Recent allegations of physical abuse in the Chicago public school system have brought to light a horrifically managed environment for children. Hundreds of claims of abuse by teachers, coaches and staff of children ranging from kindergarten through eighth grade have surfaced – most not even investigated some 70 weeks after being reported.
Independent investigators and journalists have uncovered reports of students being whipped with belts, paddles, broomsticks, yard sticks, choked, stomped on, struck with staplers and even pushed down flights of stairs. Chicago journalist Dave Savini discovered one student’s neck was fractured by a substitute teacher.
A security tape at one school showed a gym coach striking students with a paddle after students missed serves while playing volleyball.
10 year old Treveon Martin was picked up by his teacher and slammed so hard into his desk that he later had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital for a contusion to his spine.
The truly horrific part? Hardly any teachers that have been investigated were disciplined. Of the at least 818 cases of abuse over the last 7 years (most from 5 to 13 years old), only 24 teachers were terminated. One teacher who “battered students for several years” was only given a warning by the Board of Education. A reported case of a teacher blistering a child with “100 licks with a belt” wasn’t disciplined at all after investigators substantiated the abuse.
So who was presiding over all this violence on Chicago’s children? Who was watching these innocent children being abused from June of 2001 to December of 2008 while looking the other way? None other that President Barack Obama’s newest Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.
Before being nominated by President Obama, Duncan was confronted about the abuse saying, “Any founded allegation where an adult is hitting a child, hitting a student – they’re going to be gone.” An interesting statement given that during his 7 and a half year watch over Chicago’s public school system and, despite over 818 cases, only two dozen teachers were fired.
More “change you can believe in” from the Obama administration.
