Top education officials are taking a get-tough approach in their struggle to improve city high schools. They're grilling all the principals on everything from test scores to student attendance. The sessions are modeled on a successful crime prevention program in New York and they are subjecting principals to a level of scrutiny they aren't used to.

In recent years, the story of Chicago's public schools has been one of two different districts, the elementary schools and the high schools. In the lower grades, test scores are on the rise and optimism abounds. But in the high schools, large numbers of kids continue to drop out, the graduation rate remains stuck at around fifty percent and test scores have shown little to no improvement. Arne Duncan is Chicago Public Schools' CEO.
 
DUNCAN: And so we really wanted to put a spotlight on high school performance. Principals are accountable for their body of work, which is their school's performance.

To drive home the message, Duncan and his aides are embracing a program initially designed to cut down on crime, not high school dropouts. The New York City Police Department launched COMPSTAT in 1994. Every week, local precinct commanders would come before top police officials, armed with statistics, and have their crime-fighting strategies picked apart. The Chicago Public Schools version of the program puts high school principals in the hot seat.

NORMAN: It wasn't patty cake that they we're playing.

Senn High School Principal Richard Norman had his meeting late on a Friday afternoon in mid-November. Principals were asked to make a brief presentation. Norman showed up with four years of test scores graduation rates and other data. He wasn't exactly expecting a pat-on-the-back. Still, the meeting was unlike any Norman had ever been too. 

NORMAN: They asked about some of the test scores. We had a dramatic drop in a lot of our test scores. To be quite honest with you, I was really at a loss to understand why.

What steps is Senn taking to reverse the slide?” his bosses demanded to know. What is the school doing to improve its declining 9th grade attendance?

DUNCAN: These are questions that any building manager who's a CEO needs to understand and comprehend. And more than understand, have a strategy to improve.

Schools chief Arne Duncan says the meetings weren't designed to put principals on the defensive. Richard Norman says he learned a lot.

NORMAN: You know, I didn't take it personally. If I would look at it from that point of view—which you could—how is that going to help me and the school?

But other principals objected to the scrutiny.

BERRY: They felt it was more of an attack than an instructive process or an intellectual process about, What can we do to make our high schools better?”

Clarice Berry, who runs Chicago's principals union, says her office was flooded with angry phone calls in the weeks after the meetings began. Principals complained of being called downtown and interrogated.  The outcry sounds familiar to Baltimore educational consultant Bryan Richardson. 

RICHARDSON:  I was definitely not the most popular guy in the school district. I had the car windows on my car broken in one day after work in broad daylight.

Richardson helped start Baltimore's SchoolStat program in 2005 and is now working with roughly a half dozen other districts on similar initiatives. He says public school systems, like many government bureaucracies, haven't been tough enough.

RICHARDSON: In general, what you have to remember, is that this is an accountability process that's designed to orient a team around results. And if that team is not right now oriented around results, it's going to feel a little painful. 

Chicago Public Schools officials say they're analyzing all the information they've gathered and will hold a summit with high school principals early next year. In Baltimore, the SchoolStat program has helped reduce teacher vacancy rates. In Philadelphia, it's been credited with helping to increase attendance, decrease suspensions and raise test scores.  Schools officials in Chicago hope it will spark the kind of high school improvement that's remained frustratingly elusive.

I'm Jay Field, Chicago Public Radio.