A vote for Rahm is a vote for Arne Duncan on steroids. Except that Arne Duncan is already Arne Duncan on steroids.

I don’t care where Rahmageddon lives.

And I really don’t care where Rahmageddon sends his little children to school. He can send them to Latin or Francis Parker or home school for all I care.

I care that he wants to “ramp up” school turn arounds.

Rahmageddon is calling for 35 more school turn arounds over the next few years.

Reaching 35 turnarounds over a four-year period would ramp up the pace of that policy at CPS. The first occurred in 2006, at Sherman Elementary School on the South Side, and since that time 11 other institutions have gone through the process, at an average of three per year. 

While a recent Education Week article about Sherman Elementary notes that former CPS chief (and current Obama Department of Education secretary) Arne Duncan “developed the turnaround model as an alternative to the district’s unpopular strategy of closing low-performing schools and dispersing students” the turnaround process in Chicago is a deeply contested one. It is a near certainty that continual turnarounds — under an Emanuel administration or any of the other would-be mayors — would roil the local education community and ratchet up the battle over the contours of school reform in Chicago.

Turnarounds make teachers bristle. Educators are angry to be summarily fired, with no consideration given the energy they’ve put into working with students who grapple with the ravages of poverty and some of Chicago’s worst violence.