Last year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on one of the effects of Renaissance 2010, an attempt to improve the quality of education in the city's schools.  Under Ren10, as it's sometimes called, the district closed certain high schools, sending students to nearby schools. 

From the Chicago Sun-Times, March 12, 2006 "School closings lead to surges in violence, fear on receiving end."

...Last semester, a Hyde Park Career Academy teacher was punched in the face after he asked a student for identification....

This is the kind of violence that is troubling Chicago's public high schools -- especially those accepting students from areas where failing schools are being systematically shut down under Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 initiative.

Since they began admitting those students in the fall of 2004, all eight schools have posted an increase in reported violence that is at least twice as high as the average for similar high schools systemwide, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis indicates.

The most dramatic example was Hyde Park, where the average number of reported violent incidents per month jumped 226 percent during that period, the analysis of CPS data showed.

In fact, Hyde Park was hit by a double-whammy, being forced to accept more than 300 students -- more students than any other receiving school -- in the past two years because two schools closed to freshmen: Englewood this school year and Calumet the year before....

Experts say spikes in violence can make students depressed, worried, anxious and, for the unlucky ones, victims....

In class, it's not unusual to hear new underclassmen swear at teachers, triggering arguments that interrupt instruction.

Most of the bathrooms have been shut down due to a rash of arson fires in them last year.

So, it should be pretty clear that this systemwide reform effort would hurt student achievement at Hyde Park Academy.  And it did, according to an article today's Chicago Sun-Times.  Here's the lede: "At Hyde Park Academy, a neighborhood high school serving black, mostly low-income students, reading scores have dropped dramatically over the last five years." 

Dropped. Dramatically.  But not surprisingly.