From the Editor

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THE CHICAGO SCHOOL REFORMS:

The Chicago school reforms have received significant national attention due to their sweeping, radical nature. Growing out of state legislation in 1988 and 1995, the reforms encompass a powerful bottom-up/top-down strategy that provides multiple avenues for initiating building-level changes in teaching and learning. We offer a provisional answer concerning the effects of these reforms by comparing the 1993–1998 performance of Chicago's grammar schools with all other grade-equivalent schools in the State of Illinois. We find city schools making major gains over the last three years. Regression residuals show that Chicago's schools now significantly outperform Cook County suburban schools and schools in the rest of the state after controlling for rates of poverty and student mobility. While schools placed on probation have predominantly African American and low-income student bodies, rates of improvement among schools as a whole appear to be equitably distributed across the city neighborhoods. We close with several policy recommendations, one of which focuses on the potential for major goal displacement as a result of the reform board's criterion for determining the probationary status of schools.     

Bridging the gap: Incorporating qualitative data into quantitative analyses

This paper describes a technique that allows a researcher to incorporate qualitative data from open-ended survey questions into a quantitative analysis. It involves storing the quantitative and qualitative data in two separate files using the same respondent identification number in each. These two files are then linked, via this identification number. This procedure allows one to: access relevant verbatim quotes, identify themes and subthemes, deal with ambiguous answers, interpret the quantitative findings, do deviant case analyses, and identify some types of coding errors. While the intent is for this to be used with large scale survey data, it can also be used in semistructured interviews. The advantage of this technique is that it facilitates the use of qualitative data using programs such as SPSS and SAS that are familiar to most quantitative researchers, without having to learn new skills.