Arne Duncan's Chicago School "reform:" Low income/minority kids doing WORSE.

"When we look at the poor and minorities, the numbers are even more disturbing.

The percentage of black students meeting or exceeding the state standard went from 35% in 2005 to 22% in 2008.

Hispanic achievement showed a 12-point drop from 40% to 28% of students meeting or exceeding the state standard.

Asian students dropped from 64 to 53, and Native Americans sunk from 71% to 44%.

(Black students and Hispanic students comprise the largest minority population groups in CPS, with 45% and 40% respectively)."

...Claim # 6: "...over half of our graduates go to college."

Chicago's dropout rate is 51.5. So if half of Chicago's graduates go to college, then we may safely assume that 74% or so of Chicago high schoolers do not. One must wonder if Duncan's people are doing any tracking any of those students.



...Yes, the shameless practice of social promotion was ended in 1995, when "Chicago adopted a policy that called for not promoting students who scored more than a year below grade level on national tests." Now here we are with some results 13 years later that lead us to conclude that not much has changed, except that many children have been and are failed regularly on their way into the school to prison pipeline.

And can we, in fact, say that "social promotion" has been eliminated when 86% of African-American 11th graders and 80% of Hispanic 11th graders in Chicago fail to meet Illinois's College Readiness Benchmark in 2008?

Or when 91% of all 11th graders in Chicago fail to meet the CRB for Science?

Or when 75% of low income Chicago 11th graders are below the State Standard on the PSAE?

Is this really the end of social promotion, or is this just more of the same bullshit that another big city superintendent brought to Washington in 2001???

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/01/arne-duncan-portfolio-manager-or.html

found out they were not testing them. they tested them during their senior year...

arne "lost" 2 million dollars worth of computer equipment for the cps during his watch because ....well no one really knows because no one tagged the inventory. i wonder if they showed up at his charter schools?