Arne and Karen Duncan's Secret Log

Duncan & Daley used the city's elite schools as patronage.

During Arne Duncan's reign as Mayor Daley's hand-picked schools CEO, he kept a "secret log" to manage requests by clout-heavy political donors and VIPs, to get many of their otherwise unqualified kids into the city's elite "public" schools.

Although the log itself, (requests coming directly from Duncan appear as “AD” on the log. Petitions from Duncan’s wife, Karen appear as “KD” on the log) was only recently revealed by WBEZ, this is not a new story. It only got new legs last week when it was learned that Republican billionaire candidate for governor, Bruce Rauner made his daughter  one of Duncan's back-door clout recipients of a seat at Walter Payton College Prep.

The Duncan family's creative use of public education money has carried over to his policies at the DOE where he doles out billions in Race To The Top dollars to favored school districts based on their acceptance of his failed test-and-punish reform policies, which call for charter expansion, mass school closings, and teacher firings. The result -- the reproduction of a two-tiered school system of winners and losers and with it, a reproduction of the social order. The winners are the favored few. The losers are the rest. The gap grows wider as intended.

CPS secret clout list via WBEZ