Study disputes claims of improvement in Chicago school system

From The Chicago Sun-Times: A study by two University of Illinois at Chicago professors Thursday disputes the claims that Chicago public schools have improved significantly under Mayor Richard M. Daley. The study calls for an elected rather than appointed school board to move city schools forward. The disparities between black and white students, and between Latino and white students, have only grown larger under Daley, creating a “two-tier” public education system, according to the analysis by Pauline Lipman and Eric “Rico” Gutman. Daley-appointed school leaders created high-achieving, selective-enrollment public high schools, but they are three times whiter and three times less poor than the system as a whole. Meanwhile, African American and Latino students have “disproportionately experienced a string of punitive and destabilizing policies,” including “drilling’’ for standardized tests, being forced to repeat a grade, school closures and high teacher turnover.