Rahm lied about Clemente's new IB program

The joke is on us. While all of us were focused on the firing of at least 22 Clemente teachers last week, over at the Clark St. wing of City Hall, J.C. Brizard and the mayor were figuring out how to pull another fast one on the Humboldt Park community.

Rahm's announced plan to turn Clemente High School into a wall-to-wall IB academy turns out to be a hoax. Emanuel had told parents and community leaders that the wall-to-wall schools were an expansion of the city’s International Baccalaureate diploma programs, which operate inside 13 neighborhood high schools and offer students a curriculum originally designed in Switzerland for the children of diplomats. Emanuel and school officials have said the wall-to-wall IB schools would put every student through the rigorous program, not just a select group.

But, according to WBEZ' Linda Lutton: ,

...what the mayor and schools CEO have not said is that a good percentage of students in Chicago’s new wall-to-wall IB schools could actually end up in a new and untested International Baccalaureate technical education track—not in the IB Diploma Programme researchers have lauded for its success at getting low-income minority kids into selective colleges.

Asked directly by WBEZ about the possible vocational track in the new schools, Emanuel said Thursday there would be “gradations” in the IB offerings at the wall-to-wall IB schools. “But it’s built towards college, that’s what it’s really built for.”

Or not.