March 29, 2015 - 15:57
Mr. Emanuel clearly has done some good for the public school system of Chicago. His closing of 50 schools allowed 93% of those students to go to a school with a better rating (20% in top tier schools, >33% in the same tier). As he put it "if you're going to close the education gap you can't keep kids trapped in underperforming schools." I do agree with this point. However, I think many of the other things he has done have not been helpful to schools, such as making teacher evaluations harder and expanding charter schools.
Mr. Garcia, on the other hand, does not believe in expanding charters. He thinks that the city sould stop "starving public schools to feed charters," and has halted school closings. Most importantly, in my opinion, he wants to put an end to "high-stakes standardized testing." I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if a major city like Chicago stopped doing standardized testing, or at least made them less important. If this worked out, would we see this being implemented in other cities throughout the nation?