catalyst-chicago.org

This month, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision on racially separate schools, you have to wonder what Justice Thurgood Marshall would say about student retention if he were alive today.

Last October, Chicago teachers authorized a strike after rejecting a proposed five-year contract that was backed by their union's leaders. Anger over the contract's length and health care costs fueled the rejection.

In late November, they approved a revised package by just 2,503 votes (15,289 to 12,786), locking themselves into a four-year pact but winning 4 percent annual pay raises.

Dissatisfaction lingered, sparking a three-way challenge to union President Deborah Lynch in the upcoming May 21 election. If no candidate wins a majority, there will be a two-way runoff.

Texas: Sin taxes

Republican Gov. Rick Perry is facing opposition from his own party over his plan to increase sin taxes to pay for education, according to the April 24 Houston Chronicle. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst both oppose the idea, and the GOP-controlled Legislature isn't jumping on board with Perry. The governor wants to cut property taxes for more affluent homeowners while increasing cigarette taxes, imposing an admission tax on topless bars and expanding video gambling to racetracks.

California: College prep

SPRINGFIELD—The Illinois legislature has approved a bill designed to increase the number of teachers in high-need schools by recruiting parents and teacher aides.

MOVING IN/ON Former state Sen. Arthur Berman has been appointed to Gov. Rod Blagojevich's Education Accountability Task Force, which will have input into restructuring the state Board of Education. Berman is a legislative policy advisor for CPS. Click here for a complete list of task force members. ... The International Reading Association has elected University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) family literacy expert Timothy Shanahan as its vice president. Shanahan, professor of urban education at UIC, will serve as the association's president-elect in 2005, and as president in 2006.

La mitad de los estudiantes forzados a repetir un grado bajo las normas de promoción de la Junta Escolar se concentran en 100 escuelas de la ciudad. No es sorprendente que estas escuelas sirven a un número desproporcionado de estudiantes en desventaja. Pero aún en las comunidades más pobres, algunas escuelas tienen éxito a pesar de las predicciones y terminan reteniendo muy pocos. La elemental Beethoven cerca de los Hogares Robert Taylor es una de estas.

Every year since 1996, the School Board has revamped its promotion policy in an effort to raise standards while retaining fewer students. Some changes raised the bar for promotion, while others created loopholes and second chances. Extra supports for retained students have come and gone, some with little effect. Here are strategies the board has tried:

Revised requirements

Raising the bar. The School Board raised the cutoff scores required for 8th-grade promotion to high school every year from 1997 to 2000. Pass rates were fairly stable until 1999 and then dipped.

Students who fail to meet minimum standards required for high school admission and are too old to remain in elementary school (age 15 by December 1) are enrolled at their regional Academic Achievement Academy.

The seven achievement academies are housed at Senn, Westinghouse, Crane, Tilden, Robeson, Chicago Vocational, and Julian high schools. (Initially, there were nine free-standing centers)