Barbara Sizemore Stresses Test Preparation to Help Poor Black Children

By Ann Bradley

Chicago

The answer to Barbara A. Sizemore's prayers is a tall, white Chicagoan with a Midwestern twang and a balding pate. He is Paul Vallas, the brash new chief executive officer of the Chicago public schools.

Before Vallas and his team swept into "City Hall South" last summer, Sizemore operated on the fringes of the system. In a city where school reform has become a cottage industry, her insistence that African-American children be taught to take standardized tests made her an outcast from the established reform community. She had no time for the "reformers" either, accusing them of an infatuation...