Professor's Study Challenges Chicago's Claims about School Closings
Everyone who has studied “No Child Left Behind” in depth and with a critical eye has realized that the law is, at best, a piece of dangerous propaganda. 
While WBEZ (right) interviews University of Illinois Professor Pauline Lipman (at podium), Jitu Brown of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) looks on. KOCO and Dr. Lipman held a press conference at Chicago’s City Hall on January 31, 2007 to release the study, “Collateral Damage...” Dr. Lipman’s study of the impact of school closings in the mid-South area since 2002 challenged the Chicago Board of Education’s claims that the closings helped children. (Substance photo by George N. Schmidt).But few people realize that when the lay launches its most serious sanctions against “failing” public schools between now and 2014, thousands of children will be left behind, left out, and in many cases have their lives destroyed before they are even old enough to go to high school.
And like so many ugly things in the “standards and accountability” movement, Chicago has already pioneered what will soon become another ugly piece of “No Child Left Behind” — the closing of “failing” schools and the displacement of the children from those schools.
On January 31, 2007, a small group of community activists, a union organizer, and a university professor released the first in depth study of the impact of Chicago’s schools closings on the children and families from the schools that were closed.
“Students as Collateral Damage: A Preliminary Study of Renaissance 2010 School Closings in the MIdsouth” was prepared by Dr. Pauline Lipman of the University of Illinois at Chicago in conjunction with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO). The study tracked the impact of school closings on Chicago’s near south side on children, their families, teachers, other school staffs, and school administrators.
“...[T]he fate of thousands of low income mostly African American CPS students currently enrolled in Mid- South schools hangs in the balance,” Lipman writes. “Across the city of Chicago, 20 of the city’s schools have been closed and 37 schools have opened under the Renaissance 2010 plan. As of January 1, 2007, twelve schools (five since 2004) in the Mid-South have been closed and six schools (including DuSable High School, which has reopened as three small schools) have been reopened as Renaissance 2010 schools. Approximately one-fourth of the area’s students, 2,244, were directly affected when their schools were shuttered...” Ultimately, an estimated 8,600 Midsouth area students will be affected...”
The report goes on to note that more than 90 percent of the children affected are African-American and the majority is from low-income families.
Although the policy of school closings in Chicago currently operates independently of No Child Left Behind, it is a harbinger of what will happen when the school closing provisions of No Child Left Behind go into effect during the next three years across the USA. The devastation to children by school closings in Chicago will then be replicated against the poor in every state, under the guise of saving the children from “failing” schools.
