No Progress on Daily Attendance -- Or Overall Enrollment -- in Chicago

A recent Tribune piece (School attendance flat in city) describes the recent (and largely ineffective) push by Chicago Public Schools to coax more children to attend class every day -- but leaves out an even more important trend: flat overall enrollment trends.

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Overall ttendance in CPS has remained fairly flat at about 435K students -- despite the influx of new residents to the city over the past 10 years.Two out of three white families with school-age children choose to send them to nonpublic schools. Uncounted thousands more move away as kindergarten approaches.

This raises tough questions about what it will take to convincen parents to choose Chicago public schools, and hints at the possibility of overall enrollment declines (and lost jobs and funding that results) in the future. Think Cleveland.