Education: The Case of the Missing Millions

Chicago's shaken school system clutches at solvency

As the outspoken, well-tailored $82,500-per-year superintendent of the nation's third largest school system, Chicago's Joseph Harmon was a favorite in the Gold Coast parlors of the city's business elite. In four years on the job his scrappy resistance to busing in the racially divided system, now 80% nonwhite, won him praise from whites—and steady criticism from minorities and the Federal Government. But when Hannon recently telephoned to talk about the schools with his friend Don Reuben, a well-connected local lawyer and adviser to Chicago's Mayor Jane Byrne, he got a chilling message. "Things had changed,"...