It is common essay fodder now to write about the futile ways the system tries to fix education. Gates and his Common Core are being shuffled offstage, but private foundations still capture school boards’ attentions. Because admitting that the achievement gap has a genetic basis is verboten, education officials, parents and municipalities will listen to The Music Man style pitches from private foundations. What has happened is that education, especially on taxpayer dime in our awful urban school, is nothing but a cash cow for private firms that have an army of consultants, advisors and salesmen for the newest system that will boost scores and close that immovable gap.
Chicago witnessed sentencing for a scandal that exemplifies this insanity and the mega-millions involved. The Chicago Public Schools CEO was sentenced to years in jail for corruption involving millions in school contracts. This is after the man who ran the firm that bribed her was sentenced to seven years in jail as well. If you read up on what SUPES Academy did for services and combine it with how its owner Gary Solomon was busted, you see the scam many anti-foundation articles hint at with conflicts of interest.
SUPES was created by Solomon after he was a dean at a school. He left under allegations of misconduct of a sexual nature. After his departure, he worked for the Princeton Review. After understanding the education racket from the private side, Solomon then attacked in roughly the same manner that progressive subversives have used for decades: educating school administrators and leaders.
SUPES had a superintendent certification program, and was the only firm to have one in America, a monopoly marketing point. Problem is that states do have their own programs. SUPES had a roster of administrators that came through its training program and also placed SUPES graduates elsewhere. In this corruption scandal in Chicago with Byrd-Bennett (68 year old black female), the scam is revealed.
Ms. Byrd-Bennett was a SUPES employee until April 2012, when she was brought into the CPS. Magically after October of 2012, SUPES received three contracts worth a combined $4.2 million and then the whopper which was a no bid $20 million contract for investing in academic leadership. The bribery gets involved in an old fashioned way that would have made the machine pols of the early 20th century proud. It was a money honest system that went blurry.
Byrd-Bennett had lavish treatment by SUPES while CEO of CPS, and these were gifts of sorts but the killer was the kickback. The CEO of CPS was promised a plum job after she resigned from her CPS position in exchange for guiding the contracts to SUPES. For a promise of a six figure job in the future, SUPES was collecting millions in government contracts.
Educating superintendents and principals is not going to boost scores. This is stripmining education for the surface gain of hucksters and the owners of these snake oil salesmen. SUPES was just caught and more blatant about it because hey, it’s Chicago. Broad Foundation and the Gates crew all act in this manner. Educators and administrators go through the revolving door from the training to the schools back to the training all the while hiring their classmates and making sure the foundation programs get enacted for a price.
Like McDonald’s going downmarket and accepting EBT, therefore turning the underclass into a money conduit to help its bottom line, these foundations are a racket to milk the education system run by officials that desperately want to say they are doing something, anything, to boost the scores of underclass children. This wastes millions as our education system wastes billions trying to fix the unfixable.
No one cares though because they want the magic elixir to close the gap.
-By Henry Delacroix
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As someone who just graduated a crummy urban public high school very recently from a school district very similar to Chicago I can safely say that these schools don’t actually care about the education gap because the truth is they know there’s nothing they can do about it. Like the school principals in Chicago my head principal didn’t care either other than making the school look good enough for official state visitors that went to the advanced classes there an making a high salary. If you weren’t a student or teacher in the advanced classes you were just an ID number an the head principal didn’t care or talk to you unless absolutely necessary.
These schools are just daycares for anyone else who isn’t in the most advanced classes (that were mostly white) to try to keep kids off the streets an even then that doesn’t always work out because some end up committing petty crimes anyway. I don’t know if you read some of my own experiences that I commented on Mr. Shackleford’s article about a week ago, but I was one of the few white people in the lower classes that were really boring daycare like free periods rather than actually learning anything useful which considering how liberal an cancerous common core is maybe that wasn’t so bad.
The school to prison pipeline is a very real thing in these urban districts like mine an Chicago. A couple days after my senior year ended in March someone I didn’t know in my grade got shot in the ghetto by someone else in my grade. I feel bad for the young teachers I had an others that come into these districts thinking they’ll genuinely make a change an improve these students lives when the reality is that you’ll likely only help 1 or 2 in your entire 30 year career there an even then they still may not be successful in life.
Young teachers try in these districts to make a change, but usually within 20 years or sometimes less depending on the administrators an students they’ll completely burn out an not care at all. These teachers will just beg you for any work at all so they don’t have to fail you, an will just give grades like minorities often get given jobs. That’s just the truth, these school districts are making a lot of money keeping these schools an that’s all they care about. It’s a situation that I don’t know how to solve, but I guruntee you Bill Gates or any other billionaire won’t do anything about it.
I remember when they first brought Common Core to my district a number of years ago an it hasn’t done anything good for anyone except those profiting off it , but make it harder for teachers an even teachers will admit that. If you have kids, don’t send them to these inner city districts even if they advertise they’re anything worth while because I can assure you they’re not. People will call you racist for what we’re saying here an bring up one example of someone being successful out of the millions of future deadbeats in these school systems who will follow their parents footsteps of teenage pregnancies an lives of crime no matter how hard you work to help them, but as someone who was in this environment for quite awhile it’s just the reality an made me a lot less optimistic about people actually improving for good rather than just a day or two an going back to the way they were before.
The same people who call us racists purely for saying that are likely people who went to liberal private schools with mostly white people. Just like anyone who calls someone racist is likely someone who doesn’t live in the ghetto an has to face the reality of being robbed at gunpoint at any time. Luckily I’ve never had to live in the ghetto myself, but my experiences around a ghetto public school over the last few years are more than enough to know or a thing or to two to know what it’s really like an it’s a life I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
In conclusion these inner city school districts aren’t cared about no matter how bad they are an how low the test scores are solely because of the money these schools still bring in. I don’t understand why people in these white schools think it’s so cool to be a “gangster from the ghetto” an blast degenerate rap music all day long acting black. I just can’t stand being around those kinds of people an I would like them to experience it for themselves at my former high school or any of the other inner city districts rather than their private liberal arts school that protests for equality while still being primarily white an tell me if it’s still “cool”. Man I could go on an on about that.