catalyst-chicago.org

Five years ago, the Chicago Housing Authority began moving residents out of the infamous Robert Taylor Homes, a two-mile stretch of high-rise buildings saturated with crime and intense poverty.

The goal for this and other areas in the Chicago Housing Authority's Plan for Transformation: To remove concentrated public housing structures and replace them with mixed-income communities.

Signs of change abound in Mid-South. Some are as subtle as the flower-filled concrete planters that decorate the otherwise bleak landscape where high-rise public housing once stood.

Others are overwhelming. A new $65 million headquarters for the Chicago Police Department on the corner of 35th Street and Michigan Avenue. Two new buildings on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), one of them, the McCormick Tribune Campus Center, straddled by a dramatic 530-foot, concrete-and-steel tube encasing the CTA Green Line El tracks at 33rd and State Street.

Ten public schools are nearing the end of a last-ditch effort initiated by the Chicago Teachers Union to keep them open despite low test scores.

The 10 "partnership schools" were selected last spring to receive additional resources from the union and the School Board to jumpstart student performance.

Now that some 9,000 CPS teachers and support staff have passed judgment on their principals, the Chicago Teachers Union is attempting to see if the ratings correlate with school performance.

Robert Bruno, an associate professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is comparing results of the union's Principal Performance Survey to 10 years of school data, including staff attrition, student test scores and student turnover rates. Results from the new analysis are expected to be released in June.

Voucher schools unaccredited

Florida—Ten of 34 schools that received vouchers this year under an education bill touted by Gov. Jeb Bush were unaccredited, according to the May 26 Palm Beach Post. Last year, six of 24 voucher schools were unaccredited. Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings says the law does not demand accreditation. But members of Bush's own Republican party are demanding an investigation. "I know what I meant. The schools had to be accredited," said Sen. Anna Cowin, who sponsored the bill.

Reading readiness improves

Lawmakers haggle over state aid for schools

SPRINGFIELD—Despite last-minute negotiations over the Memorial Day weekend, the House and Senate remained at odds over how much to raise the basic 'foundation level' of per-pupil funding for schools and how to pay for it.

Earlier this spring, lawmakers passed a bill that would increase the level by $250. But a second bill that would pay for the increase by closing corporate tax loopholes passed in the Senate, then failed in the House by a vote of 23 to 81, despite support from House Speaker Michael Madigan.

MOVING IN/ON Terry Mazany, chief operating officer of the Chicago Community Trust, will step into the top spot when CEO Donald Stewart relinquishes the post on July 1. Stewart, who has led the foundation since 2000, will continue as president until January 2005, when Mazany assumes both titles. Mark Rigdon, formerly a senior program officer at the Spencer Foundation, has joined the Trust in a similar capacity and will be responsible for grant proposals from CPS. ... The Chicago Public Education Fund elected three new members to its board on April 29.

Como estudiante de primer año en la secundaria Kennedy, Rocio Barba sabía que era buena en matemáticas y pensaba convertirse en una técnica de computadoras. Ahora tiene el honor más alto de la clase del 2004, va en camino a la Universidad de Chicago este otoño y planifica especializarse en matemáticas. Su meta es convertirse en ingeniera.

WHO CONDUCTED IT: Robert M. Goerge and Robert J. Chaskin, Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago.

WHAT THEY FOUND: Freshmen were more likely to spend time alone, with friends or doing homework than they were to engage in structured after-school activities. They also were slightly more likely to be supervising siblings or other kids.