The school had high staff turnover its first semester, and lost its lease amid allegations of disciplinary trouble as well as financial problems. Last March, the School Reform Board hired alternative schools expert Tony Baez to evaluate all the alternative schools, both dropout and disruptive. His research team gathered data last spring and summer, when some schools were less than 6 months old. An interim report, issued in August, raised more questions than it answered about the schools' quality. The report ranked alternative schools on a three-tiered scale, but did not say what criteria had been used.
Alternative schools believe the study was biased.
She criticized the questionnaire she received as part of the research process for focusing on dropout programs and treating disruptive programs as an afterthought. Baez agrees that the study was geared toward dropout programs, but he questions a cornerstone of Chicago's program for disruptive students. Baez says his researchers were dismayed by the number of programs that were focused more on controlling students' behavior than on educating them. Chicago needs to decide whether they want to contract with an agency that wants to control kids. There have to be standards for entering into contracts with programs for disruptive students.