by Josh Dwyer When Chicago Public Schools first announced that it was closing schools, the primary justification it gave was to save money – upward of $500,000 to $800,000 per school. It needed the money to address the looming pension cliff the city is facing next year. When people began questioning those numbers, CPS’s story...

by Ted Dabrowski* With a bill that blocks the authorization of any new virtual charter schools, state Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, D-Aurora, aims to slow Illinois’ move into the 21st century. Her law, House Bill 494, calls for a one-year moratorium “on the establishment of charter schools with virtual-schooling components in school districts other than [Chicago...

If you can't beat them, join them.

Making sure we identify poor teachers and have them exit the teaching profession should be of the utmost importance. This is because teachers, by far, have the single biggest impact on student success.

WBEZ in Chicago has published one of the more incomplete stories on charter schools I’ve read in a long time. It asserts: Charter advocates and even the Chicago Tribune editorial board say 19,000 kids are on charter school waiting lists in the city.

Chicago Public Schools, or CPS, announced recently that it will make a shift next fiscal year to a funding system that gives schools a certain amount of money per student instead of per position as it currently does. Catalyst Chicago, a local independent news magazine devoted to education, explains why CPS made the change: “CPS officials hailed...