While districts in Detroit and New York scramble for funds for new school buildings and roofs, Chicago is adding 1, 600 classrooms.

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It places the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School at the top, followed by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, New York University's Stern School of Business, the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and Harvard Business School.

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The business schools of Columbia, in New York, the University of Chicago, the London School of Economics, Stanford in California and Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, for example, have teamed up behind Cardean University, an early effort at an online institution for tertiary education.

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In Chicago, plans are under way for a new school where gay students and others wouldn't face the bullying and harassment they endure in other schools.

NPR: Chicago Proposes Gay-Friendly High School

The government says the US Charter schools movement is closer to its free school programme and that in Chicago and New York, Charter schools have helped close the achievement gap between rich and poor students.

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At a recent public forum hosted by Chicago's Office of New Schools, most in the audience supported the proposed school.

NPR: Chicago Proposes Gay-Friendly High School

It's basically housing driven, and we see it in cities like Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, LA, that never had significant school desegregation.

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New York's Harvey Milk School and Milwaukee's Alliance High school were inspirations for the Chicago proposal.

NPR: Chicago Proposes Gay-Friendly High School

Mr. Epstein is a professor of law at New York University, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

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