This wrong-minded logic is endemic in today’s society, where negative stereotypes of black males are pervasive. While it is true that black males can be found in the universe of students who behave badly at school, it is not at all correct to presume that all black males who are suspended or expelled from school deserve what they got.

The numbers are striking: Black males comprise 23 percent of the CPS student population but amount to 44 percent of those who are suspended, and 61 percent of those who are expelled. Black boys are the only group of CPS students whose suspension rates are higher in elementary school than in high school.

Code of conduct

CPS policy stipulates the following mitigating factors be taken into account when disciplining students:

• age, health, maturity, and academic placement
• prior conduct
• attitude
• parent/guardian cooperation and/or involvement
• willingness to make restitution
• seriousness of the offense
• willingness to enroll in a student assistance program

Suspension rates are so high in Chicago, one researcher speculates that federal civil rights officials may see reason to investigate. “Something is wrong in a school district that suspends half or a quarter of one group of students,” says researcher Daniel Losen of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California-Berkeley.

Yet schools have the power to do something about this disparity. Just a few years ago, two out of every three black male students at Dyett High School got suspended. The situation was similar at Ryerson Elementary, where until recently, black boys were suspended at three times the district average. Principals at both schools reversed the trend once they zeroed in on the problem and embraced alternative discipline and student motivation strategies that didn’t result in boys missing classes. Rather than blaming students, these educators took it upon themselves to look for ways to address behavior issues that ensured students’ academic needs were factored in.

Here’s what’s at stake: More African-American male students drop out of CPS (55 percent) than graduate (40 percent). Research shows, unequivocally, that students who are absent perform poorly, and that suspensions put students at risk for dropping out.

When it comes to punishing black male students, the district’s scales of justice tilt toward discrimination. It’s time for CPS to publicly recognize that something is wrong, and for CEO Ron Huberman to take it upon himself to address, districtwide, the paradox of black male punishment and performance.

Budgeting and management

Q: Let’s talk about money. You’re facing a pretty big shortfall.

A: Yes, we are.

Q: There’s some extra federal stimulus money coming in, but what else are you going to do to rein in expenses?

A: We’re looking at a variety of things. In essence, the classroom is off the table. Unfortunately, that means that everything else is on the table. I am not interested in an across-the-board cut. I’m much more interested in strategic cuts, which preserve programs that have the greatest benefit for our kids.

Much has been said of CEO Ron Huberman’s management acumen and his lack of experience in education. Rumors are now flying about his plans to reorganize the district and make drastic cuts. To date, nothing major has been announced, however, word is expected soon. Huberman talked with Catalyst Editor in Chief Veronica Anderson about CPS finances, his infamous performance management strategy, what he plans to do to improve teacher quality and how technology could transform learning.

Budgeting and management

Q: Let’s talk about money. You’re facing a pretty big shortfall.

A: Yes, we are.

Q: There’s some extra federal stimulus money coming in, but what else are you going to do to rein in expenses?

A: We’re looking at a variety of things. In essence, the classroom is off the table. Unfortunately, that means that everything else is on the table. I am not interested in an across-the-board cut. I’m much more interested in strategic cuts, which preserve programs that have the greatest benefit for our kids.

Q: Give an example of a strategic cut.

A: A program that has very low outcomes. So, for example, we have over ten different supplemental math programs. We are reviewing the data and what we’re learning is that some of those programs have a much greater return in actually improving math scores. We don’t want to say, "Okay, we’re going to take every math program and cut it 10 percent." We want to look at what does each program cost per student; and what is the effectiveness of that program per student. Then cut the ones that cost a lot and don’t have a lot of effectiveness.

We have teams on the ground right now [April 2009] doing that level of analysis. We hope to announce the cuts between now and June. We have not given up the fight in Springfield. The governor’s proposed budget gives us approximately $57 million in new funding. It’s the lowest funding increase since 2002.

Winning federal grants

Q: What about the Race-to-the-Top Grant that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has talked about? Is the district going to apply?

A: Yes.

Q: What are you going to pitch?

A: Well, the Department of Education in D.C. has not released the criteria yet. I flew out and I met with Arne. The areas that they’re looking for [are] more time with kids--using this money to fundamentally change the school year and the school day—and teacher quality, particularly mproving and rewarding teacher quality.

Q: Are we talking about merit pay?

A: That’s exactly right. The third area is using funding to turn around schools that are not working and it’s the controversial [strategy] of closing schools and reconstituting them.

Q: Some Race-to-the-Top money is earmarked for states. Are you working with Gov. Quinn on the state’s bid?

A: We are. We reached out and will be working directly with [the Illinois State Board of Education] to ensure that we have the right joint competitive grants.

Performance management

Q: You mentioned strategic cuts. That sounds like the performance management effort. What’s your vision for that?

A: To focus the district on being outcomes driven. It means different things in different places. Let me talk about what it means centrally. We want a system to hold the central office accountable to the schools. Every dollar we use in central office is a dollar that’s not going to a school, so we want to be as streamlined as possible. Right now, central office manages 200 programs. If you talk to our principals and teachers, they will be the first to tell you which ones they believe are most and least effective.

Q: Are teachers and principals part of this decision making process?

A: I have teachers and principals involved in everything that we do. If we’re going to fund 20 literacy coaches, we’re going to want to make sure that we have a system that judges [their] effectiveness.

Q: What are the metrics to determine, for instance, the impact of coaches?

A: We want to be able to understand and articulate quantitatively which [academic coaching] programs are more effective. We want to use data to get to the answer. School-based performance management will be different.

Q: Really?

A: Well, not different, but fundamentally what we want to do is provide better tools for teachers. We’ve been looking at a lot districts that have achieved a great deal by being data-driven. They do regular assessments of students and they give that information in real time to teachers.

Q: CPS has something like that. What about Learning First?

A: My focus groups with teachers and principals [say] we’re not there yet.

Q: What’s missing? Do teachers have the right teaching tools?

A: Let’s say you have two or three 3rd-grade math classes. Maybe what we should do is take six students from each of these math classes who are doing really well and move them to a different class that’s accelerated. Another six kids from each of these classes are falling behind, so let’s create a class for them that will really meet their needs. Good analysis with technology that does these assessments can really arm teachers with information [they need] to achieve differentiated instruction.

Another example: Let’s say a teacher teaches a two-month segment in addition, subtraction and multiplication. Two months later that teacher does an assessment and finds [students] nailed addition and subtraction. But with multiplication, students are losing it.

Q: Learning First was supposed to do that. Is no one using it?

A: It is being used, but we have a team searching for an assessment tool that can be done more consistently, in some cases monthly and in other cases quarterly. We want to focus our professional development around how you use these data-driven tools. I talk to our teachers and many of them share that they’re frustrated with professional development. Often, it doesn’t meet their needs.

We have a team on this--identifying the right assessment tools, marrying that with the right professional development, and providing the right coaching on how you use this data analysis.

Q: One criticism is that some coaches don’t have subject-matter experience or expertise.

A: That’s a problem we have to get right. We shouldn’t have coaches [who] don’t have content area expertise. What I’m talking about is, right now, we have coaches who help teachers with certain math curriculum, certain English curriculum and often that’s very general. We’d like to arm teachers with the ability to make specific coaching requests for specific areas.

Q: I see. Coaching tailored to their needs.

A: Yes. A teacher might say, "I’m not getting through so well on multiplication. I’ll request a coach to work with me on my ability to teach multiplication." We hope assessments will help teachers pinpoint more effectively for themselves where [they need help].

Student voices

Q: What about students? Can they weigh in on your plan for schools?

A: I’ve already built up a network of students who e-mail me from different schools and tell me what’s going on.

Q: Those are powerful students. Teachers best not mess with them.

A: The parents are next. Getting the unvarnished information from parents. What are we doing well? What are we not doing well? Do you like how our report card looks? What do you find frustrating about CPS? I did this at CTA.

Huberman’s top priorities

Q: What are your top three priorities? Where you want the district to be in three years or five years?

A: Can I give you more than three?

Q: Sure.

A: One is safety. I’m terribly concerned by the level of violence in our communities. It’s not happening in the schools, but it fundamentally affects our kids’ ability to learn. Another key priority for me is performance management. We want to ensure that we’re providing the best options and outcomes for our kids. Another priority is to ensure that we are recruiting and hiring the very best teachers.

Q: Does that include where they teach? President Obama and Duncan are getting governors to talk about the distribution of good teachers.

A: Yes, it’s critical. We are working on a program right now to incentivize the best teachers and get them into the lowest-performing schools.

Q: What can you share about that now?

A: Well, what we need to do is send a group of teachers [to low performing schools] so they can rely on each other for support. We’re looking at ways to do that, including bringing them in with a veteran high-performing teacher who would serve as a coach and a mentor.

One of the big issues that we have is teacher mobility. I spoke to a few teachers who were with us for two years. I asked them, "Why are you leaving?" They told me that (1) they didn’t feel supported and they felt isolated and (2) they were not armed with the skills that they needed to succeed in their classrooms and so they ended up being terribly frustrated.

Q: You’re talking about new teachers or the best teachers? It’s not quite the same group.

A: We’re talking about the highest performing new teachers and existing teachers.

Technology and learning

Q: Okay. What’s next?

A: Technology. It’s a multi-prong strategy. Here’s the vision. You’ve got Johnny, he’s a good student, right? We know that there are different ways that kids learn. We want technology to help us do a good diagnostic. Then, we want to create online programs for kids that are tailored to the way that they learn so that we progress their learning faster.

The next piece is video games. All the video games have two formulas. One is, it’s all about getting to a level and when you get to a level you get something. We would like to create an online learning program, and then when a kid gets to the next level, we give them access to something they really want. Not the games we produce, the games they want -- Wii [and] Xbox.

Q: Access to this in the classroom?

A: Some of this is in the classroom and some of this is extracurricular. This is not replacing teachers. It’s value-added. We want the graphics and the interface to be very similar to how kids play games, so they can relate to it.

What we want to then do is take all of our kids and connect them with a coach or a mentor. Think [of] social networking sites--MySpace, Facebook. We want to create a learning space online for kids who are in similar learning environments so they can help each other. We’re not talking about somewhere where they can get in trouble. This is controlled social networking. We’d like them to feel free to compete on a game front, so that the fun of the game and the fun of competing on the core academics get blurry for the kids.

Q: I’m still not clear on how this fits in the classroom.

A: It’s not for all kids. This is not meant to be a panacea across the district.

Q: So these games are for kids who are behind?

A: We’re figuring that out. For sure, we want to make this a universal, after-school, at-the-library program.

Q: So it’s not in classrooms at all.

A: It’s definitely outside of school. We believe that they also have application in the school. No one has developed this.

Q: That’s going to be expensive.

A: I think I have investors. I want CPS to be the lab to figure this out. I’ve been in touch with Facebook [and] Microsoft and they’re very interested. Not for a fee. If they get this right, the applicability is much bigger than CPS. We want to figure out if this works with an online mentor or does it have to be a teacher in a class.

Q: I see. So you’re up to four priorities. Any others?

A: I’m going to stop here.

Leading the district

Q: What about the organization chart? When you were appointed CEO, people had concerns about your not having experience in education. How do you respond to that?

A: Well, I’d say I engage educators and they’re at the table of decision making and working through everything that is critical. The people who are questioning [me], I absolutely understand their concern. I think it’s legitimate and appropriate. But I fundamentally believe CPS needs an effective administrator and manager at the top. There’s a difference between being a subject matter expert in education and translating that into the complexities of large organizational change, [and] then being able to execute it on a global scale. Those are the strengths that I bring to the table. Partnered with education folks--I value their expertise—it makes for a strong team.

Q: What’s working at CPS now?

A: There’s been great progress on improving teacher quality. There’s been great progress in school creation.

Q: What’s not working?

A: The things I’ve laid out, I’m not saying the district is not doing well or they’re not doing these things. We’re just taking it to the next level.

Improving high schools

Q: Let’s talk about high schools, specifically the district’s transformation initiative. Is it dead?

A: No, it’s not. The fundamental issue was implementation. The plan for transformation was good. How we implemented it was problematic. We’re studying what worked well and what didn’t so that we can alter the plan where we need to. Then, we’ll come back aggressively.

Q: Are you going to add another group of high schools for next year?

A: We don’t know.

Q: What about funders? They pulled the plug on evaluating the program. That’s a big signal.

A: I met with [officials at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation] about this particular initiative and I think that they agree with me that there was a problem in execution. Implementation varied by school and so that makes it very hard to evaluate.

Q: Any sign from funders that they would support the program in the future?

A: We need to signal back to them that we’re serious about this.

Q: Another important issue in high schools is truancy and class-cutting. Is that on your radar?

A: It’s very much on my radar. How you treat this at the elementary level versus high school is very different. But fundamentally, we have to make our schools more compelling for our kids.

Q: Any initial ideas on how to do that?

A: Well, yes. How we teach kids and how they live their lives needs to be congruent. I walked into a [chemistry] class the other day and we were teaching the kids about the periodic table. The teacher was having them memorize the chemical compounds. That is not a compelling class. In today’s world, what they should be doing is experimenting online, mixing chemicals virtually and trying to predict what will happen. That is a much more compelling model.

Q: What’s the context for this?

A: We are at the tail-end of the information age and we’re entering the conceptual age. The thought of memorizing something doesn’t make sense because kids can Google something and get information. You may teach kids today about reading comprehension, but the way they read is different. Kids will read books, but online they skim and they pick out information and they keep going. So what you really want to do is capture high school kids’ imagination and give them tools [to] solve their own problems. It gives them a reason to want to be in school. The social controls to keep them in school are not there.

Q: Social controls?

A: For some kids, the family is not ensuring that the kid ends up in school. The school is not providing the right social supports to keep the kid in school.

Q: We didn’t talk about your violence and safety efforts.

A: We’ll have to come back to that.

It took years, some would say decades, to get universal preschool off the ground in Illinois. So when Preschool for All got a green light three years ago, it was cause for celebration, especially among early childhood education advocates who had worked assiduously behind the scenes and on the frontlines to make it happen.

But then, a curious thing happened. In some places, shiny new preschool classrooms set up shop, and nobody came.

This has been a particularly perplexing issue in Chicago’s impoverished Englewood and West Englewood communities. A Salvation Army social service center on 69th Street and Sangamon opened two Preschool for All classrooms yet managed to fill only one of them.

Three blocks to the west, Chicago Urban Day School had a similar experience, filling only half of its 130 preschool seats. Finding ways to get the word out and persuade families to enroll their 3- and 4-year-olds has been a challenge, Director Georgia Jordan told Catalyst writer Debra Williams last fall. “We’ve put up signs, sent home notices and modified the program.”

Appearances aside, Englewood’s empty preschool seats have nothing to do with capacity. In fact, according to the most recent population data, the ratio of preschool slots to 3- and 4-year-old children is practically 1-to-1. Yet when parent organizers conducted a door-to-door survey there a couple years ago, they found a critical mass of families had not enrolled their young children in preschool because they believed that they could not afford it or that they were ineligible or that their child was not ready. Surveys conducted in the Austin and Logan Square communities yielded similar results.

Educators and advocates rallied to find ways to capture children across the state who were most in need of preschool but whose families are the most difficult to accommodate. In policy circles, this is the high-hanging fruit.

“There is no one definition for ‘hard-to-reach,’” says Judith Walker Kendrick, co-chair of the Illinois Early Learning Council’s committee on hard-to-serve children. She ticks off a few. It could be language barriers or disabilities or that a parent has depression or a drug addiction, she explains. It could be related to the availability of transportation or concerns about safety or work schedules or income levels that put full-day programs out of reach.

“It’s like an onion,” she says. “You peel it and you get all these layers.” 

One layer is Ikeda Jones, 23, who is profiled in this month’s Catalyst In Depth. She has four children under age six and, until recently, was homeless. Then there are the Rimals, recent immigrants from Bhutan who need assistance negotiating every aspect of their new life in America. And Cherese McGee, a single mother, works full-time and needs to supplement half-day preschool with full-day childcare for her 3-year-old.

All three face wildly different circumstances, but wind up with the same result—children who are not enrolled in preschool and who are missing out on the benefits of early education.

Here and there, though, are pockets of hope. One agency dispatches staff to visit parents at home and read to their young children. The idea is to get the pitch for preschool in early, and give parents some tools to stimulate youngsters’ development.

Another example: Illinois Action for Children exported to the south suburbs a West Side Chicago partnership program that links home-based childcare to preschool centers with certified teachers. The arrangement includes transportation for the children and inspires home providers to be more attentive to early learning.

Blue Island School District 130 has caught the attention of state policymakers with its intensive outreach and support to families who may otherwise fall through the cracks. Parent educators visit hospital maternity wards to chat up new mothers about early learning and the district’s preschool programs. Social workers make the rounds in public housing developments and trailer parks. Families whose children are enrolled continue to receive support that will ensure children consistently attend preschool and get the most out of it.

Such effort is far from the norm, says Kay Henderson, who heads up Illinois’ early childhood programs. “But that’s what it takes sometimes.”

That’s the mindset it’s going to take to make sure every child has an opportunity to attend preschool. In Washington, D.C., the Obama administration has signaled its commitment to early education by putting billions in funding on the table. Some of that money needs to support the extra effort required to serve the most needy. And some of the federal government’s effort needs to go into untangling financial eligibility requirements that trip up many parents.

Inspiration can come from across the globe. Consider that Helsinki, Finland, offers free or low-cost childcare around the clock, in consideration for working families.

Whatever it takes.

In his new book, “So Much Reform, So Little Change,” University of Chicago researcher Charles M. Payne lays out in no uncertain terms how everyone, from educators and parents, district leaders and politicians, education funders and, yes, the media, is at fault for a myriad number of reasons. The most basic is a failure to address what’s really happening on the ground in schools.

“[M]ost discussion of educational policy and practice is dangerously disconnected from the daily realities of urban schools, especially the bottom-tier schools,” Payne writes. “The social dimensions of the problem are still almost certainly the least well appreciated. ... Reform after reform fails because of nothing more complicated than the sheer inability of adults to cooperate with one another.”

Payne would bristle, to be sure, at the notion that his argument offers the solution to fixing schools. Problems in the most dysfunctional schools are far too complex and vast for any one solution, and in fact, he says, the quest for a silver bullet is another reason why school reforms remain stuck just past go. Payne has zeroed in on the bedrock for educational success and how it factors into every part of the equation for school success.

Payne’s barriers to school change

• Lack of social comfort among parents, teachers,  and principals
• Low mutual expectations
• Suspicion of outsiders, distrust of colleagues
• General belief that programs will fail
• Tensions related to race, ethnicity, age
• General anger and subsequent withdrawal
• Poor internal communications
• Institutional inability to learn from experience
• Negative teachers have most leverage
• Teachers’ inability to share professional information
• Touchiness, emotional fatigue
• Culture of “happy talk”

Trusting, functional relationships matter at every level. Teachers with parents. Teachers with students. Teachers with each other. Principals and all of the above. Principals and district officials. Parents and students. Parents with each other. There are many more combinations of these and other constituencies. Yet these relationships are in crisis at the worst schools—schools which also happen to serve the poorest African-American communities. Here, trust between teachers and parents is the lowest. Payne cites a survey, presented to district brass by researcher John Easton of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, which found that only 42 percent of teachers in mostly black schools strongly trusted parents, compared to 72 percent of teachers in integrated schools.

In this month’s report, Catalyst In Depth delves into the fuzziest area of relationship-building that schools must do: connecting schools and educators to the communities they serve. Principals who get it are proactive, making this one of the first orders of business. Veteran Denise Gamble, heading into her third year as turnaround principal at Medill, a Near West Side elementary school that has posted the worst test scores in the district, has had an eye on this particular prize from the outset. She knew going in that it would take a special kind of educator to work in a community beset with social ills, where students need an extraordinary amount of support to excavate and nurture their own assets. “Medill is not for the faint of heart,” Gamble says.

Across town, neophyte principal Kurt Jones has adopted his own brand of making connections with teachers, parents and students at Libby Elementary. He decided to confront a whispering campaign that, if left unchecked, could have undermined his leadership. He told parents, “I am white and gay. You are black and poor.” Then he proceeded to lay out the only option that made could lead to children’s success: Get over it and move on. Slowly, and most certainly in fits and starts, he is making progress. One parent, convinced that the school didn’t do enough to protect her son from a fight, has decided to enroll her children in a different school. Another mother, initially ticked off at how a teacher interacted with her son, cooled down and learned another side to the story. That earned Jones and his staff a measure of respect. “We have been good friends ever since,” says Lakisha Branley.

Elsewhere across the city are other signs that educators and communities are gaining respect for the power of solid relationships. Perspectives Charter Schools hired a community liaison who is well-versed in tapping and developing community assets for the benefit of its Calumet campus school and students. Logan Square Neighborhood Association has long capitalized on building solid relationships with schools in its domain, first to get relief from overcrowding, and now to raise the bar of instruction inside classrooms. Their efforts spawned a movement for other areas of the city to grow their own teachers, people who were tied to the community and would have a leg up on understanding where students are coming from.

At about the same time that Payne’s book was released, a group of prominent educators—Tom Payzant, Pedro Noguera and Arne Duncan among them—launched a national movement to reframe public discourse on what is needed to close the achievement gap. The holistic approach they advocate goes beyond the walls of traditional schools and a child’s academic needs. Among the group’s recommendations: more early childhood education, expanded after-school and summer school, in-school health clinics, and a continued push to reduce class sizes and get the best teachers for the most disadvantaged children.

Solid ideas, no doubt. And yet, if the movement is successful in getting some or all of these policies adopted, these reforms will rise or fall on the quality of the relationships behind them.

Seniors in this teaching duo’s English course are required to write a personal essay every week, an exercise that certainly gives students’ fledgling writing muscles a regular workout. But these papers also serve another purpose: providing a glimpse into students’ minds and hearts so that teachers can understand what may be helping or hurting them in school. 

Essays turned in so far this year have raised a range of social and emotional issues that students are dealing with at home:  losing a friend or relative to violence, witnessing a shooting, absent fathers, and sometimes mothers, panic attacks, pent-up anger.

The papers also shed light on who or what has helped them deal with their troubles. Grandmothers and relatives receive their due. So does spiritual faith. One student credits a leadership camp in Aspen for boosting her confidence in unforeseen ways. And, notably, a number of students say teachers help them cope.

Forming solid interpersonal relationships with students can be the toughest part of a teacher’s job. It involves not only listening and understanding where students are coming from, but also teaching them how to understand and better manage themselves. Those who are adept at this deceptively difficult task have a leg up because they understand the root causes of students’ negative behaviors and can respond in effective ways. That paves the way for students to make positive changes in how they act and their ability to focus on school work.

The value of teaching teachers and students social and emotional skills recently has begun making headway here. But some remain skeptical that it will have bottom line impact on test scores and other student performance measures.

“People often consider social and emotional learning and academic learning mutually exclusive,” says Steve Zemelman of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, who is writing a book on North Lawndale Charter students. “But the two really go together. Good teachers understand that without supporting and respecting and listening to kids, they won’t get the highest performance from them.”

It’s been four years since Illinois became the first state to set grade-level standards for social and emotional learning. Only recently has local leadership taken up the charge to put something systemic in place in Chicago’s public schools.

Researchers have linked social and emotional learning to higher student achievement and better student behavior. The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) also notes that students who participate in social and emotional learning efforts show fewer signs of emotional stress.

Now the challenge will be to persuade principals and teachers that adding one more initiative into the district’s already short school day will be worth the effort. Clearly, it’s making a difference for students at North Lawndale College Prep.

In 1995, Catalyst Chicago reported that Mayor Richard M. Daley and his takeover team had used their new power over the city’s public schools to fix budget deficits, pay for teacher raises, build new schools and launch new programs—all during the summer break.

"What a difference three months make," Catalyst observed. Fast forward to today. How much of a difference have 10 years made?

Signs of progress abound, for sure. As the numbers in this district report card will show, test scores are up, high school graduation rates are up, first-year teachers are less likely to leave and new schools are popping up all over town. In some areas, more middle-class families are enrolling their children—a trend that has long topped the mayor’s wish list.

But the burning question is: Have those years made enough of a difference? Teacher turnover in high-poverty schools is getting worse. One of every three high school students drops out. More than half of all children still do not meet academic standards.

Simply put, we’ve got a long, long way to go. On the nation’s only common measure of school performance, low-income students in seven urban districts outscored Chicago.

With so many programs spread over hundreds of schools each—reading coaches, probation sanctions, half-day preschools, high school redesign, Renaissance 2010— it is difficult to see where Chicago Public Schools will gain traction in the years ahead.

Chicago might be further along if, like Boston, it concentrated on improving smaller groups of schools, turning them into models that others would emulate. In school reform, quality is what counts.

To order copies of the Report Card, contact Maribell Ruiz at (312) 673-3866 or ruiz@catalyst-chicago.org.

Frankly, we were stunned when Associate Editor Sarah Karp first reported in the Catalyst Chicago newsroom that there were so many incoming 9th-graders registering late at Marshall High School that the freshman class nearly quadrupled within the first month.

Only 85 were pre-registered when Marshall opened its doors on the first day of school Sept. 4. A month later, on the critical 20th day, when budgets are locked for Chicago public schools, the freshman class had mushroomed to some 322 students.

Unfortunately, this is no isolated occurrence. Across the city at high schools in densely poor communities like Marshall that offer come-one, come-all admissions, a steady stream of teenagers enrolls every day—every week—amounting to thousands of latecomers through the fall and into winter.

The phenomenon makes it impossible for administrators to get a handle on how to assign faculty and spend financial resources. It also makes it tough for teachers, particularly those in core subjects, to get a firm start with instruction. Students who trickle into their classes come with a wide range of academic abilities, and those on the low end further tax teachers to help them cover lost ground.

By contrast, schools that admit students on the basis of entrance exams or lottery have stable enrollments right off the bat. At Lane Tech, for instance, where the student population exceeds 4,000, only seven students registered after the first day. That's yet another edge for a high school that already admits only the cream of the crop. Further, unlike Marshall, Lane enrolls few students who have learning disabilities.

It goes without saying that student achievement is not what it could or should be in many of the city's high schools. In fact, making failing high schools work is a top priority for the district. Some $80 million is earmarked for High School Transformation, a two-year-old project now in place at Marshall and 24 other schools. Focused largely on instruction, the goal is to raise performance for students and teachers alike. Yet, where enrollment creep is most pronounced, it threatens to undermine the fragile academic foundation of the city's latest high school reform initiative.

Those who've long been involved with public education here and elsewhere know that high schools have proven to be far more difficult than elementary schools to improve. High school reforms, especially accountability mandates for graduation and dropout rates, are the next frontier of federal legislation and funding. Over the past 10 years, Chicago's worst high schools have been the targets for a string of reforms, including student advisories, probation, reconstitution, re-engineering and converting large high schools into smaller ones. None produced significant progress.

In this special report, we explore the rollout of this effort in real time at Marshall, and measure its impact on the lives of three freshmen, each of whom brings a unique perspective and set of challenges to the table.

"Frida" is having a hard time understanding what's going on in her classes, and it takes the school weeks to find out about her learning disabilities. "Derrick" has a smart mouth—offending teachers and security guards alike—and gets suspended four times in as many months, and winds up failing all of his classes. Tamoura dreams of going to Harvard and becoming a pediatrician, but she doesn't think Marshall can get her there, and already is looking for a way out.

"The kids seem earnest, though there are some goof-offs, but they don't seem that different from kids who go to higher-performing schools," says Karp. "A lot of the teachers care about the kids. But things outside of their control get in the way of their making progress."

Research and Data Editor John Myers analyzed reams of data on high school demographics and performance, special education, teacher turnover and school level budgets. His findings fill out this year's annual school report card, as well as buttress in-depth reports on Marshall.

Together, they show the difficulties that the system itself has created for such schools of last resort but also uncover some encouraging breakthroughs.

Mayor Richard M. Daley took his best shot a year ago, when Curie High School's local school council handed him a smoking gun in the form of a questionable decision not to renew the contract of a popular and competent principal.

Mainstream media weighed in, portraying parents and community residents who served on school councils as undeserving and incapable of handling the weighty responsibility of hiring and firing principals.

District officials followed up by going to Springfield to schmooze legislators and persuade them to bite on a plan to sharply curtail LSC's authority to select principals for their schools.

One of them bit. Rep. Daniel Burke, whose South Side district is home to Curie, agreed to sponsor the bill, and then later changed his stance under intense lobbying from LSC supporters.

Since then, Board President Rufus Williams has been on a mission to zap councils' authority over principals. He reasons that they run counter to sound management practice. As Chicago Public Schools embraces the performance culture—a concept where success is measured by quantifiable results—lines of accountability and responsibility are blurred by school councils' involvement in principal hiring.

Meanwhile, the biannual local school council elections loom in April, and the district has committed less than $50,000 to candidate recruitment, an effort that in years past has garnered as much as $400,000 from public and private sources. Obviously, the private funds have dried up. They must have heard that bell, too.

The constant onslaught of negative buzz regarding LSCs has created the widespread impression that LSCs are hapless, ineffective and, at times, as the case of Curie High School seemingly illustrates, dangerous to school improvement.

Yet consider this: At a recent workshop at the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association conference, a group of principals, assistant principals and area instructional officers I spoke with talked about working with parents and communities. Not one of them expressed reservations, much less disdain, about working with councils at their schools. Many, in fact, reported positive interactions and experiences with the people to whom they were accountable.

These are credible voices, not partisan advocates who can be dismissed. But without critical mass, they are drowned out in a sea of rhetoric and isolated examples of errors and mistakes made by a few bad LSCs.

It's been more than 10 years since researchers at the Consortium on Chicago School Research surveyed nearly 2,000 LSC members at 325 schools. It's the only in-depth study of local school councils that exists. It found that LSC members were better educated, on average, than the city's population at large, and that 60 percent had at least three years of council experience.

But despite the study's myth-busting findings, co-author Susan Ryan conceded that the media had a more lasting impact on public perception. "The only time LSCs are in the newspaper is when something bad happens," she said at the time. "People have an image of LSCs as being more trouble than they're worth."

Those words certainly ring true today. And it's too bad because countless stories about the positive influence councils and communities are having on public schools are not being told.

It's time to find out the truth. It's also time for new research that authoritatively answers everyone's questions about how local school councils are doing and what impact they're having.

It's going to take cold hard facts about LSCs that speak to bottom-line results at schools to capture the attention of the performance culture gurus at CPS and City Hall.

This time, the tool is schoolwide turnaround, a strategy tested over the past couple years at two elementary schools in Englewood that involves replacing the principal, teachers and other school staff while allowing students to remain enrolled. Orr and Harper High, also tagged for turnaround, will be the first high schools to try this approach.

Despite repeated attempts, performance at Orr has remained stubbornly at the bottom. At best, only 13 percent of students at one of Orr's small schools met state standards.

September 1997: Orr is one of seven high schools slated for reconstitution, which required faculty to reapply for their jobs, and in some cases, installed new leadership. At Orr, Principal Cynthia Felton is replaced by an elementary school principal, Joyce Johnson of DuBois.

April 2002: District officials tag Orr as one of three low-performing high schools that will be broken up into small schools with funding from the Chicago High School Redesign Initiative, an $18 million effort seeded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Eventually, Orr is broken into four smaller schools: Applied Art, Science and Technology Academy (A.A.S.T.A.); EXCEL Academy; Mose Vines and Phoenix Military Academy, which moved out of Orr into a new school location.

September 2006: Mose Vines, one of Orr's small high schools, joins High School Transformation, an improvement initiative that tackles instruction and academic rigor with new curricula and teacher training.

January 2008: Orr is slated for turnaround and will be converted into a teacher training academy run by the Academy for Urban School Leadership, which is already charged with turning around two elementary schools in Englewood. All three of Orr's small high schools will be consolidated into one large school, a return its original structure.

What's it going to take for the district to move forward? You mentioned that the district has some issues. What are they?

We have to make sure we have the right levels of accountability.

Flesh that out.

We are responsible for schools. We are responsible for the achievement of students. But we don't have responsibility for everything that happens between here and there. We are not responsible for who the principals are in the school. We don't make that selection, the local school councils [do].

You want control over that?

I want to be held accountable for the things that I'm responsible for. We need to do what's best for children. And in too many cases, adults get in the way.

What else should the district address?

We have one of the shorter school days [and] school years in the country. It's frustrating. We are comparing our students to students throughout the state and the nation, and we're operating with much more limited resources.

What would you do with a longer day?

Some of it's academic. Some is even broader than that. In elementary school, we would re-institute recess. A longer school day would allow us to do more things to broaden [students'] minds.

Another issue?

We are in a global society and our children need to catch up. We need to give them a chance to participate in society, and we're not. Brown v. The Board of Education was 53 years ago. The push at that time was integration. Today, we need to focus on equality.

Explain what you mean.

We have a deferred maintenance of $4.8 billion. We have some brand new buildings. We have some buildings that are 100 years old, some of which need a lot of work. Children in those buildings are clearly not getting the same level of equality as those who might be in newer schools. Until we can get enough resources to move everybody up, you are going to find some disparities. Compare our absolute best, top, newest school to some other areas, you still don't have the same things. Some private schools [get] huge influxes of cash. They get the best and the finest. Our children ultimately have to compete with them and it's just not equitable.

So we're back to funding.

It's so fundamental.

Let's look at the big picture. There's a new schools initiative, a high school initiative, a reading initiative. There's Preschool for All. Where is all of this taking Chicago Public Schools?

It's taking us forward. If you take any one of those, they are all build[ing] a better system than what we had before.

How does that better system look?

All of our children are performing, meeting or exceeding standards at grade level in every grade. There's adequate support for all special needs. We're no longer talking about a dropout rate. I don't think they're talking about one in Winnetka. I don't want to talk about one either.

Your goal is zero dropouts?

That's my five-year goal. 100 percent of our children meeting or exceeding standards, and 100 percent of our children graduating from high school.

Some say the district doesn't do enough to prevent or recover droputs. Do you have any ideas?

We're focused on dropout prevention. [A] truly holistic approach that says we need to keep children from even considering dropping out. Success breeds success. If we can get them learning at the right levels early enough, engage parents and have parents engage their children, then we don't worry about whether a child will drop out.

Looking ahead, who should be charged with leading the district?

Rufus Williams and Arne Duncan. We're the ones who are ultimately responsible.

School superintendents and CEOs, on average, last three to five years. Arne's been here for six years. Who's next?

Arne is the horse that we're riding and that's where we are. We should all give our full support to the folks who are in place because those kinds of conversations are counter-productive.

What are your thoughts about local school councils and communities and how they should be involved with their schools?

I love the collaboration of parents and teachers, administrators and communities. Whether it's happening inside or outside the school, we need collaboration to happen.

What can it accomplish?

It can bring more resources into the school, more opportunities to students. That being said, I think that there are people who have expertise and understanding about what takes place in education, and those people should be allowed to do what works best. You know, I was the president of an LSC.

Well, then, as a former LSC president, do you think the School Board should make the decisions that you were making when you were on that council? You're not an educator, but you hired a principal.

Whitney Young has had three principals in its 30-year history.

So you had to just renew a contract.

Well, we evaluated the principal. I don't think in the time that I was there we even got to renew the contract. I'm glad I didn't do that. The process of doing an evaluation is not one that should be taken lightly. It takes training to do that effectively. I'm not convinced that everybody gets the proper training. And even if you take it, I'm not convinced that you can come [away] prepared to be able to effectively do that for what's at stake.

What do you think is the best way to work with councils?

Somebody would say [I'm] against local school councils and that's not what I'm saying. I am saying that the responsibility and the authority should go hand-in-hand. What happens if LSCs do a bad job? The children would suffer.

But children suffer when the School Board or the district does a bad job.

If we have an area instructional officer [AIO] who is consistently giving high ratings to a principal who is not a good principal, then we can do something with that AIO. If a local school council does the same thing, we can't do anything.

What would you like to see churches and community groups do around schools?

The first thing I'd like for them to do is appreciate the importance of education. It should be revered. [Churches and communities] may not be able to teach calculus, but they can certainly teach the ethic of hard work and perseverance.

How do you motivate churches and communities, educators and everybody at central office to buy into your 100 percent performance goals if you don't let them know where things stand?

We've got to tell great stories. We've got to tell them about people just like them who have achieved. And we have to show society what is real: That African-American males are as good, and in many cases, better than everybody else. That's not the story that's being told.

Well, I have to say that hair stood up on the back of my neck when I saw the test scores broken down by race and CPS African-American students were at the bottom. Why is that?

We have all these children who live in [public housing] and all they're seeing are people who aren't getting any further. At some point, if [black children] don't see the same opportunity or feel too maligned, then they don't put in the effort that they should otherwise put in.

But how do we change that?

The way Bill Cosby puts it is he says, "We got to put a body on it." That means somebody has got to be responsible for everybody. Every parent wants what's best for their child. They may not know how to get there. But those of us who know, have to teach them.

How do you make that happen?

Real Men Read was a way to take men and put them in the faces of children and say, "This is what a man is and this is what a man does." And those men, at the same time, embrace these children.

But do those men feel responsible for the children they read to?

It's happening. We had men who went back as many times as it took to finish reading a book with those children. One guy would bring in stuff for them. He would take them out. We will create programs that give an opportunity for one-on-one relationships and develop those relationships.

It's been 12 years since you've taken control of public schools, longer than any other mayor in the country. Talk about that journey: where you started, what your priorities were, and how they've evolved since then.

It's the most complex and most challenging issue facing not just Chicago but America. It deals with the federal [government], the state, the local bureaucracy. It deals with conflicting messages adults are sending to children that education's not important.

Same thing with politicians: It is an issue that, one day, it's exciting. Then it's off the top five issues of America, and that's the failure of America to understand that education will solve all these issues. Crime, homelessness, [troubled] families—all the other issues—revolve around the lack of quality education.

What is your vision then for the next four years?

The vision is to, first of all, have all the elected officials in the state say that education is the highest priority. Just think, Illinois does not have a full-day kindergarten. So, we're a progressive state. We're a blue state or whatever it is—why don't we have full-day kindergarten?

We have to rethink this whole idea of a full-day, full-year school, instead of two-and-a-half months off. If we don't, we're going to fall further and further behind other countries that have changed or will change—and other dynamic countries that are moving ahead in a much different way in education.

How does the school system motivate parents?

I think that the responsibility of the Board of Education is to motivate parents. Those who can't be motivated—we have to take responsibility for the lost children in our society and in our school system. If [parents] can't take care of them, someone should step up.

There's a pretty famous example of school improvement in Edmonton, Canada: complete transparency and accountability across the board. Given the pressure to report good news, how is it that you can motivate educators, parents, staff to do what needs to be done?

Prior to 1995, no one even knew where [students] were. The bureaucracy said you have no right to challenge this. You test children for their own benefit, for the teacher's benefit, and the parents' benefit. Find out if he or she is learning anything.

Talk about attendance. If attendance is at 82 percent for the next two months, most of those kids are not going to finish school. So simple. I think people complicate it. First of all, you look at attendance. Then you look at each evaluation. And then you find out, how much time are they really spending? Are they spending any time in their library? Are they spending any time on their homework?

If a child gets out at 1:30, 2:00 and 2:30, [it's] very challenging for them to run home and open a book. So America has to make the difference. Should they run home or should they stay in the community center, and I call the community centers school. Instead of sending everybody home, you can do cultural activities, sports. You can do your homework, technology. This is the place to benefit yourself, not the street.

Everybody should know in the community if their attendance is at 80 percent, if the dropout rate in high school is at 40 percent in freshman class, or 25 percent. I believe in transparency because it's the taxpayer's money. They should tell the truth about it. There's nothing wrong with that.

What about people outside of the ones who work for the district—the community leaders, parents, students? Do you need them on board for your vision for schools?

You need the parents and community people to really take an interest in education. Have they talked to their state representative? Have they talked to their senator? Their congressman? And I think you need parents to help their children. I mean, you have to sacrifice for your children. This idea that public schools can take care of all the issues, I disagree. And I think we have to talk about those inspiring parents that are doing those good things for their children—who many times everybody thinks they wouldn't do it.

There are a lot of big-picture reforms in the works. There's high school transformation. There's Preschool for All. There's the performance pay pilot for teachers, the streamlining of the literacy curriculum. Renaissance 2010. Where are all these initiatives taking the public schools? Are they islands of excellence or is this part of a big picture going in one direction?

They're all part of an effort to think outside the box, because public schools never think outside the box. So, you have to have people who are willing to take the time and effort and even their money to say we're going to start training principals, we're going to look to 2010.

Do after-school programs go away if you get the longer day?

No, no, because no child's going to sit in a classroom for seven hours. We all know. They have good instruction, and after that you'll have a homework program. You have a technology program. You have all types of after-school programs.

Recently, Chicago Public Schools has embraced more principal empowerment. Do you think it's important for schools and principals to have more freedom?

Oh, yeah, they chart their own course, but you can't have someone go and chart a course that has no results for a child.

So, within limits.

Within limits. Everybody has limits. The mayor has limits. You have to be able to get a good principal who understands how important their mission is. And it requires good, solid teachers that are recruited. If you don't raise standards, children will never meet them.

On the flip side, there's been a move lately to curtail community empowerment, specifically taking away local school councils' authority to hire principals. What are your thoughts about local school councils?

I think they should have a role in it, but here's your principal at Curie High School, done a tremendous job. They're throwing her out because they don't like her. Unbelievable!

Is there a better way to use local school councils or to tap their potential for getting parents more involved in schools?

Make sure that your child is getting a good education. Make sure they have homework. Make sure they're doing the homework.

So individually, LSC members can do more with children.

How about the children on the block? You'll see some kids not going to school. Raise an alarm.

So, collective responsibility.

Right, right.

Switching gears a bit, what are your expectations for the next teachers' contract?

Negotiate fairly and honestly with them. We have poured more money into infrastructure. No other city's done this. And to me, everybody has responsibilities . . . because we have to make this system a better system.

One of your goals has been to attract more middle-class families to the public schools, and there's been labor peace since you've taken over. Now people are rumbling about a strike. Are you concerned that middle-class families are going to get nervous, maybe take kids out of school?

Oh, sure, definitely. Middle-class and working-poor, yes.

Arne Duncan is going into his seventh year as CEO, longer than most superintendents of urban school districts. What would you look for in his successor?

Oh, I'm not going to look for a successor.

He's going to stay for another four years?

Yeah. I really believe that if a person has the passion and commitment and is willing to think out the box, they should stay.

What is your vision for charter schools? [Are they] islands of excellence to emulate? Or do you think there's a possibility that the cap can be raised and you can open as many charter schools and contract schools as possible?

You need competition. We're considered one of the best higher education systems in the world—we have competition. But we don't have the best in elementary and high school because you have no competition. That's the issue.

The hopes were incredibly high something was going to happen with school funding this year.

Yeah. Where are the voices of the people? Local school councils? Everybody has to be mobilized on this. It's not going to end with this session. You have to mobilize, keep mobilizing that education funding is the key.

As well it should be. This newsmagazine has reported on the more troubling aspects of the districtwide effort, notably how it has affected children who were displaced when their elementary schools were closed. Fewer than 2 percent of them transferred immediately to new Renaissance schools. The vast majority (84 percent) were enrolled, instead, in traditional schools with below-average test scores.

Other charges leveled against the plan: Not enough union teachers. Public schools are being privatized. Community control is being undermined and local school councils will eventually be eliminated. New schools get more funding and resources than traditional public schools do.

Maybe these have merit, maybe not. Who knows? The first three are matters more related to philosophy and politics than what happens to children. And until now, no one has done a detailed comparison of funding and resources.

However, an analysis by Catalyst Chicago sheds light on how the district commits and spends its capital projects dollars and whether new schools and charters are getting more than a fair share.

As critics have long suspected, new Renaissance schools are at the head of the line for facility repairs and renovations, and a disproportionate share of current renovation work is happening in schools that now house only 4 percent of all students. Meanwhile, new schools have had more renovation work completed or funded than traditional schools: 62 percent vs. 45 percent. And perhaps most telling, the district needs to spend twice as much to finish work at traditional schools: $1.21 for every $1 already spent compared to just 61 cents at new schools.

District officials say that of course these schools are getting priority. They're often empty and it's easier and safer to complete construction work when they're vacant. "We consciously prioritize these schools to get them to an acceptable level for reopening," says outgoing Chief Administrative Officer David Vitale.

Does this mean that school buildings that are "unacceptable" for Renaissance schools are just fine for children who are, or were, already enrolled in them? Are these buildings safe or, at least, suitable for a productive and healthy learning environment? No doubt most parents would answer both questions with a resounding, "No."

Decisions like these may make sense on paper, but they breed resentment and suspicions in schools and communities. Instead of pining for a $100 million capital windfall if and when state lawmakers do something about school funding, the district would better serve the public, and itself politically, by coming clean about why some schools get upgrades or new buildings and others, presumably just as needy, do not.

"It's extremely difficult for the average [person] to get a big picture of what's going on," says Jacqueline Leavy, who for years lobbied for the district to produce a comprehensive capital spending plan.

Otherwise, the public will know that good old City Hall patronage is alive and well at Chicago Public Schools.

Either way, it's pretty clear that meeting children's basic physical needs and getting a head start in developing cognitive abilities are crucial for school success. Mentioned less often, though arguably equally if not more important, are a child's social and emotional skills. Truly, how many of us adults can do our work well when distressed over, say, a family crisis?

For any number of reasons, many children who attend Chicago's public schools live very stressed lives. Joblessness, the lack of affordable housing and high-crime neighborhoods all take a toll. For some, these afflictions are aggravated by having a parent in prison.

"Andrea," for example, is subject to crying jags and, at only 10 years old, worries whether her mother will be able to pull it together and stay away from drugs when she is released from prison. "Todd" gets into fights at school and knows his father only as the man behind bars that he and his grandmother visit once a week. "Delila" has a newborn baby and is looking for a way back into high school to get her life on track. "Maxine" is repeating 3rd grade.

Still worse, statistics show that about half of the male children whose parents are in jail or prison will someday follow in their footsteps.

While the situation for these children is extremely difficult, it is not without hope. A recent study co-authored by University of Chicago economist James Heckman reports that children have until they are young adults in their 20s to learn and develop the kinds of social and emotional skills that will improve their prospects. Boys, especially, can benefit, as these traits can mitigate the odds that they'll wind up in prison by the time they're 30.

For schools, churches and other organizations that care about children, this constitutes a marching order to find ways to step in—early—and fill in the gaps. Bits and pieces of help for prisoners' children are available around the city: A couple of South Side social service agencies have mentoring programs; a dozen or so schools offer grief and loss support groups to their students.

But there need to be more such programs that offer the kind of one-on-one nurturing relationship that, ideally, parenthood brings. Mentors can be the cheerleaders, coaches, surrogate parents, positive role models and personal advocates that these children are missing.

"Seth" is doing just OK in school, but his mentor, William Glover, says he is smart and can do much better. Sounds like a father to me.

Charter school leaders have the most autonomy. They can configure their staffs any way they want, within the confines of their budgets. They can hold classes for as long as they want, for however many days or months they want. They can set and follow their own academic programs.

Yet there's not much status quo for charter leaders to shake up since these schools are built—with public funds—from the ground up, outside the bureaucratic structure and systems of the district. It's pretty much the same story for principals of non-charter schools that are being created under the mayor's Renaissance 2010 initiative. They can call more of the shots, but there's no entrenched, toxic culture to overcome.

The deal for all of these schools is that they must produce results.

Under another program called AMPS, the district has granted some autonomy to principals at regular elementary and high schools. However, these principals oversee schools that are at the top of the achievement heap, serving many children who are high-achievers.

Then there are the star principals the district tapped to turn around four schools where scores have been mired at the bottom for years. If any regular school leaders were good candidates for autonomy, it would be these. But that's not what they got.

These academic turnaround specialists did get some extra money for themselves and their schools. The district provides them with financial incentives, in the form of signing bonuses and extra cash in their budgets.

One result: When Adrian Willis arrived at Earle Elementary in Englewood—from a cushy post at Keller Gifted in Mount Greenwood—he was able to replace beat-up furniture, initiate a conflict resolution program and fill the void of social studies textbooks.

"It's a go-to when you're running short on funds during the course of the year," Willis says. "It's been real helpful."

These principals also get extra support. A SWAT team of central office administrators who will parachute in to help keep things moving forward in a pinch, monthly meetings with a mentor, periodic seminars at a highly regarded program at the University of Virginia and networking with principals from Philadelphia, Richmond and Dade County, Fla. "By far, some of the best training I've ever had," says Principal Lorraine Cruz of Ames Middle.

Yet, Cruz laughs when asked whether she has any more power now than she did before. "Oh no," she says. "We have been empowered with tools and resources to right the wrongs."

Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the bold step of offering every principal in the district an opportunity to run their schools more autonomously.

Financial incentives, including a promising measure to reward principals for moving kids from the lowest-scoring quartile on tests to higher ones, are buttressed by freedom to set curricula and schedules, and make a host of other educational decisions.

Bloomberg gets it. Autonomy should be about performance, not perks. Daley and Duncan don't, at least not yet. Is there a method to the madness of school autonomy in Chicago? The city's scattershot approach will likely render scattershot results, and no one will know whether they've been effective.

Some elementary schools were at the top, admitting only the smartest students, those who arrive at kindergarten or 1st grade ready to read or already reading, having a couple years of preschool under their belts.

Classrooms were safe and orderly. Teachers were experts in their subjects. Parents had enough time and money to get involved. There were only a few schools like this, but they performed well, posting high test scores.

Some schools were in the middle. They admitted any child, some smart, some needing to catch up. These children came from a variety of ethnic, economic and educational backgrounds, and in schools where they were together, they were able to learn from each other. Test scores at these schools were not as high as those at top schools, but they weren't bad either.

Then there was a large bunch of schools at the bottom. These schools admitted any child who lived in the community, but unlike students at schools in the middle, nearly all of the children at these schools needed extra help in school or at home. Sometimes they were unruly. Classrooms were in disrepair. Teachers were not experts in their subjects and often didn't stick around for much more than a year. Test scores were dismal.

Leaders of the school district were not happy. They wanted every child to pass reading and math tests, so they figured out a way to try to get every school to be like the top schools. They organized schools into groups based on where they were located and created area instructional offices to provide academic support.

Area instructional officers would coach principals; subject area coaches would work with teachers. Everyone would do a better job, and lots more students would learn and do better on tests.

Two of the area offices—known as Area 4 and Area 14—started out about the same, each with a lot of schools at the bottom and led by an area instructional officer who had proven him or herself a