When asked this question: As the second education secretary with school-aged kids, where does your daughter go to school, and how important was the school district in your decision about where to live?
Duncan replied: She goes to Arlington [Virginia] public schools. That was why we chose where we live, it was the determining factor. That was the most important thing to me. My family has given up so much so that I could have the opportunity to serve; I didn't want to try to save the country's children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children's education.
Check the class size in Arlington and also the per spending per pupil. I wonder why he didn't send his kids to DC schools under Michelle Rhee? Think his daughter is going to get enough test prep? Does Arlington have mayoral control of schools? Or does Duncan get to vote on school budgets and have a school board? Duncan sends his kids to schools where he gets the same parental privileges that he wants to deny parents in urban school districts.
Tipped from EIA: http://www.eiaonline.com
13 comments:
Wow...that's truly disgusting. Duncan and Rhee (and Klein, of course) are cut from the same cloth. What's good enough for the kids of their cities is most certainly not good enough for their children. How much more obvious could it be that they are creating testing factories to minimally educate a future work force, and that they expect their own children to run the companies that hire those workers?
What else is new? Except for Chuck Schumer, no other politician of note sent their kids to an urban public school. Obama sends his children to private school, as did Bill Clinton and yes, even Jimmy Carter. Liberal or conservative, they are all the same.
Chaz
It's not just public school. Until now Obama's kids went to a public school but special public school. You can always find elite public schools. I bet Shumer's kid went to an out of the ordinary school or even if regular, there were special set aside classes. That's always been the case. Even when I was in high school at Thomas jefferson in a changing neighborhood we were in a group set aside for special classes,etc. almost like a private school but with the higher class sizes. yet since every kid was serious college bound material it almost didn't make a difference.
Where does Whitney send his kids?
Andy Rotherham's kids don't go to school yet. They just turned three years old.
Want to guess where they won't go? Let's see all these ed reformers put their money on the value of mayoral controlled school systems.
Going after people's kids is really not classy. I hope you feel a little gross about yourself.
Sure. Check the kids in Chicago after 7 years of Duncan rule and get back to me.
1. Obama spent his earliest years at private religious schools in Indonesia, one Catholic and one Muslim. He spent his 5th to 12th grade years at an elite college prep then he was off to Occidental, Columbia and Harvard.
2. Michelle Obama spent her earliest years in classes for gifted children in Chicago Public Schools then she was on to Whitney Young High School, an academic magnet school with highly selective enrollment. After that, she was on to Princeton and Harvard.
3. Before Obama's presidency, he and his wife sent their kids to private schools. In Chicago, they used the private University of Chicago Lab School which is currently $20,286/year for kids in grades 5 to 8. Now they send their daughters to a school (Sidwell Friends Lower School) which is currently $28,442/year.
4. Arne Duncan was educated at the University of Chicago Lab School, too. Then he want to Harvard. His father was a University of Chicago professor.
Duncan feels a connection with black inner-city kids because he spent years tutoring them at his mother’s after school program in Chicago’s South Side, the Sue Duncan Children's Center, where he played basketball with them, too.
http://sueduncanchildrenscenter.org
Of course his parents never permitted him to attend school with THOSE kids.
No one minds playing basketball with inner-city kids (if they'll accept you!) or tutoring them when the price is right.
But going to school with them?
Not on your life.
Chaz,
Amy Carter went to DC public schools when Jimmy Carter was President. She attended Stevens Elementary School and Hardy Middle School.
This is a paragraph from a recent column in the East Bay Express by Jay Youngdahl. It gives us a peek into the private school participant/consumer mentality:
"One of the reasons California let its schools go into disrepair is because more and more people could afford to send their kids to private schools. The children of managers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, and others did not have to worry about California's deteriorating schools. While many of these folks, especially in the East Bay, continued to support public schools, this was not their problem. There were no evil motives to their actions. (And, a disclaimer here, my kids spent their high school years in private schools.) But when your kids go to private schools, the public schools don't feel like your concern, right or wrong. Without this focus, our wealthier citizens have been able to direct their energies elsewhere."
It's important to consider who still cares about -- and is in tune with -- the state of public schools, as well as who has been assigned to managing them but may also be somewhat detached from the actual public school experience and what it means.
Some of us (I for one) are devoted public school people through and through. Their existence is deeply tied into our sense of democracy.
you people are real geniuses - how about you take up real public policy problems instead of whining about where politicians went to school. south Arlington's majority population of latinos and blacks would kindly appreciate it if you'd stop telling them that only inner city kids have problems.
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