Current Issue

School closings

As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.

Sidebar

December 18, 2008

Kareem Manuel is the leadership and activism coordinator for the Mikva Challenge. He also facilitates the Peace and Leadership Councils at Orr High School and Al Raby High School.

Mr. Manuel joined Mikva in 2007 and has been working with youth on Chicago's West Side for more than five years. Currently studying youth work at Harold Washington College, he attended Chicago public schools Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep and Beasley Academic Magnet.

kareen@mikvachallenge.org

December 18, 2008

Michael Woolley is an assistant professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and a noted researcher on how neighborhood social factors impact schools, the effects of violence on children, and what schools, teachers, parents and kids can do to develop student resilience and positive social cultures in school.

Dr. Woolley also has taught at the University of Michigan and the National Institute of Mental Health Research Center on Poverty, Risk and Mental Health.

December 16, 2008
By: Amy Weiss

Chicago’s graduation rate improved under the administration of Arne Duncan, but high school test scores did not. Elementary school test scores soared, but much of the gain was due to changes in testing procedures.

Chicago’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose, but for the most part, Chicago’s standing among the 11 urban districts participating in a national comparison did not. The NAEP rankings below are for low-income students in the districts.

November 21, 2008

Below are some of the questions from the audience that there wasn’t time to address. The answers come from the from the speakers and series organizers. Please continue the conversation by adding your comment at the bottom of this Q&A.

1. Is the research on the five essential supports for school improvement truly groundbreaking? 

November 17, 2008

Penny Bender Sebring is a founding co-director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) at the Urban Education Institute, University of Chicago. CCSR is dedicated to informing and assessing policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools. Dr. Sebring is the lead author of "The Essential Supports for School Improvement," published by CCSR, and co-author of "Charting Chicago School Reform: Democratic Localism as a Lever for Change."

November 17, 2008

Charles M. Payne is the Frank P. Hixon Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and a member of the University's Committee on Education. His most recent book is "So Much Reform, So Little Change," which examines the persistence of failure in urban schools.

November 13, 2008

In the past four years, three new elementary schools and three small high schools have opened in Austin. But the new schools have barely made a dent in that community’s need for better schools.

In 2004, a study by the Illinois Facilities Fund found that Austin had the largest gap in the city between the number of seats available in good schools and the number of children who needed them: 20,000. Austin ranked second among Chicago communities in its need for better high schools, and third in the need for better elementaries.

November 07, 2008

There is a growing body of research on school choice but little hard evidence that it benefits students or spurs school improvement.

“There is an enormous amount that we still don’t know. It is pretty hard to study and the evidence is encouraging but not definitive,” says Brian Gill, co-author of “Rhetoric vs. Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know about Vouchers and Charter Schools.” Gill is a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

November 07, 2008

The district’s free-for-all system of school choice may be on its way out, but there’s no guarantee that families will be better able to navigate through the maze of options.

James Dispensa, director of school demographics and planning for CPS, is researching how best to set up a central admissions system, which would dramatically simplify choice by allowing families to fill out just one application and then rank their school choices. New York, Seattle, Boston and Miami-Dade County are among the districts that already have such systems.