TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to article
<telecom24.352.7@telecom-digest.org>, mc_no_spam@uga.edu:
> when the feds 'evicted' him from office.
> Then there is the Chicago Park _District_ (rather than 'authority'),
> started in the 1940's as well, with its own can of worms. And there
> is the Chicago School _Board_ (also rather than 'authority') with the
> same sort of government arrangements. When the school board came up
> several million dollars unaccounted for, Mayor Daley (312-PIG-3000 if
> you ever wish to dial him direct) had a solution for that; a whole new
> layer of control called the Chicago Schools Finance Authority whose
> only job was to make the School Board obey the law on deficit
> spending. The Finance Authority has to sign off on the School Board
> budget each year, and not approve it unless the school board has the
> books in order. The board is apparently incapable or unwilling to
> obey the law all on their own.
There is however one good thing that the Chicago School Board and
system has done.
Seems that in Freakonomics they were able to prove that teachers were
padding test results because they kept the answers that all the
students had given on the tests for a period of at least a decade.
The resulting investigations culminated in the termination of several
teachers.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting news from a school system
where about ten percent of the students graduate from high school
almost totally illiterate and about thirty percent of graduating
seniors can read/write and do math at about a ninth grade level. I
recall a big stink in the Chicago Tribune once where high school
students were given a blank map of the world and asked to mark on the
map the location of 'Chicago'. While many students got it correct
(or at least parked it in the general area for North America and/or
Illinois, a few of them located 'Chicago' around South America or
the North Pole region. Tribune printed pictures of the maps the kids
had turned in. Mayor Daley was furious, but what else is new. The
reason the teachers kept those tests to work from is because there
are standardized tests all the kids have to take in order for the
school system to retain its accredidation, etc. The teachers were
desparate to get the right answers on those standardized tests. PAT]
Tony P. (kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net)