Home Weather Lottery Classifieds Sports Comics Interact AP Wire Web Specials

Chicago schools take a stand for 'old-fashioned' standards By KENT FISCHER © St. Petersburg Times, published May 17, 1998 chool systems around the nation use many techniques to fight social promotion, but each district's strategy has a common ingredient. Gumption. The districts have set clear, tough academic standards, and stood firm against parents who wanted exceptions made for their children. In Chicago, educators eliminated unsuccessful programs, and transferred the money into projects that work. They returned to the basics: mandatory homework every night, compulsory tutoring for students who continue to lag and an increased emphasis on reading, writing and 'rithmitic. "There's no magic, we just re-introduced something called studying," says Blondean Davis, an assistant superintendent in Chicago. "Most of our ideas are old fashioned," she said. "They're common sense." Considered among the worst urban school districts in the nation, Chicago, the nation's third largest school district with 430,000 students, is winning accolades from lawmakers and educators for its hard stand against social promotion. Chicago isn't alone. New York City, Cincinatti, Seattle, Boston, Washington, D.C. and Texas have all joined the war social promotion. They have an ally in President Clinton, who has opposed the practice in his last two State of the Union addresses. Chicago's is a simple system. Students whose test scores lag behind their peers by a year or more are given the option of coming to school on Saturday and attending after-school tutoring to catch up. If, after the school year ends, the students still lag, they attend mandatory summer school: seven weeks of intensive instruction in the basics. If, by summer's end, students scores are up to par, they are promoted. If their scores lag, the students are held back. The impact of the new policy was dramatic: In its first full year, almost half of Chicago's 91,000 third, sixth and eighth-graders didn't meet the new standards and were forced into summer school. Half of them raised their test scores enough to earn a promotion; 23,100 did not and were retained. The retentions stood in stark contrast to the old system. In its last year, fewer than 10,000 students in grades three, six and eight were retained. The mandatory summer school policy enraged many parents, who had to cancel summer vacations and pleaded with district officials not to flunk their children. Some parents pulled their kids out of the system and enrolled them in private schools. "We simply took a stand," Davis said. "It wasn't easy." It wasn't cheap either. The tough standards and remedial programs cost the district about $35-million year. To come up with the money, the district cut old programs, privatized some jobs and changed the way it allocated federal Title I money (federal aid for teaching poor children) to its schools. "We need to set high standards and commit a lot to resources to helping kids meet them," said Melissa Roderick, a professor at the University of Chicago who has been watching the reforms there. "The problem is that it's damn expensive." Business | Citrus | Commentary | Entertainment Hernando | Floridian | Obituaries | Pasco | Sports State | Tampa Bay | World & Nation © Copyright 1998 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.