As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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In the News: CTU strike won't shut down all schools
By: Cassandra West / August 01, 2012
If Chicago teachers go on strike, there will be 50,000 students still in school—charter schools, that is, according to WBEZ.
One Chicago charter school opens its doors for the new year today, Aug. 1. Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean Claude Brizard will welcome students at LEARN Hunter Perkins, a self-described college-prep elementary school on the South Side, making it the earliest start date of any public school in Chicago. (Press release)
CPS chief Jean-Claude Brizard will personally call CPS parents to remind them when school starts. The date is Aug. 13 for early start schools, and Sept. 4 for regular starters. Brizard will be manning the phone bank from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Tuesday. (CBS Chicago)
High school students in the Columbia Links teen journalism and news literacy program at Columbia College Chicago are sending petitions signed by 500 youth to lawmakers to urge passage of the Obama Administration’s American Jobs Act, Pathways Back to Work (S.1861), according to Links Executive Director Brenda Butler. The petitions address the lack of summer jobs for teens. Students in last summer's Links program found that since 2010 in Chicago, 10 percent of African-American teens and 19 percent of Hispanic teens were employed, according to the American Community Survey and the U.S. Census Bureau as compiled by the Center at Northeastern University.
IN THE STATE
Two of Illinois’ largest and best-performing school systems are joining many other districts across the state this fall in offering families the choice to leave schools struggling to meet federal standards. (Daily Herald)
IN THE NATION
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo vetoed a bill on Tuesday requiring public school officials to take into account the “home life and family background” of special education students when placing them in schools, a measure that would have given religious parents more power to demand that the public pay for private education. (The New York Times)
New research sheds light on some possible reasons why experiments to pay or reward students for good test scores have been yielding lackluster results. (Education Week)
New York City teachers union’s victory in a legal fight over the city’s “turnaround” plans kept thousands of teachers schools from losing their positions, but it also put another group of teachers at risk. They are “master” and “turnaround” teachers, a cohort of experienced educators selected to put in extra hours helping their colleagues in exchange for extra pay. (Gotham Schools)
re: In the state story
The Daily Herald article titled "Dist 203, 204 offering choice for families at struggling schools," simply put is a disgrace to journalism. The article does not point out that the three schools that are described as struggling in schools districts that are among the "best performing" in our state are in fact home to the largest concentrations of Black, Hispanic, and poor students in the Naperville and Indian Prairie School Districts.
Here are the numbers as of 2011: Mill Street school in the Naperville district has 26.9% black and Hispanic students with a low income rate of 22.6% whereas in the district as a whole the percentage of black/Hispanic students is 12.5% with a poverty rate of 10.4%, Georgetown school has 39% black and Hispanic students with a poverty rate of 50.1% and Longwood school has 48.8% black and Hispanic students with a poverty rate of 50.7%. These two schools are in the Indian Prairie district 204 which has as a whole 19% black/Hispanic students (heavily concentrated by the way in just these two schools) with a poverty rate of 13.8% ( which would be much lower without these two schools).
It seems to me that any reporter considering himself or herself a journalist might consider informing their readers of these salient facts.
Rod Estvan
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