catalyst-chicago.org

When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the new $500 million Early Learning Challenge Grant competition in late May, educators weren’t the only ones who joined him at the event. Duncan was accompanied by an array of leaders from outside the education world who endorsed Duncan’s call for increasing investment in early education.

Rasheed Jackson is one of hundreds of young children who have fallen through the cracks of special education in Chicago Public Schools: His evaluation for services has been severely delayed, far longer than federal law allows.

In his case, three years longer.

“He talks like a baby,” says Rasheed’s mother, Shavon Kalfus. “If he had the help prior to age 6, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

When Lorenzo Russell walked into West Garfield Park’s Ryerson Elementary School in 2007, the impeccably dressed, soft-spoken man got a sinking feeling. The walls were pale beige and had no bulletin boards. The hallways were noisy and chaotic. Stretched across one wall were old class pictures in wood frames, many showing boys with bowl cuts and girls with blond ponytails. The pictures were an obvious disconnect from the students—most of them black, save for one or two Latinos.