Principal leads charge at Gage Park
Anita Andrews, assistant principal at Gage Park High, likes to tell this story about her boss, Principal Wilfredo Ortiz: Driving on 55th Street to a central office meeting, Ortiz spotted a group of...
View ArticleThe 'tracker' hunts down cutters, truants
Jerry Mandujano, a.k.a. the tracker, strides up the front staircase at Gage Park High. He holds a clipboard with computer printouts that display student photo IDs and class schedules. The front line of...
View ArticleUptown: Schools drawing fewer area kids
Brennemann Elementary recorded a couple of troubling trends in the three years between 2002 through 2005. Total enrollment fell by 28 percent and a smaller share of its students were living in the...
View ArticleSmall schools not a deterrent
Three years ago, Chicago Public Schools began to subdivide its most troubled high schools—Orr, Bowen and South Shore. The idea was that smaller learning environments would allow students to get more...
View ArticleDitching has domino effect
Shenice began cutting classes at Tilden High in New City shortly after Christmas break last year. She can't think of a reason other than "I just got bored." The 15-year-old failed four classes that...
View ArticleNo boundary change for Little Village
Attendance boundaries for four Little Village high schools will remain as currently drawn despite a recently passed referendum that calls for changing them, say officials of Chicago Public Schools....
View Article'Record high' attendance a figment
Last year, students at Robeson High School in Englewood had one of the district’s worst attendance rates. But somehow, on the first day of school this year, attendance was more than perfect. This...
View ArticleDecoding the district's progress report for 2008
Chicago Public Schools put on its best face in 2008: Another Year of Strong Progress for Chicago’s Students – the district’s self-assessment of last year’s accomplishments and test score gains. But the...
View ArticleThousands of students in early grades miss weeks of school
At Revere Elementary in Greater Grand Crossing, a whopping 82 percent of preschoolers and 36 percent of kindergarteners missed 18 days of school or more in the 2009-10 school year—just under a month of...
View ArticleLeaving the neighborhood
For years, the percentage of teenagers who attend their neighborhood high school hovered around 50 percent. But since the district has increased school options, primarily charter schools, that...
View ArticleIn the News: CPS sees boost in first-day attendance
CPS says first-day attendance for the new school year that started Monday was up slightly from last year, despite the number of students forced to go to new schools because their old schools closed....
View ArticlePreschoolers miss school, miss out on learning
A large number of children in Chicago Public Schools preschools are chronically absent, a new study by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research has found. Nearly half of...
View ArticleNumbers that Count: Chicago School Policy Forum
Schools, social service agencies, government agencies and other outside institutions can "get on the same page" to help children succeed in school by focusing on tracking key indicators that lead to...
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CPS touts minute improvements for students from closed schools
Minor improvements in attendance, on-track rates and grade-point averages among students from closed schools were touted Wednesday and proved enough to please CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and board...
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Absenteeism, truancy up in elementary grades
Even as CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett has pledged to find ways to reduce chronic truancy and absenteeism in Chicago Public Schools, her administration is quietly grappling with the fact that the problem is...
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