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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Teachers ring City Hall during protest of layoffs, larger classes

Sun-Times:
Thousands of protesting teachers encircled City Hall and commandeered an entire block of Clark Street during rush hour Tuesday to rail against rising class sizes and deficit-driven teacher layoffs.

One police official estimated up to 4,000 protesters marched from Board of Education headquarters to City Hall and back again.

With mounted police lining the route, teachers decried Schools CEO Ron Huberman's plan to raise class sizes to 35 -- causing up to 3,000 Chicago Teachers Union layoffs -- to battle an estimated $600 million deficit.

"Don't treat our children like sardines,'' read several protest signs. "Don't supersize classrooms,'' said others.

As they completely surrounded City Hall, some teachers chanted "Hey hey, ho ho, Mayor Daley has to go.'' But outside Board headquarters at 125 S. Clark, the last half of the chant changed to "Huberman has to go.''
Very interesting! Tough times at the Chicago Public Schools for sure.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

District 299: Budget Cuts Still Looming

Alexander Russo at the Chicago Schools Blog discusses a variety of news from state budget negotiations in Springfield, student protests against education cuts, and punishment against those protests.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Reading scores stay flat for CPS eighth-graders

Sun-Times:
Despite the mantra from Mayor Daley to focus on reading, Chicago's eighth-grade reading scores haven't really budged since 2002 on a key national test, although fourth-grade results have seen a gradual uptick, results released Thursday show.

Chicago landed in the middle of the pack of 18 big-city school districts that agreed last year to take the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation's Report Card. The city trailed New York and Miami, but outpaced Los Angeles and Milwaukee.

Overall, 45 percent of Chicago fourth-graders reached at least the "basic'' reading level in 2009, while 60 percent of eighth-graders hit that mark. But only 16 percent of fourth-graders and 17 percent of eighth-graders reached the higher bar of "proficient.''

Statistically significant fourth-grade improvement only emerged by comparing 2009 Chicago results to those from 2003 or 2002. Eighth-grade scores didn't show any significant gains between 2002 and 2009 -- a period spanning most of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's tenure here as Schools CEO.

Chicago posted no substantial progress since 2002 in closing the achievement gap between white students compared with African Americans or Hispanics, and between poor and non-poor students.

The standout was Atlanta, which showed the biggest, most consistent jumps in both grades.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Bennett School class of 2008


Getting ready for their big day in a video that consists of largely still pictures.