catalyst-chicago.org

CEO Jean-Claude Brizard challenged a Chicago Urban League audience on Monday to become more forceful advocates for better education, in order to close the widening achievement gap between minority and white students in CPS, especially African Americans.

When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the new $500 million Early Learning Challenge Grant competition in late May, educators weren’t the only ones who joined him at the event. Duncan was accompanied by an array of leaders from outside the education world who endorsed Duncan’s call for increasing investment in early education.

It’s a practice that just won’t die.

Study after study, researcher after researcher, has made the same point: Holding students back when they are not achieving at grade level does not help them academically.

Still, the idea resonates with the public. And outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley garnered praise for instituting a ban on social promotion in 1996.

Now, like an aging, punch-drunk prizefighter who just won’t give up and leave the ring, the district’s promotion policy remains alive, if not well.