Schools Districts and Education Boards

¶ … Chicago's School Systems "CPS recommends closure of four underperforming charter schools" is about the recent determination that four charter schools in the Chicago area will be closed. The reason for shutting down these schools is that they are underperforming, and not adequately serving the students that they are supposed to provide a quality education. Specifically, three of the schools -- Amandla Charter High School, Shabazz/Sizemore Academy Elementary School, and Larry Hawkins High School -- were on the Academic Warning List last year.

As such, they were tasked with designing and implementing remediation plans to help their students to perform better. A review of those remediation plans, however, determined that they were not sufficiently implemented during the present school year. Subsequently, Chicago Public Schools has decided to revoke the charter for these institutions. The fourth school, Bronzeville Lighthouse Charter Elementary School, will not get its charter renewed because it has failed to meet basic performance standards of the school district. The key elements discussed in the article include the four charter schools.

Charter schools are one of the several different types of schools discussed in this course. Moreover, another key element was the school district, Chicago Public Schools, which was able to specifically exercise authority over these four schools due to a "charter accountability policy" (Author, 2015). Also, school performance and the failure to meet standards for school performance were key elements in this article, and are aligned with the concept of student and school performance discussed in the course.

The main way that parts of this article relate to this course is that many of the charter schools actually had the opportunity to formulate remediation plans and implement them to help their students reach basic standards. This part of the article reinforces the need for schools to meet state standards, and to revolutionize their methods in order to do so. Chicago Board of Education approves sale of former school site ..

" is about the phenomenon in which the school board of Chicago is taking action to monetize and repurpose property it owns which used to be school sites. In most instances, these sites are merely abandoned or vacated properties which the school board owns, and is attempting to repurpose in order to make a profit. The funds from the sale of such properties are supposed to be used by the school board to fund its educational endeavors, in all of their myriad manifestations.

The article focuses on one of the most recent sales, the former Stewart Elementary School site to Morningside Equities Group Inc., as a case study for this phenomenon. The multimillion dollar sale occurred after a critical "community engagement process" (Author, 2015) in which the school district worked with city officials to determine the most salient community uses of the property. In this particular instance, those uses include residential areas, commercial areas, a playground, and more.

One of the key elements of this article is that the Chicago School Board has a viable means of generating funding that.