A New Focus

Well, now that Chicago schools are free of the outdated (CPS is 50% Black, 38% Hispanic, 9% White) and counterproductive federal oversight on desegregation, after 26 years, there is no excuse now not to try something new that might actually focus on learning. The Chicago school district spent "at least $2.5 billion" on these efforts which could be better directed to teaching children core knowledge. The Tribune:

Schools chief Arne Duncan promised that the system will continue to provide extra academic support in racially isolated schools and will preserve its integrated magnet and selective enrollment schools.

"This is core to my values and how I was raised," said Duncan, who attended the private, racially integrated University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in Hyde Park.

"We can spend hundreds of thousands dollars less on lawyers and put it in the schools. Money that went to legal fees will be spent on the students."

Duncan estimated the case has cost more than $1 million in the last four years.

But you still have a predictable battle over the equitable distribution of resources:

Alonzo Rivas, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who has watched the case, said he wonders if Chicago will keep up its commitment to diversity once no outside body is watching over it.

For example, the district failed to offer any African-American or Latino children the opportunity to transfer into largely white schools in the 2004-05 school year before the court ordered it to do so.

Others in the community also are concerned about whether the district spends equally on its neighborhood schools and on magnet and special schools.

"I am not sure one more year is enough time to answer all this," Rivas said.

Meanwhile time and learning are lost, as kids pass through the system. This dilemma points to the value of fully implementing the NCLB Act, which puts a priority on whether schools are successes or failures in educating children, rather than solely on color of the skin of the children attending.

But the better answer is looking at children as individuals, and assigning the resources to them, so that they and their parents can reward the schools that teach them the best. Here is one hopeful example, in one of Chicago's neediest neighborhoods. And here is another.

We need school choice in Chicago.