Examiner Editorial: Nation’s schools will not see the change promised
Examiner Editorial
July 19, 2009
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| According to a new report, Education Secretary Arne Duncan did not improve Chicago schools as much as he and President Barack Obama have led the public to believe. (AP File) |
That Chicago’s public schools are a massive failure is not the fault of Arne Duncan, their superintendant for seven years and now President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education. But, according to a new report, Duncan did not improve Chicago’s schools nearly as much as he and Obama have led the public to believe.
When he named Duncan for the position, Obama boasted of the improvement he had brought about in Chicago’s scores on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), “from 38 percent of students meeting the standards to 67 percent.” But the new report, issued by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, offers convincing evidence that these gains are almost entirely the result of technical adjustments in 2006 to that particular test.
Other tests show continued poor performance in Chicago. The Prairie State Assessment Exam (PSAE) shows no improvement at all since 2001, when 27 percent of eleventh graders met state standards in math and reading. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Exam, which is administered nationwide, suggests that a pathetic 13 percent of Chicago students are actually proficient in math at their grade level.
In 2008, only eight of 99 Chicago high schools met the standards set by No Child Left Behind, and all eight were selective enrollment schools. Only 6 percent of entering Chicago public school freshmen will obtain college degrees by age 25.
Chicago produces such abysmal results despite spending 20 percent more per pupil than the national average. The failing system’s well-compensated, unionized teachers (starting annual salary: $44,000) work the shortest school days and the shortest school years of any big-city school system in America, and their union has strenuously resisted any changes to the schedule.
In his writings, Obama holds up education as one of the most important economic issues of our time, to say nothing of its value to children’s development. Obama did nothing substantial to improve public education in Chicago while there, but some education reformers took heart when he expressed openness to such small but helpful reforms as merit pay, which the unions strongly oppose. That hope continues to dwindle, though.
As he saps his political capital and the nation’s purse this summer on contentious and expensive issues of health care and energy, the likelihood decreases that he will be able to upset the unions’ apple carts with much-needed education reforms. On top of that political reality are Duncan’s apparently unimpressive credentials, now seen to have included a resume padded by the President of the United States.
