One day after a report assailed school reform efforts in Chicago, a group of local and national educators on Tuesday unveiled a new reform organization and a plan that they say could help transform the system-one school at a time.

The new organization, the Chicago Forum for School Change, is backed by many of the same players that have been active in the school reform scene during the past five years, including the national Coalition of Essential Schools and the University of Illinois at Chicago-based Small Schools Workshop.

Chicago Forum for School Change is being endorsed by school reform guru Theodore Sizer, founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, which is based at Brown University in Providence, R.I. The forum is funded by a $75,000 grant from the Joyce Foundation and a $75,000 grant from the DeWitt Wallace Reader's Digest Foundation.