PJ Media

PJ Mediahttps://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/03/24/its-for-the-children/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usWed, 10 Jun 2026 04:23:12 -0400"It's For the Children"<![CDATA[But whose children? The Washington Post says the discovery of a special list through which the Chicago elite might have gotten their kids into good schools shows how a system can be gamed to provide one kind of service for the haves and and another for the have-nots. “Public” systems run on guidelines and not all of them are published. Chicago faced a resource allocation problem. According to the WaPo most Chicago schools “face huge academic challenges” which meant that many parents didn’t want their kids in ordinary schools. They were “dissatisfied with neighborhood schools” and so need to “jockey for a limited number of slots in well-regarded magnet schools, out-of-boundary schools or selective public schools that base admissions on criteria such as grades and test scores.” But the VIPs couldn’t really be expected to line up. One solution: a front door and a backdoor. That’s why Duncan’s list was secret, referring to a special list maintained by current Secretary of Education who then ran the Chicago school system. It contained a list of connected parents and special schools. Some school officials they denied there was any correlation between these two columns whatsoever. If there was a backdoor the rear entrance had no visible signs.]]>Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:43:55 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2010/03/24/its-for-the-children-n189689