catalyst-chicago.org

Nonprofits can do good things for kids, but if they’re not paying attention to what kids are doing in school, they’re not helping them graduate.

That was one of several admonitions delivered at a forum aimed at helping CPS and its external partners boost Chicago’s graduation rate, which ranges from an appalling 38 percent for African-American boys to 71 percent for white girls.

“There are a lot of really good programs out there,” said Elaine Allensworth, a co-director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research. “But if the people who work with kids don’t know how they are doing in class, they’re working blind.”  

For the 14 years of Mayor Daley’s reign over the school system, community organizations have picked their battles, mainly protesting something the School Board wanted to do to the schools in their own communities. 

Now they’re trying to get together to present an ongoing united front on major issues.

Over the past 10 days, almost 700 parents, teachers, students and community activists turned out for events aimed at creating citywide movements to right what they believe is wrong with the Chicago Public Schools. One event was organized by the vocal and sometimes strident critics of the school system; the other by a generally more diplomatic group.

The late G. Alfred Hess Jr. studied Chicago schools for

more than 25 years, first as a post-doctoral fellow at Northwestern University,

then as executive director of the Chicago Panel on Public School Policy and

Finance and, for the last 10 years, as director of Northwestern's Center on

Urban School Policy. Before his death on Jan. 27, he shared his insights on

school reform under Mayor Richard M. Daley with Catalyst Publisher Linda Lenz.