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Special Education

Even as CPS opens more new schools, children with special needs have a tougher time finding options. Placements in private therapeutic schools are scarce, and some charters are reluctant to enroll them.

Linda Lenz

November 07, 2011

This article originally appeared in Gambit Weekly

When urban school systems erupt into turmoil these days, someone is bound to say: Let's do what Chicago did. Put the mayor in charge.

Oh that it were that simple.

November 15, 2010

When members of the Chicago Teachers Union went to the union polls June 11, they chose the most aggressive leadership that this union has ever had.

CTU President Karen Lewis and her crew not only are talking and acting tough on traditional union issues such as job protection, they are also passionately pursuing a reform agenda of their own, and organizing like-minded parents and community members to support it, and by extension, them.

June 10, 2009

As publisher of Catalyst Chicago, I am very pleased to announce that on July 1, Lorraine Forte will step up to the position of editor in chief of Catalyst Chicago. Lorraine has been our deputy editor for the last five years.

She will succeed Veronica Anderson, who after eight years as editor, has been named a Knight Fellow at Stanford University, one of journalism’s most prestigious honors and opportunities. She is one of a dozen members of the Knight Class of 2010.

May 29, 2009

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.”  

March 11, 2009

If Chicago’s charter, Fresh Start and other school innovations are part of a grand design to improve all the city’s schools, the folks on the ground don’t know it.

That was one of the conclusions that a recent visitor from England made after visiting one charter school (Perspectives, Joslin campus), two Fresh Start schools (Hamline Elementary and Wells High) and one turn-around school (Harper High).

January 21, 2009

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.

August 20, 2007

What the Chicago Public Schools needs is a strike—not against it by the teachers union, but for it by everyone who cares about the city's children and understands the importance of their education to the city's future.

Just imagine: Eden Martin of the Civic Committee and Tim Schwertfeger of the Chicago Public Education Fund marching alongside Idida Perez of West Town United and Mildred Wiley of Bethel New Life. The location, of course, would be the James R. Thompson Center, the Chicago home of state government.

February 22, 2006

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.

December 29, 2005

Outside Chicago, only three to four seats are filled in each school board election, and, typically, there are contested races for only one or two of those seats, according to Gerald Glaub, deputy executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards.

"It's not unusual to see no challenges," he says. "In a very limited number of circumstances, there are not enough candidates one or two each election."

Contests develop most often when an incumbent steps down, says Glaub.

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