Double standards and Chicago charter school ‘miracle’ stories

Less than two years ago, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley stood with Alderman Dorothy Tillman, a number of other politicians, and some minor celebrities on the stage of the “New Williams Multiplex” and ushered in a new and unprecedented era of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, mendacity and clout in the sorry history of Chicago’s public schools.

On that bright September morning, Mayor Miracle was hailing the latest example of what Chicago’s corporate media repeat — as if repetition were truth — as Daley’s education “miracle.” The closing of Williams at the dawn of the “Renaissance” in 2002 and the reopening of the school in September 2003 — as three or four “schools” under one roof was actually a dry run in noxious propaganda and a test drive for several of the lamebrained schemes that later became “Renaissance 2010.”
During the next few months, before school opens in September 2005, Chicago will oversee the largest and most expensive turnover of public property to private interests since Buffalo Bill was killing buffalo across the Great Plains while the railroads were grabbing lands (either public lands of native peoples’ lands, depending upon your perspective) along the rights of way. But much of it began at Williams, so a little note is worth the time here and now.

Behind a screen of media attacks in April and May 2002, Arne Duncan and Michael Scott, then relatively new to the school scam game, decried the “failure” of the old Williams (ignoring a gang war that had reduced test scores articifically in May 2001) and declared that they had to do something bold and heroic by closing the old Williams and rebirthing it as part of what they called “Renaissance.” Left out of the official history that led to Daley’s attack on the old Williams was the fact that Daley’s destruction of public housing had displaced several street gangs, among them the MCs, which then went to war against the Disciples outside the front door of Williams. As a result of that shooting war, the children at Williams were too busy during May and June 2001 to pay as much attention to the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and the school’s sc ores dropped just in time for the “Renaissance” to attack.

The mayoral dog-and-pony show 16 months later, in September 2003, when the “Multiplex” opened was part of the same scam. When that worked, Chicago was prepped for the “Renaissanace 2010” blitz that began in July 2004. By then, the politiicans had all be bought in.

In the coming months, Arne Duncan will continue talking about how he’s got to be a tight manager of money — but he won’t talk about how he’s got three or four principals under one roof at his south side “Multiplex.” And behind the screen of propaganda on behalf of charter schools (and the attacks on public schools that issue from Dunca’s propaganda departments and their echo chambers in the “news” departments of Chicago’s corporate media), millions of dollars of public lands, public buildings, and public school equipment will be given away to charter hucksters while the mayor’s cheered for more miracles.