Chicago charters ask public schools for more money, and a debate takes shape

08-02-2011

By Will Guzzardi/Huffington Post

There's a debate smoldering, just out of the media spotlight, behind the scenes of Chicago public policy. It's one that pits some of the city's wealthiest individuals and most powerful political interests against a larger but more disparate group of activists, organizers and union workers. At stake, at least according to both sides' rhetoric, is nothing less than the fate of the city's children. The debate is between supporters of charter schools -- with names like Pritzker, Zell, and to a certain degree Brizard and Emanuel -- and believers in reforming the traditional public school model. A simple request, made this week by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, sheds some light on this debate: what's at stake, who's involved, and where both sides stand. The request was described in its most basic form by the Chicago Tribune headline Wednesday: "Charter schools press CPS for more money." In fact, what INCS was asking the Chicago Public Schools for was a higher proportion of per-student funding; to fully understand what that means, a little background on charters is required. (more...)

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Chicago charters ask public schools for more money, and a debate takes shape

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