Regarding the part about "not wanting inner city schools to reap the benefit", that same attitude also applies to cuts and liabilities, LOL. Full disclosure: my wife and I are both teachers in Milwaukee right outside of the city in a diverse and relatively high-performing area that draws from suburban McMansions as well as housing projects, so it's been an interesting ride. I know exactly what you are saying here.
I had to laugh at some of the reactions a few years back when our governor, Scott Walker, made some massive cuts to general state aid for schools to balance a huge deficit he created through tax cuts. For a year or two, the increased contributions to benefits from public employees (aka "pay cut") were enough to offset the cuts, but by about year 3, even the well-off suburban school districts had to start cutting programs, raising fees, and laying people off to make ends meet in the austerity era. You should have seen the reactions from people in affluent suburbs, who just assumed (from a position of entitlement, privilege, and to a lesser extent, racism) that the 1.6 billion dollar cut was only going to affect the schools in the city where black and brown people live. The pearl clutching, confusion, and dismay was a sight to behold. They honestly thought they were in a safe little bubble where austerity measures would only affect "others".
Anyway, one of my issues with Duncan is he took a lot of undue credit for improving Chicago schools, when the reality was that he happened to be in charge when some of the biggest gentrification was taking place when entire poverty-stricken neighborhoods and giant housing projects were bulldozed, thus creating a diaspora of "low test scores" out of the city.
