More Chicago Style Going D.C.

I doubt that most Americans expected that the Change coming to D.C. with the new administration would be the extension of the Chicago-School of getting things done, with more Chicago personalities going into the White House--the Chicago connections continue to dominate the national news. So today Chicago School's Superintendent Arne Duncan was named as Secretary of Education. (He plays basketball with the President Elect.) So the Chicago-style of education will get a shot at national policy. The reputation of the Chicago Public Schools isn't very good. Also, President-elect Obama was chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education reform project aimed at improving Chicago public schools.

By December 31, 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge had identified and certified $110,643,651 in matching funds....

While the controversial figure William Ayers, a founder of the Chicago project, came up fairly often in the late presidential campaign, I was more curious about why no one, including Obama, ever pointed to any positive results in education reform here in Chicago whenever education was discussed or debated. He was criticized for being just a community organizer, but the Challenge was a funded project in an important area of civic concern. Why didn't he promote the achievements of the Challenge?

I can only conclude that the money and the effort produce no significant results. I am not the only one.

An August 2003 final technical report of the Chicago Annenberg Research Project by the Consortium on Chicago School Research said that while "student achievement improved across Annenberg Challenge schools as it did across the Chicago Public School system as a whole, results suggest that among the schools it supported, the Challenge had little impact on school improvement and student outcomes, with no statistically significant differences between Annenberg and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain, classroom behavior, student self-efficacy, and social competence." (original source)

So, while I very much want to see education of our children improve, the selection of Arne Duncan doesn't give me any reason to expect much, nor does the experience of his new boss in the White House with education reform (despite having money to spend) give me much hope for real change. Having lived in Chicago since 1972 and having raised 6 children here (5 in public schools), I expect the only change will be Chicago-style business as usual writ large on a national scale, where they will have more money to spend. I sincerely hope I am wrong about this. 

Comments

[Judy K. Warner]

From what I've read, the real purpose, as opposed to the stated purpose, of the Annenberg challenge was to inculcate a leftist world view and political activism into public school students. I'd like to see a study that measured that outcome. Probably very successful.

[Boonton]

Well, from the Exec. Summary of the report the challenge impacted 210 schools, 90% of them elementary. So for $110M that works out to about $523,809 per school. That's a good amount of money for an individual but according to http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:eFzuNzRVTkIJ:www.cps.edu/SiteCollectionDocuments/Citizen%27s%2520Guide%2520Budget.pdf+average+budget+of+a+chicago+elementary+school&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us they give an example of 461 students per elementary school. That translates into $1,136.24 per kid.

But according to your first link the project ran from 1995 to 2001. That's 6 years so you're talking about $189 per kid per year. I can see how that can help in some individual cases but if it costs $10K per year per kid you're talking about a difference in spending of 1.89%. Assuming the Challenge was perfect and every dollar was spent as well as possible how much statistical difference would that have really made in the schools that received the Challenge versus those that didn't?

[Stuart Koehl]

You don't understand. It's about looking good and feeling good, not being good and doing good.