Chicagoland: Where Did Mayor Rahm Emanuel Go To High School? By Larry Elder

By Larry Elder, Apr. 15, 2014

The fascinating CNN reality show, “Chicagoland,” follows the high and lows of a hardworking, charismatic principal, Liz Dozier of Fenger High, an inner-city public school.

We watch her struggle for funding while operating under constant fear of gang-related violence. Chicago has had 76 murders so far this year, putting them on track for 260 murders in 2014, after 509 murders in 2012 and 421 in 2013. The murders are mostly black urban victims and black urban perps, What high school principal goes out on the street, with a bullhorn, to ensure that kids can walk safely to and from school -- without getting shot? Repeat, without getting shot. Welcome to Chicago.

In one scene, the principal literally maps out “safe passage zones” where, she hopes, kids walk to school without being shot by gang members who are unhappy that “outsiders” have crossed into their neighborhood.

In a city of one-third whites, only 8 percent of the public school student body is white. Nationwide, 10 percent of all families send their own kids to private school, and for black families the rate is 5 percent. Among public school teachers in Chicago, however, 39 percent send their own kids to a private school!

What parent with options would send a child to a school like Fenger? Yet lefties like Rahm Emanuel oppose vouchers -- where the money follows the child -- which would give parents at least a fighting chance in choosing a better school.

This is not Baghdad. This is not Beirut. This is Chicago. It has been called the murder capital of the country, and in some years has the nation’s highest number of murders annually. And a recent investigation has just revealed that the Chicago police has under-reported aggravated assault and aggravated battery crimes by 25 percent -- and has done so for years!

The city is about one-third black, one-third white and one-third Hispanic. But blacks commit 70 percent of the city’s murders, and the victim is almost always black. Large numbers of inner-city kids come from homes without fathers, a phenomenon that is a direct result of 50 years of welfare-state policies that undermine the integrity of families.

“Chicagoland” also follows around its dynamic mayor, Rahm Emanuel, the wealthy former chief of staff of President Barack Obama and senior advisor to then-President Bill Clinton. One of his primary objectives is to improve the performance of Chicago public schools. To this end, we see the cheerleading mayor visiting urban schools and high-fiving students.

But what we really see is yet another rich elitist encouraging excellence at a school his parents would not allow him to set foot in, let alone attend. Violence? Low academic standards? Constant scrambling for funds? The school’s beleaguered principal mapping out “safe passage zones,” where “peace monitors” would accompany students as they walk across “gang lines”?

Emanuel likes to say that he believes in public education because he is a product of public schools. Really? But where did Rahm I-believe-in-public-schools Emanuel go to high school?

He attended New Trier High School, a public school perhaps like no other. It was founded in 1901, by wealthy Northsiders, as the Wikipedia put it, “to enable parents to educate their children without sending them to college preparatory schools on the Eastern seaboard.”

New Trier High is considered by many to be among the finest public high schools in America, and has been featured on the cover of many national magazines stories about New Trier’s academic rigor and its many distinguished graduates.

From Wikipedia:

 “In 1928, New Trier began its advisory system, the first such in American public secondary education, in which each student meets with one faculty adviser and the same fellow advisory students every morning throughout his or her career. …

“New Trier spends more than $15,000 yearly per student, well above the state average of $8,786. It has been included in the ‘Top Hundred’ and ‘Most Successful’ lists of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Parade magazine. The school was also identified as ‘quite possibly the best public school in America’ by Town & Country, in a six-page article on New Trier that cited the ‘rich’ and ‘demanding’ curriculum, extensive arts and activities, strong participation in athletics, and faculty of the caliber typically found teaching at good colleges. Life magazine also recognized New Trier as one of the best high schools in America with cover stories in 1950 and 1998.

“Approximately 98 percent of the class of 2013 went on to college. Of these students, 37 were National Merit Semifinalists, 31 were National Merit Finalists, and 67 received letters of commendation. For the class of 2006, the mean SAT verbal score was 620 and the mean SAT math score was 650. For the class of 2013, the mean ACT composite score was 27.5, the highest in Illinois for an open enrollment public school and among the top school scores in the United States. According to an article by the University of Michigan Department of Psychology, ‘New Trier students outperform their Illinois classmates on every conceivable measure.’ The article also points out that 92 percent of the school's funding comes from the high property taxes of its affluent surroundings.”

Emanuel’s condescending embrace of a public school system his own high-striving parents would have rejected says a great deal about America’s left elite. It demonstrates yet again the liberal’s soft bigotry of low expectations.

You see, for Rahm Emanuel, it’s New Trier. For you, it’s Fenger High.

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