by surprise that closing schools and merging students from different neighborhoods and different schools into one building would have some serious, sometimes violent, rivalries. The unspoken reason behind some of the violence – race – doesn’t get any attention at all. You think that there might be some tension between Black and Hispanic students tossed together in classrooms? Does Huberman have a better feel for things?
Probably not.
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