Chicago Educational Profiteer Spotlight: Myles Mendoza!

Move aside minor plutocrats, a big hog from Denver has moved to Chicago:  Myles Mendoza!

Unlike what the corporate tran$formers would have the public believe, we teachers are not opposed to examining data,  so we examined the data on Myles Mendoza. We found the following:

• Myles scored big with a recent op-ed published in the Trib, which dishes out the usual corporate educational tran$formation horseshit, including references to "empowering [parents] with real choices," and "inadequate traditional schools."  
• He runs with an elite crew, which includes educational profiteers such as John Schoenig (Notre Dame Law School grad wearing the Catholic schools cloak), Kevin Chavous (partner in swanky Washington D.C. law firm), and Jack Buck (Notre Dame grad and scion of John Buck Co., a real-estate firm founded by his dad and engaged in winning public-sector projects) 
• His Ed Choice Illinois website is top quality, featuring cool graphics and heart-warming photos of minority kids
• On his Twitter page, Myles identifies himself soundly as bohemian bourgeois (remember readers, Bobos are rich folks who love to identify with the common man):
• "Chicagoan" (for the past four months)
• "Devoted dad and husband"
• "CPS parent" (for the past four months -- at a magnet school)
• "Indie rock fan of yore" (We're assuming Nirvana and Pearl Jam.)
• His look is kewl: tall, sorta dark, nice name, horn-rims

Based on this data alone, Myles seems very similar, if not more well-funded,  to many of the other educational profiteers sniffing around CPS.  However, a close reading of his op-ed reveals two very alarming claims:

1. "[Chicago] neighborhoods have become either rich or poor."

• This is alarming because it indicates a basic unfamiliarity with Chicago.  We realize that Myles has only been living in the city for a few months, but couldn't someone in his crew have suggested better research?  Hadn't anyone heard of middle-class neighborhoods like Beverly, Jefferson Park, Mt. Greenwood, Norwood Park, Edison Park, Wildwood, Garfield Ridge, Bridgeport, Bronzeville, or Hyde Park, just to name a few? 

2. "Key to solving Chicago's challenges is first understanding that our broken school system is not on a par with the others -- neighborhood deterioration, rising crime and unfunded liabilities -- but rather, the chief cause of them."

• The first alarming thing is Myles' use of the pronoun "our." Ideally, Myles should have put in a few years teaching in a regular CPS school before using this pronoun, as the CPS magnet school he pulled strings to get his kids into clearly isn't broken.  But we realize that actually teaching the children whose lives one purports to tran$form is not de rigueur for educational profiteers.

• The second alarming thing is the implicit claim that poverty is caused by traditional CPS schools. If we remember our history correctly, poverty has existed for a lot longer than schools have.  Even Jesus Christ worried about poverty, and He didn't have any schools nearby.  Unlike Christ, however, Myles Mendoza claims to have hit on the solution to poverty.

Based on the overall data, we at WCT conclude that Myles Mendoza is indeed an educational plutocrat, a hog-with-the big-nuts.  It would be more honorable if the new plutocrats like Myles had chutzpah in old-school Bill Beavers-style.  As it is, though, you'll have to look for Myles Mendoza in the society pages of the Chicago Tribune Magazine.