I'm not sure what you expect the school system to do for the total breakdown of social structure in vast swaths of Chicago. Middle class people would be insane to keep their kids in a school system where gangs have marked off territory in most of the schools and the majority of kids are from poor, single-parent homes. Even the middle class blacks who stuck it out on the south side for so long have given up--Chicago lost 200,000 of them in the last decade. The south side has become a literal ghetto--increasingly filled only with people who can't afford to get out. The schools can't fix a community on the edge of viability, raising children with no fathers, no structure of authority, and no prospects.
