Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Selective enrollment CPS high schools already receive less $/student CPS funding than many of the low-performing low-enrollment high schools. That said, clearly demonstrates “funding” has relative little impact on academic achievement of students. Quality of faculty, parental supervision of their children’s school performance and classroom attention, teachers’ command of classroom discipline, and emphasis on educational fundamentals of reading, writing, and math skills are far greater determinants of academic achievement. The selective enrollment schools contain students who are academically-motivated. The low-performing schools contain students who are captive to their disruptive classmates and disinterested teachers. Let’s not forget CPS has nearly half… Read more »