CPS Principal Pay-for-Performance Plan Opens the Door for Community Schools

Merit pay is a notoriously tricky business. Reward short-term returns and you hang the future out to dry. Or, as we've seen in a growing number of school districts across the country, you run the risk of teachers and administrators taking shortcuts (ie, cheating) to grab the brass ring. Mayor Emman...
August 22, 2011

Links of Interest

What We Read, August 12-19, 2011   Criminal Justice Court Reform: Even conservative states are adopting lighter sentencing policies in response to unsustainable prison costs, reports the New York Times.  Matthew Iglesias questions the social, political, and economic rationale behind incr...
August 19, 2011

More incarceration does not equal less crime.

The ACLU posted a fascinating infographic this week. The above graphic compares the change incarceration rates and the change in crime rates from 1999 to 2009. Illinois' prison population has skyrocketed since 1970, but has not grown considerably in the past decade, as illustrated by this chart pr...
August 18, 2011

Links of Interest

What We Read, August 1-5, 2011 Criminal Justice Court Reform: Drug court: Why spending more will cost us less: Commentary in the San Jose Mercury News. In response to disproportionate numbers of nonwhite males unemployed and/or incarcerated, New York City unveiled a strategy involving, among o...
August 5, 2011

Links of Interest

What We Read, July 25-39, 2011 Criminal Justice Court Reform: Prison Law Blog links to a working paper by a Fordham University Law Professor, which concludes that “growth in prison populations has been driven almost entirely by increases in felony filings per arrest”. Cook County Board Preside...
July 29, 2011