Nine months after its launch, Chicago’s radical experiment to remake its city schools is struggling to get off the ground.
Local corporations and foundations have been slow to pony up cash for the reform effort, known as Renaissance 2010. Two of the Chicago school officials charged with overseeing the plan resigned recently, sending leadership into disarray. The teachers union has blasted it. And parents groups have picketed school board meetings.
The initiative, which calls for shutting down the worst schools and–with the financial support of the business and philanthropic community–reopening 100 small schools free from many district controls, also has set off a power struggle not seen since the mayor took control of the city’s beleaguered public school system in the mid-1990s.
As the initiative moves into a critical stage, Chicago Public Schools officials, business leaders, teachers union representatives, parents groups, reform activists and charter school operators all are jockeying to drive the lofty vision to reform the nation’s third-largest school district.
Those competing agendas are threatening to undermine one of the nation’s most ambitious efforts to remake chronically underperforming schools.
The conflict in Chicago is similar to one playing out across the nation as everyone from President Bush to software magnate Bill Gates vies for seats at the education reform table, once the sole domain of educators.
“We are moving from a rather insular system run by educators to a broadening that includes businesses, foundations and other community members,” said Priscilla Wohlstetter, who conducted a study on public school partnerships and serves as the director of the Center on Educational Governance at the University of Southern California. “The boundaries have slowly been coming down and you will, naturally, see resistance.”
Wohlstetter said the trend began evolving in the late 1980s when many districts, including Chicago, let parents and teachers have a say in budget and curriculum decisions. In the mid-1990s, business leaders took a more prominent role.
But now, 25 years after they were first offered seats at the table, these groups are realizing their visions of reform do not always mesh.
In Chicago, the greatest pressure point stems from the sometimes public, and often private, role the business community is playing in the reform effort–a role many see as far too influential.
The business community also has been slow to funnel cash to the new start-up schools.
When Mayor Richard Daley launched Renaissance 2010 in June, he did so at the offices of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, flanked by top corporate and philanthropic leaders.
Daley said the committee had agreed to raise $50 million to help pay start-up costs for 100 new schools.
Absent from the podium were union officials and many longtime Chicago education reform activists.
“It was clear from the beginning who would be driving this bus, and it certainly isn’t parents and it certainly isn’t teachers,” said Julie Woestehoff, director of Parents United for Responsible Education, a community group that staged protests against the plan.
“It’s been frustrating for us because the business community has motivations that are not the same as the ones parents have. It’s not that it’s an evil agenda, but it has to do with getting rid of unionized teachers, getting rid of the local school councils.
“There is little trust in the parent community that they are out for the best interest of the kids.”
Woestehoff and other reform activists are angry that most of the new schools are not required to have local school councils, the elected bodies that oversee each Chicago school. The Chicago teachers union is angry that these schools are not required to hire unionized teachers.
But R. Eden Martin, president of the Civic Committee, said his group is not interested in running the city school system or in breaking the teachers union.
“We have one agenda–if you can call it that–and that is to lend a helping hand and be supportive of our public education system,” Martin said. “The business community does not want to be involved in making basic education decisions about math programs, reading programs or who should be teaching. We are getting involved because we are concerned about adequate resources and making sure schools are run efficiently.”
But there are early signs that providing adequate resources may be more difficult than first thought.
When Daley launched the initiative, he said the Civic Committee already had half of the $50 million it planned to raise, and district officials said the money was “in hand.” The Civic Committee created a fundraising arm called New Schools for Chicago.
But Martin and Phyllis Lockett, executive director of New Schools for Chicago, said local corporations and foundations have committed “in writing and orally” about $24 million. They repeatedly have declined to identify those contributors, saying they want to compile a complete list before releasing it to the public.
Martin and Lockett also acknowledged that they have received less than $4 million in cash. Paperwork filed March 18 with the charitable trust division of the Illinois attorney general’s office shows $3.2 million had been collected.
Of that, New Schools has given out about $750,000 to start up campuses.
“All in all, what we have been able to do in six months–in a tight fundraising environment–is pretty remarkable,” he said.
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There also are signs that New Schools officials are doing more than simply turning over cash.
For starters, New Schools had a representative on the district committee that studied the 55 new school proposals last year and approved the first 18 schools, 17 of which will open in the fall. The 18th is scheduled to open next year.
Initially, the mayor and Chicago Public Schools officials said the Civic Committee would raise $50 million to be disbursed as incubation money to the 100 new schools. In documents sent to potential new school operators, the district told them to assume they would receive $500,000 in start-up funds and directed them to build it into their budgets.
But when the first financial grants were announced recently, New Schools declined to fund two start-up campuses and gave six others significantly less than the $500,000 most were expecting. Although New Schools officials say they expect to give out more grants later this year, many charter school operators were expecting the money early on.
“We are not in a position to fund everything,” Lockett said. “We looked at the proposals and determined what we could fund at this time.”
Lockett said her group is looking to fund schools that are high quality, provide innovation and autonomy, enable time for teachers to partake in intensive professional development and have 500 students or less.
“We looked at all of the proposals, and these are the six that fell into our criteria,” she said.
New Schools officials also have a chilly relationship with some high-level Chicago Public Schools officials, who privately complain the business group is trying to control the reform.
Complicating matters, schools chief Arne Duncan decided to restructure the department that oversees the reform midway through the rollout, confusing charter school providers who privately complained that they did not know who was in charge.
Then, in March, Greg Richmond, an architect of the city’s charter school movement who was overseeing Renaissance 2010, resigned to become president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. A few weeks after Richmond left, another official in the Renaissance 2010 office, Karen Daniels, resigned.
Duncan acknowledged that the launch has seen its share of problems within the district, but he attributes them to “growing pains.”
“I think the team we have in place now is stronger than it has ever been,” Duncan said. “Yes, there have been some stumbles, but this is a bold plan, and we are learning as we go. I feel confident that all the pieces are now in place to make Renaissance 2010 a huge success.”
Duncan said that if New Schools cannot raise the $500,000 start-up money for every new school, the district has other sources it could tap, including millions of dollars the Gates Foundation has given the district to create small schools.
Duncan also said that despite the seemingly crowded Renaissance 2010 table, he welcomes comments from everyone in the community.
“The reason public education has failed is precisely because–for years–no one cared, no one got involved, everyone sat on the sidelines and let someone else worry about it,” Duncan said. “Now everyone wants to get involved, and I think that will be the salvation of public education. Democracy is a messy process, and there is going to be some fighting and some growing pains. But I think this is preferable to no one caring about our kids.”
For now, charter school operators are willing to give the district and the business community time to work out their problems.
“This is a very bold vision that has energized everyone in the state, energized people to see all kinds of possibilities … Right now, that excitement is still there,” said Elizabeth Evans, executive director of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools.
“But we believe strongly that if some of these issues don’t get resolved soon, it will be a much different story down the road. We don’t want people brushing it off as just another education reform that is going nowhere–the opportunity is too big.”