Even if you work at Chicago Public Schools, its organizational chart is probably foreign. At the top sits one all-powerful mayor, at least when it comes to schools. Then come his appointees: a seven-member school board, a chief executive officer and a chief education officer. Beneath them are nearly a dozen cabinet-level appointees overseeing the bulk of the district's central office, which includes more than 60 administrative offices.

Let's focus on just one of those offices: school networks. CPS clusters 431 of its 660 schools in 13 networks by geography. Each network is run by a chief, who, in turn, often employs a deputy, who, in turn, employs anywhere from five to 10 people. These mini-departments recruit principal candidates, administer budgets, oversee school progress and make sure schools are following policy and curriculum. (The other schools in CPS, including charters, schools slated for improvement with increased support and alternative schools, have their own deputy network chiefs and staffs, including a few teachers, some on the CPS payroll and some not.)

In all, Chicago Public Schools spends more than $22 million annually to maintain this layer. The number quickly rises to $200 million if you include additional network staff and the district's central office, which also is filled with midlevel oversight. The biggest chunk of funds is spent on the central office—to fund 933 positions—and network offices—another 279. That may be small in a system that has 38,000 employees and an operating budget of nearly $6 billion. But these administrators add to a bureaucracy that slows or too often stops reform in midstep.

It doesn't take a Six Sigma specialist to ask why CPS—which is facing a $480 million budget shortfall and warning of mass layoffs—can't turn the networks' duties over to the hundreds of principals and local school councils essentially doing the same thing.