Why are the Chicago school day and year among the shortest in the country?
It’s always been that. It’s a real challenge. And the Chicago public schools are desperately underfunded by the state. There were 34 kids in my daughter’s class in first grade in Hyde Park. We’re moving to Arlington, Virginia, and there’s a great little neighborhood school and there are 19 kids in her class; there are two teachers in every kindergarten class. Illinois is 49th out of 50 states in the percent of [state] funding going to public education. We’re 43rd in the disparities between the rich and poor districts, so we had one of the widest gaps. How can we be proud of that? Q: One education pundit I talked to said we’ll know that CPS is working when middle-class families send their children to the system’s schools in numbers far greater than they do today. Your response? A: I think you’ve seen dramatically more middle-class children going to Chicago public schools. I can give you 30, 40, 50 neighborhood schools—Nettlehorst, Lincoln, Ogden, Alcott—there’s a whole series of schools
