Twenty years of reform efforts and programs targeting low-income families in Chicago Public Schools has only widened the performance gap between white and African-American students

Across the city, and spanning three eras of CPS leadership, black elementary school students have lost ground to their white, Latino and Asian classmates in testing proficiency in math and reading, according to a recent analysis by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. This is an important issue in Chicago, where almost half of CPS students are black, the vast majority from low-income households. Yet for all the talk and attention paid to boosting African-American achievement in recent years, there has been no such breakthrough. Poor test scores are only part of the equation. Only 1 in 2 African-American students in Chicago graduates from high school, a number that has increased over the past decade but not at the rate of other racial and ethnic groups. School suspensions, expulsions and disciplinary cases also affect black students disproportionally. When Mayor Richard Daley took control of the city's school system in 1995, it triggered a wave of reform efforts specifically aimed at improving student proficiency in the worst-performing schools. Then-schools chief Paul Vallas set minimum achievement standards on tests, held back students who failed to perform and placed schools with large numbers of low-performing students on probation. In later years, then-school CEO Arne Duncan — now the U.S. education secretary — launched reading initiatives in high-poverty neighborhoods on the South and West sides. He implemented a literacy screening test in the early grades to make sure students were on track. He closed dozens of underperforming schools and oversaw rebuilding efforts at others in predominantly poor black and Latino communities. Millions of dollars were pumped into countless after-school initiatives and tutoring and mentoring programs geared toward African-American students, only to see math and reading scores languish and many black students fall further behind.