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School closings

As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.

Debra Williams

February 07, 2012

We are pleased to announce that we are resurrecting Comings & Goings to help you keep up with colleagues in the city’s broad-based education community. We welcome your help. Send announcements and intelligence about job changes, honors and other interesting items to Community Editor Debra Williams.

May 20, 2009

CPS has made Englewood, South Chicago and Riverdale priority communities for the next round of Renaissance 2010 schools for 2010-2011 and the district is looking for people to serve on a transitional advisory council for each of those communities. Council members will meet with school design teams, review new school proposals, make recommendations to CPS about new schools and host community meetings, public forums and other activities to solicit community input.

May 05, 2009

Education officials in the Obama Administration have made innovation in teaching a top priority for schools and districts that want to win their share of extra federal stimulus grants. A recent study points toward one area where innovation is long overdue: reading instruction for struggling minority students.

April 22, 2009

Kindergarten math skills are the best predictor of later school success for children, say researchers. Yet, preschool education in the United States tends to focus more on building skills for reading rather than mathematics.

Around 120 early childhood educators from around the country gathered recently at the Erikson Institute’s first international symposium on early math education, to hear educators from China, Japan, Austria and Singapore describe math instruction in those countries and to discuss strategies for improving math skills in young children in the U.S.  

“We look at everything through a literacy lens. We don’t look at what we can do with math,” said Sara Slaughter, the education program director at the McCormick Foundation, which supported the symposium.

April 22, 2009

Three years ago, Marquita Booker stood outside her home in the Edward Willis Homes, a predominantly black housing development in south suburban Robbins. A petite, young white woman walked up and asked her: “How old are your children?”

Booker eyed her suspiciously. Her son, 3-year-old Jaquari, was at her side, and baby Jaylin, almost 1, in her arms. She thought, “Who are you to be asking me about my children?”

Nevertheless, Booker answered.

April 22, 2009

Sometimes, getting children into preschool requires an early start. Take the Carole Robertson Center for Learning's Parent-Child Home Program, which works with low-income children as young as 15 months. The program, modeled on a national initiative launched in the 1960s, sends home visitors out twice a week to read to children and play with them using carefully chosen books and toys that the children get to keep.

April 22, 2009

When Myles Jones turned 3 in March, his mother began looking around for preschools because he was so bright.

“When he wasn’t quite 1, he could spell his name and he knew his birthday,” says Myles’ mom, Cherese McGee. She chose Toddler Town Day Care in Evanston, a private child care center with a Preschool for All program, because it offered instruction in the arts, science and reading. Plus, the program was a full day—a must for McGee, who is a single working mom.

April 22, 2009

A program that started out serving hard-to-reach preschoolers in the Austin neighborhood has since spread to suburbs south and west of the city.

The program brings at-risk children in home-based day care to nearby child care centers for part of the day, to give them the benefit of an early-education curriculum taught by certified teachers. The goal is to serve youngsters who are in need of preschool but are being cared for by relatives, friends or in other home settings.

April 22, 2009

In the last two years, 5-year-old Kymarria Gibbs has moved five times. She and her family lived with a relative in Indiana, moved to their own apartment while they were there, then landed at another relative’s home in Chicago. When that didn’t work out, they ended up at a homeless shelter on the South Side. Finally, in late February, the family got a subsidized apartment in Waukegan.

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