Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Thursday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“Less than half of students at Benito Juarez Community Academy High School graduated in 2008 when Juan Carlos Ocon took over as principal, but by 2013, he said, the rate rose to about 69 percent,” the Sun-Times reports.

The secret of Juarez’s success – and the success of 19 other neighborhood high schools in Chicago in getting more students to graduation day – started with the school’s ninth-graders and keeping them “on track,” according to new research to be released Thursday by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School research.
Shepherding ninth-graders through their first year of high school – focusing on helping them to show up to class and complete their work so they pass their courses – leads to jumps in graduation rates, even at high schools once thought of as “dropout factories,” according to the study.
“Attention to those very small things has a big payoff,” said Elaine Allensworth, who directs the Consortium, adding that schools need to intervene as soon as freshmen show a dip in attendance or decline in effort.

The Consortium is one of the few reliable institutions we’ve got, so this is indeed significant. I was particularly struck by this passage:
“The interventions that have worked so far are less expensive and dramatic than a schoolwide turnaround or conversion to a charter school, she said. The gains spanned gender and race but were highest for African-American males.”


That finding is all the more relevant given the day’s other big education news.
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Note: The Consortium has created an “on-track” website where you can find tons more, including groovy charts and the full report.
That’s Bill!
Former-candidate-for-every-office-in-Illinois-several-times-over Bill Daley is joining a Swiss hedge fund.
Apparently his on-again off-again thirst for public service was only fueled by ambition, because it’s not like he isn’t rich enough yet or the need for serving the public has been filled by others since he decried the state’s “lack of leadership” while promising that job creation would top his agenda if elected governor.
Instead, job destruction is his new game.
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“Bloomberg reported that Argentiere, based out of Zug, Switzerland, and named after a skiing village in the French Alps, would focus on volatility trades, or betting on the rate at which stocks rise or fall,” the Tribune notes.
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See also:
* Businessweek: Hedge Funds Are For Suckers.
* Gawker: Hedge Fund Managers Are The Biggest Gangsters Of All.
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Scalia Baffled By HBO & Other Mind-Blowing Judicial Knowledge Gaps
Everyone should be disturbed by what’s playing out in the U.S. Supreme Court right now.
Cubs Two-Game Winning Streak Finally Comes To An End!
A game for the ages at Wrigley.
The Top 3 Reasons Why Obama’s Clemency Initiative Sucks
Hint: Race, scope and accountability.
Chance the Rapper Cannot Speak
Plus: The CSO’s DJ & Northbrook’s Kaskade. In Local Music Notebook.
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BeachBook
* Government Secrecy: One Step Forward, One Leap Back.
* St. Louis Post-Dispatch Head Carpenter Quits Over Lee Enterprise CEO’s $700,000 Bonus.
* Thank Obama For His Education Agenda.
* Report: Poor Planning Led To River Forest Diplomat’s Death In Afghanistan.
* Chicago’s Violence Tied To Policies Of Rahm’s Past.
* FBI Informant Tied To Cyberattacks; Chicago Hacker Was Dupe.
* Chicago Doctor Among 3 Americans Killed In Afghanistan.
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Posted on April 24, 2014