Chicago Mayor Calls For "Brainiac High"

theodp writes "In a private lunch with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, BusinessWeek's Michael Arndt was taken aback by the mayor's candid monologues against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the failure of public schools — Chicago's included — to adequately train kids today in technology, math, and science. Among the education fixes Daley said he's contemplating are a fifth year of high school and elite math and science academies for Chicago's brainiest students. Endless wars that divert hundreds of billions a year from schools and job training are also undermining America's competitiveness, Daley added, wondering where the public outrage is."

Comments

Outstanding chutzpa!

[Bearhouse]

Not THE Richard M. Daley, from the outstanding bunch of politicos who have shaped Chicago's history for the last 50 years?
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daley_family
Reap what you sow, then bitch about it...what amazing hypocrisy.

Re:Schools vs. Killing brown people

[PopeRatzo]

Except that his message is to throw more money at schools as if that will fix the problem.

Like it or not, there's no such thing as a school that couldn't do a better job educating kids with more money. It does take money to teach kids. The more the better.

People point to public schools and say "See, they spend more money and don't get better results" than private schools.

What those people don't take into account is that private schools self-select their students based on social and economic measures, and start off with better students. Further, unlike the public schools, private schools are not required to take the most difficult cases: students with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, behavioral problems. Public schools MUST take those students, and that's where a huge amount of the funding in public schools goes.

Anybody who parrots the right-wing talking point that the problem is teachers unions has never taught in both public and private schools. I taught in both systems, back when I was working my way through grad-school in the 80s, and was on the school board for both my daughter's k-8 and high schools. She went to public schools here in Chicago and got a first-rate education (she's in grad school now). Chicago is supposedly "ground zero" for a school system that is dysfunctional because of the teachers' union, and I can tell you from direct experience that's not the problem.

The problems are many, but at the top are funding, shitty parenting, a growing socially and economically-impoverished underclass (thank you Ronald Reagan) and a society that is increasingly anti-education (thank you, Fox News).