Wednesday, October 9, 2013

How to spot a Chicago educational profiteer



Social class:  bohemian bourgeois

Ride:  hybrid

Crib:  North side or hip neighborhood made edgy by population of orderly immigrants

Husband:  attorney (not store-front), professor (humanities), consultant, IT start-up

Education:  advanced degree from highly selective institution

Clothing:  urban chic;  Etsy + Patagonia

Hair:  tastefully tousled; trim + color touch-up every 6-8 weeks

Nails and brows:  done

Handbag and shoes:  no less than 400 dollars, darling

Cosmetics:  tasteful department store

Affect when trying to appear friendly:  breezy, whimsical

Affect when engaging in corporate edu-speak:  intense, joyless, steely

Fav corporate lingo:  excellence, high expectations, people of color, norms, contextualize, codify, synergy, college-ready, data, socialize, protocol

Secret thoughts about teachers:  “Nice pants. Kohl's must be having another sale.”  “Jesus, can’t she trim her cuticles?”  “What is she eating, her kid’s Lunchable? Gross.”  “Here we go, another fucking conversation about the broken copy machine.”   “Good point, Einstein.”


Salary Philosophy:  Earning 150K in sales?   Vulgar money-grubbing,  darling.  Earning 150K through educational profiteering?  A win-win combination of spiritual profit by modeling and promoting  excellence plus the secondary benefit of earning a corporate salary.

7 comments:

  1. OMG! LOL- "orderly immigrants..."

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  2. wow, these types are all over New Orleans too! It's a plague of them.

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  3. We in L.A. have our own variety + throw in people of color who climbed up the social ladder while stepping over their peers back home, moved out and only return for fund raisers and photo ops with the local kids ("pets").

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  4. One must remember darhling, that one has to advance one's standing by doing good! So long as the consequences are not in my back yard! Trouble is we need teachers otherwise I won't have anyone to patronise - how awful that would be!
    Steve Flatt liverpool uk

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  5. Please read this article by a recent Colorado transplant (he's in ed reform and his wife is in medicine)...you seem to have described them to a T: http://tinyurl.com/oftktxvU
    I love how his tag at the end says CPS parent...for 4 month at the magnet school of his choosing that is!

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  6. Thanks for the tip on this self-described "Chicagoan"! One of his patrons appears to be the honorable and virtuous Rupert Murdoch, who we all know cares deeply about poor urban kids.

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  7. You got Minneapolis reformers right on the nuts.

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