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School closings

As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.

elementary and K-8 schools

November 29, 2006

Seven months on the job, and Area 14 Instructional Officer Jose Torres has quite a task ahead of him. Until last year, most of the 26 schools he oversees had shown little or no progress for more than a decade.

Torres—who, as a fellow with the prestigious Broad Superintendents Academy, was mentored by Thomas Payzant, a noted innovator who led Boston Public Schools for more than a dozen years—says he is up to the challenge. His own early struggles with learning English and changing schools frequently taught him lifelong lessons in hard work and discipline.

November 29, 2006

Three years ago, McAuliffe Elementary in Hermosa, had a bad reputation. Students were unruly, fear and mistrust were rampant among staff and the community was not involved. Academic performance was poor. By 2004, McAuliffe had landed on probation.

Later that same year, the local school council ousted the principal and decided to hire the assistant principal, David Pino, who was also the school's disciplinarian, to take his place. The area instructional officer, who is charged with making sure schools perform well academically, was alarmed.

November 29, 2006

Maria Cruz was thrilled when the local school council at Moos Elementary chose her to replace the principal who retired last year. With 18 years under her belt at the West Town school—as a math teacher, then as a math and bilingual coordinator and, most recently, as assistant principal—Cruz knew the staff and the students well.

She also knew that something needed to be done to boost students' academic performance, especially in reading, and to get the school off probation, where it had landed the previous year. The problem was that she wasn't sure how to do it.

November 29, 2006

Walkthroughs are a staple of any area instructional officer's job. The practice is simply what it says: Area instructional teams walk through a school, visiting classrooms and taking note of students' work and how teachers are teaching.

From this, AIOs are able to pinpoint what's working and where improvements are needed. Afterward, the team writes a report and discusses it with the principal, who weighs the team's recommendations and determines which ones the school will implement.

November 29, 2006

On a few occasions, when Olga La Luz began doing school walkthroughs as a new area instructional officer, she would see something in classrooms that made her cringe. Or rather, it was what she didn't see: real learning.

Kids would be writing and rewriting spelling words or filling in worksheets, while the teacher sat at his or her desk, reading or grading papers.

Right then and there, she would pull the teacher aside and, in a quiet, halting voice, ask, "What do you think the students are doing?"

October 26, 2006

When Janet House became principal of McCorkle Elementary, she faced the challenge of jump-starting a school with rock-bottom test scores, uninspired teaching and high mobility.

House was appointed to replace a principal who was ousted under the district's first intervention initiative.

"There was no real instructional program going on," says Philip Hansen, who visited McCorkle as director of intervention. "Everyone worked in isolation. The upper grades were tumultuous in the halls, in the classroom. It just was a mess." (Hansen now works for Princeton Review.)

October 26, 2006

When Marsh's local school council hired Gerald Dugan as principal in 1990, his reputation as a skilled administrator and his Spanish-speaking ability were key selling points.

The South Deering school served a Mexican immigrant community, but only one previous principal, who stayed just a short time, spoke the language. Dugan, then a district administrator, had the right credentials and impressed the search committee, recalls teacher Judith Mims, who was on the LSC.

October 26, 2006

When Janice Rosales was appointed to take over Peirce Elementary, she became the school's fourth principal in three years—and at 34, the youngest. By the time she left 17 years later, the school had made a steady climb out of the academic basement with better discipline, new staff and a restructured school day.

Her hand-picked successor, Paula Rossino, continues to build on the foundation laid during Rosales' tenure. Now, Peirce has begun to draw more middle-class parents from the surrounding Edgewater neighborhood, although the school remains high-poverty.

September 13, 2006

At the North Kenwood Oakland campus of the University of Chicago charter schools, even the preschoolers are tech-savvy: Using a simple drawing program, they learn to work a mouse and refine their fine motor skills in the process.

In kindergarten, children listen and follow along onscreen as the computer reads to them. They also practice spelling by clicking on and dragging letters to form words.

In 1st through 5th grade, students use computers to write reports, graph the results of experiments and conduct research.

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