Rahm Emanuel's Ability

Can Mayor Rahm Emanuel improve Chicago's public schools thus improving the quality of life in Chicago's lower income neighborhoods?

He can if the Mayor creates a cultural movement that persuades more parents to value education. Mayor Emanuel could call upon Chicago's best educators, marketing experts, and grass roots activists to developed and implement plans that will accomplish the impossible.

Mayor Emanuel has the ability to bring Chicago's best minds together to improve our public schools.


Marc Sims
Chicago


From NBC's Rock Center.
Harry Smith is the reporter.

Mayor EMANUEL: There's only one problem I'm--gives me pause. Never--the fiscal ones, the financial ones do not give me pause.

SMITH: What gives you pause?

Mayor EMANUEL: Harry, you go around sometimes, kids are growing up in an environment in parts of the city that you wouldn't let your own kids grow up in. There's no sense of life, and there's an emptiness in their eyes that you don't know if you can change. And they can see downtown; and yet, for them, it's miles and miles away. And I don't ever want a city that for some of our children they don't think they're part of that. And I don't know whether I have the ability to affect that.

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Improve The Parents

Do the public schools in low income neighborhoods need to improve the parents in order to improve the schools?

Marc Sims

marcsimschicago@gmail.com

PS


But there still are useful hints here about what matters in parenting.

"If you are smart, hard-working, well educated, well paid and married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more likely to succeed," write Levitt and Dubner. "(Nor does it hurt, in all likelihood, to be honest, thoughtful, loving, and curious about the world.)

But it isn't a matter of what you do as a parent; it's who you are."

There is more at www.freakonomics.com, and at Ned Potter's blog: http://abcnews.blogs.com/scienceandsociety/