The Chicago Reporter

While watching the drama of the Chicago teachers’ strike unfold, it was clear the key underlying issue was money.

In addition to raises and job security, teachers complained about growing class sizes, the physical conditions of schools and the need for specialized services to better assist struggling students. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools officials have said there just isn’t enough money for all of that. And it shows every year when CPS scrambles to prune its budget down to the $5 billion it needs to operate.

There’s no doubt that Chicago schools need more money to buy new textbooks; pay for more teachers to lower class sizes; hire social workers, reading specialists, nurses and teaching assistants. The striking teachers also reminded us that their schools need air-conditioning, new roofing and other upgrades.

What you haven’t heard much about, though, is the funds that could help meet these expensive needs. It’s the hundreds of millions of...

Back in 2000, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development took a gamble on Chicago. The federal agency agreed to deregulate the Chicago Housing Authority in exchange for then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s commitment to tear down thousands of substandard and poorly managed public housing units and replace 25,000 of them within a decade.

The plan began swiftly and thousands of units were quickly razed. Each year since, the CHA has set goals for replacing units. While rebuilding has been slow-going, every year HUD has cut the CHA checks, which reach well into the millions, as if all of the units are standing and occupied.

A few months back, I was sitting in a CHA board meeting where an official touted that the agency was on track to replace 845 units by the end of this year. I was curious to know where those units are located. One month and 15 emails later, I found out that the CHA hasn’t exactly made the sort of progress the public was led to believe.

Well...

Dyryl Burnett is a high school teacher, but he still understands the struggle that his inner-city students face. Burnett was like many of them before he became a music teacher -- he struggled with a troubled family life and the allure of gang-banging.

Music helped him turn it all around and he hopes it will do the same for his students. Burnett works with low-income students at Options Laboratory School, which aims to use art to help them grow up to be successful.

His class has a recording studio and a mock record label. By focusing on music making instead of music theory, Burnett says he hopes to combine a process the students love with something that teaches them to work towards a goal.

"I want them to open up to me so I can teach them the way of the world -- not just the topic or the subject in this classroom. Music allows me to do that because it's innate enough in our system," he said.

The Chicago Reporter visited Burnett's class and...

Short on cash? A new study shows that it might keep you from saving for the future.

A series of experiments released in Science magazine took students from Harvard, Princeton and the University of Chicago and asked them to play games -- Angry Birds, Wheel of Fortune and Family Feud. The students were divided into two groups -- "poor", where players were given less opportunity and less time to play the game, and "rich", where players had more.

The experiments showed that the "poor" kids got shortsighted -- more focused on the present problem and less on the future, and more willing to borrow from their future selves in order to make it in the present.

"It's kind of striking that when you take people from the Princeton University community and put them in a situation where there is a shortfall of resources, they behave just like...