Overshadowed by the loud controversy surrounding the Chicago Board of Education's vote to take drastic action against 17 failing schools was the quiet comment by Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard, who said the district now has to heal the breach with communities.

"I have been a part of the...

It's ironic that Mayor Emanuel's announcement that Chicago charter schools are lining up to get cash for a longer school day was made at Chicago International Charter School in Washington Park.

That school, part of a network run by one of the city's largest charter operators, already has a...

Tamoura Hayes started high school in Chicago with big dreams for college that she already knew would be tough to reach. "C'mon," she said. "I go to Marshall High School."

Marshall is a West Side school that for decades has been known both for its stellar girls' basketball team...

From a journalist's standpoint, the most refreshing news to emerge from Catalyst Chicago's recent interview with incoming Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard was his promise to be transparent. The in-depth, shoe-leather reporting and analysis that is our hallmark can only be accomplished when administrators have a green light to...

Call it a 180-degree shift.

When former Schools CEO Ron Huberman made his debut speech at a City Club luncheon in 2009, most of his talk was about how he planned to curb school violence and push failing schools to improve. There were two new programs in the...

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. In English, that's 'The more things change, the more they stay the same.'

That phrase came to mind as I reviewed the reams of headlines produced by Catalyst during the years since Mayor Richard M. Daley took the reins of the Chicago...

A lot of the general public believes the media live only to dig up scandal. Untrue. (Usually we don't have to go looking too far for it anyway.)

Here are some good-news headlines I'd like to see, or write, in the coming school year:

District scraps 'principal discretion' at...

The release of the latest state test scores for Chicago Public Schools show another year of modest gains. Good news, although as Chief Education Officer Barbara Eason-Watkins noted, "Small gains are never enough."

What's more interesting is the news surrounding the scores. For one, Mayor Daley

Recently, Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman told school principals that the district plans to focus on data analysis as a first step toward improvement. There's one statistic that the district ought to immediately turn its attention to: suspensions and expulsions of African-American boys.

Our newly-released report on discipline...

Here's a sobering scenario: Each year, about 7,000 seniors earn a diploma from Chicago Public Schools, but don't enroll in college and have no preparation for work. That is a road to disaster, given the state of the U.S. economy these days.

Today's tough job market--with unemployment claims at...

It's the straw that broke the grassroots' back: the appointment of Ron Huberman to head the Chicago Public Schools.

Tuesday night, an overflow crowd met at Operation PUSH headquarters to plot strategy aimed at forcing Mayor Daley to rescind his selection and launch a national search for a schools...

When CPS officials released the final school closings list on Friday, four that were initially slated to close or undergo the turnaround process--which requires the entire staff to reapply for their jobs--weren't on the list.

A Catalyst Chicago analysis also found other schools that weren't on the list, but met...

Quick, name three of the last seven secretaries of education (not including Margaret Spellings).

Outside the world of education, most people probably can't--which says something about the level of attention the general public typically pays to the job, despite poll after poll that says we rank education as one...

The data is shocking: If the students who enrolled in kindergarten in Chicago Public Schools in 1994 had, instead, enrolled in top-spending Lake Forest-Libertyville schools, they would have reaped the benefit of an extra $36 billion-worth of education by the time they graduated.

That statistic was just one of many...

A kid who lives in Austin is closer to suburban Oak Park-River Forest High School than to Whitney Young, a comparable top-scoring Chicago school. And according to state Sen. James Meeks, that Austin student should be able to enroll, at no cost, in Oak Park, less than a mile-and-a-half away...

I've got a suggestion for pastor and state Sen. James Meeks: No need to go all the way to New Trier to see disparities in school spending--a trip across town to Walter Payton will do just as well.

Taking kids across town to one of the state's top-rated, top-spending high...