Accountability in Chicago in the 1990s derived from progressive reform legislation adopted in 1988 and 1995. The Illinois General Assembly in 1988 passed the Chicago School Reform Act (P.A. 85-1418), which included a set of goals, a redistribution of the school district's resources, and a decentralization of decisionmaking to the school level. The central goal of the legislation was for Chicago's students to achieve at levels comparable to students across the nation (that is, meet national norms in reading and math), both districtwide and at each individual school in the district. The pre-1995 reform era could be characterized as a low-stakes, school-based voluntaristic improvement period, while the post-1995 era has been a high-stakes accountability era, featuring both severe sanctions for adults and students and extensive support for the district's lowest performing schools. In this paper, the author talks about the accountability and support in Chicago and its consequences for students. The author turns out a well-researched and well-documented case as evidence of just how far the Chicago public schools have come. Compared against their own prior performance, the author provides ample documentation of their successful turnaround. The author also documents the data on promotional policy by analyzing research by Melissa Roderick and her colleagues at the Consortium on Chicago School Research. Comments by Stanley S. Litow and Richard Elmore are presented. (Contains 12 figures, 1 table and 34 notes.)