School Reform in Chicago
Lessons in Policy and Practice
Edited by Alexander Russo
In 1987, The U.S. Secretary of Education embarrassed the city of Chicago by calling its public schools the worst in the nation. Chicagoans may have been tempted to brush off that observation as heavy-handed Washington bluster. But, the secretary was only repeating what civic leaders, educators, parents, and students there already knew: the city's schools were failing, and they desperately needed fresh resources, organization, ideas, and purpose.Over the next decade, Chicago underwent the most ambitious school reform effort in history, becoming a huge laboratory for school reform innovations in areas such as governance, leadership, accountability, and community involvement. Along the way, there were many notable successes, spectacular flops, and lessons learned.
In highlighting the key issues and dynamics of Chicago's reforms, this book identifies challenges and solutions that are applicable to other school systems. For example:
- Former accountability czar Philip J. Hansen discusses controversial school accountability and intervention initiatives.
- Ken Rolling, former head of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, reflects on how privately funded school reform efforts can succeed if they overcome some chronic problems.
- Andrew G. Wade and Madeline Talbott show how parent and community involvement can support school improvement.
Praise:
"Like Chicago itself, this volume is provocative, even contentious. Key players in Chicago's reform efforts show that sweeping school-governance changes, though exhilarating, can spur makeshift and ill-considered responses. Quick-fix advocates will be challenged, but the undaunted Chicago reformers who speak out in these pages offer hard-earned lessons that no policymaker should ignore."
-Dorothy Shipps, Teachers College, Columbia
"This is the best-told story of a major urban school system's 15-year struggle to dramatically improve student achievement. It examines key aspects of big school district reform thorugh the savvy voices of the activists, practitioners, policymakers, researchers, journalists, politicians, and unionists who have intimate, 'warts-and-all' knowledge of the process."
-Peter Martinez, Director, Center for School Leadership, University of Illinois at Chicago