Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Chicago Turnaround Strategy

Other blogs do a much better job of covering the absudrity that is the Chicago public school system (where the "CEO" of schools seems to be doing about as well as the CEO of AIG), but I have to say, after reading this article about all the schools slated for "closure," "turnaround," "consolidation," "phase out," and "re-engineering," I can't help but wonder what George Carlin would say about the euphemisms being used by the Chicago education "reformers."

I also can't help but wonder why they keep blaming the schools and the teachers that teach in them when a particular school like Phillips High School was "re-constituted" in 1997, "re-engineered" in 2000 and is slated for "academic turnaround" this year (i.e., all teachers who teach there will be fired) and it still seems to have problems.

Might the problems of the children attending that school be caused by something other than the school and the teachers teaching in it?

Not in Chicago, where the teachers are ALWAYS at fault and ALWAYS the first to get fired.

And not in Arne Duncan's and Barack Obama's vision for American public education.

Remember, they plan to take this stuff national, both through the three card monte Race to the Top competition this year and the extension to it Obama is already calling for next year.

Close schools, fire teachers, open charters, close schools, fire teachers, open charters...

Great - the strategy seems to be working so well in Chicago.

Should be even better on a national scale.

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