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Arts programs don't magically raise test scores, but they can level the playing field for kids of differing academic abilities and teach students skills, like the ability to work cooperatively, that transfer to other life situations, says David Roche, who heads the new arts office created last summer in partnership with the non-profit Arts Education Initiative. Roche has hired curriculum supervisors for music, visual arts, and theater and literary arts and is now working on blueprints for arts programs. Roche talked with writer Rebecca Harris about the importance of arts education.

School districts across the country are facing pressure to improve classroom performance under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, but are giving short shrift to problems like bad lighting or poorly heated classrooms that can affect learning, says a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers.

"It's a topic that doesn't get nearly enough discussion in the education dialogue," says spokesman George Jackson. "We don't talk about the [buildings] where we expect students to go and hit all these [legislated] benchmarks. It can't be a separate conversation."

Your March 2007 article ("National funders spur grassroots reform") on the demise of two school advocacy groups—Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform and Neighborhood Capital Budget Group (NCBG)—fails to acknowledge their many accomplishments and unfairly paints them (and surviving groups such as PURE) as negatively "stuck on governance," and not "results-oriented." It seems to embrace a limited vision for school improvement which has little objective support.

Last year was a stressful one for O'Keeffe Head Start teacher Jeanine Pelican. At home, she watched helplessly as a beloved family member battled a terminal illness. At school, she attempted to corral a classroom of 20 high-energy 4-year olds, many of whom exhibited behavioral problems and were difficult to teach.

"It was a very rough year for me," recalls Pelican, who has been teaching for 10 years, first at a Catholic school, then at child care centers, but for the last five years at O'Keeffe Elementary in South Shore.

Anthony Downing, young and energetic, has no problem working weekends, evenings and summers to push and cajole Schurz High School students to go to college.

Downing is exactly what CPS officials were looking for when they posted jobs for college coaches: someone who has worked with teenagers and knows the logistics of getting them into college, yet is less costly than a certified guidance counselor.

But the investment has taken a toll, according to researcher James Rosenbaum.

AT CLARK STREET M. Hill Hammock, retired chief operating officer for LaSalle Bank, has been appointed chief administrative officer, replacing David Vitale. Hammock will be responsible for all non-educational activities, including finance, real estate, technology, and support services. Unlike Vitale, who earned a token salary of $1 a year, Hammock's salary will be $170,000. Vitale will remain as a senior advisor to CEO Arne Duncan.

Chicago would get 15 new charters, but have limits placed on expansion campuses of existing charters, under proposed legislation crafted by Senate President Emil Jones Jr. and the Chicago Teachers Union.

At least three of the new charters would be required to serve chronic truants and dropouts, an idea hatched by legislators who recently visited several such schools in California.

An 11th-hour effort by Chicago Public Schools to take away local school councils' authority to fire principals has failed to move forward in the Legislature this session.

Although CPS started quietly shopping its idea to state lawmakers in mid-April, district officials waited until May 25—days before the scheduled end of the spring session on May 31—to offer up a formal legislative proposal.

Now that the Illinois Legislature is in overtime, organizers from A+ Illinois, the coalition of groups that support an overhaul of state school funding, are working to gauge support among rank-and-file lawmakers for a marginal income tax increase to support education. Ryan Canney, deputy campaign manager and field director for the group, talked with Catalyst Springfield correspondent Aaron Chambers about the group's strategy in the overtime session.

A: How do you define a marginal income tax increase, and what have been the results of your talking to legislators?