If Billy Has Seven Bombs and Bernadine Plants Three, How Many Bombs Does Billy Have Left?

If you’re a Chicago Public School student, there’s too good of a chance you wouldn’t know.  Sun-Times:

The comparison between Chicago, 10 other large urban U.S. school districts and dozens of foreign countries found Chicago ranked close to Slovenia and Armenia and far below economic competitors such as Singapore, Japan and Taiwan.

“Our urban district students are performing no differently than many Third World nations,” said study co-author John Dossey, an emeritus math professor at Illinois State University. “It doesn’t bode well.”

Although CPS math scores have improved since 2003, fourth-graders still tested worse than all but Cleveland and Washington, D.C., in the United States. Just 13 percent of CPS eighth-graders were proficient in math, putting them on par with students in countries such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Jordan and Macedonia.

“It is alarming,” said Gary Phillips of the American Institutes for Research, which released the report.