It was huge news in the summer of 2013. Chicago Public Schools, or CPS – one of the largest school districts in the country – had just voted to close almost 50 schools in an effort to right-size the district and eliminate wasteful spending. This meant thousands of CPS students would be attending new schools...
THE PROBLEM More than 21,000 students in Chicago Public Schools, or CPS, are being left behind. They are attending schools that fail to prepare them for life. A majority of students attending the lowest 10 percent of elementary schools and high schools in Chicago don’t have basic competence in reading, science and math. They’re significantly...
Every year, thousands of struggling Chicago Public School, or CPS, students are sent on to the next grade despite the fact that administrators and teachers know they aren’t ready – and they are destined to fall further behind. Research shows that promoting students before they are ready can have devastating long-term effects. In fact, unprepared...
Chicago Public Schools, or CPS, has been getting special treatment from the state for almost 20 years when it comes to funding for special education, transportation and nutrition programs. According to a recent report in the Belleville News-Democrat, CPS received $607 million in a special block grant from the state last year for these programs...
School districts across Illinois waste more than $941 million a year by giving raises to teachers who earn their master’s degrees, even though most studies show these degrees do nothing to boost student achievement. In fact, even U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan thinks this is one of the worst ways to spend money in...
Illinois school districts and administrators want to keep parents in the dark. That’s why the Illinois State Board of Education is refusing to do a full release of results from a survey about the inner workings of the state’s public schools. The state paid $600,000 to Chicago Consortium on School Research to conduct the survey,...
A system where parents control the flow and distribution of money empowers families to hold schools accountable.
The Philadelphia and Chicago school systems are both in trouble. Decades of mismanagement have left both districts in financial free-fall. Philadelphia has a $304 million deficit. It has already taken some steps to address it – closing 24 schools this summer and laying off more than 4,000 employees, including almost 700 teachers. District leaders tried...
Kyle Olson Publisher, Founder and CEO EAGnews.org America is supposed to be about freedom. One of the founding principles of our country is that we are naturally endowed with the inalienable right to choose how we want to live our lives. We drive the cars we want. We shop where we want. We live where...
It’s becoming clear that teachers’ union bosses are doing a lousy job representing the best interests of their members. Case in point: Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis. Not only did she organize a strike and agree to a contract that she knew would cost thousands of her fellow union members their jobs, but she...
The Department of Justice is seeking a federal court order to halt Louisiana’s school voucher program. The order would apply to school districts still under federal desegregation supervision. Arguing that the implementation of the voucher system has caused “school wide racial demographics to stray further from district-wide percentages,” the DOJ seeks to put the program on hold...
On the same day he gave a speech celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s life on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder instructed the Justice Department to file a motion to prevent 34 predominantly black school districts in Louisiana from allowing families to utilize the state’s voucher program. And the Justice Department’s reasoning...
As the 2013-2014 school year begins in Illinois, results from last year’s standardized tests reveal that public schools across the state have a long way to go in improving education outcomes. Recent scores showed that: Overall, only 25 percent of the state’s juniors were considered college-ready in all four subjects last year – the exact percentage as...
The lowest-performing public school students are the most likely to use and benefit from school choice programs according to a new study on Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program. In fact, 27.9 percent of students who participated in the program were in the bottom fifth of their prior public school’s mathematics test score distribution. These findings fly in...