Daley school plan fails to make grade

Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down Cheap Rosetta Stone Software and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city’s school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.Daley school plan fails to make gradeRenaissance 2010 officials defend efforts to upgrade education for Chicago students over last 6 yearsSix years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the citys school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found. The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasnt lived up to its promise by this, its target year.There has been some good and some bad in Renaissance 2010, but overall it wasnt the game changer that people thought it would be, said Barbara Radner, who heads the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University. In some ways it has been more harmful than good because all Rosetta Stone Chinese the attention, all the funding, all the hope was directed at Ren10 to the detriment of other effective strategies CPS was developing.Turning around public schools is the core of Daleys efforts to keep the city vibrant. But the outcome of his ambitious education experiment is as important to the nation as it is to Chicago. The architect of Renaissance 2010, former schools CEO Arne Duncan, is now the U.S. Secretary of Education and hes taking the Daley-Duncan model national as part of his Race to the Top reform plan.Duncan is using an unprecedented $4.35 billion pot of money to lure states into building education systems that replicate key Ren10 strategies. The grant money will go to states that allow charter schools to flourish and to those that experiment with turning around failing schools all part of the Chicago reform.Illinois education officials hope to get a piece of the pie and are preparing an application for Tuesdays deadline. Renaissance 2010 was launched in 2004 after decades of school reforms failed to fix chronically underperforming schools. City leaders promised to close the worst schools and open 100 innovative ones that would rely heavily on the private sector for ideas, funding and management. Central to the plan was an increase in charter schools, which receive tax dollars but are run by private groups free from many bureaucratic constraints.Daley and Duncan credit the program with injecting competition and invigorating a stagnant system and say it has laid a foundation the district can build on.We havent looked at all the data, but our belief is that Renaissance 2010 dramatically improved the educational options in communities across Rosetta Stone Software Chicago, said Peter Cunningham, Duncans spokesman, who followed him from Chicago to Washington. We believe that it is contributing to Chicagos overall success. Renaissance 2010 and Race to the Top both reflect a willingness to be bold, hold yourself to higher standards and push for dramatic change, not incremental change.Cunningham and other supporters argue that many new schools, mainly in low-income and high-crime neighborhoods, are outperforming nearby traditional schools.