History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Glitter falling off mayoral control of schools in Chicago
- 11-09-2010
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Blog by Mike Klonsky/Huffington Post
Fifteen years ago, Chicago was the first to do it -- turn control of its public schools over to an all-powerful mayor. Now the second city has become the nation's model for mayoral control, a model favored by the business community and the city's power philanthropists as their way of ensuring accountability over this $5 billion/a year enterprise called public schooling. With mayoral control has come the business model, complete with the appointment of a CEO (what used to be called a superintendent) and a small, politically faithful and compliant school board, dominated by bankers and the city's real estate interests. It is also favored by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who rose to power as a prototype non-educator/manager and top-down political overseer for the mayor. Upon his appointment as President Obama's schools chief, Duncan made mayoral control of the nation's largest urban school systems one of his top priorities. (more…)
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