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The Next Mayor

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Fall 2010

After 15 years under Mayor Daley’s control, a regime change is in the works for Chicago Public Schools. Here’s what the next mayor and schools chief need to know about where schools stand and what direction they need to take.

Table of Contents

Still not good enough

Sarah Karp

On the eve of a February meeting where the death knell was set to sound for five Chicago schools, CEO Ron Huberman granted Paderewski Elementary on the West Side an 11th-hour reprieve.

The decision had nothing to do with education or finances. Instead, Huberman said he changed his mind after walking to Mason Elementary, where Paderewski’s students would have been sent. Mason wasn’t close by, but had higher test scores than Paderewski. Huberman had promised not to repeat the mistakes of the past: closing one bad school only to send students to another one.

On his walk to...

governance, testing and accountability
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New union, new day

Linda Lenz

When members of the Chicago Teachers Union went to the union polls June 11, they chose the most aggressive leadership that this union has ever had.

CTU President Karen Lewis and her crew not only are talking and acting tough on traditional union issues such as job protection, they are also passionately pursuing a reform agenda of their own, and organizing like-minded parents and community members to support it, and by extension, them.

“Our members want a union that will protect teaching and learning,” says Lewis, a National Board Certified teacher who taught chemistry at...

teachers union
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Drama in their lives

Sarah Karp

As a sophomore at Kenwood Academy, Ka’la Shepard faced a storm of adverse circumstances. She was pregnant, her mother had lost her job as a medical technician and their home was in foreclosure.

School faded in importance. “I found myself trying to help my mom by making money, doing things I shouldn’t have been doing,” Ka’La says, careful to avoid specifics about what she did.

When it was time to wake up and get to class, Ka’la was too tired, from work and from the emotional burden of everything going on in her life. She skipped school—once, twice, and then so many times she...

community involvement, dropouts, foster and homeless children
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A holistic approach

Lorraine Forte

Commander Anthony Carothers, a veteran cop with a brisk manner, strides into a conference room at 7th District police headquarters in Englewood, where he and several of his officers are slated to meet with principals from some of the neighborhood’s three dozen schools.

“My whole goal is to get ahead of things,” Carothers says to the group. “If you have events in the evening, we need to know about them so we can have the manpower out there.”

“We want to get to the day when we don’t need any officers in the schools,” he continues. “But today is not that day. Today, we want to...

safety
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Letter From the Editor

Facing a critical juncture

By: Lorraine Forte

Fix another budget mess. Do something—anything?—to improve the worst schools. Curb school violence. Keep labor peace.

Almost enough to make you ask, who needs this headache?

Making inroads on these vexing problems could easily consume every waking hour of the city’s next mayor and schools chief. (As Catalyst Chicago went to press, leadership of the district was up in the air and outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley had yet to choose an interim replacement to succeed Ron Huberman, who decided to step down before his boss and was set to leave Nov. 29.)

Fix another budget mess. Do something—anything?—to improve the worst schools. Curb school violence. Keep labor peace. Almost enough to make you ask, who needs this headache? Making inroads on these...
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Sidebar

Advice from teens

By: Lorraine Forte

A cross-section of high school students talked to Catalyst Chicago about strategies to prevent school violence. Here’s a sample of what they said.

START EARLY

A cross-section of high school students talked to Catalyst Chicago about strategies to prevent school violence. Here’s a sample of what they said. START EARLY “Start teaching kids at a young age that...
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Letters From Readers

More clarity needed on school turnarounds, but article muddies the waters

By: Elaine Allensworth

I am writing to express concern about the Nov. 20 article in the New York Times "A Dilemma for Schools Seeking to Reform," which quotes me at length and cites research by me and my colleagues at the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. [Editor's note: An extended version of the New York Times article appears in the Fall 2010 issue of Catalyst In Depth.]

I am writing to express concern about the Nov. 20 article in the New York Times "A Dilemma for Schools Seeking to Reform," which quotes me at length and cites research by me and my colleagues at the...
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