Arne Duncan is the current Secretary of Education in Washington and was the biggest architect of the Renaissance 2010 movement within the Chicago Public Schools. He has been an effective leader for the charter school movement, or “turn around” schools as they begin to shape the education systems of underprivileged cities in the rest of the United States of America. There are many people who are in favor of the charter schools coming up through the education system, but there are others who are seeing the negative impact on their families and children. This renaissance is good for creating a better education for students, but the scale is heavily tipped to one side that is harming people who are/have been involved in Chicago Public Schools
The objectives of the Renaissance 2010 initiative within the Chicago Public Schools are to close down schools in order to open new ones in the hope that chartered schools will replace them. In an article titled “Making Sense of Renaissance 2010 School Policy in Chicago: Race, Class, and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberal Urban Restructuring” the author, Pauline Lipman ,describes what is in store for new schools, “a plan to close 60-70 schools and reopen 100 new schools, at least two-thirds as charter or contract schools” (Lipman, 2009). This article makes sense of what Renaissance 2010 is by telling the reader the plan is to close down Chicago Public Schools in order to replace them with 100 charter schools. On the website provided by Chicago Public Schools, there is a description of what the Renaissance 2010 movement plans to do straight from the “The primary goal of Renaissance 2010 was to open 100 quality schools in the city’s most underserved areas by 2010” (CPS, 2014). The facts are that R...
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...ady closed plenty of schools that have torn communities apart, taken away jobs, and gave promises that cannot be kept. If Arne Duncan can reform his reform, then there may be some hope left for the aftermath of what has been Renaissance 2010.
Works Cited
Brown, J., Gutstein, E., & Lipman, P. (2009, May 29). Arne Duncan and the Chicago
Success Story: Myth or Reality? | Common Dreams. Common Dreams. Retrieved April 10, 2014.
Fitzpatrick, L. (2014, April 8). Hundreds of charter school supporters rally in Springfield.
Chicago Sun Times. Retrieved April 10, 2014.
Lipman, P. (2009). Making Sense of Renaissance 2010 School Policy in Chicago: Race,
Class, and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberal Urban Restructuring . The Great Cities Institute, GCP-09-02, 3. Retrieved April 5, 2014.
Who we are . (n.d.). Chicago Public Schools : Who we are. Retrieved April 10, 2014.
Another noteworthy urban sociologist that’s invested significant research and time into gentrification is Saskia Sassen, among other topical analysis including globalization. “Gentrification was initially understood as the rehabilitation of decaying and low-income housing by middle-class outsiders in central cities. In the late 1970s a broader conceptualization of the process began to emerge, and by the early 1980s new scholarship had developed a far broader meaning of gentrification, linking it with processes of spatial, economic and social restructuring.” (Sassen 1991: 255). This account is an extract from an influential book that extended beyond the field of gentrification and summarizes its basis proficiently. In more recent and localized media, the release the documentary-film ‘In Jackson Heights’ portrayed the devastation that gentrification is causing as it plagues through Jackson Heights, Queens. One of the local businessmen interviewed is shop owner Don Tobon, stating "We live in a
In the twentieth century, governmental agencies and private developers acting together cleared out the central city to make room for the federal government. The government was able to do this through its unique economic and legislative relationship to the city, and through a heightened symbolic architectural and verbal language which supported its valorization. The symbolic language and the government's dominance in the local economy are mutually supportive. Symbolism removes ownership of the city from local residents and makes it national. It also masks the federal government's failure to prove economically beneficial to all sections of the city and to all its races and classes, as a 'trickle down' theory of dominant economies argues. Because of the government's importance in the local economy, its symbolic self-representation goes unchallenged.
According to Lehrer, U., & Wieditz, T. (2009), Toronto saw a massive population growth in a period of thirty years due to the extensive construction of high-rise condominium towers which led to the city being divided into three distinct cities: “city of the rich, the shrinking city of middle-income households, and the growing city of concentrated poverty.” According to the article the division is caused by the development of condominiums as the new form of gentrification which displaces the poor people and focuses to attract the higher-income people to the area.
In the text, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, author Diane Ravitch explores her ideological shift on school reform and the empirical evidence that caused this shift. Once a proponent and contributor of testing, accountability, choice, and market reforms, Ravitch’s support began to diminish as she realized that these current reforms were not viable options. She came to realize that the new school reforms focused entirely on structural and managerial adjustments and that no focus was given to actual learning.
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Duncan, Arne. "The Well-Rounded Curriculum: Secretary Arne Duncan's Remarks at the Arts Education Partnership National Forum." U.S. Department of Education. 9 Apr. 2010. Web. 07 Dec. 2010. .
...the real world, we need to adopt a modern approach that is proven to work and built to last.” He says that parents, not politicians or bureaucrats, should be in charge of the education dollars spent on their children and that teachers need to be liberated from the politicized, bureaucratic status quo and rewarded for the educational value they create. Robert Sarvis plans on maximizing school choice through public-school matching programs, ending education fads, deregulating private schools and public-school reform, and fostering every aspect of education policy.
The city of Denver and the challenges confronting its elected leaders, are no different than any other large city, one of the most problematic of which, includes enhancing the quality of public schools for ethnic minority students from lower socio-economic neighborhoods. Katherine Boo’s, “Expectations”, provides a narrative centered on Superintendent Michael Bennett and the implementation of his ambitious strategy to raise high school graduation standards throughout the Denver public school system. Bennett’s plan to achieve this lofty goal illustrates the “four tides,” or philosophies, of administrative reform: liberation management by allowing students from underperforming schools to attend any high quality public school of their choice; (2) a war on waste through the closure of Manual High School; (3) a watchful eye with computer tracking to ensure student accountability; and (4) scientific management with increased and meticulous academic standards.
The spatial isolation present in Detroit deepened anti-integration sentiment, and the resulting shift of whites out of the Rust Belt led to conditions conducive to deindustrialization. However, Sugrue notes that “[racial prejudices] are the result of the actions of federal and local governments, real estate agents, individual home buyers and sellers, and community organizations” (11). That is to say white flight is a phenomenon dependent on political climate rather than being an entirely intrinsic, prejudiced practice of whites. This is an important distinction to make, as it helps reinforce the idea that systems such as poverty and racism are exactly that—systems, and not a result of individual immorality. The same can be said for the urban crisis in Detroit: as opposed to being purely an issue of deindustrialization or poverty, Sugrue argues that the circumstances of Detroit may be in part an institutional problem. “The shape of the postwar city, I contend, is the result of political and economic decisions, of choices made and not made by various institutions, groups and
...spects that put too much of a burden upon the teachers. All children deserve an excellent education, but it takes more than the teachers and the school system to ensure the success of a child. The child must have the drive and parents as well must be involved. Although the plan has many great ideas, the school system should not be punished if a small group fails what about the large amount that is doing wonderfully? This law was an outstanding start. Now that lawmakers are aware of the problems, they need to act. The worst that could happen is that No Child Left Behind is unchanged, leaving behind yet another child. (Symonds) ?Reform is no longer about access or money. It is no longer about compliance or excuses. It is about improving student achievement by improving the quality of the education we offer American students.? Secretary of Education Rod Paige.
Zimmer, R. and Buddin, R. (2009), Is Charter School Competition in California Improving the Performance of Traditional Public Schools?. Public Administration Review, 69: 831–845. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.02033.x
“gentrification as an ugly product of greed. Yet these perspectives miss the point. Gentrification is a byproduct of mankind 's continuing interest in advancing the notion that one group is more superior to another and worthy of capitalistic consumption with little regard to social consciousness. It is elitism of the utmost and exclusionary politics to the core. This has been a constant theme of mankind to take or deplete a space for personal gain. In other words, it 's very similar to the "great advantage" of European powers over Native Americans and westward expansion”(Wharton).
The gap between the nation’s best and worst public schools continues to grow. Our country is based on freedom and equality for all, yet in practice and in the spectrum of education this is rarely the case. We do not even have to step further than our own city and its public school system, which many media outlets have labeled “dysfunctional” and “in shambles.” At the same time, Montgomery County, located just northwest of the District in suburban Maryland, stands as one of the top school systems in the country. Within each of these systems, there are schools that excel and there are schools that consistently measure below average. Money alone can not erase this gap. While increased spending may help, the real problem is often rooted in the complex issues of social, cultural, and economic differences. When combined with factors involving the school itself and the institution that supports it, we arrive at what has been widely known as the divide between the suburban and urban schools. Can anything actually be done to reverse this apparent trend of inequality or are the outside factors too powerful to change?
Zukin, Sharon. "Gentrification: Culture and Capital in the Urban Core." Annual Review of Sociology 13(1987): 129-147.
...itner, H., Peck, J. and Sheppard, E.S. (2007) Contesting Neoliberalism Urban Frontiers, New York: Guilford press.