Chicago hope: 'Maybe this will work.'

Where Richmond and other proponents see flexibility and the potential for innovation, however, some residents see an abdication of responsibility.

"What you hear is less red tape, less bureaucracy, more autonomy," says Shannon Bennett, assistant director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization in South Chicago. "To us that sounds like less accountability to parents and communities.... We're desperate for change, but out of all these schools that will open up, how many of these models have been proven?"

Mr. Bennett's point, that little research backs up the idea that charters, or small schools, necessarily have better performance, is a central criticism of Chicago's plan. Several experts have questioned the idea of such a major overhaul when it's unclear if the alternatives will be an improvement.

"It's easy to be enthusiastic about creating something new, but I think what the charter experiment has taught us is that it's a lot harder to run highly effective schools than one might think at the beginning, and there's a lot of stored-up know-how and practice at the existing schools," says Archon Fung, a professor of public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "Why are reformers so interested in revolutionary solutions to school reform when nobody can say with confidence that any particular revolutionary solution is better than any other?"

In fact, there are data out there, but they are hardly conclusive. Charters have had mixed press nationwide lately, but the laws that govern them vary from state to state. In Chicago, they've done fairly well - better, on average, than district schools, according to a Chicago Board of Education study.

As for small schools, they have consistently better attendance, lower dropout rates, and fewer detentions. But improved academic performance has been tougher to prove.

It isn't so much that small schools by themselves are the answer, says Tom Vander Ark, director for education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given millions of dollars to create small schools around the country and in Chicago. "They only make success possible."

Other than a few selective schools that serve wealthy communities or require entrance exams, "there are no successful large high schools," he says. "We think every urban area in America should be working as aggressively as Chicago."

Even the most ardent supporters of the plan acknowledge that the next few years may be hard on some parents and students, and that having even one school close - much less 50 or 60 - can be traumatic.

While Richmond consoles himself with the idea that if a new school fails, he can replace it with a better one, that's less comforting to a parent whose child has spent five years in the school that didn't work.

Still, the argument goes, the new schools can hardly be worse than the status quo, and hopefully, they'll be better.

The teachers union, the LSC advocates, the parents with kids in closing schools - "all these groups have good arguments and legitimate concerns," says Professor Knowles. "I think the test is not to throw away the whole initiative, but rather to look closely at the results as these schools open."

Page: 1 | 2 | 3