By George N. Schmidt

Continuing to ignore the fact that most of the best high schools in Chicago and the Chicago area are larger high schools (several with more than 2,000 students), Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan continued to promote charterization, privatization and small schools at a May 19 media event at Prosser Vocational High School. “Our large high schools are broken,” Duncan told more than 200 people, mostly from charter schools, who had assembled for the event, which announced that the Gates Foundation would put another $11 million into shrinking Chicago high school, promoting unproven charter high schools, and paying corporate consultants to evaluate high school.

In his remarks, Mayor Richard M. Daley continued to promote his “Renaissance 2010” plan, which has been closing schools and attacking the performance of others on dubious grounds, while promoting charter, contract and small schools with no proven performance records. “We need a strategy to turn around our entire system of high schools and makde them all high schools of tomorrow,”Daley said.

Jim Shelton of the Gates Foundation announced that another $11 million was being targeted at Chicago’s high schools, with much of it going to two charter schools that have been promoting themselves in the media.

Flanked by Board of Education administrators and foundation officials, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley continued his attack on the city’s public schools on May 19. In a prepared speech, Daley repeated his claim — contradicted by the facts of high schools in Chicago and the Chicago area — that high schools need to be radically changed and reduced in size through “small schools” and charters. To the far right above  are Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan and Jim Shelton of the Gates Foundation. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.