Jim Broadway on Chicago charters and turnarounds.
Jim Broadway, who publishes the authoritative Illinois School Policy Updates (subscription here), comments on recent developments in Chicago and the impact on Springfield.
The Chicago public schools are a kind of laboratory for school “reform” efforts. The turnaround concept is one example. Most Illinois charter schools are also in Chicago (and generally not producing the kind of results they promised).
The most successful reform of the last three decades in Chicago appears to have been the establishment of the Local School Councils – the Chicago equivalent of the elected school boards serving all other districts in Illinois – which have been doing their jobs and out-achieving the top-down model with little fanfare.
The relative ineffectiveness of top-down school governance models is
