catalyst-chicago.org

Chicago Public Schools has allotted nearly $47 million so far to plan and launch its transformation project in 25 schools. The district plans to spend another $35 million to expand the effort in 2008, adding as many as 20 schools to the mix and extending the effort into the upper grades in participating schools. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is footing much of the bill, giving CPS nearly $28 million to date. Next year's investments will include:

The April 2007 meeting of the Curie High School local school council began, as always, with Secretary Norma Valle taking attendance. It didn't take long. Only six members were present—parents and community representatives, all of them Hispanic. No teachers, no students, no whites, no African-Americans, no principal.

But the lack of a quorum and the absence of Principal Jerryelyn Jones wasn't much of a surprise. Calling the meeting and highlighting Jones' absence was the whole point.

Good teaching is more than just knowing the curriculum and knowing how to explain it to students, says UIC professor Eleni Katsarou. It also requires some hard-to-measure skills, such as the willingness to take risks.

But when Katsarou tried to explain that to her students, it was like she was speaking a foreign language.

"I'd tell them that they needed to be culturally responsible, and they didn't know what I was talking about," Katsarou explains. "I was speaking in vague terms."