This is our pandemic! We are facing a huge deficit and our kids continue to fail in school. We really need to face the truth and make hard changes. Our diverse society challenge anyone who is in the classroom. Teachers are facing kids & parents who don't speak english and can barely write coherently. Until we challenge ourselves to face the truth and require parents to held accountable, little will change. It's just our society is unwilling to hold this discussion!
EDUCATION
Classroom Cop
Mayoral control of the schools is put to the test in Chicago.
Callie Lipkin for Newsweek
Huberman in Class: 'I'm going to have to make decisions that are unpopular.'
May 5, 2009 | Updated: 3:19 p.m. ET May 5, 2009
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Ron Huberman walked the halls at Julian High School on Chicago's South Side one day in late March. Students were loitering in the lobby, wearing caps backward and sideways. The place was dirty. Even the clocks were wrong. Huberman, the new school chief installed by Mayor Richard M. Daley, did not like what he saw. He promptly moved to fire the principal.
Huberman later told the teachers at Julian: "You are going to be held accountable." He was not bluffing. At 16 other schools, he has canned the entire faculty and staff—and he's only been on the job since February.
The effect has been a sonic boom to a school system, the nation's third largest, that is mired in urban woes—and, in some cases, a sense of complacency. "It's been a huge change in the culture," said Robert Runcie, the chief administrative officer. "His management style is data driven. He wants results. It doesn't matter if you work 300 hours a week. If it doesn't make a difference for the students, it's not working. He's really shaking things up."
It has been 13 years since Mayor Richard M. Daley seized control of Chicago's school system, creating a new template for urban education. City hall now runs the classrooms in New York, Boston, Cleveland and a handful of other major American cities. The Chicago model has also gone federal. President Obama reached into the city's system to tap Arne Duncan as education secretary; he brings to the national stage a penchant for merit pay and charter schools, a determination to close failing schools—and a reasonably amiable relationship with the powerful teachers' unions, which may soon be put to the test. Duncan recently warned that he may withhold federal education stimulus money from states that limit the number of charter schools—caps typically backed by the unions. Success won't come easy.
"We're going to see some real drama on the education horizon," said Timothy Knowles, the director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago, which has designed some new schools for the city. "This is the first time we're hearing some of these calls—for more parent choice and competition—coming from the Democratic side nationally."
To gauge how the battle might go, it is worth watching Huberman, who has had a fight on his hands from the start. When Daley brought control of the schools to city hall, he was determined to move beyond the traditional profile of a schools chief. In choosing Huberman, he threw convention to the wind. The 37-year-old Huberman, who is gay, was born in Israel, grew up partly in Tennessee—and has spent much of his career as a cop.
Huberman was chasing gangbangers in 2001 when he caught the mayor's eye. A technology whiz, Huberman had developed a laptop-computer program that enabled officers in squad cars to instantly trace the backgrounds of suspects at crime scenes. He subsequently helped mastermind the city's crime-surveillance camera system.
When Daley learned about the innovations of "this smart young cop," as the mayor calls him, he put Huberman on the fast track, tapping him first as his chief of staff, then putting him in charge of the city's transit system. In a city hall where aides often step gingerly around the powerful mayor, known for his fits of temper and tongue lashings, Huberman has earned a reputation for being blunt and confident enough to disagree with Daley on issues. "I tell the mayor things he doesn't always want to hear," says Huberman. "He respects that."
For his part, Daley has said he "can sleep at night" knowing the schools are Huberman's hands. If the new schools chief has upset entrenched interests and caused some alarm in the ranks about higher expectations, Daley could not be more pleased. He says he wishes more parents shared Huberman's indignation over school failures. "He's making the difficult decisions," says Daley. "He's not afraid to do that."
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