Huberman hearts Daley...

but can't get his facts straight

In the last 10 minutes of this interview, Chicago's new schools CEO Ron Huberman, comes off as a thoughtful guy with a sense of the social conditions outside of school that impact student learning. The problem is, that for the first 20 minutes, he's responding to John Callaway's softball questions with the most fawning homage to Mayor Daley I've ever heard. Sounding very much like he's reading from a script prepared by one of the mayor's PR firms, he tells Callaway how much he likes Daley's top-down, outside-manager model of running public schools. The he names New York, Denver, and Miami as models. But Huberman hasn't done his homework. Miami/Dade Public Schools continue to have a career educator at the top of the system--Alberto Carvalho. Before Carvalho, there was educator Rudy Crew.

No transparency

Following in Arne Duncan's footsteps and with the same lack of transparency that marked his management style at the CTA, Huberman continues to ignore FOI requests and won't give up (or maybe he just doesn't know) info about school closings.

If they're going to continue to close down schools in the name of progress, they should be able to demonstrate what progress is or isn't being made. (Angela Caputo at Progress Illinois and Fred Klonsky)