published in 2009-12-29 06:28:00
Nick Anderson:Soon behind Arne Duncan left his job like schools chief here to get one of the most powerful U.S. education secretaries ever his former students sat for federal achievement tests. T ...
Nick Anderson:Soon behind Arne Duncan left his job like schools chief here to get one of the most powerful U.S. education secretaries ever his former students sat for federal achievement tests. This month the mathematics report card was delivered: Chicago trailed several cities in performance and progress made through six years.Miami Houston and New York had higher scores than Chicago on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Boston San Diego and Atlanta had bigger gains. Even fourth-graders in the much-maligned D.C. schools improved almost twice as much since 2003.The federal readout is just one measure of Duncan's record as chief executive of the nation's third-largest system. Others show advances on various fronts. But the new math scores signal that Chicago is nowhere near the head of the pack in urban academy improvement even though Duncan often cites the successes of his tenure as he crusades to fix public education. > 
