Far from the heated rhetoric of the charters-versus-public schools debate, a 2009 paper looking at a decade of charter schools in Chicago suggests that they don't necessarily improve test scores all that much, but that charter high schools are good at sending kids to college, in ways traditional schools might learn from. Read more
The Gateway City is home to one of the nation's most spectacular, singular museums: a childlike maze of metal, water, and stone, the vision of a sculptor and contractor who finally got to combine his two gifts. Read more
Harold McCormick Jr., of the famous Chicago McCormicks (grandson of both Cyrus and John D. Rockefeller) took flight in 1926 to document the city for the Army Air Corps, the first time it had ever been done. Plus: a million Chicagoans watch Italo Balbo arrive in the city. Read more
The effect of incarceration on unemployment rates; regular folks are more confident about the future than CEOs, perhaps because they don't have to sell stuff to Europeans; more news from the low-wage recovery; and more Read more
A new report shows that Chicago has followed national trends in low-wage jobs, as an increasing number of well-educated breadwinners make up the proportion of workers below the line of self-sufficiency. Read more