Rahm Emmanuel: The education mayor?

yes Peter Meyer / November 28, 2010

The former White House Chief of Staff and current candidate for mayor of the Windy City announced last week that he wanted Chicago to be the first city to adopt the ?Common Core standards.?? (See Fordham's Resource Page here.)

With current Chicago Public Schools (CPS) President Ron Huberman, a Richard Daley appointee, slated to step down tomorrow, the big city education battles (having been fought in Washington, D.C. and New York City) will now move west, to the Second City and the nation's third-largest public school district.

Though Emmanuel enjoys a comfortable lead in the polls, running second is lawyer Gery Chico, a CPS Board President during the tenure of both Paul Vallas and Arne Duncan, and who is claiming the mantle of education reformer.

?During his tenure as President [of CPS],? says Chico's law firm biography, ?the Chicago Public Schools initiated a broad series of nationally recognized education and fiscal reforms which led to six straight years of student performance increases, six years of balanced budgets, six years of labor peace and the unprecedented rebuilding of Chicago's public school buildings. All of this activity led to the turnaround of one of the most troubled public school systems in the nation.?

Polls open at 6:00 AM, February 22, 2011.

?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow

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