Mayors & K-12 (un)achievement
Rahm Emanuel (@RahmEmanuel) is suddenly preaching phonics, science of reading, and teacher training. How convenient.
He is the same mayor who ran Chicago Public Schools for eight years and never made evidence-based reading, writing, and math instruction the non-negotiable core of how classroom teachers were prepared or supported.
He closed 50 schools—the largest mass closing in U.S. history—overwhelmingly in Black neighborhoods, promising better academics. University of Chicago research found the closings did not deliver meaningful academic gains for the kids who were moved. Graduation rates rose. Proficiency did not keep pace. A later look at students who started elementary school on his watch showed large shares still not reading or doing math at grade level.
The deeper failure was upstream: teachers. Illinois teacher-prep programs have long been weak on the science of reading. NCTQ reviews found many did not adequately cover phonemic awareness, systematic phonics, and the other components that actually teach kids to decode. Chicago itself leaned on balanced-literacy approaches that mixed in practices the research does not support. Rahm lengthened the day and added pre-K. He did not systematically require or rebuild teacher preparation so that every classroom teacher could deliver explicit, evidence-based instruction in reading, writing, and math.
Now he points to Mississippi’s phonics-and-training model as the obvious answer and calls cultural fights a “distraction.” Parents who said the same thing for years—kids need to be taught to read first—were treated as the problem by his party. He does not get to rewrite that record because the polls moved and a 2028 run looks possible.
The argument is not that phonics is wrong. The argument is that Rahm had the power, the schools, and the teachers and did not fix the preparation pipeline when it counted. He does not get a clean slate. In fact… White liberals, like one of the K-12 cartel’s paid grifters in the attached screenshot, do NOT get a free pass either, @MSNOWNews.
I’m glad someone with Emanuel’s level of influence is paying attention. Still, even if he was secretary of the DOE at the national level, it wouldn’t matter — especially not given his history with unions. He’d have to flip REALLY hard on them to effect necessary structural changes, thereby negating a lifetime of hard-won political capital.
Someone like Emanuel could address this most effectively as governor. He’d then have the power to direct the state-level Department of Education they to take a Louisiana-style approach to literacy in the elementary grades and chop heads until it got done.
Even then, that would only BEGIN the battle to rein the unions in. In a place like Chicago (or NYC, or LA, or SF or Atlanta, etc.), the quid pro quo would be huge; the union would probably want significantly more teachers (read: union members) before they would agree to it. They’d argue class sizes and training days, and implementation metrics, but at the end of the day, the union would be fighting for it’s actual raison d’etre: increasing it’s power as a political machine.
There’s history with Oakland on this. The Board and district leadership all agreed to go back to phonics, but a critical mass of teachers refused after it was implemented; it was too hard, they needed smaller class sizes to do it, etc. The District dropped the initiative pretty quickly and Oakland continues to churn out minority grads who spend 13 years in school for pretty much nothing. In their defense, OUSD has brought phonics back into the classroom now, but tenure protections in blue states like California are so strong that if a teacher quietly refuses to instruct that way, or does the dog and pony show version when the boss is watching, or tries, but is ineffective, there’s almost nothing a principal can do about her performance except offer more training that she can be forced to attend, but cannot be held accountable for implementing.
The result? Parents blame teachers, admin blames teachers, but because teachers can’t be fired, teachers shrug and point fingers right back (fairly, in many cases) and just keep on doing what demonstrably doesn’t work. And the beat goes on…
Even if a strong leader like Emanuel could do the right thing — hold teachers and admin accountable if they failed to improve outcomes for the mass of students — that would leave a huge mark economically that no leader wants to face. K-12 public schools are basically a jobs program/voting bloc. To attract the people who actually could get the job done, you’d likely have to pay a lot more in salaries and benefits and you’d end up firing a lot of people who have no real skill to earn a similar salary in the private sector.
Could it be done? In a right-to-work state like Louisiana, yes. But I watch those too and the political will isn’t there, even when the legislative bodies are red. Again: no politician wants to piss off a voting bloc as big as teachers.
In big blue urban metros the changes that are needed won’t happen unless there’s a full collapse of the existing system.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
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Sorry. This is NOT Education Reform.
@RahmEmanuel is using poll-tested language and if you listen to the actual words, he’s not saying anything novel, bold or transformational.
He’s just saying what the campaign whisperers are telling him –
Let’s go back to basics… (How?)
Teach what a pronoun is not talk about your pronoun… (That doesn’t say stop mistreating our children)
We have to wake up (and??)
Parents? Unions? Freedom? Failure? Nada.
Let’s stop praising people who talk the talk. Please.
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I asked currently Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway about our $28K per student system’s long term, disastrous literacy results at a campaign event some years ago. Her response: “Talk to the School Board”.
