Accountability always cuts both ways... And other meditations on the 'Arc of Justice' Arne Duncan has been breaking through Race To The Top
As the final hearings on the largest number of school closing in US history begin in Chicago, with 54 schools facing closing, an equal number about to be disrupted by the closings and transfers of thousands of children, and additional schools facing "turnarond", "co-location" and the other Orwellian victimizations, the massive movements against corporate school reform in Chicago is not only building more resistance, but also a call for true accountability.
Above, Chicago principals and chiefs of schools following the January 2014 accountability sessions hosted by citizens of the Chicago communities that were plundered by school closings, charterizations, and disinvestments. Nearly ten years after Arne Duncan proclaimed his first "renaissance" by closing Williams, Dodge and Terrell elementary schools and 15 years after Frederick Bates hosted his first "hearing" on the reconstitution of Englewood High School, a growing number of citizens await the opportunity to bring some semblance of accountability to those who have profited from the attacks on public schools since 1995.
Joining the ranks of those who will need to be held accountable are the principals of the high schools which selected teachers for the IB program -- then "deselected" those same teachers in abrupt letters of April 12, 2013. But not all principals are craven collaborators -- just the majority. And just as collaborators faced unique forms of accountability in times past, so the same will hold in Chicago as the tide turns.
