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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.

John Myers

March 15, 2010

Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration today confirmed the five representatives who will travel to Washington DC on March 17 to defend Illinois’ Race to the Top application. At stake: up to $510 million in federal stimulus dollars that would jumpstart changes to teacher evaluations and other school improvement initiatives.

Called upon to defend the state’s bid will be: Miguel del Valle, Chicago City Clerk and chairman of the state’s P20 Council, and Audrey Soglin, executive director of the Illinois Education Association. They will be joined by Chris Koch, superintendent of Illinois schools, his general counsel, Darren Reisberg and his chief of staff Susan Morrison.

March 15, 2010

Honors student with cerebral palsy waits a month for CPS bus services before returning to school in Joliet. (Tribune)

* 18 percent cut in the works for Chicago charters. (WBEZ)

* New Consortium report finds mixed results in science after a Chicago policy change made college-prep coursework the default.

More from Ed Week. Download the full report here.

* Like CPS, where sophomore sports have been slashed, other districts are trimming back on athletics. (Sun-Times)

* Budget guesswork has schools extremely anxious this year. (Tribune)

* President Obama will unveil today his blueprint for No Child Left Behind overhaul. (Politico)

 

March 12, 2010

Residency requirements for Chicago teachers are back on the Springfield agenda, this time with an unlikely sponsor.

State Sen. Heather Steans says she was able to convince Sen. President John Cullerton to extend the deadline for SB 3522, a bill that would scrap the rule requiring teachers in traditional Chicago public schools to live within the city limits. Mayor Richard M. Daley has long defended the requirement, established in 1996, as a way to try and beef up the city housing market and keep teachers close to the communities they serve.

Should Steans successfully move the bill out of the Senate Executive Committee next week, she believes it could reach a vote on the Senate floor—the first time a residency bill has done so.

March 12, 2010

Rep. Monique Davis wants violence hotline for Chicago schools; critics say its another unfunded mandate. (Chicago Talks)

House Bill 4647, which passed the House 112-1 last month and is currently awaiting a vote in the Senate, would force Chicago Public Schools to start a hotline to collect anonymous tips from people who might otherwise fear reporting crimes to the police. The hotline would be run by the Chicago Police Department, which would investigate each call.

* Marconi consolidation plans in flux. (Substance)

* Gov. Quinn starts tax hike barnstorm at Springfield school. (SJR)

* Schools must plan for bleakest of state budgets. (NYT/CNC)

March 11, 2010

Draft academic standards in math and English—the bedrock of the national common standards movement, of which Illinois has played a central role—were released yesterday. (NYT)

The new standards are likely to touch off a vast effort to rewrite textbooks, train teachers and produce appropriate tests, if a critical mass of states adopts them in coming months, as seems likely. But there could be opposition in some states, like Massachusetts, which already has high standards that advocates may want to keep.

“Many states have too many expectations in their academic standards that force teachers to cover too much in a superficial way,” said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. “We said: ‘Let’s keep these very understandable and at a number that is manageable. Let’s not put on teachers more requirements than they can deliver.’ ”

* Schools Inspector General launchs investigations into 30 Chicago high schools where grade-changing may be rampant; Mayor Daley lashes out. (Sun-Times)

* Undocumented Chicago youth come out to press for immigration overhaul. (WBEZ)

* CEO Ron Huberman’s performance management highlighted on All Things Considered.

* Hundreds protest cuts to Chicago sophomore sports programs. (ABC7)

March 10, 2010

The Sun-Times unearths thousands of changed grades at Hyde Park Academy, including more than 870 F’s that were boosted to passing marks.

Search through a database of changed grades by high school.

* Olympic Speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno visits Smyth Magnet to discourage underage drinking and push healthy lifestyles. (Sun-Times)

* BackTalk notes the need for LSC candidates.

* Gov. Pat Quinn formally unveils his budget at noon and will invite reluctant lawmakers to pass tax hikes. But Quinn’s opening salvo includes little more than cuts, loans and deferred payments to help fill an estimated $13 billion hole. (Clout Street)

March 09, 2010

The US Department of Education has released final rules for the $650 million Investing in Innovation grant, a stimulus-funded competitive grant aimed at school districts and nonprofits. (Ed Week)

* While the Supreme Court considers Chicago’s handgun ban, Mayor Richard Daley pushes statewide gun restrictions. (Tribune)

More from WBEZ.

* Students are filing college financial aid requests at a fast clip as state funding lags. Nearly 45 percent of CPS seniors have already done so. (Huffington)

* The Tribune Editorial Board applauds Urban Prep for its 100-percent college acceptance rate.

March 08, 2010

Dawn Turner Trice profiles a pre-med student who opts to teach in a South Shore elementary school instead. (Tribune)

"You know the social problems. But it's not just that," he said. "It's the school system's inadequacies. It's the budget constraints. It's the No Child Left Behind law. It's the almost exclusive focus on reading and math for standardized testing. Sometimes, it's bad administrators or a system so thick with bureaucracy it's almost impossible to get through."

* All 107 seniors at Urban Prep are are off to four-year colleges, a major milestone that drew praise and a surprise visit from Mayor Richard Daley. The school is the nation’s first all-boys public charter high schools comprised entirely of African American students. (Sun-Times)  

More from WBEZ and the Tribune.

* Grow Your Own program faces high funding hurdles in state’s fiscal crisis. (Chicago Talks)

* CPS students are plan more budget protests, this time over specific cuts to sophomore sports. (ABC7)

March 05, 2010

State Supt. Chris Koch, addressing lawmakers during a special Senate committee hearing, predicts 13,000 job cuts if state reduces education budget by 10 percent. (SJR)

Illinois Issues provides a rough breakdown of those cuts: tenured teachers, 457; non-tenured teachers, 5,826; administrators, 505; service employees, such as counselors and social workers, 402; non-certified employees, 5,194.

More from the Herald-Review and Statehouse News.

* Little Village, Julian high schoolers protest school budget cuts at City Hall. (Substance)

* News that Illinois made the final cut in phase one of Race to the Top generated lots of coverage—mostly positive, with a few cautionary notes.