Chicago Public Schools - 80% Minority, Mayoral Control, Little Connection Between The People's Grievances and Their Alignment

Newsweek: Mayoral control of the schools is put to the test in Chicago.

It is emblematic to see that in the Chicago Public school system, with 409,000 students, 80% of which are minority students - the mayor of the city has taken over the schools for 13 years running and a former police man has been chosen to take the top spot as the former leader got a promotion to the Federal government's head of education.   In Chicago the increase in the rate of passage of a state standardized test for academic achievement from 36% up to 64% is seen as progress that should be celebrated rather than one can expect to hear anything about the 36% of the children that still failed the test.

Such is the case in troubled school systems in major metros such as New York, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Cleveland.  The fact that these systems have a large population of racial minority students who are being negatively impacted the most - such facts are not registered on the dashboard in the political actions of those who are suffering the most.

The first thing I think about when I hear about Chicago Public Schools is the show put on by State Senator Meeks from 2008.  Senator Meeks threatened to enroll Chicago Public School students in 2 small, wealthy, White school systems in the suburbs to highlight the funding discrepancies between the two sets of school systems.   Chicago's per student funding rate is around $10,600.   Senator Meeks searched the state and found the wealthiest and Whitest school system which fund their studnets to the tune of $16,000 and $17,000 and used this as the basis for his argument.  

With the help of a lazy or complict news media no one bothered to note that these two school systems had 1,700 students and 3,400 students respectively.  This gap in spending is more likely due to a less favorable economy of scale for these other schools as compared to the 409,000 large school system.    Secondly no one told Mr Meeks that while indeed Chicago's funding is less than these two cherry picked school systems - it is roughly $2,000 above the average state funding.  Thus, clearly, more Illinois school systems spend less per student than does Chicago for the Chicago to have this above state average funding.  It would be a mistake to expect the news media to seek to call these points out.

EXPANDING THE POLICE TAPE

In reading the Newsweek article I was reminded of the persent struggle to reform the DC Public Schools.  As with DC, the mayor has been forced to defend his school chief against the entrenched interests that seek to resist change in pursuit of accountablity and performance.

The missing force from the battlefield are the "consuming parents".    With the education of their children being debated on their behalf I detect a strange silence from the parents as bullets fly between the mayoral command and the teachers unions.

It appears to me that the Senator Meeks faction would consider itself as the "voice of the parents".  It must be noted that Meeks chose to fight the external fight when given the choice to plant a stake in the ground.  More money from the state to compensate for the City of Chicago's inability to provide more resources to fund its own basic government service - education - to the satisfaction of those who purport to be advancing the interests of the system.