More than half of Chicago high schoolers attend schools outside their neighborhoods, reports Elizabeth Duffrin in Catalyst (December), and those who stay behind are paying a price. The city’s 12 least popular high schools–Austin, Manley, and Orr high schools on the west side, and Calumet, Bowen, Englewood, Fenger, Harlan, Robeson, South Shore, Tilden, and Phillips on the south side–lost 62 to 77 percent of the students in their attendance areas last year. These schools are often caught in a vicious circle in which the most able and motivated students and faculty leave. “A typical class at South Shore has 28 students; 10 to 12 of them have learning disabilities, and another two or three have behavioral disorders, according to [lead math teacher Betty] Hammond. The learning disabled read on a 4th- to 6th-grade level, and the behavior disordered cause frequent disruptions, she reports. ‘You can’t get through the material that should be covered.’”
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Tracking the burden of rent. From the Chicago Rehab Network’s third-quarter “Department of Housing Quarterly Analysis”: “‘Rent burdened’ is a standard used by HUD to describe a household which pays more than 30% of its income for rent. In 2 out of every 5 rental units in Chicago, households are rent burdened. In 1 out of every 5 units, renters pay more than half their income for rent.”
