Focus on Instruction Turns Around Chicago Schools
January 5, 2010
Talk of “turning around” troubled schools has become synonymous with firing educators, but a nonprofit organization here with a successful track record takes a different approach.
In 2006, Strategic Learning Initiatives signed a contr act with the Chicago public schools to help 10 schools serving grades K-8. More than 95 percent of their students were from low-income families. Over a decade, the schools had seen new principals, new teachers, new curricula, and professional-development initiatives. Despite the changes, nine were on a list to be restructured or closed.
What Strategic Learning did with the struggling schools, says its chief executive officer, John Simmons, was “not rocket science.” But it worked…