‘Painful Lessons': Abuse At Chicago Schools
Hundreds Of Kids Beaten, Whipped, Even Choked By Teachers, Coaches

A couple of weeks ago there was news of $67,000 being spent on a no-bid deal for cappucino machines for Chicago schools, most of which hadn’t requested them, and weren’t even using them once they were delivered.

Now, comes another installment showing how the Chicago school system has been in the habit of operating.

Treveon Martin, 10, is afraid of a teacher at his school. “I’ve seen him hit five of them in the classroom,” Martin said.

Martin says he and others have been hit, grabbed and even struck with a belt. “He’s threatened almost all the kids in his classroom,” Martin said.

He says it happened at Robert Emmet Academy in November but a Chicago Public School investigator didn’t talk to him until last week – 70 days after the case was reported, and not until after we started asking questions.

“He holded my arms and he picked my body up, and then he just slammed me on the desk,” Martin said.

An exclusive CBS 2 investigation discovered Treveon Martin is one of at least 818 Chicago Public School students, since 2003, to allege being battered by a teacher or an aide, coach, security guard, or even a principal. In most of those cases – 568 of them – Chicago Public School investigators determined the children were telling the truth.

So, just another local issue? It shouldn’t be.

These sorts of incidents don’t spontaneously appear in a large organization. They won’t appear at all where competent, engaged, hands-on management is not afraid to set and enforce rigorous standards of professional conduct at all levels.  In order for this pattern of mismanagement to have arisen, those in charge are prima facie guilty of failure to exercise due diligence in the performance of their responsibilities.

The REAL question at this point is where is the media’s questioning of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about his prior and  apparently poor performance as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, under which the above noted financial, (and even more seriously) physical abuses occurred.

From the Department of Education website we find the following:

Prior to his appointment as secretary of education, Duncan served as the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools, a position to which he was appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley, from June 2001 through December 2008, becoming the longest-serving big-city education superintendent in the country. (emphasis added)

Seems to the Chief that Duncan SHOULD have some ‘splainen’ to do!

DOE’s bio blurb goes on:

As CEO, Duncan’s mandate was to raise education standards and performance, improve teacher and principal quality…

If that was Duncan’s mandate, based on the evidence, he failed to live up to expectations…and now he’s the man that B.O. (The Exalted One) himself has picked to lead the rest of the country’s educational establishment ever onward and upwards beyond the realm of “no child left behind”.

(Eeeeeuuuu!)

Better the Department of Education was eliminated than to turn it over to Duncan’s apparently incompetent management.