A Heck Of A Rauner Story

From Diane Ravitch.

This pretty much sums up the underlying mindset among the elites here in Chicago

I had a personal encounter with Bruce Rauner. Two years ago, I received the Kohl Education Award from Dolores Kohl, the woman who created it, a great philanthropist who cares deeply about the forgotten children and annually honors outstanding teachers. After the awards ceremony, Ms. Kohl held a small dinner at the exclusive Chicago Club. There were two tables, 8 people at each table. I sat across from Bruce and of course, we got into a lively discussion about charter schools, a subject on which he is passionate.

As might be expected, he celebrated their high test scores, and I responded that they get those scores by excluding students with serious disabilities and English language learners, as well as pushing out those whose scores are not good enough. Surprisingly, he didn’t disagree. His reaction: so what? “They are not my problem. Charters exist to save those few who can be saved, not to serve all kinds of kids.” My response: What should our society do about the kids your charters don’t want? His response: I don’t know and I don’t care. They are not my problem.

This was not a taped conversation. I am paraphrasing. But the gist and the meaning are accurate.

The guy's entitled to that kind of attitude, but in my opinion, he's just gross. The only chance Quinn has of being re-elected is if the Republicans run Rauner. He's so repellent, people will go vote against him.

His attitude is also Rahm's, if you will recall Rahm's conversation with Karen Lewis. What was Rham's number of kids worth bothering over? Was it 25%? I can't remember. It's an underlying principal of this charter movement: that black kids raised in city poverty can't be educated in neighborhood schools--- they need to be separated and set against each other, and that everyone in the city needs to find little storefront schools where these kids aren't.

And it's that simple. And it's based on race.

Here in the 49th ward we have two of the really sketchy charter chains. Someone should ask our alderman if he finds it ironic for a Democratic alderman to have the same basic ed policy as Bruce Rauner and Eric Cantor.