President Obama is set to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The reauthorization of ESEA will supplant policies enacted by the Bush administration under No Child Left Behind.
John Byrne and Azam Ahmed of the Chicago Tribune report that Arne Duncan, Obama’s Secretary of Education and former head of the Chicago Public Schools, kept a list of big shots who wanted their kids to be given preferential treatment in assignment and admissions decisions. Here is a quick summary:
Whispers have long swirled that some children get spots in the city’s premier schools based on whom their parents know. But a list maintained over several years in Duncan’s office and obtained by the Tribune lends further evidence to those charges. Duncan is now secretary of education under President Barack Obama.
The log is a compilation of politicians and influential business people who interceded on behalf of children during Duncan’s tenure. It includes 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard Daley’s office, House Speaker Michael Madigan, his daughter Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.
At this point, there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Admittedly, it is a pretty circumstantial case, but a federal investigation is underway.
There is evidence that Duncan perpetuated a school admission process that granted Chicago’s elite extraordinary access to district leaders and administrators who made admissions decisions to the city’s top schools. As Carol Moseley Brown explained, “This process is not pure, and everyone knows it.”
It is not unlike the way that Obama and Democratic leaders welcome lobbyists, corporations, and special interest groups into the legislative process. In Washington DC, the process is not pure, and everyone knows it.
