catalyst-chicago.org

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.

Fix another budget mess. Do something—anything?—to improve the worst schools. Curb school violence. Keep labor peace.

Almost enough to make you ask, who needs this headache?

Making inroads on these vexing problems could easily consume every waking hour of the city’s next mayor and schools chief. (As Catalyst Chicago went to press, leadership of the district was up in the air and outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley had yet to choose an interim replacement to succeed Ron Huberman, who decided to step down before his boss and was set to leave Nov. 29.)