Chalkbeat

The results are in. Here’s where four Chicago 8th graders plan to go to high school in the fall.

2024-02-28T22:35:00+00:00

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Nicole Watson began checking the GoCPS website early in the morning on Feb. 23, in case Chicago Public Schools released the high school enrollment results early.

Results were scheduled to go online at 5 p.m. that day, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking at the website every hour.

After months of touring schools, preparing for the High School Admissions Test (HSAT), and ranking school choices last fall, her son Daniel Watson was about to find out where he would be spending the next four years of his academic career.

Daniel’s grades in seventh grade were stellar and he did well on the HSAT — both criteria considered in the application process, alongside their neighborhood’s “Tier,” which is based on socioeconomics, and the order in which they ranked their preferred high school programs. The Watsons felt good about his chances of getting accepted at his top choice schools, but Nicole Watson was still anxious.

When she checked the website shortly after 5 p.m. and saw that he’d been accepted to his top choice selective enrollment school, Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep, she had to hold back tears.

“I knew he could get in, that the possibility was real, but seeing it felt really nice,” she said, letting out an audible sigh. “Not quite overwhelming, but a relief.”

Some families also felt that relief last Friday evening as they saw their results; the uncertainty and stress of the high school enrollment process came to a successful end for them.

But others found disappointment and further uncertainty staring back at them from their screens after their children were denied or waitlisted at their top choice schools.

“It worked out for us. But I think about all of the kids and families who were disappointed because they didn’t get an offer, or they didn’t get their first choice,” said Watson. “Break that news to a kid, and then how do you continue to build their confidence and let them know ‘it’s not you, it’s the system?’”

Students who are unhappy with their offers can apply for Principal Discretion, which allows selective enrollment high school principals to fill seats outside of the regular selection process. Students can also appeal the decision, or they can wait a few more months to see if they get off the waitlists and into their top schools.

But, after the Board of Education’s December vote to develop a new five-year strategic plan that would, among other things, shift “from a model which emphasizes school choice to one that supports neighborhood schools,” even families whose eighth graders were offered seats at their top choice high schools have a lot to think about. Some worry about how much the plan will impact the schools they chose while others worry about how the process and the schools will be different for their younger kids.

Last year, Chalkbeat followed four families as they went through the CPS high school enrollment process. Now, after results have been released, we’ve checked in with them to see how they fared, what they think of the process now that they’ve received results, and how they’re thinking about the future as the school choice system stands to undergo big changes.

Daniel Watson leaned on art techniques to help manage his stress during the enrollment process. His mother Nicole Watson has helped him apply to career-focused high school programs in hopes of broadening his options.

Daniel Watson

Daniel Watson played it cool when he learned he had an offer for a seat at his top choice schools, said his mother. But “he couldn’t stop smiling,” so she knows he was excited.

Nicole Watson said she wouldn’t do anything differently, but when the Watsons potentially have to go through the process again for her third grade son, she’ll do exactly what she did for Daniel and make sure that he is the one who picks his top choices.

“Because this is his high school experience,” she said. “I’m glad that I did that and that I just didn’t make the decision myself, that I really allowed it to be his decision.”

Now that the process is over, the Watsons will focus on the big transition to high school, but the fact that her youngest son’s turn will be coming up in the midst of the Board of Education’s next five-year strategic plan, which could de-emphasize school choice, is on her mind.

“That means that this particular kid potentially could be impacted by it,” she said. “We understand that strong neighborhood schools indicate a strong, thriving neighborhood. But at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with having a more rigorous academic setting for kids who need that.”

For Daniel and the Watsons, they’re already onto the next thing — thinking about college. Nicole Watson said that looking ahead she’s most excited about the potential for dual-credit and Advanced Placement classes for her son to help reduce the cost of college.

Katherine Athanasiou, left, and Chloe Athanasiou. Chloe Athanasiou hopes to one day help to repair some of the flaws in the youth mental health system. She hopes that attending a high school where she can take an Advanced Placement Psychology course will be a step towards that dream.

Chloe Athanasiou

When Chloe Athanasiou first began considering high schools, one of their goals was to attend a school where they knew people. For Chloe, that school was Walter Payton College Prep, her top choice.

So Chloe was relieved when they were offered a seat at Payton, but “it wasn’t happiness until I heard from friends that are important to me,” they said.

Chloe advises students going through the process this year not to worry about “what other people are doing. Worry about yourself first, then you can worry about others.”

Focusing so much on attending Payton to be with their friends, Chloe said, put even more pressure on getting into the school, “even if it wasn’t the best decision for me,” they said. “If I were to do it all again, I probably would have put a lot less pressure on myself.”

Even with their success in the process, Chloe still thinks the whole system needs to be changed.

“I think it’s a ridiculous amount of stress and pressure for you to deal with. And it’s not necessary,” they said. “We could figure out a different solution.”

Katherine Athanasiou, Chloe’s mother, also felt the pressure and said she would’ve tried to stay, or at least appear, calmer if she had to do it over again, which she will next year when her sixth grade son goes through it.

“But this is a really crazy process and I feel like we all have to show ourselves a little bit of grace,” said Katherine Athanasiou.

Even with the Board of Education’s move away from school choice to support neighborhood schools, Katherine Athanasiou said she’s still going to push her son to get straight A’s next year, because in the current process, “if you get a B in seventh grade, you’re pretty much locked out of selective enrollment schools,” she said.

But Chloe, who attended a neighborhood school through sixth grade before transferring to a selective enrollment elementary school, said they are hopeful that the board’s plan will improve things for everyone.

“It would have definitely changed my experience [at the neighborhood school] if more time and effort was put into making sure that those spaces were safe and that they were receiving a good amount of resources,” said Chloe. “I think it will, in the long term, benefit everyone.”

Selah Zayas, left, hoped to follow in her mother Andrea Zayas’ footsteps and attend her alma mater Lane Tech College Prep. Selah was accepted to one of her other top choices: Noble Street College Prep.

Selah Zayas

This year’s high school enrollment process has changed everything for the Zayas family.

Selah’s HSAT scores came back lower than expected. So they weren’t surprised when she didn’t get an offer at her top choice selective enrollment school, Lane Tech College Prep, but the family was disappointed.

The HSAT cut-off scores for Lane Tech were among the top five highest this year. Students who scored below that cut-off score did not get offers.

The other schools with higher cut-off scores were Walter Payton, Whitney Young, Northside, and Jones College Prep, all of which consistently rank as the top high schools in Chicago in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Students rank selective enrollment schools and “choice” schools — charter schools, magnet programs, and other non-selective enrollment schools — separately. Selah did receive an offer at Noble Street College Prep, which she ranked as her number one “choice” school, largely because it is where her brother attends — so she could take advantage of sibling preference. Although she is disappointed, Selah said she still feels relieved to “have some clarity” about where she’s going in the fall.

“At least I didn’t have to go to my neighborhood school,” said Selah, but she envies the kids who had more choices. “I just wanted the same opportunity and selection.”

Her mother, on the other hand, is questioning everything.

Andrea Zayas teaches at a dual-language charter school where Selah and her two younger sons attend, and now she’s worried that the school did not adequately prepare her daughter for high school and also may be underpreparing her younger sons.

Specifically, she no longer trusts the school’s grading system.

A low grade is supposed to be a “red flag,” she said. But Selah had a 4.0 grade point average in seventh grade. So Andrea Zayas was surprised when her test scores were low.

“It definitely makes me reconsider the elementary school that they’re currently at,” she said. “It’s kind of like the fruit of my discontent over the years with their instruction.”

“My children have not been acknowledged as having challenges, because they were always compared to their peers versus being compared to a standard,” she said.

To help her daughter cope with the disappointment, Andrea Zayas has been reaffirming that Noble Street is a good school, but she is really rattled and is questioning not just her daughter’s elementary school preparation but the school choice system as a whole.

“I feel like sometimes there’s an illusion of choice. The true preparation doesn’t begin in middle school or eighth grade, the true preparation begins in kindergarten, when you choose a school that is going to prepare your child for their next step.”

“There’s all these schools,” she said. “But do you have access? There might be options, but without access, what do options matter? And access is the instruction that occurs every day. It’s the elementary school that you’re going to and what they are doing.”

Elias Gray’s interest in engineering has him eyeing schools with strong STEM programs, but this process has directed his thoughts even further into the future as he considers college and beyond.

Elias Gray

“Three words,” said eighth grader Elias Gray three days after receiving enrollment results, “It’s. Finally. Over.”

Gray was genuinely surprised when he learned that he had an offer to attend Brooks College Prep, which was his top choice selective enrollment school. Although he did very well on the HSAT, he got a couple of B grades in seventh grade, bringing down his overall score on the high school enrollment rubric.

“I just feel excited because I never thought I’d be able to get into Brooks,” Elias said.

At school the Monday after results were released, however, his classmates had a mix of emotions, he said.

“Some are happy. Some are depressed because of how low they got.”

Either way, he said, he doesn’t know a single kid at his elementary school who will be attending the neighborhood school — Morgan Park High School.

“Our neighborhood school is like the final line, the last line,” said Elias. “It used to be good, but I don’t know what it is now.”

With the board’s plan to shift from school choice, Elias’s mother Shanya Gray wonders what that will mean for her younger son when he considers high schools.

“I just don’t want my kid to be a guinea pig,” she said.

But, she said, she feels much more prepared now that she’s gone through the process and understands how everything works. That’s the advice she has for families preparing for this year’s enrollment process — learn everything you can about the system.

“There’s no one place where you can go and get all the information, all the tips and so on,” she said. “There are these pieces that you have to find or have to know. The people who are most successful in this system are the ones who have cracked it. It isn’t necessarily the smartest. It isn’t necessarily the best. It’s the people who have cracked the system.”

‘Productive struggle’: Chicago educators search for ways to close math gaps

2024-02-05T23:31:44+00:00

Arika Henderson’s kindergarten class at LEARN South Chicago campus usually starts the day with a math lesson. On this early morning in January, the kindergartners are working through addition problems.

Henderson, an 18-year veteran teacher, asks a student to help model to the class how to solve 1+2. Together, they use brightly colored blocks to represent the numbers in the equation and count out loud together.

Henderson then pairs off the kindergartners to solve more problems on their own — a strategy she uses to see if students are grasping the concept and provide additional guidance to those who need a little more help.

As schools across the country grapple with low math scores that have dropped over the last decade and plummeted even further during the COVID-19 pandemic, educators like Henderson are searching for ways to engage students and build proficiency in math.

In Chicago, some schools have brought in math coaches to help teachers hone their instruction, while other educators are turning to a concept called “productive struggle,” where students are encouraged to find their own strategy to solve math problems before a teacher steps in to give them a solution.

Finding ways to help young learners build a solid foundation for math learning is key to students’ success in later grades, experts say.

Math concepts build over time, so instilling those basic math skills is critical, said Susan Levine, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.

“Evidence shows that the level of math that you go into kindergarten with is predictive of your long term-trajectory,” said Levine. “It doesn’t mean students can’t catch up, but research shows that it is better to start early.”

Students who skip pre-K or K may miss early math skills

In kindergarten, students learn how to count to 100, add, subtract, and identify shapes — building blocks for more advanced skills such as multiplication, division, order of operations, and the Pythagorean theorem.

In Illinois, state law does not require parents to put children in school until the age of 6. It is unclear how many young children do not attend preschool or kindergarten, since the state only tracks the number of children in publicly funded programs.

But research has found that students enrolled in kindergarten, especially full-day programs, have significant gains in reading, math, and social emotional skills. Young children who don’t attend school before first grade may fall behind in being introduced to foundational math.

Enrollment in the early grades also took the biggest hit during the pandemic as parents were concerned about safety and virtual learning.

That may have further stalled progress in math for many young children.

The Illinois State Board of Education’s KIDS exam is an assessment given to students in the fall that measures the readiness of children entering kindergarten. Teachers are asked to assess students’ readiness in math, social-emotional skills, and language and literacy development. In Chicago, teachers found that 31% of kindergarten students were ready for math during the 2020-21 school year, down by 3 percentage points from 2019.

When Illinois shuttered schools in 2020 in response to the pandemic, Henderson’s kindergarten class that year was in its second semester. During virtual learning, she said, only 14 students showed up consistently on the computer.

“It was only so much you could control from your end,” Henderson said.

Now, those students are third and fourth graders. Henderson suspects many did not have a good kindergarten experience to build their foundational knowledge in math, she said. “I just feel so bad.”

At Ruggles Elementary located on the city’s South Side in Chatham, Shekinah Curry, a second grade math teacher who has only been in the classroom for three years, said she’s noticed gaps in students’ foundational skills when it comes to writing numbers and counting.

“You may have students who are still writing numbers backwards. There was one student, she put 97 when it was supposed to be 79,” said Curry. “I have students who may not know how to count by fives or students who are questioning ‘if I’m counting by 10s correctly.’”

Schools turn to math coaches, shifting strategies

As districts work to close the learning gaps, educators are shifting to different strategies, such as productive struggle, and schools are scrambling for ways to help teachers become more effective in teaching math. In CPS, the district has started to roll out the Skyline curriculum, which encourages students to be active participants in class.

Katie Gleason, a first grade teacher at LEARN South Chicago campus, learned about productive struggle during her monthly meetings with teachers who are a part of the charter school network’s math professional learning community.

The approach — which Henderson used in her classroom and involves allowing students to work out ways to solve problems on their own after the teacher has first modeled a strategy — is effective because it requires students to make a connections between math concepts they are learning in class, Gleason said. However, the approach can be difficult for teachers to adapt to because some were taught to stand in front of the class and show students how to get the right answer.

“The math professional learning community has really taught us to allow students to have that productive struggle to try it on their own first and to teach them that it’s okay to make mistakes,” said Gleason. “We actually learn a lot through our mistakes.”

Some Chicago schools are also investing in math coaches — who observe educators in class to provide them with feedback and instruction strategies — to help bridge the gap in student learning and get students engaged in math.

At LEARN, math coach Midm Yi, who was a teacher for 11 years working with third, fourth, and fifth grade students, understands how difficult it can be for classroom teachers to catch students up to their current grade level while teaching new material.

In his role as a math coach, Yi spends his time observing teachers from anywhere between 25 to 45 minutes to evaluate engagement strategies teachers are using. Then he provides debriefing notes to teachers and resources they can use to improve their instruction. At the end of each week, he meets with other coaches in the network to go over training plans, professional development plans for teachers, and other projects.

Yi said he not only wants to see how teachers are working to fill in holes in students’ foundational skills, but also how they are “delivering that high, rigorous content that the curriculum is also providing for us. Are you intentionally using your plan time to effectively carve out specific time where you will be addressing those needs?”

In CPS, Corey Morrison, director of mathematics at the district, said his department has a math specialist for each grade who looks at research to see what math strategies are useful and a program manager who analyzes real-time data to see what interventions students need.

A CPS spokesperson said the district also has 198 coaches who support teachers in literacy and math. In addition, the district has also given funding to every school to hire at least one academic interventionist to work with students.

Shekinah Curry stands next to her second grade class on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024 at Ruggles Elementary school in Chicago, Illinois.

CPS’s Skyline curriculum, which is still being rolled out across the district, has also been a main force in changing how students learn math, Morrison said. Lessons are designed to encourage students to try their own math strategies in class, while teachers help students facilitate the conversation.

“It allows students to form their understanding based on what they’re naturally bringing to the classroom,” said Morrison. “Then, the onus is on the teacher to facilitate them to a point of deep understanding.”

School officials see promising growth

With the new support for educators and students the district added last year, Morrison said, schools are starting to see growth on students’ test scores.

“Last year was our first real year back from COVID,” said Morrison. “We saw a lot of promise from the strategies we put in place, and I think more of the intentionality around building positive math identity.”

Chicago Public Schools assesses students in reading and math between kindergarten and second grade three times a year on the i-Ready exam. At the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, 12% of K-2 students were at grade level at the beginning of the year. That number jumped to 50% by the end of the school year, according to data Chalkbeat Chicago received from a Freedom of Information Act request.

LEARN charter school network found that teachers who received math coaching or were a part of the network’s professional learning council during the 2022-23 school year saw their students score a higher proficiency rate on the NWEA and Illinois Assessment of Readiness exams, compared to teachers who were not receiving coaching. The charter school network — which serves 4,200 students across 11 schools in Chicago, northern suburbs, and Washington D.C. — went from one math coach last coach to five this year, according to a spokesperson. Three are shared between schools in Chicago and North Chicago; the schools in Waukegan, Illinois and Washington D.C. have one school-based coach each.

Teachers at LEARN like Katie Gleason have found math coaching and being a part of the professional learning community helpful. While Arika Henderson doesn’t receive math coaching, she is practicing productive struggle in her classroom.

Since the pandemic has eased, Henderson says she has seen growth in her students — some of whom had never been in school before — this year.

“They are getting in a routine of things,” she said. “The lightbulb has kind of come on and I can see the difference.”

On the cold January day in Henderson’s classroom, after she modeled a way to solve addition problems, her students worked on their own in their textbooks for about 10 minutes, tackling equations such as 2+1, 2+2, and 2+3.

Most students sat at tables named after flowers — sunflowers, tulips, lilies, roses, chrysanthemums — and worked with cubes. Others were asked to sit with Henderson’s instructional aide to get more hands-on support. Henderson walked around the classroom, keeping students on task and offering support where needed.

Some needed time to solve the problems, while others already found the answers. One student told Henderson: “I don’t need the counters. I already know it.”

A few minutes later, Henderson asked the class to share their answers and how they solved the problem.

Nearly every hand shot up, as the kindergartners jumped with excitement to tell their teacher and classmates what they had learned.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Board of Education renews contracts for 49 charter schools

2024-01-25T23:01:29+00:00

The Chicago Board of Education voted Thursday to renew agreements with 12 charter networks, impacting 49 schools. The decision followed months of pleading from charter school leaders, educators, and students.

The board extended contracts for all of the schools up for renewal. It renewed most of the contracts by either three or four years, starting this July. The maximum extension allowed under state law is 10 years.

Each renewal came with a set of conditions, ranging from monitoring services for students with disabilities and students learning English as a new language to improving facilities, financial compliance, and accuracy of teacher licenses. Those conditions were a result of “issues that were identified during our comprehensive review,” said Zabrina Evans, executive director of the district’s Office of Innovation and Incubation in the Office of Portfolio Management.

The vote represented the first round of charter renewals under the current board. In the months leading up to Thursday’s vote, Chicago’s charter school community worried that the board, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, would make it more challenging for charters to get renewed. Johnson, who rose to power as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, has long been critical of charter schools, but has also said he doesn’t oppose them.

More recently, the board passed a resolution stating its intention to move away from school choice and focus on sending more resources to neighborhood schools. The resolution does not call for the closure of schools of choice, such as charters, but board leaders said they would be more closely scrutinizing charter schools.

The board’s vote to renew all contracts isn’t surprising: State law has barred school closures in Chicago until 2025. In July, a Cook County judge overturned the previous board’s decision not to renew its contract with Urban Prep Charter Academy after ruling that the state’s school closure moratorium applies to charters.

Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland said she appreciates the improvement she’s seen in some charter schools, but said that others have failed to keep up finances or follow federal laws.

“I still maintain that as a private operator getting public money, there should be a higher level of scrutiny,” Todd-Breland said.

District officials said they evaluate charter schools based on performance in three criteria: academics, finances, and operations, which focuses on 13 areas related to state and federal law, requirements in their charter contract, and CPS policy. Five-year extensions are awarded to schools that meet or exceed academic and financial standards and receive the highest rating for operations. Extensions beyond five years go to schools that exceed all standards.

Board President Jianan Shi said he wanted the district to continue focusing on the student experience portion of the operations category for charter evaluations. He said he was concerned to see schools not meeting expectations focused on students with disabilities, students who are learning English as a new language, and student discipline. No school met standards for all three of those categories.

“‘I’m elated that we have schools that are doing well academically and financially, but I want kids to enjoy going to school every day,” Shi said.

During several board meetings since the summer, charter school leaders have asked the board to renew their contracts for the maximum 10 years. While it was previously common for schools to receive five-year extensions, district leaders have more recently renewed charters for shorter terms. Last January, the previous board – appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot – handed out two-year extensions to nearly half of the charter schools up for renewal, while another two got five years.

On Thursday, no school received five years. Just over half were extended for four years, and just over 40% were extended for three years. The board approved a one-year extension for Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy Charter High School and a two-year extension for Chicago High School for the Arts.

Ebonie Durham, executive director of Great Lakes Academy, a charter school that received a three-year extension, asked the board to provide schools and families with more clarity on what it takes to get a 10-year extension.

Great Lakes met academic and financial performance standards, but did not meet benchmarks for operations, including for student discipline, students with disabilities and students learning English as a new language.

As conditions of Great Lakes’ extension, the board called for the school to implement the district’s recommendations for serving students with disabilities. The conditions also call for monitoring how the school is serving English language learners, its disciplinary practices, and how it tracks repairs to facilities.

“If the CEO’s recommendation is accepted and we receive three years, in two years I will be back in front of this board again pleading to be renewed,” Durham said.

Before the board vote, some teachers raised concerns about Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy, which serves students ages 16-21 who became disengaged with school. The teachers at the school, who are part of the Chicago Teachers Union, have voted to strike Feb. 6 in response to concerns over several issues, including staffing levels for students with disabilities, “sanctuary protections” for immigrant students and employees, and compensation, according to the CTU.

Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, highlighted the fight at Instituto as one reason the renewal process should reflect “what the people, the stakeholders in that school community deserve.” One of her recommendations included creating Local School Councils so that charter parents have more of a voice.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago charter school advocates urge Mayor Brandon Johnson to back school choice

2024-01-18T04:31:09+00:00

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Charter school advocates delivered 2,000 letters to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office on Wednesday, urging the mayor to keep school choice alive, after his hand-picked school board signaled they may try to shift more resources toward neighborhood public schools.

Charter proponents are concerned about the future of their schools under a new mayor who campaigned on a pledge to boost neighborhood public schools — just as dozens of charters are up for renewal and a city moratorium on closing schools ends next year.

For roughly two decades, Chicago Public Schools has operated a system in which families can apply to myriad charter, magnet, test-in, or other district-run schools.

Having options for school was critical, said Myisha Shields, a parent of three former charter school students, during a news conference Wednesday at City Hall.

“My five babies, my Black babies — they’re gonna go where I choose for them to go, because that’s the choice that I was given,” she said. “I really don’t need Mayor Johnson’s help in choosing anything for my children.”

Shields, who lives near Marquette Park on Chicago’s South Side, said she has three children who attended charter schools and are now all pursuing nursing degrees.

She credits Noble Schools for the success of her eldest, who pushed through “severe learning disabilities” to get straight A’s at Alabama A&M University, where she’s a senior. Shields said her other two daughters are in their freshman and sophomore years at the University of Illinois Chicago. Shields said her kids wouldn’t have had the success they’ve enjoyed if they’d gone to traditional public schools.

“Her self esteem at one point was so low, but now it’s as big as City Hall,” she said of her eldest.

Myisha Shields, far right, delivers thousands of letters to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's office from parents, administrators, and alumni in support of school choice programs on Wednesday.

Noble Schools is one of 47 charters up for renewal during the 2023-24 school year. More than half of Chicago’s roughly 51,000 charter school students are enrolled at one of Noble’s 17 campuses across the city.

“We are calling for Mayor Brandon Johnson and his CPS board to demand a fair charter renewal term that protects school choice,” Shields said “If charters are not treated fairly, please believe: We will be at your door every day. This is not the last time you’ll see this face.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the mayor said: “The Johnson administration believes in investing in neighborhood schools so that all of Chicago’s families have the choice to send their children to fully-funded, well-resourced, and celebrated schools in their community. As a former public school teacher, Mayor Johnson knows first-hand the harm that sustained disinvestment has on Chicago’s communities and youth. Furthermore, as the father of three CPS students, the Mayor is personally invested in ensuring the success of Chicago’s public school system.”

During the renewal process, district officials scrutinize charter schools’ academic performance, financial practices, and compliance with other standards. Chicago Board of Education members vote on the final renewal terms.

CPS spokeswoman Sylvia Barragan said in a statement that district leadership and the Chicago Board of Education “do not make charter renewal or revocation decisions lightly.”

The board voted last month on a resolution to move away from school choice and ensure “fully-resourced neighborhood schools, prioritizing schools and communities most harmed by structural racism, past inequitable policies and disinvestment,” according to the resolution.

It was the first time the board formally stated it wants to move away from its embrace of selective admissions and enrollment policies, because it “reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity,” according to the resolution.

In response to worried charter and school choice advocates, Chicago Board of Education President Jianan Shi said during an Agenda Review Committee meeting on Wednesday that the resolution “is, again, about prioritizing neighborhood schools, creating pathways from K-12 and (helping) schools and neighborhoods farthest from opportunity, so that we are not sorting our children and favoring those with more means.”

He added that it’s “not directing us to close selective enrollment schools.”

Even before Johnson took office, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration started a trend of shorter charter renewal periods. Johnson, a former educator and organizer for the teachers union, historically opposed charter expansion and said during the mayoral election runoff campaign that charter school expansion “forces competition for resources and ultimately harms all schools.” But he also has said he does not oppose charter schools.

This story was updated after publication to include a comment from the Chicago mayor’s office.

How do families use Chicago’s vast school choice system? Five people tell us their stories.

2023-12-20T22:53:13+00:00

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One mother in West Pullman on Chicago’s South Side sends her daughter to a charter school even though there are two neighborhood schools down the street.

Up in Albany Park, a mother is for the first time confident in her daughter’s neighborhood school after two decades of sending her older children to magnet and test-in programs.

A high school student attends one of the district’s most coveted high schools — but wants the city to undo the system she used to get there.

There’s a lot that goes into how families choose a school in Chicago.

Last week, the city’s school board made waves by announcing they want to move away from that system of choice and build up neighborhood schools, especially in areas that have lacked investment from the city. The board passed a resolution last week stating its intent, but does not call to close any schools or change specific admissions policies.

Originally established to help desegregate schools, the system has recently earned a reputation for stressing out students, who are competing for seats at a limited number of sought-after schools, many of which are segregated by race and income.

Despite that, students have increasingly chosen schools they’re not zoned for. Last school year, 56% of students attended their zoned neighborhood school, or roughly 20 percentage points fewer than in the 2002-03 school year. A quarter of students attended their zoned high school last year, compared to 46% 20 years ago.

The district also won a federal grant in October that they will use to collect community feedback on how they can make neighborhood schools more attractive. In the grant application, Chicago Public Schools said its goal was to reduce the percentage of families attending school outside of their regions by 3%. The district did not answer questions to clarify their definition of region or why 3% was their goal.

How much the district will try to change the city’s school choice system will depend on feedback from the community, board members said. Already, a mix of reactions have emerged. Some community groups praised the board’s support of neighborhood schools. But former CPS CEO Janice Jackson wrote in an op-ed to the Chicago Sun-Times that moving away from school choice would ultimately hurt Black and Hispanic children.

“Trying to do anything in a district that large is going to take a long time if you’re going to do it right,” said Jack Schneider, a professor at University of Massachusetts at Amherst who studies education policy. “It’s going to turn quite slowly and particularly so if your effort is rooted in engaging communities and really listening to them and trying to respond to what you’re hearing.”

Chalkbeat asked readers for their thoughts on school choice and got nearly 80 responses from families across the city about how they’ve navigated the system. We spoke to some of those families to understand how — and why — they chose their schools.

From left to right: Tiffany Harvey walks her dog, Mila, alongside her daughters Isabel Harvey, 21, and Amalia Harvey, 10, as they walk to Haugan Elementary School in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2023. Amalia is a fourth grader at Haugan Elementary School.

Preschool sells mom of four on neighborhood school

About 20 years ago, when Tiffany Harvey was deciding where to send her firstborn to school, she kept hearing that aside from some gifted and magnet programs, Chicago’s schools were “terrible.”

Harvey applied to magnet schools and had her son tested for gifted programs. She also toured a kindergarten classroom at the neighborhood school, Haugan Elementary, a couple blocks away from their Albany Park home. But at the time, Haugan didn’t have before- or after-care programs to accommodate her work schedule, while magnet and gifted programs came with busing. And Haugan’s test scores seemed low to her, she said.

“I honestly felt like I was a bad parent if I didn’t explore all the options and find the best option,” she said.

Over the next two decades, Harvey would send her first three children to magnet, gifted and selective enrollment schools outside their neighborhood.

A few years ago, that changed.

In search of preschool for her fourth child, Harvey applied for the district’s full-day pre-K program and saw that Haugan had seats. She didn’t want to pay for preschool again, and after so many years in Albany Park, she wanted to invest in her neighborhood school as someone who was better-off than some of her neighbors. Her daughter got a seat at Haugan, where 89% of students come from low-income families.

Some research shows public pre-K programs can “attract a more integrated group of families” to schools, while some districts notice families flee after preschool, said Halley Potter, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, who has studied school segregation.

Harvey, who had low expectations, found Haugan was “phenomenal,” she said. Her daughter’s teacher was creative and kind. There was a good combination of play-based learning and introduction to academics. Her daughter was meeting kids from all kinds of families. The next year, she enrolled her daughter in a nearby lottery dual-language program, but they missed Haugan. Her daughter returned for second grade and is now in fourth grade.

“We never looked back,” Harvey said.

Harvey supports families having the ability to choose a school for their child. However, she wishes more parents would realize that schools can’t be measured by test scores alone, and more-advantaged children, like hers, can flourish alongside peers who are different from them. It’s also easier for parents to get involved at schools that are nearby, she said.

As district leaders consider how to invigorate neighborhood schools, they should add more services, such as pre-K programs or after care, as ways to draw in more families, she said.

“I don’t know what the right balance is,” Harvey said. “I do want our neighborhood schools to be celebrated and promoted and have the resources they need, where parents don’t feel like they have to drive across town to find a better option.”

A mom who chose a charter school

Charity Parker lives a couple of blocks away from two neighborhood schools in West Pullman. But her daughter, Aikira, attends a Chicago International Charter Schools, or CICS, campus that’s a roughly 15-minute walk from their home.

Parker, who attended Catholic and charter schools growing up in Chicago, said the neighborhood schools close to her — Curtis and Haley — are “poorly funded” and don’t have good test scores. At both neighborhood schools and Aikira’s charter school, more than 90% of students are from low-income families. But CICS is designated as “commendable” by the state, the second- highest designation out of five. Haley and Curtis have lower designations.

Charity Parker, left, and her daughter Aikira Parker, 8, right, smile as they pose for a portrait together outside of CICS Prairie Chicago International Charter School, where Aikira is a second grader, in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2023.

Aikira is learning more advanced topics than other neighborhood kids Parker knows, she said. She placed fifth in the school’s science fair for a solar panel project, Parker noted.

“An 8-year-old doing engineering work — I’m not getting that at my local CPS school,” she said.

Another selling point for Parker, who is Black, is that about one-third of Aikira’s peers are Hispanic, so she’s exposed “to another culture besides her own.” At Curtis and Haley, more than 90% of students are Black, which is common in Chicago’s segregated neighborhoods.

Parker said all parents should have the right to choose where their children go to school, and the district should never mandate attending neighborhood schools. While Parker loves some things about CICS, she has some issues with the school.

Aikira “loved” kindergarten at CICS, but the next year, Parker had some disagreements with Aikira’s first -grade teacher over coursework. This year, Parker has some concerns about behavior issues in Aikira’s classroom and has considered transferring her out.

But other charters are far away, and she doesn’t have a car. Private school is too expensive.

So, she’ll stay at CICS, she said.

“I’ll admit there are some things about my daughter’s school that rub me the wrong way, but the education is awesome,” Parker said.

Dad sought out selective schools for his son

Since kindergarten, Clyde Smith’s son, Kadin, has exclusively attended selective public schools located 5 to 6 miles south of their Bronzeville home.

Kadin tested into McDade Classical School, a selective enrollment elementary school in Chatham. Then, he tested again in sixth grade and got a seat at an accelerated middle school program located inside Lindblom Math and Science Academy, a selective enrollment high school in West Englewood. Kadin, 16, is now a sophomore at Lindblom.

The stressful nature of admissions never felt “unhealthy,” Smith said. His son has always been surrounded by peers who aimed for similar programs, so he was used to the competition.

“It’s always been in the air,” Smith said. “It’s almost like asking a fish, ‘How’s the water?’”

Kadin Smith, left, stands with his father, Clyde Smith, at their Bronzeville home.

A simpler option might have been to attend his neighborhood school where he’s guaranteed a seat: Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts. District officials closed Dyett in 2015, but the school was revived in 2016 after protests and a hunger strike that Mayor Brandon Johnson participated in as an activist.

The district hosted a press conference in October at Dyett about the school’s rising graduation rates, and officials noted that the school’s 86% graduation rate had surpassed the citywide average.

Smith said he “understood the activism” that brought back Dyett, but it wasn’t enough to win him over.

“The test scores, the classes offered, the colleges they get accepted into overall, to me, doesn’t lay proof that that’s the strongest academic environment like some of these selective enrollment schools are,” Smith said.

Smith complimented the district’s desire to boost neighborhood schools, adding that segregation and “racial inequities” have left many schools under-resourced. Neighborhood schools need “strong teachers,” challenging courses, and more internship opportunities, he said.

Paul Hill, an architect of the idea that districts should create a mix of school options for parents, said the district could risk driving away parents like Smith.

“If the district is really serious about working hard on the neighborhood schools and trying to figure out what would keep people in them… that’s responsible,” said Hill, the founder of the Center for Reinventing Public Education. “On the other hand, if they really attack the schools of choice that probably will drive down enrollment.”

Smith agrees. After all, if Kadin didn’t get into a selective enrollment high school, he and his wife would have sent him to private school.

Mom is daunted by high school admissions

Laura Irons loves Logan Square and their neighborhood school, where her 7-year-old daughter is in first grade. But the thought of choosing a high school is so daunting, the family is considering leaving Chicago by the time their daughter finishes eighth grade.

Irons’ daughter passed up a seat at a magnet school to attend her zoned school, Brentano Math and Science Academy, because the family liked walking to school and didn’t want their daughter to lose friends.

“Being nearby the school, I think, has tremendous social-emotional benefits,” Irons said.

For the future, her family would consider the neighborhood high school. But other parents tell Irons it’s dangerous, with lots of fights and nearby shootings. Irons doesn’t know whether to believe them.

Laura Irons, far right, poses for a photo with her husband and two children at the Logan Square Blue Line stop.

Irons worries about the impact of the competitive application process on her daughter. Through friends and community Facebook groups, Irons hears about kids being “so tremendously stressed out” by the application process. She hates that some schools are considered good or bad without any clarity about why.

“I don’t like [the idea of] making such a big decision at such a young age,” Irons said. “It feels like the college process, which is hard already in itself.”

Even though Irons and her husband love city life, they’re leaning toward leaving unless there is more clarity and transparency around how the choice system works, she said. And she doesn’t know where to find accurate information.

“I do value choice in certain situations so I’m not anti-choice,” Irons said. “I think the system that we have, though — to sound so cliche — it’s just a broken, very opaque system. I wonder if kids would even be stressed if the parents weren’t so stressed.”

Selective enrollment student sees problems with the system

One of Tess Lacy’s earliest memories of discussing school choice was in fourth grade. Her physical education teacher told her class, “I want you to go to good high schools,” Tess recalled.

Comments like that were common throughout Tess’s elementary and middle school years. Teachers talked often about applying to sought-after high schools. Many of her friends felt they’d fail their parents if they didn’t get into those schools. While her own parents didn’t care where she went, the stress around Tess conditioned her to focus on selective enrollment schools, she said.

Tess Lacy poses for a portrait in front of George B. Swift Elementary School, which she used to attend, in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2023. Lacy is currently a sophomore at Jones College Prep.

She took the High School Admissions Test and got into her top-ranking: Jones College Prep in the South Loop.

Now, three years later, Tess wants to see the selective enrollment system abolished.

Selective enrollment schools tend to have more resources, not just from the district, but also from families who can fundraise, sometimes millions of dollars, Tess noted.

“If you intentionally, institutionally, structurally create schools that have more resources, parents with more resources will send their kids there,” Tess said. “I feel like a lot of people are able to realize that’s not normal, but there’s a lot of people who would rather forget about the tens of thousands of students who don’t have that privilege.”

Tess doesn’t regret attending Jones, where she finally feels accepted as a transgender young woman and has made friends from all over the city. She enjoys doing technical work for the school’s drama department.

But her decision to attend Jones now feels like it was influenced by everyone around her. She regrets not ranking Edgewater’s Senn High School higher. Senn was not her zoned high school, but is a neighborhood school closer to home that has a good arts program — one of Tess’s interests.

She would encourage eighth grade students to “really, truly think about what they as a student want.”

“Now I look back, and I see how my decision was so not my own decision,” Tess said.

Correction: This story orignally stated that McDade Classical School was a gifted program. McDade is another type of selective enrollment elementary school in Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools leaders want to move away from school choice

2023-12-12T18:45:13+00:00

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Chicago school leaders want to move away from the district’s system of school choice — in which families apply to a myriad of charter, magnet, test-in, or other district-run programs — according to a resolution the Board of Education will vote on this week.

The move puts in motion Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign promise to reinvigorate Chicago Public Schools’ neighborhood schools. On the campaign trail, Johnson likened the city’s school choice system to a “Hunger Games scenario” that forces competition for resources and ultimately harms schools, particularly those where students are zoned based on their address.

District leaders’ goals include ensuring “fully-resourced neighborhood schools, prioritizing schools and communities most harmed by structural racism, past inequitable policies and disinvestment,” the resolution, which was released Tuesday, said.

The board wants to pursue that policy goal — and several others — as part of the district’s five-year strategic plan, which will be finalized this summer. In an interview with reporters on Tuesday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, Board President Jianan Shi, and Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland declined to specify changes or say how far they want to move away from the choice system. That’s because they want to collect community feedback on how far the district should go, which would be outlined in a final five-year strategic plan this summer, they said.

The board is expected to vote Thursday on the resolution, which doesn’t create or get rid of any policies; rather, it formalizes and publicizes the district’s goals.

The district wants to “transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools,” the resolution says.

This marks the first time the board has formally stated it wants to move away from selective admissions and enrollment policies. It says the school choice system, as it exists today, “reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity” and must be replaced with “anti-racist processes and initiatives that eliminate all forms of racial oppression.”

Some selective enrollment and magnet schools lack the diversity of the city, enrolling larger shares of white and Asian American students, while others remain largely segregated by race and class.

Martinez said it is painful to hear of students traveling far distances to attend school, or when parents ask if they should get their 4-year-old child tested for gifted programs. He said he can “scream as loud as I can” about all that he believes neighborhood schools can offer to families versus highly sought-after magnet or selective enrollment schools — but “it’s not going to be enough.”

“We see this as an opportunity to, again, build trust, because I want to keep calling that out — that is a huge challenge for us,” Martinez said.

Any number of big changes could be on the horizon, Todd-Breland said.

“There likely will be policies that need to be revised and changed, so the admissions and enrollment policy is on the table as something that through this process of engagement, likely there will be some changes to it,” Todd-Breland said.

Todd-Breland and Shi said they’ve heard many pleas from the community to overhaul the choice system. The board’s goal to move away from school choice is framed in the resolution as a response to the district’s ongoing challenges, such as budget deficits and academic disparities between students citywide and Black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, those who are homeless, and children learning English as a new language.

District leaders imagine prioritizing neighborhood schools to receive more resources and programming. Martinez said universal preschool is one example of an initiative that can draw families into a school.

The system of school choice in Chicago grew over many decades.

Data shows around 56% of elementary school students attended their zoned neighborhood school last school year and 23% of high school students did. Twenty years ago, during the 2002-03 school year, 74% of students attended their zoned elementary school and 46% of high schoolers did.

Many of the district’s most popular magnet and selective schools were created in the 1980s and 90s under a court-ordered federal desegregation consent decree that officially ended in 2009. In the 2000s, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley opened 100 new schools under an initiative known as Renaissance 2010. Most of those schools did not have neighborhood attendance boundaries and many were charter schools run by third-parties.

The expansion of school options also contributed to the mass closure or shakeup of nearly 200 schools, including 50 schools in 2013. Enrollment has further declined since then, but under state law, the district cannot close schools until 2025. Officials would not say if the five-year plan would eventually include closing schools and emphasized their plans to engage communities.

However, Todd-Breland did signal that the board might move to close charter schools.

“If you are a privately-managed school, taking public dollars from our taxpayers that would otherwise go to the other schools that we know need to be invested in because they haven’t [been] for years, and you are not performing at a level that we find to be a high quality educational experience for young people, then why do you continue to exist in this system?” she said.

Nearly half of the charter schools authorized by the Chicago Board of Education are up for renewal this year and dozens more will be next year. If a charter is not renewed, it most likely would close, though operators can appeal to the state.

The previous administration, under the leadership of former CPS CEO Janice Jackson, also tried to reinvigorate underenrolled neighborhood schools. In 2018, the district offered additional funding for specialty programs to local schools looking to attract more students.

Though the current system has long been criticized for stressing out students and families as they compete for spots at the most sought-after schools, many families value having options outside of their assigned neighborhood school. Student admissions to gifted programs rely on a test, while admissions to selective enrollment high schools are based in part on the High School Admissions Test and previous school performance.

The board’s policy priorities come less than a year before Chicago will for the first time elect school board members. State law currently says 10 members will be elected and the mayor is to appoint another 11. That shift is one reason the board is focused on getting a lot of community feedback on their vision, so new board members “understand this is the direction that the district is moving in,” Shi said.

Political shifts, such as this transition to an elected school board, could upend what the current board wants to do, said Jack Schneider, an education policy expert and professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

“The last thing you want is to put all of this effort into something like promoting neighborhood public schools and then have a massive change in the composition of the board that then leads to a 180 in priorities,” Schneider said.

The resolution also highlights several other policy goals under the district’s next strategic plan, including creating more community schools over the next five years. These schools provide wraparound services to students and families, another priority for Johnson. It also includes adding staff, ensuring culturally relevant, anti-racist lessons for students and similarly framed professional development for educators, and prioritizing collecting feedback from students and the community.

The board also wants to ask the community’s help in creating plans for “previously closed and currently ‘underutilized’ schools,” the resolution says.

Read the full resolution on page 21 of the board’s agenda posted online.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

After court order, Chicago Public Schools extends contract with Urban Prep charter schools

2023-12-14T22:36:49+00:00

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Forced by a court order, the Chicago Board of Education voted Thursday to extend charter school contracts run by embattled Urban Prep Charter Academy.

The board approved an extension until June 2024 for the network’s Bronzeville and Englewood campuses.

The extension comes more than a year after the board voted not to renew the contracts, with plans to take over those schools. The board’s decision was based on allegations that Urban Prep mismanaged finances and failed to comply with special education laws, as well as allegations that the school’s founder, Tim King, sexually abused a now-former student. King has denied those allegations.

Urban Prep appealed the board’s decision to state education officials, who sided with CPS. The charter network then filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court alleging that their agreement couldn’t be revoked because of the state’s moratorium on closing schools until 2025. In July, the court ruled in Urban Prep’s favor.

“That is why we are here — to be in compliance with the court’s order even as it may be contrary to previous actions by the board,” Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland said last week at a meeting to review the board’s agenda.

CPS has appealed the court’s decision.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, who currently appoints the school board, is critical of the charter sector, but he has also stressed that he doesn’t oppose charter schools. The board recently passed a resolution signaling that it wants to boost neighborhood schools and move away from the district’s school choice system, which families use to apply to magnets, charters, and test-in schools and other programs.

Several teachers and families from other charter networks have pleaded with the board to renew their contracts over the past several months, including on Thursday. Christian Feaman, director of district advocacy for Illinois Network of Charter Schools, suggested the board’s new resolution attempts to “claw back the basic rights” of school choice for “Black and brown families.”

The resolution — which doesn’t create or get rid of any current policies or schools — isn’t intended to signal a closing of all charter schools, Todd-Breland said Thursday. Rather, the board wants to “hold charters accountable to the promise that was made at their founding,” she said.

The Urban Prep agreement approved Thursday comes with more than a dozen conditions, including cooperation in district investigations and complying with financial oversight. Those conditions are generally the same that Urban Prep has had to follow in the past, most of which Urban Prep has not attempted to comply with, said Zabrina Evans, executive director of the district’s Office of Innovation and Incubation in the Office of Portfolio Management, last week.

In remarks to the board Thursday, Dennis Lacewell, chief academic officer at Urban Prep, said the district is spreading “lies and propaganda” about the charter failing to meet nearly all the requirements CPS has asked of it. Lacewell said Urban Prep has complied with eight of ten previous conditions and submitted evidence to the district.

Separately, a few public speakers raised concerns about the board’s resolution, specifically saying the board shouldn’t be moving to close any selective enrollment or gifted schools. Todd-Breland emphasized that there is no current plan to close any schools.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

How does it feel to apply to high school in Chicago? Four eighth graders share their experiences.

2023-12-11T11:00:00+00:00

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Chloe Athanasiou was rippling with nervous energy. It was Oct. 11 and they — and 28,000 of their eighth grade peers — were about to take Chicago Public Schools’ High School Admissions Test, or HSAT.

“Everybody’s so nervous. Either everybody’s really quiet or screaming their heads off,” Chloe said. “I was one of the people who was screaming their heads off to try to feel better. It actually worked, strangely.”

The test would be a crucial factor in determining the next stage in their lives: where they will go to high school.

In Chicago, every eighth grade student is guaranteed a spot at their local neighborhood school, but according to data from previous years, about 70% of high schoolers attend schools outside their neighborhood.

What was once an effort to desegregate Chicago Public Schools has turned into a fiercely competitive process to get a seat at top-performing, well-resourced high schools. Admissions decisions are still based on a “tier system,” which assigns every student’s address in the city a “tier” based on the socioeconomics and educational attainment of people living in the census tract and admits a mix of students living in different tiers.

Applicants spend months attending open houses, researching schools, and ranking them in order of preference. Next, they take the HSAT. When their scores come back a few weeks later, students have a chance to re-rank their school choices — a new twist added this year.

Then, everybody waits — until May, when admissions offers are made.

The whole process, as eighth grader Elias Gray put it, causes “mostly anxiety and fear.”

CPS made some changes to this year’s test meant to help alleviate stress, said Sara McPhee, executive director of the CPS Office of Access & Enrollment. After feedback from families, for example, the HSAT was shortened to one hour instead of two-and-a-half and reduced from four sections to two.

But the anxiety is deep-seated because what’s at stake, these students say, are their futures.

Chalkbeat followed four eighth graders from different parts of the city and different types of schools through this year’s enrollment process – which came with some changes and a test day glitch. Here’s what it’s like to go through Chicago’s high school enrollment process.

High school is one key to unlocking dreams

Many students begin thinking about where to apply to high school well before eighth grade.

That’s partly because students’ grades in seventh grade factor into admission at the city’s selective enrollment schools. The other half of a student’s overall score is based on their HSAT results.

Students try to prepare however they can, including by shelling out for private tutoring – even though CPS warns that it has seen no correlation between test preparation and acceptance rates.

Katherine Athanasiou (left) and Chloe Athanasiou (right). Chloe is in eighth grade in Chicago Public Schools and hopes to one day help to repair some of the flaws in the youth mental health system.

Chloe Athanasiou wants to be a therapist when they grow up. In their own personal experiences with therapists, Chloe has seen many ways that mental health treatment for young people, especially queer youth, needs to be improved.

That is why Chloe hopes to attend a high school that offers an Advanced Placement Psychology course, something available at the city’s top selective enrollment high schools.

In order to make that hope a reality, Chloe began preparing for the admissions process in the spring, but it’s been in the back of their mind for years.

“You start thinking about it in sixth grade a lot, because you’re like, ‘Okay, next year is the year that I have to get all As,’” said Chloe. “And then in seventh grade, you’re like, ‘Okay, [now] I have to get all As. So how am I going to do that? How am I gonna accomplish that with the amount of homework and the different really big projects?’”

To prepare, Chloe did test prep courses, took practice tests, and participated in a Test Anxiety group offered through their school. Despite all of the preparation, said Chloe, the anxiety and stress remained.

“Logically, I know that really all that’s at stake is the next four years of my life. But mentally, it turns into this gigantic thing,” said Chloe. “It turns into a bigger thing than it actually is because of peer pressure and parent [pressure] just evoking a lot of anxiety.”

Nicole Watson (left) and Daniel Watson (right), a CPS eighth grader who is applying to career-focused high school programs. Daniel said he leaned on art techniques to help manage his stress during the enrollment process.

Art helped Daniel Watson ease some of the pressure of going through the admissions process, but his interests in science and technology are driving his and his family’s choices about high school.

His mother, Nicole Watson, began looking into Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs at local high schools as a strategy to counter the high competition of selective enrollment high schools.

“It’s just another way of potentially having my child at a high-performing school,” she said. “I’m looking at all of the options because I think we all know that selective enrollment schools only have so many seats.”

For admission to high school in the 2022-23 school year, 6,239 students ranked Lane Tech, which has about 1,200 seats for incoming freshmen, as their top choice school.

Whitney Young and Jones high schools were the second and third most frequently ranked as student’s top choices, with over 3,400 students ranking them as their first choices.

Nicole Watson wants to give her son more options, but as a social worker she worries about the kids who don’t have “parents or community that’s invested in their education and don’t have access to programming that can make up and fill in those gaps.”

Shayna Gray (left) and Elias Gray (right) outside of Kellogg Elementary in Beverly on Chicago’s South Side. Elias is eyeing high schools with strong STEM programs, but the application process has him thinking even further into the future.

Eighth grader Elias Gray let out a long sigh and shook his head before describing his feelings about the impending HSAT last month.

“This test basically decides the next course of your life in education,” he said.

His mother, Shanya Gray, admitted to feeling just as nervous. A few days before the test, she took the day off from work just to help her son study and try to ease the anxiety for both of them.

“This whole thing is very new to me, because I didn’t grow up in the US. I grew up in the Caribbean,” said Shanya Gray. “So I’m learning as I go along, learning about this process here in the U.S., and there are, even now, some things I wish I knew a year ago.”

She was surprised that there was not more preparation for the test built into the CPS curriculum. She ended up paying for tutoring and a test prep workshop to help her son prepare, but she’s keenly aware of the fact that such preparation isn’t available to everyone.

Elias says he wishes there was more preparation and support from CPS and within the classroom in the form of practice tests and lesson plans specifically targeting the HSAT.

While Elias is hoping to attend a school that can best support his interests in engineering, his goal is simply to attend “an actually good school.”

This whole process, he says, forces students to look forward, even beyond high school, and consider how the choices they make now will have a significant impact on where they go to college and their entire future.

Selah Zayas (left) hopes to follow in her mother Andrea Zayas’ (right) footsteps and attend her alma mater: Lane Tech College Prep.

Selah Zayas looked on as her grandmother evaluated her little brother’s vital signs this summer. He had started having difficulty breathing and Selah’s grandmother is a nurse. Watching her jump into action, she saw how important that kind of knowledge can be, and she wants to help people in the same way some day.

Following in the family’s footsteps is kind of a thing in the Zayas family. All of Selah’s siblings attend the same public charter school where her mother teaches fifth grade, and Selah’s sights for high school are set on Lane Tech, which her mother attended.

After her older brother went through the high school enrollment process last year, Selah went in with eyes wide open. Plus, her school has a High School Placement Manager who prepares students for high school and the enrollment process.

Even so, Selah and her mother had some concerns.

Selah learned some of the foundational math skills tested on the HSAT when schools were fumbling with virtual learning during the pandemic. Studies show that students have had significant and lingering learning loss due to the pandemic, and as a teacher, Selah’s mom, Andrea Zayas, has seen some of these impacts first-hand.

This, she said, is part of what makes the enrollment process inequitable.

“I feel like this system is unfair,” she said. “It’s one test, one day. It’s an hour of their life to determine the high school that will lead to their college.”

In addition, Selah learned math at her dual-language school entirely in Spanish, and while CPS offers the opportunity to take the HSAT in Spanish, Selah feels she is stronger at reading in English. So she opted to take the test in English.

These concerns compounded the pressure, said Selah, because the stakes are so high.

It’s about “who I’m trusting to take the next four years of my life at school [and who] will help guide me,” she said.

Chicago Public Schools canceled and rescheduled the High School Admissions Test after technical problems caused problems on the original date all eighth graders were scheduled to take the exam.

Glitch adds to test day stress

On HSAT test day, the test that 20,000 eighth graders had spent months worrying about malfunctioned. Some students had been able to complete the test before the system crashed, others had completed half, some had never even been able to log in.

Meanwhile, at schools across the city, cell phones were buzzing as eighth graders texted friends about what was going on – discussing questions they remembered from the test, telling friends what to expect, and maybe freaking out a little bit.

CPS decided to reschedule the test, allowing those who finished the chance to keep their scores from this session or retake it at a later date.

Before scheduling a retest date, CPS worked with the vendor to make sure the test wouldn’t crash again. The new testing dates were finally set for Oct. 24 and 25.

Chloe

“I thought the stress would be totally gone, the stress of actually counting down the days until the test,” said Chloe Athanasiou the day after the initial test. “It’s not gone, it’s still there, because nobody knows what’s going on.”

Although Chloe was able to finish the test before the system crashed, their mother was incredibly frustrated by the technical issue.

“It really feels like a nightmare. The kids who are in tier four and have supportive parents and have resources, their parents are going to be able to navigate this in one way or another,” said Katherine Athanasiou.

Families with means, she said, might leave CPS altogether, “and then it’s just inequity upon inequity upon inequity.”

Daniel

Daniel completed the reading section on Oct. 11 and finished the test “with one minute to spare” when he retook it on the 25th. Knowing he had cut it so close made it more stressful as he awaited his scores

He had more anxiety leading up to the retake than he’d had for the initial test, he said, because there was less information available about when the test would be rescheduled. So he didn’t know how to schedule his studying time.

Elias

When Elias Gray sat down on Oct. 11 to take the test, he said all “the questions were in Spanish, and there were numbers all over the screen.”

After hearing the district would cancel and reschedule the exam, Elias felt “shock and relief at the same time.”

No one at his school was able to finish the test, he said. The principal shut down the test once malfunctions started. Knowing that kids at other schools were able to finish the test, Elias felt that the whole testing situation this year was compromised.

“That was unfair because kids at our school are friends with kids at other schools and they might use the answers there to try to [do better] on the test,” he said.

Selah

At Selah’s charter school, students were able to complete the reading section, but when they came back from break, the test was no longer working.

The whole situation had her feeling “a little bit salty,” she said.

For her, there had been more surprises than just the technical difficulties. While she had signed up to take the test in English, she found out on test day that students taking the test in Spanish were allowed to use a dictionary.

Knowing that, she said, might have changed her mind about taking the test in Spanish.

In addition, Selah was particularly put off by the timer that pops up in the corner of the screen as a warning that time was almost up.

“It was very stressful to have to keep seeing that,” she said. “I kept checking in, seeing how much time I have left.”

In the end though, Selah was mostly relieved to have more time to study and go into the test with a little more knowledge about what it would look like.

Selah Zayas is currently in eighth grade at a public charter school where their mother teaches.

After scores come back, reality sets in

After HSAT scores were released just before the Thanksgiving holiday, families had a week to re-rank their school choices if they wanted to. McPhee said people are encouraged to rank by their preference, not by where they think they have the best chance of getting in.

Many seats go to students who have ranked a school second or third, she said. “The seats aren’t gone because we filled them up with the kids who put them first.”

“If school A is your dream, always put your dream at the top of the list.”

But McPhee, a mother of two CPS students herself, hopes families will consider their neighborhood schools and realize that there are more than just a few good options for their soon-to-be high school students.

Chloe

After watching Chloe waiting for their scores and seeing the stress this process has caused, Katherine Athanasiou can only think of two words to describe the process: “developmentally inappropriate.”

“You think these kids can handle so much,” she said. “Now you turn around and you’re like … ‘they are just brand-new teenagers.’”

Despite Chloe’s high scores, the Athanasious have begun an application process for a local private school just to keep their options open. Both were disappointed by the way CPS handled the system malfunction in October.

“I really believe in public education, and I’m still hopeful that it will work out – we’ll get into either the top choice or the second choice,” said Katherine Athanasiou. “But I also want to think about a place where the application process sees a child for not just test scores and grades but for all of the things that make the child who they are.”

Chloe feels pretty good about their chances at one of their top choices and excited that their friends received similar scores so they might attend the same selective enrollment school together.

Chloe switched schools in the middle of elementary school and it made a significant difference in their mental health and happiness.

“It really makes you see that school environments can be really different,” said Chloe. “You have to find the one that’s right for you and that’s not so easy to do.”

Daniel

Daniel’s test scores – in the 90th percentile – were almost exactly what his mother expected. She feels that gives him a good chance at getting into some of the selective enrollment schools on his list.

They evaluated last year’s cutoff scores for each school and decided to re-rank his top three schools, believing he had the best chance to get into Brooks or Lindblom – both selective enrollment schools on the South Side.

While they wait for offers to be made in the spring, she plans to help her son prepare for the Algebra Exit Exam. If he passes, he’ll be able to take geometry as a freshman.

But Daniel’s mom also hopes for broader improvements for all public schools.

“The fact that there are selective enrollment schools shows us CPS knows how to create high-performing schools,” she said. “There needs to be some more equity, so that we have high-performing neighborhood schools.”

Elias

While waiting for his scores to come in, Elias went to a second open house at Gwendolyn Brooks High School, a selective enrollment school in the Pullman neighborhood. The first visit was with his class earlier in the year. This time he was impressed, and it prompted him to re-rank his top school choices – his number one is now Brooks.

Now he’s nervous again. He did well on the test, but the few Bs he got in seventh grade brought his overall score to only a little bit above last year’s cutoff score for Brooks.

He’s trying not to think about what-ifs. Instead he’s reflecting on the process so far and thinking about where he can improve. He’s already thinking about how his experience with the high school enrollment process might prepare him for four years down the line when he’s applying to college.

Selah

When Selah’s scores came in at slightly above average, she was crushed. She had expected to do better.

Her dreams of attending one of the top selective enrollment schools in the city suddenly felt out of reach and she decided to readjust her rankings during the re-ranking period. She began to think her best option might be the charter school her brother attends where sibling preference guarantees her a seat.

Her mother, on the other hand, was baffled. The scores, she said, were inconsistent with her daughter’s grades and how she performed on other standardized tests throughout the year. It made her rethink everything. Is the school not adequately preparing her children? Was there a problem with the test? Did she miss something?

This isn’t the first admissions rodeo for Andrea Zayas and it likely won’t be the last. Her eldest son went through the process last year and did not get an offer at his top choice school.

“That was a disappointment for him and it wasn’t just one day; that disappointment lingers, you know?” she said. “I really feel like it impacts how they see themselves.”

Zayas has two younger children as well – a second grader and a sixth grader – and after seeing the ways this process has impacted her two older children, she isn’t sure if it’s worth it to put her youngest two children through it too.

Her focus now is making sure her daughter understands that “a person is not one thing.”

“A person is many things all at once and there are different strengths” she said. “What is that famous quote? If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will spend its whole life believing it’s stupid.”

What do you think of Chicago’s school choice system? Chalkbeat wants to hear from you.

2023-11-20T20:13:53+00:00

Chicago’s system that allows families to apply for magnet and selective enrollment schools — often outside their neighborhoods — traces back decades. It was initially seen as a tool for desegregation.

But, in recent years, many of those schools have since been criticized for enrolling a larger share of white and Asian American students, even though those students make up a minority of the district, compared to their Black and Hispanic peers.

In addition, the emergence of charter schools in the late 1990s presented families with options outside of their local district-run school.

More recently, officials have seen Chicago’s school choice system as a way to offer families more choices, allowing them to enroll their children in a school they like, instead of being tied to a neighborhood school that may not have the resources they’re seeking.

Still, the admissions process, accessed through an application called GoCPS, has built a reputation for being confusing, cumbersome, and stressful.

Since his election earlier this year, Mayor Brandon Johnson has expressed a desire to boost investments into neighborhood schools, so families don’t feel like they need to leave their communities to get a good education for their children.

We want to know from Chicago Public Schools families: What has been your experience with the city’s school choice system? Tell us here or in the short survey below. (We will not use your answers or your name in our reporting without your permission.)

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Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Many states are moving toward private school choice. Illinois is letting its program lapse.

2023-11-14T19:35:49+00:00

A little over three years ago, Eva Villalobos was searching for a public school for her four daughters, two of whom she had recently adopted in March 2020.

She wanted a school that would provide the mental health and academic support her new daughters needed. Then she discovered St. Gall School on the city’s Southwest side. It had everything she was looking for: small class sizes, before- and after-school child care, and social emotional support.

The price tag for the Catholic school was steep — Villalobos said it cost her almost $20,000 a year for all four children. But her oldest daughter received funding from Illinois’ tax-credit scholarship, Invest in Kids, to bring the price down to about $10,000 a year.

Next school year, however, Villalobos’ children — and more than 9,000 other Illinois students who received tuition support this year through Invest in Kids — will no longer benefit from the state-sponsored financial help.

That’s because Illinois lawmakers are letting the tax-credit scholarship program lapse on Dec. 31. Students who already receive the tax credit scholarship will have their tuition paid for through the end of this school year.

Illinois’ move comes at a time when more than a dozen states across the country have created new private school choice programs or expanded existing ones.

Neighboring red states, such as Iowa and Indiana, have recently made nearly all of their students eligible for private school choice programs, which give families public dollars to pay for private educational options. Wisconsin, which has a Democratic governor and a Republican-dominated legislature, increased the dollar amount of its school vouchers over the summer.

But in Illinois, state lawmakers did not pass a bill during the fall veto session to extend the program despite a last-minute push from families and advocacy groups. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker struck a neutral position that frustrated both sides — underscoring the shifting political winds in a state that has become more blue since the program passed six years ago.

Invest in Kids allows individuals or corporations to donate to scholarship-granting organizations that then distribute money to students from low-income families who need help paying tuition for private schools. Donors get a tax credit worth 75 cents for every dollar donated, up to $1 million. The state capped donations at $100 million and credits at $75 million — limits that were never hit, according to state data.

Michael Petrilli, president of the right-leaning Fordham Institute, said Illinois is likely the first state to kill an existing private school choice program without court intervention.

“It’s very hard to take government benefits away from people, especially when they are sympathetic individuals, especially low-income parents trying to do right by their kids,” Petrilli noted.

But opponents of private school choice programs applauded Illinois lawmakers for not extending the program when the veto session closed last Thursday evening.

Dan Montgomery, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, one of the state’s largest teachers unions, said in a press release that “there is a nationwide push to divert public dollars from our public schools through vouchers or voucher-like programs like tax credit scholarships and education savings accounts.”

He praised Illinois lawmakers who “chose to put our public schools first.”

For Villalobos, the end of the program likely means taking her children out of a school where they are thriving.

“We would be forced to try to find different ways to still be able to support them because they need all this additional help,” she said, noting that she doesn’t see how paying for private school would be feasible. “It just won’t happen.”

How politics shifted during Invest in Kids’ existence

Last week, Villalobos and other families and supporters of Invest in Kids filled the halls of the state capitol in Springfield for the final days of the fall veto session. Wearing blue shirts that read “Save My Scholarship,” they pushed state lawmakers to call a bill, HB 4149, that would extend the program until 2029 with some new limitations around donations.

But Illinois Speaker of the House Emanuel “Chris” Welch never called the bill for a vote.

The moment stood in stark contrast to 2017, when Republicans and Democrats were engaged in a tense, drawn-out battle over how to pay for public education. A budget impasse had stretched for two years.

At the time, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner favored the idea of tax-credit scholarships and said he was “hopeful” a compromise deal would include such a program. Democratic leaders — all of whom are no longer in office — wanted a compromise to end the stalemate and better fund public schools. Behind the scenes, they were open to including a tax-credit scholarship.

Invest in Kids emerged from the closed-door negotiations that finally broke the impasse.

State lawmakers agreed in 2021 to extend the program for a year, with the backing of trade unions that supported additional money for the creation of private vocational schools. Those unions offered their support again this year.

Some advocates, who hoped for another extension, became concerned in the spring when Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher and organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union, became mayor of Chicago. Johnson beat Democrat Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, who favored school vouchers and charter schools.

“His victory surprised a lot of people,” said Greg Richmond, superintendent of the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools. “I had a friend who works in the political arena, he called me two days after the mayoral election and he said, ‘I hope I’m wrong, but I’m just letting you know the scholarship program is now dead.’”

The perception was that “elected officials would want to be on the right side of the CTU,” he added.

Still, in October, Pritzker said he would sign a bill if lawmakers sent it to him. A spokesperson from the governor’s office told Chalkbeat Chicago in late October, “he won’t veto something that passed with a majority supporting it.”

Republican lawmakers urged Welch to bring the bill to a vote on the House floor last week and expressed deep frustration that he didn’t do so.

Rep. William Hauter, a Republican representing a district in central Illinois between Peoria and Springfield, mocked his colleagues from the floor Thursday. “I stand to just congratulate the majority power party who has stood firmly against the Invest in Kids program.”

He called Democrats’ commitment to kill the program “breathtaking.”

In a veto session, a bill requires three-fifths vote to pass. Cassie Creswell, executive director and president of Illinois Families for Public Schools, a public education advocacy group, said Welch might not have wanted to call the bill because it didn’t have enough support from Democratic lawmakers.

“He does not want to call bills that are going to divide his caucus,” she said.

Opponents celebrate ‘historic win’

When the veto session ended on Thursday, opponents cheered the end of Invest in Kids. They said the program lacked transparency and accountability when it came to reporting who received public dollars, and it gave public money to religious schools that discriminate against LGBTQ students.

Public schools have to report academic and disciplinary data to the Illinois State Board of Education, which is included annually in the state’s report card. Similar data for Invest in Kids is not available, though students enrolled in private schools with the help of a tax-credit scholarship are required to take state standardized tests.

“We do not know test scores. We don’t know graduation rates. We don’t know discipline information. We don’t know who attends,” said Creswell. “We don’t know how anyone spent $250 million they got over these last five years. So no transparency and no oversight.”

The Illinois Department of Revenue has issued an annual report on Invest in Kids for the past five years. But much of the individual school level data is suppressed because of student privacy laws. Aggregate data collected in the most recent annual report showed 56% of students supported by tax-credit scholarships last school year were white, 32% were Hispanic or Latino, 20% were Black, and 12.5% identified as other.

Roughly two-thirds were from families whose income was below 185% of the federal poverty line — or $49,025 for a family of four in the 2022-23 school year.

Rep. Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar, a Democrat and the lead sponsor of HB 4149, said she hopes to bring new legislation in the spring.

Guerrero-Cuellar, who represents neighborhoods on the city’s southwest side and west suburbs, said more than 400 students in her district use the tax-credit scholarship to attend private schools.

“This is a critical and needed program for a lot of people,” she said. “We have food deserts, health deserts, and educational deserts.”

But some supporters of the program think a last-minute save is unlikely after lawmakers declined to act last spring and then again in the veto session.

Anthony Holter, president of Empower Illinois, one of the largest scholarship-granting organizations for the program, said he doesn’t know how “feasible it is and whether the conditions in the spring would be any different.”

Parents and students hold signs inside the Illinois State Capitol building as they rally in support of the state's tax-credit scholarship program. The tax-credit scholarship is set to sunset at the end of 2023 after lawmakers didn't act.

Supporters worry about the future for scholarship students

Some supporters of Invest in Kids worry about the long term-effects on students and schools when the tax-credit scholarship program ends.

Tracy Smith, a mother of twin boys whose tuition is supported with the help of a tax-credit scholarship, said that without an extension, private schools could close and teachers could be laid off from their jobs. She also said that ending Invest in Kids would take away families’ right to choose a school that is right for their kids.

“You’re going to have an influx of more students going into a system that they don’t want to be a part of,” said Smith. “If they don’t extend the program, you’re taking away their choice.”

Richmond, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago, said some Catholic schools could face closure without the scholarship program.

“Some of our schools have 50 kids on scholarship or more,” he said. “When a school loses that number of students then the school’s future is also at risk. It’s not just the 50 students whose education is at risk.”

Some donors have already reached out about helping students stay in their schools, he said.

Christine Boyd, principal of St. Mary of the Lake and St. Thomas of Canterbury Catholic schools on the North Side of Chicago, said the vast majority of the schools’ 300 students were on scholarship. Most of the students are African immigrants who speak two languages at home, she said, and the school has a “robust” program for English language learners.

The loss of the scholarship program “will be very devastating to our community and to the school,” Boyd said.

Roni Facen, principal at St. Francis de Sales High School on the city’s Southeast Side, said that she has 55 students who are a part of Invest in Kids. She said some of the students won’t be able to continue attending the school.

The school is located in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood and many families are low-income, she said. Facen said that the school gives a scholarship to all students to help them attend.

“I’m gonna do everything I know how to do to keep my babies here. But it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be an easy fight,” said Facen.

Villalobos, the mother of four, was angry when lawmakers waited until the last minute to make a decision on the scholarship and disappointed that the program was not extended.

“There’s so many unforeseen things that happen in life. No matter how financially stable or healthy you are, things can change in the blink of an eye,” said Villalobos. “This is such a wonderful cushion to have for hard times.”

Now she’s trying to figure out her next step. She wants to keep her daughters at St. Gall, which offers before- and after-school care and social-emotional and academic support. But now that Invest in Kids is ending, she doesn’t know what she’ll do.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Cara Fitzpatrick is a story editor at Chalkbeat. Contact Cara at cfitzpatrick@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago charter schools face potential crossroads with new mayor, dozens of renewals

2023-11-01T12:00:00+00:00

“What happens if our school isn’t renewed?”

Claudia Rodriguez read aloud that question, which was submitted from an audience of more than 100 parents gathered inside Noble School’s UIC College Prep’s gymnasium in mid-October.

Rodriguez, the chief of public affairs at Noble Schools, answered confidently: Non-renewal isn’t really something we’re worried about.

Noble opened one of the first charter schools in Chicago in 1999, when the concept of privately managed public charter schools was brand new. Since then, Noble has expanded to 17 campuses, and the Chicago Board of Education has renewed Noble’s charter agreement four times.

Noble is one of a record 47 charter schools up for renewal in the 2023-24 school year. In all, about 27,600 students are enrolled at these campuses — more than half of the roughly 51,000 students enrolled in charters this year.

The high-stakes renewal process, which scrutinizes charter schools’ academic performance, financial practices, and operational compliance among other factors, comes at a pivotal time, as Chicago’s political landscape is shifting under a new mayor and looming school board elections. Charter communities wonder what it could all mean for their schools.

There’s been a trend toward shorter charter renewals that began under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. In January 2020, the school board renewed seven charter operators for terms of five or more years. But in the years since, only two have received a renewal of five or more years, according to Chicago Board of Education records.

Lightfoot’s successor, Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former educator and organizer for the teachers union, has historically opposed charter expansion. During the mayoral election run-off, Johnson said that charter school expansion “forces competition for resources and ultimately harms all schools.”

But he has also stressed he does not oppose charter schools — and he is strongly against closing schools, which is what could happen if a charter is not renewed. There’s also a state-imposed moratorium on school closings in Chicago until 2025. The mayor’s office did not respond to Chalkbeat’s requests for comment.

An important limit on charter schools’ footprint is already in place for the next several months. In the 2019 contract agreement between Lightoot’s administration and the CTU, the district extended an agreement from 2016 to have a net zero increase in the number of charter schools until the contract expires in June 2024.

Johnson’s recently appointed school board will manage the charter renewal process alongside the CPS Office of Incubation and Innovation. Board President Jianan Shi is a former teacher who has taught at a district-run school in Chicago and a charter school in Boston. Before joining the board, he served as executive director of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, which has previously gotten funding from the Chicago Teachers Union Foundation.

CTU President Stacy Davis Gates believes the way the district handles charters altogether needs to change significantly. She wants more oversight of budgeting at charters and more-equitable engagement of parents and staff.

“The renewal process has to reflect the realities that we’re dealing with. There has been financial mismanagement, there is bloated administrative pay, there is a blind eye to culturally relevant curriculum and practices within the school community,” she said. “Now what do we do about it?”

In a statement, a district spokesperson said CPS is “committed to working with charter leaders and listening to members of our school communities to ensure we make the best possible decisions for our students.”

Nevertheless, charter school administrators, teachers, and parents are keeping a close eye on this year’s renewal process for a hint of what the future holds for the charter sector.

“I think renewal is very important in January,” said Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. “I think that will be a first signal from this board about what they think about charter public schools.”

The ‘renewal hamster wheel’ can impact classrooms

During the renewal process last school year, 11 of 13 charters up for renewal were granted terms lasting three years or less. In 2022, six of the seven charters up for renewal were given terms of three years or less.

Parents and staff in charter school communities have different views about what the renewal process can mean for charters.

Although Noble staff are confident about their renewal, Rodriguez said the possibility they and other charters might get a shorter contract is a concern.

“From a staffing point, it takes a lot of energy,” she said. “From our parents’ [perspective], the uncertainty and instability that that could cause if we’re always thinking in renewal mode.”

Claudia Rodriguez, left, the chief of public affairs for Noble Schools, is in charge of running the renewal process for the charter school network this year.

The heavy lift, Rodriguez said, is due to the large amount of paperwork required and the amount of data the school has to collect. In addition, Rodriguez — who runs the renewal process — said since the process requires reporting on different aspects of the school’s academic, operational, and financial performance, she has to pull in staff and educators from other departments to get the information she needs.

That, she says, “does take time and resources away from the work that we could be putting back into managing our schools and supporting our students.”

“Having to be in a renewal hamster wheel is not the best option for everybody,” Rodriguez said.

Stephen Palmerin, principal at Horizon Science Academy Southwest, feels roughly the same way.

His charter received just a two-year renewal last January, due to concerns about its suspension numbers compared to those of neighboring district schools, as well as the underperformance of elementary students with disabilities.

The K-12 school, which serves about 760 students, is working to reduce suspensions by 50 percent each year before its charter is up for renewal again in 2025. But Palmerin said it’s not entirely fair that Horizon Science’s stats are being compared to both elementary and high schools, since traditionally, elementary schools have lower suspension rates than middle and high schools.

And apart from his concerns about why his school got a relatively short renewal, Palmerin called the renewal process “so time consuming.”

“I wish people would keep the students at the forefront of all decision making,” he said.

But for some parents, the renewal process serves as a way to make sure their children’s schools hold up their end of the bargain.

Blaire Flowers, a parent liaison for education non-profit Kids First Chicago, which specifically supports Black and Latino families, said when her children were at Plato Learning Academy, a contract school, and North Lawndale College Prep, a charter, renewal season was when the schools would begin to “get themselves together.”

Plato is run by a different principal than when Flowers’ children attended three years ago. But at the time, she said, there was no Parent Advisory Council, which is meant to give parents a voice at schools that receive federal Title I funds for students from low-income backgrounds.

When renewal time came, the school established a PAC and began having meetings, created more programming, and held more enrichment events for students, such as a book fair and a Christmas gym shoe drive, she said.

“That’s when they were really doing what they were supposed to,” she said.

Plato received a two-year renewal term in January. Dating back to 2017, the district has given the school relatively low ratings for its financial status and student performance on standardized tests.

Hal Woods, the executive director of the Office of Innovation and Incubation from 2018 to 2020, said he advocated for more regular check-ins with schools to ensure they were staying on track and to make renewal time “a non-event.”

Giving shorter-term renewals to charter schools that aren’t in compliance is one way the board can show schools that they “mean business” and encourage them to do better, Woods said. But with school assessment data often coming in at renewal time, he felt like his office was playing catch up and addressing issues after they’d already taken a toll.

“I just want to make sure that CPS [is] providing better and more real time information to my old department so these things can be corrected in real time,” said Woods, who is now chief of policy at Kids First Chicago.

Palmerin said there is some concern among his staff about the Johnson administration’s sentiments about charters.

“I have no choice but to remain hopeful, because thinking that our days are numbered here, that’s going to affect our work,” he said. “I just know that if we’re committed to the work that we’re doing, let’s not give them an excuse but to give us a maximum renewal.”

Closing charters could be unlikely under moratorium

By law, a charter school must be given notice that they’re failing academically, operationally, or financially. And they must be given time to resolve the issues before officials can revoke a charter agreement and close the school.

The school can also appeal the decision to the Illinois State Board of Education and if successful, it can still operate under state management in Chicago. If that fails, they can appeal in court. That was the course recently taken by Urban Prep after CPS ended its charter; the state voted to uphold the district’s decision.

After a challenge in court, a Cook County Judge ruled that CPS could not “close, consolidate, or phase-out Urban Prep” until after the school closing moratorium expires in 2025.

Woods said he doubts that there will be any charter closings in the coming years, given the legal requirements and the appeal process. But more importantly, Woods said, “it’s very very hard to close a school … because every school is a community.”

At the same time, Woods said that charter expansion is also unlikely given the decline in school-aged children in the city over the past decade.

Flowers said charter schools have served her family well. Her daughter takes three buses to her school each day because Flowers wants her to take advantage of the Phoenix Pact college scholarship option available through North Lawndale.

Blaire Flowers’ three oldest children, pictured above, attended North Lawndale College Prep and Plato Learning Academy, both charter schools. Flowers hopes Mayor Brandon Johnson will “trim the fact” from the charter sector.

Nevertheless, Flowers said she does hope that the Johnson administration will “trim the fat” from the charter sector.

“Some of these charter schools are not really helping the community like they once were,” she said.

There is quite a bit of variation in student outcomes among Chicago’s charter high schools, according to a 2017 study by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, one of the first studies to evaluate Chicago charters according to metrics beyond test scores. The study considered school organization and policies, the incoming skills and characteristics of enrolled students, school transfers, and student performance.

“The single most important takeaway from the study was how much variation there is within the charter sector,” said Julia A. Gwynne, the senior research scientist on the study. “There’s a little bit of a tendency for people to see the charter sector as being sort of monolithic all one way or all another way. And we just didn’t find that to be true.”

With the uncertainty about what a new mayor and new school board will do, Rodriguez said Noble representatives are attending more board meetings and encouraging parents and staff to speak at them to provide “a holistic view of what Noble does in the community and how we support our overall community in Chicago.”

Despite the challenges of the renewal process, Rodriguez said she doesn’t necessarily think the process needs to change. But she does believe that all schools, including traditional public schools who might not be serving students well, should go through that process.

Gates, CTU’s president, said she’s hopeful the education backgrounds of the mayor and new school board will play a role in how the district handles charters going forward. She thinks that the charter renewal process needs to be overhauled to make sure teachers and families have a voice.

Self-proclaimed “charter school mom” Myisha Shields is working to have her voice heard — she spoke at a school board meeting in August and attended Noble’s parent meeting earlier this month. She has had three children graduate from Noble charter schools, and two are current Noble students.

“It’s almost like charters have to prove a point just to stay open. We have to work harder. We have to work our kids harder to prove that these should be an option in the city of Chicago,” she said. “I just wish they would stop making it so hard. It’s so unfair.”

Regardless of how the process changes or stays the same in the coming years, Myisha Shields has one request for everyone involved.

“Just listen to us,” said Shields. “Our kids deserve a great education.”

The Chicago Board of Education is expected to vote on the renewal agreements for the 47 charter schools in January.

Correction: Nov. 1, 2023: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Julia A. Gwynne’s name. It has also been updated to clarify Plato Learning Academy is a contract school, not a charter.

Applying to Chicago Public Schools? Here’s a guide to the 2024-25 application process.

2023-09-13T15:22:45+00:00

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It’s that time of year again: Chicago Public Schools opened its application Wednesday for elementary and high school seats for the 2024-25 school year with a deadline of Nov. 9 — about a month earlier than usual.

Families use the application for entry to a variety of schools, including selective test-in schools and neighborhood schools outside of their attendance boundaries. Sixth graders can also use the application for seven advanced middle school programs.

For high schools, there are several changes to this year’s admissions process:

The High School Admissions Test, or HSAT, will last an hour instead of the previous 2 ½ hours. This shorter test “allows CPS to get the information needed on student performance for the admissions process while helping reduce anxiety for students and increasing accessibility,” a district spokesperson said.
In addition to English, the HSAT this year will also be offered in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.
The district has created a single admissions scoring rubric for all programs. Previously, there were multiple rubrics.
High schools will no longer have additional admissions requirements, such as interviews, essays, or letters of recommendation. Such a requirement “added to the complexity of the process and was burdensome for families,” according to a district spokesperson.

Students will find out their HSAT score in mid-November. After that, students can re-rank the programs they chose in GoCPS until 5 p.m. November 22, district officials said.

About half of elementary school students attend a school outside of their neighborhood, and roughly 70% of high schoolers do the same.

For the second year, families of preschoolers won’t have to apply until the spring. The city is working toward providing universal preschool for 4-year-olds. Last year, officials said there were enough seats for all children who wanted one.

For elementary school and the middle school programs, families can apply online or over the phone. For high school, they can also submit a paper application. Most charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, can also be applied to through GoCPS and students are offered spots via lottery.

The application process for all students, which can involve ranking school choices and taking entrance exams, can be cumbersome for many families to navigate. The later application deadline “may catch people off guard,” said Grace Lee Sawin, co-founder of Chicago School GPS, an organization that helps families navigate admissions.

“I think that will throw off a lot of people who think they had the month of November” to explore their options, Sawin said.

In recent years, CPS has extended the application deadline. Results are expected to be released next spring. The district will hold weekly online informational sessions about GoCPS in English and Spanish starting Sept. 19 at 9 a.m. The sessions will continue until early November. Families should register online here.

Here’s what you need to know.

Families can apply to several types of Chicago elementary schools

Families can use the application for entry into several types of elementary schools.

They can select up to 20 magnets and neighborhood schools outside of their own attendance boundaries. Families can also choose from more competitive, selective enrollment schools, which require a test to get in. Those include the city’s gifted programs and classical schools, both of which offer more accelerated curriculum.

The tests can be scheduled once you submit your application. For these schools, families can choose up to six programs. Families can choose up to three gifted centers that are specifically for English learners.

For neighborhood schools, families don’t have to rank their choices, since they will be entered into the lottery for each program on their list and may get multiple offers.

For the test-in schools, applicants must rank their choices. They are eligible if they score high enough on the entrance exams, but the district does not publish what the cutoff scores are. Thirty percent of seats are reserved for the highest scorers. The remaining offers go to the highest scorers across four socioeconomic tiers that are based on where students live, as an effort by the district to more equitably admit children to selective schools.

Each city neighborhood is assigned to one of four tiers, with the first tier representing the lowest-income areas, along with other factors, such as less education attainment. (You can look up your tier using this map.)

Students who choose magnet programs are entered into a lottery. Schools set aside remaining seats for students from each tier. There are also preferences given to siblings and in some cases, students who live within a certain proximity to the magnet school.

CPS offers admission to 7 accelerated middle school programs

Sixth graders can use the elementary application to apply to the city’s seven Academic Centers, which offer accelerated middle school programs. They are located inside of high schools — some of which are the city’s selective programs, such as Whitney Young — allowing these middle schoolers to take high school level courses.

Students must have at least a 2.5 GPA to apply and must take an entrance exam that can be scheduled through GoCPS. They can choose up to six school options, and must rank their selections. Students are admitted based on their score, with the highest scorers offered seats first. Last year’s cutoff scores can be found here.

All 8th graders encouraged to apply for a variety of Chicago high schools

The first step for eighth graders seeking a high school seat is taking the high school admissions test, or HSAT.

Due to a change last year, the exam is now given in school to all eighth graders at the same time. This year it’s scheduled for Oct. 11. Private school students can take the test on Oct. 14, 15, or 21, according to the district’s website.

Students can enroll in their neighborhood high school or they can use the application to rank up to 20 other high school programs. Schools may have multiple programs, such as one in fine arts and another in world language.

While many of these schools admit students via lottery, they may also have various preferences, such as for kids who live within the attendance boundary or those who earned higher math scores.

Students can also choose from the city’s 11 selective enrollment programs and can rank up to six of them. These schools are more competitive and admit students based on a rubric that includes their HSAT results and their GPA. Last school year, the first 30% of seats went to students with the highest scores on the rubric. The rest of the seats are split up among the highest scoring students across the four socioeconomic tiers. Last year’s cut scores for selective enrollment schools can be found here and for other high schools, they can be found here.

Selective enrollment schools have been criticized for enrolling larger shares of affluent, white, and Asian American students versus Black and Latino students who make up more than 82% of the district. Officials promised to overhaul the system last year in order to make it more equitable, but none of the promised changes have been made.

Students can receive up to two offers — one each for selective enrollment and CHOICE. If they get just one offer, CPS will automatically add them to waitlists at schools they ranked higher than where they got in. If the student doesn’t receive any offers, they can join waitlists for schools they want to attend or they enroll in their neighborhood school.

What is the application process for children with disabilities?

Students with disabilities can apply to any program. No matter which school they end up in, the district is legally required to provide any services that a student may need, according to their Individualized Education Program, or IEP.

For admissions exams, students should be afforded any testing accommodations listed on their 504 plans or IEPs, according to the FAQ page.

However, students with disabilities may face a more complicated school assignment process. For example, if a child is physically impaired and is offered a seat at a magnet elementary program that is not accessible, the district will offer transportation to a “comparable” magnet program that has the proper accommodations, according to a district FAQ about the admissions process.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools is becoming less low-income. Here’s why that matters.

2023-09-06T22:09:52+00:00

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About six years ago, Lori Zaimi’s daughter told her mom that another longtime friend was leaving their elementary school in Edgewater on the North Side. The friend’s apartment building, she explained, had been sold to someone who was going to renovate it.

Zaimi recognized the familiar story of gentrification, when higher-income families move into a working class neighborhood and drive up property values. She’d seen property demolitions and pricey single family housing go up across Edgewater, the formerly working class neighborhood where she grew up.

She has also seen the impact in her daughter’s school, where Zaimi became principal in 2015. These days, she said, rent is “unaffordable for many of our families.”

A decade ago, nearly 73% of students at the school, Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies, came from low-income households, according to district data. Last school year, that figure was just over 34%.

Zaimi’s school is not alone. Ten years ago, 85% of Chicago Public Schools students came from low-income households. Now, that figure is 73% — a 12 percentage point drop — according to district data from the 2022-23 school year. Chicago Public Schools considers a student “economically disadvantaged” if their family’s income is within 185% of the federal poverty line. This year, that threshold is $55,500 or less for a family of four.

The drop, experts say, is driven by several factors, including gentrification, population and enrollment shifts, as well as a potential dissatisfaction with district schools.

Even though the number of students from low-income families has dropped, nearly three-quarters of the district’s student body is still considered “economically disadvantaged.” But if the downward trend continues, Chicago schools could continue to see fewer dollars than expected from the state, which funds districts in part by considering how many students from low-income families are enrolled.

For individual schools, such as Peirce, the decline has led to the loss of Title I money, federal dollars sent to schools with high shares of low-income students. But as the school has become more mixed-income, it has also become more racially diverse: Last school year, Peirce was 47% white and 32% Hispanic, compared to 17% white and 62% Hispanic 10 years ago.

As the district enrolls a smaller share of students from low-income households, Chicago’s schools continue to look different from how they did a decade ago, especially in rapidly changing neighborhoods. That shift raises questions about who schools are serving, how they should be resourced, and what the district — and the city — can do as it continues to lose students.

Low-income drops happening across Chicago, but steeper in some neighborhoods

Peirce is one of more than 200 schools that have seen their share of students from low-income families drop by more than the districtwide decline of 12 percentage points, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s public school enrollment data from the 2022-23 school year.

The analysis of the past decade also found:

While overall enrollment has also fallen, it’s still outpaced by the loss of students from low-income families. The district enrolled 31% fewer students from low-income families than in 2013, as the district’s overall enrollment dipped by 20%.
When looking at neighborhoods, schools in Lincoln Square and Irving Park, on the North Side, and West Elsdon, on the Southwest Side, saw a median 20 percentage point drop or more in students from low-income households since 2013. That’s more than any other community area.
Nine of the top 10 schools that lost the largest shares of students from low-income households were located on the North Side, across gentrifying neighborhoods.
Half of them enrolled more children last school year than they did 10 years ago, bucking citywide trends.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, 73 schools saw increases in their share of students from low-income families. One-third are on the South and West sides — regions that have also lost the most residents between 1999 and 2020, according to a 2022 report from UIC.

CPS officials use two methods to find out which students are from low-income households. They automatically count students who receive certain government aid meant for low-income families, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. And they collect forms handed out at the start of the school year that ask families to report their income, which in the past helped the district determine students who qualified for free or reduced price lunch.

In 2014, CPS became eligible for the federal universal free meals program for districts that serve at least 40% students from low-income families. With less pressure on schools to collect the forms, which are not mandatory, some have suggested that the district may be collecting fewer of them, potentially skewing the data about low-income families.

A CPS spokesperson said it could be “one of several reasons” behind the drop in the district’s share of low-income students. However, district officials declined to share the rate at which forms have been returned over the past decade, instead asking Chalkbeat to file an open records request for that information.

There’s some evidence that those forms do not get filled out, particularly among new students, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

In the 2014-15 school year, 86% of preschoolers and 81% of kindergartners were listed as coming from low-income families, on par with children in other grades, district data show. The next school year, after the district became federally eligible for universal free lunch, around 62% of preschool and kindergarten students came from low-income families, while figures in older grades shifted just a couple percentage points from the previous year.

“That says to me new families that are coming into CPS are not signing up for free lunch,” Allensworth said, who added that population shifts are also a likely contributing factor.

The current data for early grades could also signal that CPS is likely to see its low-income population decline further. Last school year, nearly one-quarter of preschoolers and close to half of kindergarteners were from low-income families, compared to more than three-quarters of students in nearly all of the older grades.

Multiple principals told Chalkbeat they don’t believe missing paperwork is a big contributor — or that it is a factor at all — since their funding heavily relies on collecting those forms.

Another factor in the drop of low-income students could be a slight uptick in families seeking out private schools. Of Chicago’s low-income families, 10% were enrolled in private school in 2021 — an increase of 3 percentage points from 2019, according to an analysis of Census data by Jose Pacas, chief of data science and research at Kids First Chicago. That’s after little change since 2012, the last time there was a similar increase.

That coincides with the COVID pandemic when CPS switched to virtual learning, as well as the launch of Illinois’ tax credit scholarship program, which began in the 2018-19 school year. The program grants tax credits to people who fund scholarships for low-income students who want to attend private schools. That program is expected to sunset this year.

Some low-income parents, like Blaire Flowers, say they’re frustrated with the lack of good school options available in the neighborhoods they can afford to live in. Her daughter takes two buses to a charter high school miles away from their home in Austin on the West Side because Flowers wasn’t able to find a school she liked in their own neighborhood.

West Side parent Blaire Flowers, pictured in the center, is surrounded by four of her five children.

The mother of five also fears that CPS won’t provide her 4-year-old son who has autism with an adequate education. She’s already struggled to secure bus transportation for him this year, and she’s heard frustrations from parents of older students with disabilities who have had trouble securing services they’re entitled to.

If Flowers left Chicago, she’d follow in the footsteps of many friends and family members, some who found the city too expensive, she said.

“Everyone I know, that I was close to, has left the city,” Flowers said.

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

The demographic changes in Chicago Public Schools are largely a reflection of a changing city, experts said.

From 2010 to 2020, Chicago’s population grew by 2%. The median household income also grew by more than $20,000, according to U.S. Census estimates. But during that time, the school district saw enrollment decline by 60,000 students. In recent years, the city’s population has dipped by 3%, driven in part by an exodus of working class families.

“The share of working class families in Chicago is decreasing with time, as its industry and economy shifts toward white collar jobs that skew upper class, college educated,” said William Scarborough, the lead author of the UIC report, who is now an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas.

School closings, including the mass closures under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, may have also pushed some working-class families to leave the city if they lost a beloved neighborhood school, Scarborough added. More people left the majority Black census tracts that experienced those 2013 school closures versus similar areas that did not, according to a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times investigation.

As schools lost students, some principals doubled down on enrolling the kids who lived in their neighborhood.

That’s what happened at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Lake View on the North Side, which saw one of the biggest drops in the share of students from low-income families. In 2013, Hamilton enrolled nearly 40% of children from low-income households, according to district data. That dropped to roughly 9% last school year.

James Gray, who was the principal from 2009-17, inherited an enrollment crisis when he took over Hamilton, which had narrowly escaped closure. The school enrolled 243 students when he arrived – roughly half of the almost 500 it served in 1999. He set out on what he called a “guerrilla effort” to sign up more neighborhood children, offering tours of the school, hosting weekend events and open houses, and even venturing to the park to chat up parents of toddlers — or potential future students.

Gray was successful. By the time he left, enrollment had jumped back up to about 480 students. He noticed that his students were increasingly coming from wealthier families. They were also more white. But that’s who lived in the neighborhood.

In 2013, the school was 47% white, 12% Black, 30% Hispanic and 4% Asian. Last school year, 73% of students were white — on par with the racial makeup of Lake View — while just 3% were Black, just under 13% were Hispanic, and nearly 4% were Asian American. (Hamilton’s current principal did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Though the shifts at individual schools can be stark, the racial breakdown districtwide has only changed slightly. As of last school year, the district’s students were 4% Asian American, 11% white, 36% Black, and 46.5% Hispanic. Ten years ago, 3% were Asian American, 9% were white, 40.5% were Black, and close to 45% were Hispanic.

Research has shown that students in diverse schools, both socioeconomically and racially, perform better academically than schools that are not integrated.

At the same time, families who become the minority may not feel as included or even shut out from their schools. As more neighborhood white families enrolled at Hamilton, Gray said, he received an anonymous note that said he had “driven Black and brown families away.”

It also stung when former students would visit and notice improvements at the school — bankrolled, in part, by parent fundraising efforts — such as new hoops and backboards in the gym and a new science lab.

They would say some version of, “Oh Mr. Gray, I wish you could have done this while I was here,” he recalled.

“They realized their experience was different from the kindergarteners or first graders’ experience over time,” Gray said.

While the demographic shifts have led to more income and racial diversity at some schools, that diversity could be fleeting as gentrification continues to push longtime neighborhood families out.

John-Jairo Betancur, professor of urban planning and policy at UIC, said as property values “dramatically” increase, families — and their children — leave for other neighborhoods or the suburbs, causing enrollment in the local schools to drop. At the same time, birth rates are declining in Chicago and more households do not include children, Betancur noted.

That has happened in Logan Square, home to Lorenz Brentano Math & Science Academy elementary school.

Similar to Hamilton, Brentano was at risk of closure due to low enrollment in 2013. Principal Seth Lavin’s priority when he became principal in 2015 was to bring in more students. He, too, was successful through various efforts, giving more than 100 school tours his first year, he said.

Today, the school enrolls almost 700 children, a 62% increase from a decade ago. But the school looks different. Roughly 39% of students come from low-income households, a nearly 50 percentage point drop from 2013 when 88% did. The school has also become more diverse: Half of Brentano’s students are Hispanic, just over a third are white, and about 5% are Black. A decade ago, 85% of students were Hispanic, while 5% were white, and 4% were Black.

Lavin said he is worried that gentrification has already “pushed out a lot of families” and will continue to do so, leading to a “great sense of loss” for families who have long called Logan Square home, and believe Brentano is at the heart of their community.

“It’s heartbreaking that even as we grow, and there’s expansion and the programming and things we didn’t have before that we’re able to get because of enrollment growth, that we’re losing families that should have those things, too,” Lavin said.

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

Lavin can spot six buildings outside of Brentano that have been renovated and hiked up rent prices in the last several years. He said the city “desperately” needs affordable housing and a pathway to home ownership.

“If we want to keep kids in neighborhood schools, we have to keep kids in neighborhoods,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that building more affordable housing and boosting neighborhood schools are priorities for his administration. Specifically, the mayor wants to grow the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model, which provides extra money for wraparound support and programming.

Separately, Johnson’s vision for school funding would alleviate pressure on principals to enroll more children in order to have a well-resourced school, or even to avoid closure. Though in the past more students meant more funding, CPS officials have been shifting toward funding schools based on need, not just enrollment. But that comes as the district stares down financial challenges, including a fiscal cliff as COVID relief dollars are set to run out.

If the city does nothing to address issues such as affordable housing, Chicago will shift toward “a city that primarily serves elites,” said Scarborough, the author of the UIC report.

District officials have not yet researched the trend around losing students from low-income families, a spokesperson said.

But many principals have noticed these shifts for years.

Even with how her community has changed, Zaimi’s school has two counselors and more staff focused on academic intervention. Still, she wishes she had more funding to hire a parent resource coordinator who could work with families, as well as instructional coaches who could help new teachers or those using new strategies in the classroom.

After all, she emphasized, her students have a lot of needs, regardless of their income. And, last year, more than one-third — about 370 — came from low-income families. That’s larger than the enrollment of entire schools in Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Urban Prep Academies could be turned over to Chicago Public Schools after state denies appeal

2023-04-19T21:44:09+00:00

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Urban Prep Academies may soon no longer operate public charter high schools in Chicago after state education officials denied the nonprofit’s appeal of a decision by the Chicago Board of Education.

The Illinois State Board of Education’s ruling could mean the end of Urban Prep’s 17-year run as a nationally-recognized charter school network known for serving Black boys.

But Urban Prep officials said late Wednesday that they filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County “asserting that the Chicago Public Schools has violated state law that there be a moratorium on school closings until 2025.”

However, the district is not planning to close the schools. In October, when the Chicago Board of Education voted to revoke Urban Prep’s charter agreement to operate campuses in Englewood and Bronzeville, district officials – in a nod to the network’s unique mission and model – promised to continue operating the schools under district management.

At the time, the Chicago school board cited the charter network’s mismanaged finances and its response to a sexual misconduct investigation involving Urban Prep’s founder, which were uncovered by a report by Chicago Public Schools’ Inspector General.

That report alleged that the charter network’s founder, Tim King, groomed an underage student who later worked at the nonprofit and continued to receive paychecks and benefits after he stopped working there. King denies the allegations.

Board chair Steven Isoye said after Wednesday’s vote that “critical steps are already in motion” to communicate with current students and families about the transition. He said Chicago Public Schools will operate a new school with two campuses and an advisory group is already working on transition plans. A district spokesperson confirmed that plan and said the campuses would remain at their current locations.

Two state board members — Donna Leak and James Anderson — abstained from voting on Urban Prep’s appeal.

“As an African American woman and the mother of an African American son myself, I know there’s a need for a safe space that provides them with the chance to know your value and not how you are portrayed in the media on so many occasions,” Leak said. “We have to do better for African American young men.”

Over the last several months, parents and school leadership have fought to keep all three campuses open and under the operation of Urban Prep Academies. The school’s website also appears to still be accepting applications for new students.

“We trust that the courts will rule in favor of justice and Urban Prep students and families,” the statement from Urban Prep read.

The state board had also voted in November to revoke a charter it held with Urban Prep for a third campus — which the state took over in 2019 after the charter network appealed a decision by Chicago’s school board to close that campus. That campus is slated to close at the end of this school year.

Dennis Lacewell, Urban Prep’s chief academic officer, told state board members their decision will impact 400 current students and “hundreds of elementary and middle school black boys” who will “lose the Urban Prep option.” He called the Chicago school board’s October decision “erroneous” and accused the district of “moving the goalposts” as the network tried to address concerns about financial mismanagement.

“A decision to close our schools would eliminate this black institution which almost 20 years ago took on a challenge to successfully educate the most neglected demographic of students: Black boys,” Lacewell said prior to the vote. He also said the decision could result in roughly 100 people losing their jobs, 85% of whom are Black.

Isoye said Chicago Public Schools is committed to retaining as many current Urban Prep staff as possible.

As part of the appeals process with the state, a hearing officer issued a full report for each school in February and recommended the appeals be denied. The reports outlined concerns about Urban Prep’s financial management, noting “extensive borrowing practices via credit cards and predatory lenders.”

It also highlighted a finding by Chicago Public Schools Inspector General that the charter network obtained a Paycheck Protection Program loan from the federal government that “made significant misrepresentations regarding the cost of its operations leading to the receipt of a loan larger than what it would have otherwise been qualified to receive.”

Last fall, Chicago school board members acknowledged that Urban Prep’s academic model has been successful for the Black teenage boys it serves. In the past, Urban Prep has received national recognition for graduating Black students at high rates and steering them into college.

The school’s leadership decided to appeal to the Illinois State Board of Education in November to prevent Chicago from taking over the schools.

After the vote, Isoye said the decision to deny Urban Prep’s appeal — effectively ending the once-lauded charter network — was “not an easy one to make.”

“Supporting the success of Urban Prep students through the transition and beyond is a top priority of all of us here,” Isoye said.

Mauricio Peña contributed to this report.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson’s win reflects local and national shifts on education

2023-04-12T20:35:00+00:00

The direction of public education in Chicago changed last week when voters elected a teachers union organizer and former middle school teacher to be the city’s next mayor over a former schools chief and education consultant.

Brandon Johnson, 47, clinched victory with 52% of the vote over Paul Vallas, 69, and will be sworn in as mayor on May 15.

He comes to the job with more experience in public education than most, if not all, previous mayors. Johnson will also be the first mayor in recent memory to hold the title of a public school parent. And he’ll be the last with the power to appoint the school board.

But most significantly, Johnson brings a teachers union-friendly perspective that rejects many of the education ideas that once dominated Democratic politics and defined Vallas’ career: a focus on accountability for schools, teachers, and students, market-based school choice, and top-down decision-making from the mayor. Support from Democrats for those ideas began to erode years ago, making Johnson’s rise part of a bigger national shift.

“The former bipartisan ground that the Paul Vallas-esque reformers used to occupy, where do they stand anymore?” said Sarah Reckhow, a political scientist at Michigan State University who studies education policy. “The ground has shifted beneath them.”

Brandon Johnson announced his bid for Chicago mayor on Oct. 27, 2022. His win over Paul Vallas on April 4, 2023 marked the culmination of a years-long effort by the Chicago Teachers Union to influence public policy beyond the classroom.

Johnson’s win is also a win for local progressives, who see it as the culmination of years of effort. His education agenda — which closely mirrors policy papers put out by the Chicago Teachers Union over the past several years — calls for more funding for traditional public schools, higher pay for teachers, and additional social services for students.

Emma Tai, executive director of United Working Families, which endorsed Johnson and helped turn out the vote with an army of field organizers, said Johnson’s victory comes after a “years-long journey” of “sustained, aspirational” organizing.

“Both (Donald) Trump’s secretary of education and (Barack) Obama’s secretary of education endorsed Paul Vallas and he lost,” said Tai. “A working-class majority defeated a bipartisan, wealthy donor consensus on public education. And I think that any Democrats with national aspirations or presidential aspirations need to pay pretty close attention to that.”

Johnson’s victory follows a decade of growing union strength

The start of Johnson’s political career can be traced to the summer of 2011, when he left the classroom to become an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union.

For more than a decade prior, Chicago had been a testing ground for a vision of school improvement that relied on accountability and pushed publicly-funded, privately-run charter schools as engines of improvement.

In this worldview, held by Democrats and Republicans alike, teachers unions were seen as stubborn barriers to progress, intent on preserving an adult-centered status quo.

When Johnson became an organizer, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first chief of staff, had just been elected mayor and Illinois lawmakers had passed a new law reforming teacher tenure and limiting the Chicago Teachers Union’s ability to strike. It was one of dozens of laws passed across the country — in red and blue states alike — aimed at weakening the collective bargaining rights of teachers.

That did not sit well with classroom teachers.

A year earlier, a high school chemistry teacher named Karen Lewis had been elected as the new president of the Chicago Teachers Union on a platform promising to oppose charter school expansion, stop neighborhood school closures, and take on high-stakes testing and accountability.

The headquarters of Chicago Teachers Union sit on Chicago’s Near West Side.

Lewis and Emanuel became foils on the future of public education in Chicago — and nationally. They battled over seemingly everything — how long the school day and year should be; how teachers should be evaluated and compensated; and eventually, whether or not 50 public schools should be shuttered.

Though Emanuel succeeded in shuttering 50 schools, Lewis said the “fight for education justice” would “eventually move to the ballot box.”

“Clearly, we have to change the political landscape in this city,” Lewis said on the day the school board voted on the school closures in 2013.

That moment galvanized more than just the teachers union. Tai, now the head of United Working Families, said those closures prompted her to get into politics.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want them to be able to do this anymore,’” Tai said. “What’s it going to take so that I never have to be at a Board of Education meeting again, watching as Black parents are dragged out by white jacketed security guards while they’re crying? I never want to have to see that again.”

Johnson was one of the boots on the ground for the teachers union during this time, convening groups of teachers from schools on the South and West Sides and building coalitions with community organizations.

He helped elect City Council members in 2015 and supported Jesus “Chuy” Garcia’s bid for mayor when Lewis was sidelined by a brain tumor. In 2018, Johnson ran for a seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners and won — a victory Lewis applauded in a letter to teachers when she resigned as CTU president.

But in 2019, the union’s endorsed candidate for mayor, Toni Preckwinkle, lost to outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot in a landslide. That fall, teachers went on strike for 11 days and although the union secured some significant wins, the protracted fight left some teachers and parents frustrated. Still, this spring, the union’s existing leadership won re-election.

Chicago Teachers Union members rallied outside City Hall on the 11th day of their strike in 2019.

Johnson’s ascension to mayor is now an ironic — and perhaps fitting — end to three decades of mayoral control over Chicago Public Schools, a major priority of the union’s. In an interview last week, Johnson told Chalkbeat that he still supports eventually relinquishing control to an elected school board now that he’s been elected.

“Anyone else would say, ‘Well, now that we have it, we’re good because we have our mayor. So let’s keep it. Let’s keep mayoral control,’” he said. “That would miss the moment … We still believe that democracy is the best form of governance for our public school system.”

Mayoral campaign becomes an indictment of education reform

The union had tried and failed twice in the last decade to put an ally in the mayor’s office. But Vallas was a different kind of opponent, and the union capitalized on growing skepticism among Democrats about his education record.

He rose to prominence in 1995 as the first CEO of Chicago Public Schools after the state legislature handed control of the system to then-Mayor Richard M. Daley. He became a leading advocate for and adopter of the education-reform playbook touted by both Democrats and Republicans throughout the early 2000s.

Defenders of Vallas say he fixed entrenched problems and improved outcomes for students. But others, including the CTU, say he left a “trail of destruction” in the places where he worked — which Johnson supporters highlighted during an event on the city’s South Side just weeks before the election. Vallas supporters disrupted that event and called their claims “completely untrue.”

Still, Johnson’s campaign continued to focus on Vallas’ complicated schools legacy, even releasing a two-minute ad with parents from New Orleans and Philadelphia talking about teachers being fired during Vallas’ time leading those districts.

Paul Vallas represented a different kind of opponent for the Chicago Teachers Union, which had tried twice to put an ally in the mayor’s office.

Peter Cunningham, founder and board chair of Education Post and former assistant secretary at the U. S. Department of Education, said Vallas — and his record on education running school systems in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Chicago — were mischaracterized and unfairly maligned. Vallas advocated for more than just school choice and high-stakes accountability, he said. For example, he started a program that still exists to provide Chicago Public Schools students with free eye exams and eyeglasses and developed a school-based teen pregnancy program. He built more than 70 new school buildings — including the one where Johnson eventually taught middle school.

“I would not say the reform movement was a failure in any sense,” Cunningham said. “I would say that it had considerable successes.”

And even though Johnson’s campaign criticized Chicago’s system of school choice that Vallas helped to build, he has taken advantage of it for his three children, two of whom attend a magnet elementary school and one who attends a neighborhood high school that is not his zoned school. That’s a reflection of the way Chicago Public Schools has been reshaped by the changes of the last two decades in ways that are likely to outlast any mayor.

“We’ve seen a lot of improvement in Chicago over the last 15 years,” said Elaine Allensworth, Lewis-Sebring director of the UChicago Consortium on School Research, which has studied Chicago Public Schools since 1990.

More students are graduating high school, going to, and finishing college. Student learning accelerated between 2009 to 2014 — with students gaining six years worth of education in five — according to research out of Stanford University. Out-of-school suspensions have decreased.

“No matter what you think about the reforms of the last 30 years, that’s not the question,” Cunningham said.

“The question is: What do you want to do in the next 10?”

The work beyond the classroom walls begins

The vision laid out by the teachers union more than a decade ago will come to fruition on May 15 when Johnson is sworn in as mayor.

Now, he will have the chance to tackle the issues beyond the classroom, beyond the school building, beyond the district administration. As he moves from an outsider advocating for a certain ideology to decision maker, Johnson will face the realities of governing a city known for its provincial politics, despite being dominated by Democrats.

Johnson will be responsible for a police department grappling with reforms mandated by the federal government and a public health department still dealing with a global pandemic. He’ll oversee multiple city agencies that determine when libraries are open, whether trains run on time, how businesses are licensed, and how to manage garbage pickup and alley rats.

Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson spoke at a City Club of Chicago luncheon during his campaign for mayor.

Allensworth said educators have an “innate sense” of how those different sectors — such as transportation, public health, and safety — all impact public schools.

“I do hope that having that knowledge will help him be a good strong coordinator of all those different services in the service of young people in Chicago,” she said.

And although Chicago Public Schools has seen a lot of improvement, the pandemic stymied some of its progress. Chicago’s scores on the nation’s report card last year dropped in math and flat-lined in reading. Long-standing gaps between students of color and their white peers remain. The district’s handling of students with disabilities is being monitored by the state, after a 2018 report found it delayed and denied services to those children.

“There’s so much more work to do,” said former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who led Chicago Public Schools from 2001 to 2008 and now heads a nonprofit focused on violence prevention.

Duncan endorsed Vallas and in doing so, didn’t mention education or schools. In an interview with Chalkbeat, he said the mayoral election was as much about education as it was about public safety, noting that when students drop out of high school, they’re more likely to be shot and killed.

“The consequences here in Chicago for educational failure are pretty staggering,” Duncan said. “This is absolutely about education. It’s absolutely about breaking cycles of poverty and helping people have upward mobility and enter the middle class.”

Now, he said the city needs to rally around Johnson. And he applauded the former teachers union organizer for promising to double the number of youth summer jobs from 30,000 to 60,000 and make that employment program year round.

Johnson has also promised to fund the city’s public schools based on need, not enrollment, which has been declining for the past decade. With schools slated to get their budgets this month, it’s not clear if the formula for doling out money will change in time for next school year. He’s vowed to continue investing in support staff — such as social workers, school nurses, and librarians — which Chicago Public Schools has already started doing using federal COVID recovery money.

He’ll have to negotiate a new contract with his former employer, the Chicago Teachers Union, and decide whether to keep current district leadership, including CEO Pedro Martinez, in place.

Tai, with United Working Families, said Johnson’s win does not mean their work is finished.

“I don’t think it’s ever really over,” she said. “But it’s a game changer, a conversation changer, and once again, Chicago’s in the center of it.”

Patrick Wall contributed reporting.

This story has been updated to correct Peter Cunningham’s title.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Like the candidates themselves, donors in Chicago’s mayoral race have deep education ties

2023-03-31T23:36:51+00:00

Like the candidates themselves, the people and organizations giving big money in Chicago’s mayoral election have strong ties to public education — and the debates around it for the past two decades.

Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas’ campaign has been propelled by wealthy business executives, while county commissioner and union organizer Brandon Johnson has been fueled by labor unions.

The Chicago Teachers Union is Johnson’s biggest donor, while Vallas has received six-figure donations from wealthy individuals with ties to school choice and education reform, including some who have charter schools named after them. Vallas, a torch bearer for school choice and charter schools, has supported voucher expansion. Meanwhile, Johnson’s progressive platform aligns closely with the teachers union’s vision for the district.

While a full accounting of campaign donations and spending won’t be available until after the election, a Chalkbeat Chicago analysis of Illinois State Board of Elections records shows Vallas has received at least $15 million since October and Johnson has collected more than $10 million since October 1, 2022.

Johnson’s campaign fueled by labor unions and educators

Johnson received the backing of the Chicago Teachers Union, his largest donor, before officially launching his campaign last fall. Since then, the union’s Political Action Committee has donated almost $2.2 million to his campaign, according to state board of elections records.

The union has poured millions into aldermanic and mayoral campaigns in recent years as a way to influence broader policies that affect public schools. Some rank-and-file CTU members have filed a complaint against union leadership, alleging members’ dues were being funneled to the union’s political action committee, according to WTTW’s Paris Schutz.

A handful of other labor unions are among Johnson’s other top donors. The parent unions of the CTU — Illinois Federation of Teachers and American Federation of Teachers — each gave $940,000 and $2.1 million respectively. The country’s other largest teachers union, the National Education Association, donated $50,000, and its Illinois counterpart gave $75,000. Several political committees connected to the unions that represent special education aides, classroom assistants, school bus aides, child care workers, and nurses, have collectively donated more than $2 million, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

United Working Families, a progressive group and CTU ally, has also donated almost $47,000 in in-kind contributions, usually in the form of staff help, to Johnson’s campaign and the national Working Families Party donated $70,000.

Aside from labor unions, Johnson’s campaign coffers have mostly been filled by smaller individual donations — many from teachers and educators. For example, he received $20,000 — one of his largest individual gifts — from Elizabeth Simons, a former bilingual education teacher, who now chairs the board of the Heising-Simons Foundation. The foundation provides grants to organizations aimed at strengthening early childhood education for low-income families.

Attorneys who have represented the Chicago Teachers Union at the bargaining table donated to Johnson. Robin Potter, mother of union Vice President Jackson Potter, gave $6,000 and Robert Bloch’s law firm donated $5,000.

Others who have advocated for more funding for public schools gave to Johnson, as well. Cassie Creswell of Illinois Families for Public Schools gave $5,000, and National Education Association President Rebecca Pringle donated $2,000. Kenneth Williams-Bennett, father of CPS graduate Chance the Rapper, also donated $8,000 to Johnson. Williams-Bennett was previously an aide to late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Chance donated $2.2 million to Chicago Public Schools in 2017, as the school district was fighting for more state funding.

Vallas backed by wealthy donors with ties to education reform

Vallas’ campaign war chest is bigger than Johnson’s and has been throughout the campaign. The former district CEO has seen an infusion of cash from corporate business executives, many of whom have ties to charter schools and other education organizations.

One of his largest individual donors is Paul J. Finnegan, co-founder and co-CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners, a private investment equity firm in Chicago. Finnegan has donated $400,000 since October. He is a past chairman and current local advisory board member of Teach for America. Finnegan also sits on the board of CDW Corporation, a technology and services provider for businesses, governments, and school districts, including Chicago Public Schools, which has ramped up purchasing in recent years using COVID-19 recovery dollars.

According to tax filings from 2019, the Finnegan Family Foundation supports dozens of education nonprofits, including Teach for America and the Academy for Urban School Leadership, and charter schools networks, including Noble, LEARN, KIPP, and Intrinsic.

Golf resort owner Michael Keiser, who also sits on the local advisory board of Teach for America, and his wife, Rosalind, have donated $400,000 to Vallas’ campaign since October. He also made a $500,000 donation last summer, shortly after Vallas announced his bid. Finnegan and Keiser are also supporters of the University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute.

Other six-figure donations include Craig Duchossois, executive chairman of the Duchossois Group, has donated $760,000. The Duchossois Family Foundation has given grants to After School Matters, according to the foundation’s website.

Citadel executive Gerald Beeson has donated $300,000 since October. Beeson and his wife have an ongoing scholarship for students at Big Shoulders Fund, which provides support to Catholic elementary and high schools in low-income communities.

Two of Vallas’ top donors helped open charter schools in Chicago that now bear their names. Donald Wilson, CEO of DRW Holdings, supported the opening of the Noble Network of Charter Schools 12th campus — DRW College Prep —on the West Side in 2012. He has donated a combined $350,000 to Vallas’ campaign since January.

Joseph Mansueto, a billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Chicago Fire soccer team, donated $250,000 to Vallas’ campaign. In 2017, he donated $18 million that largely funded the construction of Noble’s 17th campus in Brighton Park, now named Mansueto High School.

Deborah Quazzo, a controversial ex-Chicago school board member, and her husband donated $7,500 and $10,000, respectively, to Vallas’ campaign, as first reported by WBEZ. Quazzo left her seat after the Sun-Times reported on her business dealings with the district. The district Office of Inspector General said Quazzo violated Chicago Public Schools’ ethics code, according to the Sun-Times.

Even though they have not given direct donations to Vallas’ campaign, two political action committees focused on school choice and education reform are backing his candidacy by running ads for his platform and against Johnson.

On March 23, the American Federation for Children, a group founded by former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, donated $65,000 to the Illinois Federation for Children PAC. On the same day, the group gave $59,385 to a political strategic media firm Go Big Media, for digital media supporting Vallas, records show.

INCS Action Independent Committee, which supports candidates who are supportive of charter schools, spent $258,000 on television ads and $359,000 on digital media opposing Johnson, as first reported by WTTW.

INCS Action has received most of its funding since October from James S. Frank, who gave the committee a collective $1.5 million. Frank is on the boards of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and Chicago Public Education Fund, in addition to Teach for America’s local advisory board. He has donated $225,000 directly to Vallas since January.

Campaigns have until April 17 to file a full accounting of their fundraising and spending activities through March 31.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago students get swimming lessons and a chance to learn life-saving skills

2023-03-27T18:32:53+00:00

About half a dozen second grade students perched on a pool ledge, feet dangling in clear water at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Boys and Girls Club on Chicago’s West Side. They giggled as they waited in swimsuits, goggles, and multi-colored swim caps for the next swimming test: flutter kicks.

With the green light from their instructor, the 7- and 8-year-olds unleashed a flurry of kicks. Squeals of joy and sloshing of water echoed inside the spacious natatorium on a mid-February morning.

Over the last year, LEARN Excel Charter in Garfield Park has partnered with the Boys and Girls Club for free, eight-week-long swim lessons for its students. The partnership helps provide enrichment opportunities and teach life-saving skills, Principal Sekou Robertson said.

“A lot of our kids can’t swim,” Robertson said. “They’re afraid of the water. It’s mostly due to access.”

For Robertson, it’s important to create opportunities that go beyond academics.

“Of course we are here for reading, math, speaking, and getting good test scores,” Robertson said. “But we also know at the end of the day life skills that our kids need and swimming is one of them.”

Drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths for children under 17 in the U.S., with Black children dying of drowning at higher rates than white and Latino children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most drowning deaths among children between 1 and 13 years old occur in swimming pools, and in natural bodies of water such as rivers for young people ages 14 to 17, the CDC found.

In recent years, some legislators across the country and local communities have pushed to make swimming lessons more accessible.

A LEARN Excel Charter student jumps into a pool at Martin Luther King Jr. Boys and Girls Club, 2950 W Washington Blvd., Chicago. The Boys and Girls Club partnered with the school to offer free swim lessons for its students.

Since LEARN Excel Charter started piloting the swimming program in spring 2022, the lessons have been a big hit with students. The school and the Boys and Girls Club partnership has expanded to allow three sessions in the fall, winter, and spring.

On the February morning, second grader Supriti Collins was eager to get back in the pool. It was her third round of swim lessons since the charter school partnered with the Boys and Girls club last spring.

“They teach us paddling,” said the 7-year-old, who wore a bathing suit decorated with palm tree silhouettes and a red swim cap . “I love paddling.”

A push to teach life-saving skills in school

“We’re going to go over some pool rules,” Andrea Lopez, aquatics coordinator, said during the lessons last month. “Can you raise your hand and give me one pool rule?”

All 13 students’ hands shot up, ready to share.

“No running,” one student said.

“Don’t go in the deep end,” said another.

“No diving on the shallow end,” a third added.

LEARN Excel Charter student raise their hands to share pool safety rules at Martin Luther King Jr. Boys and Girls Club in Garfield Park.

The instructors take two students at a time to test their skills after running through the full list of pool rules.

Cynthia Bedolla, aquatics director at the Boys and Girls Club, said the organization has been focused on providing free swim lessons and other water safety and awareness programs for the community, especially with warmer weather around the corner.

The Club aims to provide customizable aquatic programs that fit the needs of the kids, Bedolla said.

Students are evaluated on the first day and put into two separate groups based on their skillset and lessons, Bedolla said.

They are assessed — two by two — on a few skills including blowing bubbles, floating on their back, and paddling.

Andrea Lopez, aquatics coordinator, tests two LEARN Excel students at a West Side Boys and Girls Club on whether they can blow bubbles.

Tia Wilson, the Excel teacher who helps coordinate the swimming program, said the school is committed to giving their students experiences.

“Our kids don’t necessarily get to do this all the time,” Wilson said. “We look for opportunities where we can allow our kids to have these types of experiences.”

Wilson said these lessons are also a motivator, something students look forward to.

“They love it,” Wilson said. “It builds their confidence. Each time they get better and better.”

In the pool in February, Tyler Nelson hesitated as he leaned back attempting to float. With the help of the instructor, the 8-year-old relaxed and stretched his arm as if lying on a bed.

He smiled.

He’s been coming since the first session last spring. His favorite things about the lessons are getting to learn how to swim and chatting with his friends.

He hopes to get better at swimming with this latest round.

His ultimate goal: Master the deep end.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s school board renews charter schools for shorter periods

2023-01-25T23:56:06+00:00

Eighteen Chicago charter schools and networks got the school board’s blessing to continue operating beyond this school year — but in many cases for relatively short stretches.

The process reflects an ongoing shift in the district’s relationship with its charters. Until this year, the overwhelming majority of these schools had reliably gotten five-year renewals, in some cases for more than two decades. But at the school board’s Wednesday meeting, most got much shorter contracts. Almost half landed only two-year extensions and only two schools got the full five years.

In recent years, the district has put opening new charter schools on hold amid steeply declining enrollment and has resorted to shorter-term charter renewals with strings attached. Some charter operators have argued that the shorter extensions create uncertainty for their school communities, some of which serve largely low-income and other vulnerable students.

At the Wednesday meeting, more than a dozen charter administrators, parents, and students pleaded for longer extensions. Christian Feaman of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools decried the short-term renewals as disruptive and said the advocacy group is pushing for 10-year terms for high-performing charters.

“We continue to be concerned about the lack of consistency and transparency in the renewal process that moves the bar,” he said, adding, “Renewal terms of less than five years jeopardize the stability of our schools.”

But district officials said the shorter-term renewals reflect a push to hold charters more accountable. The district has closely scrutinized how charters serve students with disabilities and English language learners, and how they ensure these schools’ discipline practices do not harm students.

The renewals approved at the board’s monthly meeting on Wednesday largely came with conditions — a list of student outcomes and other requirements that schools have to meet during that renewal period. Those conditions were not included in public board meeting documents but instead will be communicated to charter operators directly.

Charter leaders and supporters ask for longer renewals

One school, Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy, a small alternative high school on the city’s Southwest Side, had its charter renewed for one year only.

Many on the renewal list were approved to continue operating for another two years. Those schools are: North Lawndale Charter Prep, Alain Locke Charter School, Little Black Pearl, Plato Learning Academy, Passages, Horizon Science Academy Southwest, and Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy. Acero Schools, Chicago Collegiate Charter School, Intrinsic, Christopher House, and University of Chicago Charter School landed three-year renewals.

Two alternative campuses run by Camelot Schools — Chicago Excel Academy and Camelot’s SAFE Achieve Academy, for students who have been expelled — along with Hope Learning Academy got renewed for four years. The Excel Academy of Englewood and Chicago Tech Academy High School got five-year renewals.

It was the first time Acero, Alain Locke, and the University of Chicago Charter Schools did not get five-year renewals since they were launched in 1998.

Employees and supporters of the charters up for renewal turned out en masse at the Wednesday meeting to argue that they should receive longer extensions.

Administrators at the University of Chicago Charter School said it tackled an uptick in discipline issues amid the pandemic head on, hiring more social workers and training all staff on restorative justice practices, among other steps. They spoke of the school’s efforts to line up more internships for students and steer teens to college.

Nikita Johnson-White, the chief financial officer at Passages, read a letter from an eighth grader raving about the school and said with a new principal at the helm, the school is working to improve services for students with disabilities and more. But she said the two-year renewal the school is getting will not give enough time to make progress, urging the board to grant at least three years.

Aniya Hill, a senior at North Lawndale College Prep, credited the school with helping her transform from a timid freshman to a confident leader of the school’s Peace Warriors violence prevention student group. She said she has been accepted at 20 colleges, a reflection of the charter’s college-going culture.

Hill joined parents and school leaders in arguing for a longer renewal. Jemia Cunningham-Elder, the school’s CEO, said she has worked to address issues the district has flagged with services for students with disabilities and school discipline since she was hired in September. But she said she needs more time.

“We’ve provided 25 years of stability,” said Bruce Miller, a member of North Lawndale College Prep’s board. “If you can provide us with five years of stability, that would be fantastic.”

District officials tout thorough charter evaluations

Feaman of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools said the district needs clearer and more transparent criteria for renewal. A renewal of two or three years means too much of administrators’ energy goes into the considerable red tape involved in seeking extension instead of into making actual improvements for students, he said.

But district officials insisted that their expectations are clear and conveyed to charter operators up front.

“Our renewal process is evidence-based, aligned with national best practices and continuous,” said Zabrina Evans, director of school quality and support atf the Office of Innovation and Incubation.

A five-year renewal is the standard for schools meeting standards in three areas: academics, finance, and operations. Under operations, district officials give extra weight to how well the charter school is serving students with disabilities and English learners and whether it uses school discipline appropriately.

The district said the Office of Innovation and Incubation conducted comprehensive evaluations of the charters seeking renewal. Office staff visited all the campuses, in some cases conducted special site visits to size up services for students with disabilities and school climate more closely.

Passages, for example, did not meet standards in financial performance and in operations, because of concerns about its services for students with abilities and English learners. North Lawndale College Prep also did not meet these standards, in its case falling short in serving students with disabilities and disciplining students excessively, according to the district.

Instituto Leadership did not make the grade in all three categories and is facing closure if it doesn’t meet improvement goals over the coming year. Officials said a newly launched Options School Network to oversee the district’s alternative high schools will provide support to the school in coming months.

Officials said that extensions longer than five years are an option for charters that exceed standards in all three categories.

But board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said even for schools that exceed standards, she would strongly oppose renewals longer than five years. She said the district embraced charter schools with the idea that they could outperform traditional district-run schools. Especially at a time of declining enrollment and the possibility of leaner budgets, she said a decade is review their performance again.

“This was a very sobering presentation today to see school after school after school that are not wildly outperforming our traditional CPS schools,” she said.

Earlier this winter, the board also took the rare step of revoking the charter for once-lauded Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men serving Black boys and taking over its two South Side campuses. The district cited financial struggles at the school and an investigation by its inspector general into sexual misconduct by the school’s founder, Tim King, whose findings he has strongly denied.

The board also approved a new accountability policy for charter and district-run alternative high schools, known in Chicago as options schools. The policy is temporary, effective only for the current school year. It is meant to tide the district over while it works to design a new accountability system for all schools, which is slated to go into effect during the 2024-25 school year.

Alternative schools in the city were subject to their own accountability ratings in recognition of the high-needs students they serve — former dropouts or students at risk for dropping out, in some cases because their studies were derailed by parenthood, homelessness, or criminal justice system involvement.

The new policy says the district will calculate an academic performance score for each school, factoring in metrics such as graduation, attendance rate improvement, growth on the district’s STAR assessments, and more. Schools that fail to attain a high enough score could face mandatory improvement plans and charter nonrenewal if they fail to implement those plans.

District officials said Wednesday in a statement to Chalkbeat that the district wanted a strong accountability policy for alternative high schools because they serve the district’s most vulnerable students.

The district, which presided over a massive expansion of alternative high schools during the 2010s, saw significant enrollment losses on those campuses during the pandemic’s disruption. It also has taken some steps to rein in transfers to alternative schools, raising the bar for traditional high schools referring students to those campuses. The new Options Schools Network will continue a recent trend of closer oversight and extending some district programs to these campuses.

“For schools that are serving some of our most vulnerable students, we are committing to provide the supports these schools need,” Todd-Breland said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Urban Prep loses charter agreement for last Chicago campus

2022-11-17T22:56:02+00:00

After months of controversy surrounding Urban Prep Academy, the Illinois board of education ended the charter school’s agreement for its downtown campus Thursday, citing enrollment declines.

The move marks the latest blow to the nationally recognized charter network that specializes in serving Black boys on Chicago’s South and West Sides.

Last month, Chicago Public School moved to revoke its charter agreement and take over Urban Prep’s Bronzeville and Englewood campuses following a report from the district’s inspector general that substantiated misconduct allegations against the charter school’s founder.

Illinois board members voted to revoke the Urban Prep charter agreement after the charter school failed to maintain enrollment numbers at a certain level for its West/Downtown campus. Since originally opening in West Garfield Park, the campus has moved various times. Most recently, it relocated to Roosevelt University two years ago.

Board member Jaime Guzman, who voted to revoke the agreement, said the most important constituency were the 51 students who would require support from ISBE in the transition.

“This is a sad decision,” Guzman said.

Board member Donna Leaks, who abstained from casting a vote, said she could not support revocation of a charter for a school that’s provided a “unique opportunity for African American young men” in Chicago. Still, she said she understood the issues around sustainability.

“My hope is that there will be an effort to maintain this model that empowers our young African American men to feel pride, high expectations, and know their value,” Leaks said, fighting back tears.

Urban Prep’s downtown campus will be required to surrender its charter and close at the end of the 2022-23 school year. The charter school leaders will still be able to appeal the decision in court.

The state has had oversight of Urban Prep’s West campus since 2019 after the Chicago Board of Education voted to revoke the organization’s charter for the West campus citing concerns over financial mismanagement and dwindling enrollment.

As part of the charter agreement with the state, Urban Prep was required to maintain enrollment at 155 students. The charter’s West/Downtown campus, located at Roosevelt University in South Loop, currently has 51 students enrolled. The charter school has failed to meet enrollment requirements for three consecutive years and the numbers have fallen precipitously, state officials said.

During the meeting, Dennis Lacewell, chief academic officer for Urban Prep, lobbied board members to keep the school open, arguing enrollment declines are not unique to Urban Prep, but something local schools serving Black students are grappling with in Chicago.

“We do not dispute the fact that our current enrollment numbers are not ideal,” Lacewell said. “However, we will like to highlight how this is a challenge that is not unique to Urban Prep and other schools serving Black students, particularly post-pandemic.”

Concerns over enrollment numbers were first raised in a letter sent to the school last month, leaving the school with only a few weeks to increase enrollment by over 40 students, Lacewell said.

“We simply ask that Urban Prep Downtown campus is allowed to continue to grow and move forward in an upward trajectory,” Lacewell said.

At Thursday’s meeting, several students spoke fondly of their experiences at the charter school, expressing interest in wanting to finish out their high school career at Urban Prep.

Michael Woodard said he had witnessed “nothing but Black excellence” in his three years as an Urban Prep student. He described support from teachers, staff, and peers — and cited the charter school’s record of seeing all graduating students receive offers to attend college:

“I believe that I speak for all of my brothers in every graduating class when I say: ‘We want to finish what we started by graduating as Urban Prep young men.’”

Still, state board members remained unmoved and voted to revoke the agreement of the once-lauded charter school.

Jackie Matthews, executive director of communications for ISBE, said the board will work with the charter school’s families and CPS “to ensure that students have adequate supports before and during their transition into other CPS schools and programs that meets their unique needs.”

Chicago Public Schools plans to continue the Bronzeville and Englewood programs with teachers and staff for the 2023-24 school year, Matthews added in an email.

The district has assured the state board that Urban Prep students at the West/Downtown campus will be prioritized for the programs should students want to continue under the Urban Prep model absorbed by the district, Matthews said.

The state action also came early enough to allow Urban Prep students to participate in Chicago Public Schools’ high school application process for the 2023-24 school year, Matthews added.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Student ‘peace warriors’ at Chicago’s West Side schools spread message of nonviolence

2022-11-03T18:00:44+00:00

As a child, DeMarcus Thompson spent most of his time inside his house. His mom worried about the shootings that regularly erupted on his block and didn’t want to risk letting him play outside.

Now, as a Peace Warrior at North Lawndale College Prep, the 17-year-old’s mission is to stop fights at his school before they escalate and contribute to the violence beyond the school walls.

The Peace Warriors program, a central part of the West Side charter school’s efforts to confront gun violence by centering students’ needs, trains students to mediate conflicts, support grieving classmates, and bring peace and happiness to school by greeting peers at the front door and leaving celebratory birthday notes on lockers.

“Our biggest goal is to end violence — any and everywhere and to do that — we have to end violence inside of ourselves first because violence starts internally with the thought,” said DeMarcus. “In order to get to our goal, we have to work together.”

City and school leaders have long wrestled with Chicago’s pervasive gun violence. Amid a spate of shootings last fall, CEO Pedro Martinez called on city agencies, community groups, and neighbors to work together to combat violence and support students.

In recent shootings, district leaders have dispatched crisis counselors for a few days to support students and staff in mourning, but sustained mental health support and wraparound services are needed beyond the classroom

During the first month of the new school year, nearly four dozen school-age children were wounded across the city in shootings between Aug. 22 and Sept. 16, according to data obtained from Chicago Police Department through a records request.

Dozens more have been wounded and 15 have been killed since, according to the Sun-Times.

The Peace Warriors program at North Lawndale College Prep is an attempt to break that cycle by turning students into “ambassadors of peace,” said Gerald Smith, a restorative justice specialist and supervisor of the program at the school.

Many students are “committed to being a solution to a serious problem,” Smith said, because they have personally experienced gun violence.

Students spread message of peace and nonviolence

In mid-October, about three dozen students sat shoulder-to-shoulder with teachers in a circle inside a conference room at North Lawndale College Prep’s Collins campus and talked about losing brothers, cousins, friends, and neighbors.

They described dealing with the aftermath of a loved one wounded by gunfire, and the still-fresh mental and emotional scars of violence.

“I feel like I see violence a lot in my life,” one student said. ”I feel like it’s an ongoing thing, coming and coming, faster, and faster, and faster. I feel it on my back. I hate it.”

“People were coming down Christiana and people were shooting,” another student said, recalling a memory of trying to walk home from school when someone started shooting. “We had to run back into the building. We had to hide in the cafeteria.”

“We heard someone call him outside and all of a sudden we heard 30 shots,” a third student said of a neighbor. “We looked out the front window and this man is dead. He got shot in his head at least three times.”

“That was the second time I saw a dead body,” the student added.

The conversations were part of a two-day Peace Warriors training session, which included team-building exercises and small breakout sessions and group discussions where students learned about Martin Luther King Jr.’s six principles of nonviolence.

Peace Warriors and their advisor Gerald Smith sit in a circle during a training in mid-October at North Lawndale College Prep.

Founded in 2009, the Peace Warriors program was created following the charter school expansion into two campuses. A substantial increase in fights prompted school leaders to implement a program to train students in King’s teachings, Smith said.

“Violence is a tragedy for everybody, but I think it’s much more tragic for students,” Smith said. “Peace Warriors is the most valid alternative to their current life experiences.”

A great deal of the healing work comes from the Peace Warriors, school leaders said.

Students are the eyes and ears of the group, said Kyera Bradley, principal at the charter’s Christiana Campus.

They work to de-escalate problems while also supporting peers through condolences runs, when a Peace Warrior tries to bolster someone who has lost a loved one or is experiencing a challenging time by pulling them aside to chat or just for a hug. They’ve also held training at middle schools, high schools, and in communities that have experienced gun violence.

“Their work has been game-changing,” Bradley said.

During a recent training with aspiring Peace Warriors, DeMarcus helped guide a breakout group during a discussion of some of King’s principles. Part of the work is connecting with peers and helping them feel a part of a group that shares a collective goal, he said.

“We are trying to stop the violence in our schools and in our community,” DeMarcus said. “They feel the same way about that. It’s important to make that change.”

Fellow Peace Warriors interject love and kindness by greeting peers at the door in the morning, reaching out to struggling classmates, and acting as ambassadors of peace by teaching others about nonviolence, said DeMarcus, who is a senior. The goal is to get students into peace circles before conflicts spiral out of control.

But it hasn’t been without its challenges.

“Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s easy,” he said. “What keeps me going is how I’m making a change inside of my school even if it might not be immediate.”

Among the principles Peace Warriors learn are: ”nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people,” “the beloved community is the framework for the future,” “attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil,” and “accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of cause to achieve the goal.”

“The training and the program way to create a solution that involved the entire student body — staff, students, and our families alike,” Smith said. “It’s literally a life that they’re choosing because it is either a life and death issue for them and their friends.”

In reflecting on more than a decade of work advising the group, Smith continues to be hopeful as more students commit to changing their school and broader neighborhoods.

“Young people have been seen as the scourge, but to see them as the solution — it’s inspiring, it’s hope-building,” Smith said.

Peace Warriors and their advisor Gerald Smith pose in mid-October after training students aspiring to join the group at North Lawndale College Prep.

Charter school expanded wraparound services

The Peace Warriors program is not the only way the North Lawndale schools are working to support students grappling with the trauma of gun violence. In recent years, the charter has expanded wraparound services to include a first-year experience coordinator, housing for students experiencing homelessness, and programs such as drama therapy and student support groups.

Principal Bradley said the charter school has developed community partnerships with the mission of creating a welcoming and safe learning environment for students. Most recently, the school started working with Books over Balls, a group that supports students through sports and mentoring, she said.

Students dealing with grief from the loss of peers, family, or people from their neighborhoods are looking for stability, Bradley said.

“My goal is to ensure that everybody in this building has a sense of belonging, has a sense of connection,” Bradley said. “I want them to know we are going to do leaps and bounds and go over and beyond to ensure that they’re safe. They’re loved. They’re cared for. They’re heard.”

That means checking in with new students and connecting them with resources and programs so they don’t fall through the cracks, said Kay Griffin, manager of first-year experience at the Christiana campus.

The position, created this year, aims to help the charter’s retention efforts by building relationships with students and ensuring that “new scholars feel the same support that returning scholars feel,” Griffin said.

She meets one-on-one with new students to discuss behavior, attendance, and grade reports, connects them with resources and programs available to them, hosts monthly group meetings with new scholars, and builds relationships with parents.

“The first year at a new school is critical,” Griffin said. “We want to make sure that the relationships they are building are solid.”

Griffin, who has worked at the school for a decade, understands how vital these supports are for both students and parents. In 2016, she lost her fiance to gun violence just as her son was transitioning from eighth grade into the charter school. The loss hit Griffin and her son hard, who she described as being in a “dark place.”

She recalls the charter school’s staff being intentional with their support, “pouring into him” through a difficult time.

“We can’t afford to fail with these kids,” Griffin said. “We want them to be successful every step of the way.”

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

LEARN charter network starts the school year ahead of Chicago schools

2022-08-08T22:59:19+00:00

Donnie McGee and his daughter Serrena stood outside the Romano Butler Campus in the LEARN Charter School Network early Monday morning, eagerly waiting with other families for the doors to open on the first day of school.

Inside, Principal Sharanda Morehead addressed her staff in the lobby, giving instructions for the day and a brief pep talk in which she called the mix of veteran teachers and newer faces the “secret sauce” to the school’s success.

The North Lawndale school is one of seven in the LEARN Charter School Network, which usually starts classes in early August and a few weeks ahead of Chicago Public Schools, which this year, starts on Aug. 22. LEARN serves predominantly Black and low-income families. At Romano Butler, about 500 students in kindergarten through eighth grade make up the anticipated enrollment, according to Morehead, in addition to preschoolers.

LEARN schools get a head start on the year to help minimize summer learning loss, said CEO Greg White. This year, they are focusing on providing students with not only academic support, but the social and emotional support that has become critical since the pandemic, he said.

“It’s been a difficult time for all communities, but LEARN students in particular have been impacted by the COVID crisis, and they need a lot more additional support,” he said.

Unlike many schools across the country, LEARN schools are requiring masks this year and will test students for COVID-19 on a biweekly basis. Students will be tested in school, and if a test comes back positive, Morehead said she and her staff will inform the family and the school community, while observing the student’s privacy.

White said the LEARN network over-hired staff to avoid the shortages plaguing districts across the country, especially for positions such as social workers and special education teachers.

Last year, the LEARN network only had to close a few if any of its classrooms due to its COVID-19 policies, which included masking and weekly testing, according to Morehead. The network also continues to encourage vaccination, White said.

As Serrena and her father waited on Monday for the doors at Romano Butler to open at 8 a.m., the kindergartener beamed with excitement. Last year, she attended another school in the LEARN network, her father McGee said. Ahead of the first day, he had to scramble to find parts of her new uniform since the colors she was allowed to wear have changed.

The students – who wore uniforms composed of white shirts, charcoal gray pants or skirts, sweater vests, ties with red accents, and black sneakers – carried backpacks, lunchboxes, and bags filled with classroom supplies. The staff greeted families, handed out face masks, and helped guide students to classrooms.

To prepare for the new year, onboarding for new teachers started two weeks ago, Morehead said. Returning teachers returned a week later for intensive professional development that focused on curriculum, social-emotional support, and new initiatives, she said.

This year, there are three social workers and a behavior interventionist at her school, Morehead added.

Star Terrell, the mother of fourth grader King, said that she trusts how the school handles safety and appreciates how it communicates with parents. Still, she said she reminded him to distance from others and use hand sanitizer.

King doesn’t usually wake up early, but he was excited to get to school today, Terrell said. This morning, she made breakfast, gave her back-to-school speech, and said a prayer with her son.

WaConda Curington-Harris is the mother of MiAsia, an eighth grader who will be her third child to graduate from the LEARN network. Although summer passed quickly, MiAsia was so excited to return to campus that she had already donned her school uniform by the time her mother woke up, she said.

Curington-Harris praised Morehead for helping connect her older children and other students with opportunities such as the Daniel Murphy Scholarship.

“That’s an excellent opportunity for these students, because a lot of our students and parents don’t know about the scholarships and stuff like that,” she said.

Trisen Phillips, who is in eighth grade, said he’s excited to apply to high schools and go on class trips. He’s also excited to see his friends again after spending five weeks this summer taking a course as a part of the High Jump program, which provides support for students going into high school.

Although he hopes to attend Whitney Young High School next year, Phillips said he is happy to be back at Romano Butler for now.

“I love my school,” he said. “I’ve been here since kindergarten, so it’s good for me to come back here. I learned almost everything I know from here. The teachers and stuff that I’ve been with is amazing.”

On Friday, Romano Butler hosted a back-to-school event in partnership with local organization UCAN that more than 500 people attended, Morehead said. Activities included barbecue, face painting, roller shaking, bouncy houses, and horseback riding.

“But the most important part was the meet and greet with the teachers,” she said. At the event, parents had the chance to get to know teachers and get information about the school.

Morehead, who said she has been with the LEARN network for 19 years, was born and raised in North Lawndale. She said she hasn’t gotten much sleep while preparing for the first day, which she tries to make “perfect.”

Eileen Pomeroy is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Eileen at epomeroy@chalkbeat.org.

This Chicago charter expelled more students than any other school. Can that change?

2022-02-09T12:00:00+00:00

When teachers at Legal Prep Charter Academy returned to school in August, they discovered a new central air system, freshly painted red hallways, and something else surprising — a professional development seminar called “Restorative Justice 101.”

The course, which coached them in a new approach to discipline, was part of a monumental shift away from exclusionary discipline — spurred by renewed anti-racism protests, a feeling that the old system wasn’t working, and more scrutiny of charter discipline data by Chicago Public Schools.

Founded on the concept of justice, equity, and diversity, Legal Prep previously had a dubious distinction: It suspended students at a higher rate than any other school in Chicago and issued 13 expulsions during the 2019-2020 school year, meaning almost one out of every 20 students was expelled.

But this fall, teachers were being trained in restorative practices — responses to rule-breaking that focus on compassion and reducing repeat offenses — an effort that, assessed 22 weeks into this school year, appears to be making a difference.

So far this year, three of the about 300 students on the charter’s West Garfield campus had been suspended, said Legal Prep co-founder and current principal Sam Finkelstein. And Legal Prep’s director of culture, Joseph Williams, said as of mid-January, there hadn’t been a fight on campus since Nov. 1.

“The building feels less tense and feels much more comfortable,” said Finkelstein. “And I feel like it does equal a happier student.”

Over the past decade, Chicago has been one of many public school districts that have taken a hard look at discipline practices, but the city’s 100-plus charters have largely been left to their own devices.

Even during the 2019-2020 school year, when in-person learning was abruptly truncated by the coronavirus pandemic, the district’s charters issued an average of 130 suspensions per 1,000 students. (Students can be suspended multiple times). That rate is nearly five times that of non-charter schools in Chicago, according to new analysis of disciplinary data obtained online from the Illinois State Board of Education and Chicago Public Schools.

Of the schools in Chicago issuing the highest number of expulsions in 2019-2020, eight of the top 10 schools were charter schools, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education. In 2018-2019, all 10 were charters. Legal Prep was on both of those lists.

Analysis of the data also shows that, despite a push for more restorative practices, change has been slow for both district-run schools and charters.

The school district is taking notice. At the January school board meeting, officials argued that shorter-term charter renewals of two to five years, instead of the state-sanctioned 10, will offer more opportunity to scrutinize the number of suspensions and expulsions. Charter advocates have pushed back on the shorter renewals, arguing the district needs to find a better way to balance accountability and the conditions charters need to plan and thrive.

CPS asked Legal Prep to provide more information on its disciplinary practices with its renewal application, according to documents obtained through a public records request. The district noted the school’s high rate of suspensions and expulsions, as well as the length of the suspensions issued to students.

Legal Prep did not dispute the concerns raised by CPS. In its renewal application, the school said it would not try to “justify” the discipline data but instead work to change the school’s discipline policy.

Still, Finkelstein was among the charter leaders and parents who testified before the board in favor of longer terms, citing Legal Prep’s discipline overhaul as one reason for the standard renewal. Other community members also spoke at the meeting in favor of its renewal.

In the end, the board voted to renew Legal Prep for a shorter two-year term.

The shorter renewal term “is our only tool we have as an operator, by virtue of the way charter schools are administered in the state of Illinois and for Chicago,” Board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said. “It is also about saying, no, you will not expel a kindergartener in the city of Chicago.”

Chicago charter schools follow own rules

Discipline, both in Chicago Public Schools and charter schools, has disproportionately affected students of color.

Excessive discipline is not just a charter school issue. Studies have consistently shown that students of color, and particularly Black boys, are disciplined more frequently than their white peers, and are often disciplined for violations that their white peers are not. In traditional public schools in Chicago, schools with larger white populations were less likely in 2019-2020 to suspend or expel students than schools with schools with more Black students, the data show.

The three district-run public high schools with the highest percentage of white students — Taft High School, Lane Technical High School, and Walter Payton College Prep — issued an average of four out-of-school suspensions per 1,000 students in the 2019-2020 school year.

By contrast, the three traditional public high schools with the highest percentage of Black students for which data was available — Hyde Park Academy High School, Simeon Career Academy High School, and Little Black Pearl Art and Design Academy — issued an average of 62.5 suspensions per 1,000 students the same year.

Disproportionate discipline in charter schools only furthers this racial imbalance, since charter schools in Chicago — which are publicly funded by privately managed — are overwhelmingly non-white.

Overall, data show fewer students are being expelled or suspended at schools citywide. That decline is the result of a prohibition in 2006 of “zero tolerance” policies that require staff to suspend or expel students as a consequence for certain offenses.

Charter schools are not required to follow every policy regulation set by Chicago Public Schools, since they are independently run. Still, discipline in charter schools in Chicago also decreased in the last five years. In 2015, the average number of out-of-school suspensions issued by Chicago charter schools per 1,000 students was 274. In 2020, it was 130.

Chicago Public Schools has made an effort to work toward restorative justice practices and away from exclusionary discipline. In 2017, the CPS Office of Social and Emotional Learning published a toolkit for restorative practices.

Starting last year, CPS gave local school councils the option of whether to keep or get rid of school resource officers, the Chicago police officers stationed in schools. Thirty-one high schools voted to eliminate one or more officers this summer, with some opting to use the freed-up budget money for restorative justice training for staff and others.

Chicago Public Schools also released a new anti-bias framework this summer that, in addition to outlining new procedures for investigating bias-based incidents, includes a section on “community accountability” — that is, more “healing” responses to harm, according to CPS, instead of punitive measures such as suspensions and expulsions.

As part of this framework, the Office of Student Protections says it is providing guidance to public schools — including charters — on reducing bias and less-punitive discipline practices, though they have not released more details publicly. The district said it is preparing to launch more initiatives related to this framework throughout the year.

Some charter schools are also rethinking discipline. Noble Network of Charter Schools scrapped its controversial demerit program, where students were punished for small infractions, and those demerits would accumulate into a higher punishment. The network also replaced its student code of conduct with “The Noble Community Pact,” according to a spokesperson for the network.

The pact uses restorative justice practices, including peer mediations and wellness spaces, in response to students’ misconduct instead of exclusionary discipline. While Noble couldn’t provide data on suspensions and expulsions from this year, the spokesperson said the network is hopeful that the new community pact will help it in its new push to become an “anti-racist” organization.

At Legal Prep, Finkelstein, Williams, and other administrators have restructured the disciplinary code. Instead of setting suspension or expulsion as a punishment for certain offenses, such as fighting, students being disciplined have to engage in a mediation process with a member of the school’s counseling team to get at the root cause of the issue.

Suspension and expulsion are not off the table, but the school now views those punishments as last resorts, Finkelstein said.

Over the summer, Legal Prep also hired several new staff members, and Finkelstein said they specifically sought out candidates who were interested in restorative justice. Indeed, moving to restorative justice requires a massive cultural shift — one for which not everyone is prepared.

Legal Prep’s “high expectations, harsh consequences” philosophy led to heavy-handed punishment for its students.

Lofty ideal leads to a culture of strict discipline

At Legal Prep, which was founded in 2012 and claims to be Chicago’s only legal-themed school, the original campus philosophy was “high expectations, harsh consequences.”

That lofty ideal led to harsh punishment: Staff suspended and expelled students frequently, with the hope that the discipline would act as a deterrent to problematic behavior. Similar to Noble Schools, Legal Prep would punish students for small infractions, such as talking out of turn, in order to try and deter students from committing larger infractions. But Finkelstein said that this method wasn’t successful.

The school, which is about 99% Black, issued 190 out-of-school suspensions during the 2019-2020 school year. Community organizers and students say the harsh discipline tactics make students less engaged with school and feel unwanted.

Legal Prep has had other troubles. The charter was named as a defendant in two federal lawsuits filed on behalf of former students, alleging that a former Legal Prep staff member repeatedly sexually assaulted two minors on campus from 2017 to 2018. Those cases, which were filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in 2019, are ongoing. Finkelstein did not comment on the suit.

In addition, the school has struggled with administrative turnover and finances, the school’s renewal application shows. In 2018, the school completed renovations to its property required by the school district. These renovations drained the school’s coffers, preventing it from taking on other expenses for the last few years.

Ken Ayers arrived at Legal Prep in 2015 after a difficult freshman year at a different charter school. Ayers, who is now a senior at Illinois State University preparing for law school, found a lot of value in the school’s law programs. And as a star student, he didn’t often get in trouble, but watched as his peers did.

Ayers said he often saw students at Legal Prep “self-medicating” with drugs or alcohol or acting out and fighting in school. West Garfield Park is one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Chicago. But rather than just disciplining students for such behavior, he said, the school should have been more compassionate.

“I [saw] a lot of reactive behavior, but not a lot of proactive behavior,” Ayers said. “They need to do something to not only connect with the students, but actually connect to the families as well, because the student is not the only person going through the trauma.”

Ayers transferred to a private school in East Garfield Park after one year, looking for more challenges academically. This summer, he had internships at three different law firms in Chicago, and took the LSAT in August.

In response to concerns such as these, Legal Prep staff implemented what they’re calling the “breather system,” according to Finkelstein. When a student is acting up in class, the teacher will call a member of the school’s counseling or discipline team to pull the student out for a few minutes.

The student can talk to a staff member for a few minutes about what’s bothering them. They can then return to class, having vented and calmed down.

The school has also started using peace circles and mediation — mainstays of restorative justice practices — to intercede when students get into more serious trouble, such as getting in fights. Finkelstein says they often try to get the parents involved in mediation, as well as teachers and other students who may be involved.

Mediation sessions often resolve whatever issues the students have, and the students aren’t punished for their actions afterward. Students are also sometimes directed to anger management sessions with a school counselor.

Under the new restorative justice program, students are less likely to continue to misbehave after completing a restorative justice process, he says. And the number of suspensions has been slashed to single digits.

Joseph Williams, director of culture at Legal Prep, says students are happier now with the restorative justice process. He says students have developed trust in the restorative justice process and have started asking for mediations before acting out.

“The upperclassmen do seem happy with the changes,” Williams said in an email. “The 9th and 10th graders have never known another way, since we were remote all of last year, and they are definitely bought into the system.”

Williams also sat on Legal Prep’s hiring committee over the summer, and said the committee spent significant time in interviews ensuring new teachers would be a good fit with the school’s changing culture. Most returning teachers contributed to the design of the new restorative justice system.

Some teachers were anxious about switching to the new system because they were worried about an uptick in violent behavior, but those worries have been assuaged by the results they’ve seen so far, according to Williams.

New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church is also the home of the MAAFA Redemption Project, which provides resources to at-risk young men.

New approach is part of push to keep children in school

Next door to Legal Prep, Rev. Marshall Hatch, Jr. is paying close attention to the changes at the school.

Hatch is one of the pastors at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in West Garfield, which occupies the building next door. Out of the same building, he also runs the MAAFA Redemption Project, an initiative that provides resources and life skills to at-risk young men between 18 and 30.

Hatch completed an internship with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights while in graduate school and studied the way school-to-prison pipeline can funnel public school students, particularly Black students, into the criminal justice system. Studies have shown that excessive discipline contributes to the pipeline.

“If a student is not in a school building or the classroom, where are they?” Hatch said. “Students who are suspended at higher rates or expelled, those students are more likely to have early involvement with the criminal justice system.”

In communities with a heavy police presence, students who are out of school are more likely to come into contact with police.

Experts agree that excessive discipline is detrimental to students’ self-esteem. In addition to missing out on what they would learn in class, multiple suspensions and expulsions can make students feel unwelcome and unwanted in school.

“Expulsion is not great for children,” said Dr. Terri Sabol, a professor of child development in Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. “It sets them up to feel disconnected from school, for thinking that they don’t belong. And it can have long term effects on their development and their connection to school.”

Under Legal Prep’s new restorative approach, students miss far less class time than they did previously. In fact, the system is designed to minimize the amount of class students miss, Williams said.

“When kids miss school, they have a hard time catching up and following along, and that only increases the likelihood of them acting out,” he said.

Students expelled from traditional public schools typically can’t attend another CPS school for at least a year. Instead, they are automatically enrolled in an alternative program, according to a statement from Chicago Public Schools.

Charter schools must notify CPS when a student is expelled; district officials then review the student’s case and decide whether or not the student can enroll in a district school or an alternative program.

This kind of disruption can deter many students from returning to school at all, even though state law requires that students stay in school until they are 17, according to Michael Hannan, an administrator with the Alternative Schools Network, a nonprofit that works with students who have left school.

Still, there are often challenges with implementing restorative justice after students are accustomed to exclusionary discipline.

Restorative methods depend on acceptance from everyone, Hannan said.

Because the students with whom he works at the Alternative Schools Network have usually already dealt with exclusionary discipline, he and the network embrace restorative justice practices. But not all families or even students buy into them.

Hannan said that some students don’t want a restorative justice process or are suspicious of a new system. To get students on board, schools must be consistent in their messaging and discipline, Hannan said.

Hannan also emphasizes that restorative justice doesn’t mean that students aren’t held accountable for their actions.

“It’s not ‘you can do whatever you want, and you get to be back in the classroom.’ That’s just bad practice,” Hannan said. “A good restorative process involves hard work, involves conversations and involves the support of your peers. But that’s because, if you have a real restorative justice practice in your school, you build that network of support.”

While Finkelstein recognized that not everyone would embrace Legal Prep’s shift to restorative justice, he said he’s hoping the change will teach students more about community.

“There’s a real opportunity for us to help kids understand the importance of this work, help kids understand that this is not just about them individually, this is about the collective,” Finkelstein said. “[It’s] about all of us in the school as a community, making this commitment to each other, to our school community, that we’re going to be a place where everybody can succeed, where people can make mistakes and still be successful.”

Chicago quietly launches overhaul of schools serving its ‘forgotten students’

2021-12-22T11:30:00+00:00

It didn’t take long for Edwin Panduro, a sophomore at Air Force Academy High School on the South Side, to completely tune out his teachers while taking courses remotely during the pandemic last year.

Home alone with two younger brothers, he kept his own laptop on mute with the camera off, often paying more attention to their schoolwork than his own. By midyear, Panduro stopped logging on. By spring, he knew his odds of graduating on time or even making it through high school were shrinking.

This fall, Panduro looked for a school where he could start fresh. He landed at the South campus of Ombudsman, a national operator of alternative high schools, tucked in a strip mall in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood.

Long seen as second-chance campuses for students often derailed by homelessness, teen parenthood, trauma, or involvement in the criminal justice system, Chicago’s network of alternative schools attracted some teens such as Panduro during the pandemic. But overall, the number of new arrivals on alternative campuses fell — in part because of a quiet district push to rein in the number of students transferring out of its traditional schools.

That push is part of a broader effort to rethink the district’s tenuous relationship with its alternative schools — a partnership with the University of Chicago’s Education Lab that has tried to strike a balance between strengthening alternative campuses and right-sizing them after years of rapid growth.

Students work on computers at Ombudsman Chicago South, an alternative school in a strip mall in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood. CPS is sending fewer students to alternative campuses.

The district piloted new academic and mental health interventions on these campuses, some of which have come under fire for offering pared-down curriculums and sparse support services. But at the same time, it took steps to keep more struggling students in neighborhood campuses, which coupled with the pandemic dealt a major blow to some alternative schools’ enrollment. Transfers to what the district calls options schools plummeted to about 1,200 students last year, less than a third of their pre-pandemic rate.

District leaders acknowledge some Chicago high schools have sent too many of their students to alternative campuses, exacting a steep “transfer penalty” that cuts teens’ odds of graduating. Alternative providers, in turn, argue principals at traditional schools are under too much pressure to hold on to students who need a more flexible setting. They say a bid to shore up enrollment and budgets at struggling South and West high schools could doom many alternative campuses, which serve some students who would not graduate otherwise.

The changes come at a precarious time, when the pandemic and an increase in violence have placed struggling students at an even greater risk of not finishing school. The overhaul is a critical test of whether the district can do right by about 6,800 students in 39 alternative programs. And, although they make up only a small fraction of CPS’ 330,000 students, they are among the city’s most vulnerable youth and are much more likely than their peers to be Black and male, and to have a disability.

It’s too soon to say whether the effort will help students or cause some to fall through the cracks. But alternative schools are getting renewed attention. This past August, district leaders and Mayor Lori Lightfoot held the customary start-of-the-school-year press conference at Panduro’s Ombudsman campus — the first time an alternative school has hosted the event.

Earlier that summer, Maurice Swinney, the interim chief education officer, stressed the importance of doing more for teens in the district’s alternative schools.

“I truly believe that supporting options students is the single biggest equity issue facing our district and our city,” he said.

‘Forgotten students’

Panduro headed to Ombudsman determined to get his high school career back on track.

The goal seemed daunting. Already struggling with the high school transition when COVID shuttered school buildings, he sat out the final stretch of his freshman year, assuming that teachers would pass him regardless.

Edwin Panduro poses for a picture outside Ombudsman Chicago South after class.

Last year was a total loss academically and, with the deep sense of isolation it brought, a strain emotionally as well. When Panduro, 17, tried to start over at his neighborhood Gage Park High School, he was told he was just too short on credits.

Staff there suggested he try Ombudsman’s South campus, which had lost a quarter of its student body during the pandemic.

“Ombudsman took me with open arms,” he said.

Janice Jackson, the district’s former CEO, said in an interview with Chalkbeat after her tenure ended this summer that she came to see bringing alternative school students such as Panduro more into the district fold as a key imperative. For example, even as the district pushed to instill more of a college-going culture in traditional schools, alternative students interested in continuing their education past high school did not get the same support.

“We can’t just have them in these programs to get a high school degree and improve our graduation rates, which we did without a next step,” Jackson said.

The district did not make a current leader available to discuss the changes, providing a written statement instead; Pedro Martinez, who replaced Jackson as CEO this fall, has not addressed the issue publicly.

“Every school district has a group of forgotten students, and in Chicago Public Schools, options students are it.”

In the year before the pandemic hit, the district teamed up with Education Lab on a new Chicago Student Success Initiative, underwritten with about $5 million from an AbbVie Foundation grant. The goals: better understand the district’s alternative school students and their experiences, and look for innovative ways to boost outcomes.

Those campuses were last in the spotlight roughly a decade ago, when the district kicked off a major expansion. The number of programs swelled from nine to 48 at their peak, including some run by for-profit providers such as Ombudsman, which has four schools in the city. At one time, as many as 13% of the district’s high school students attended an alternative classroom at some point in the year, compared with roughly 3% on average nationally.

The expansion helped fuel the rise in the city’s graduation rate, by opening up more seats for dropouts to take another crack at finishing school. It also drew criticism from community leaders who worried students were shunted into a second-tier system that would not prepare them for life after high school. Going by the district’s own alternative school ratings, some programs have delivered much better academic outcomes for students than others.

But in large part, the district left the alternative providers to their own devices. The relationship was marked by lack of coordination and distrust, said Dar’tavous Dorsey, associate director of strategic engagement at Education Lab.

“Every school district has a group of forgotten students, and in Chicago Public Schools, options students are it,” Dorsey said.

This spring, Education Lab released a report by senior research director Monica Bhatt showing students who enroll in alternative schools are much more likely than their peers to be low-income, to have been arrested or victimized, or to have experienced homelessness.

The report does not weigh in on the quality of Chicago’s alternative programs, noting it can be hard to tease out from their students’ high academic and mental health needs. But it says that while 90% of students on traditional campuses graduate, only 40% of teens in alternative schools do. And the overwhelming majority of students who attend will never return to a traditional high school, making alternative schools an essential “last line of defense” before they drop out.

The key takeaway was that because alternative school students face such a wide array of hurdles to graduation, their campuses must do more to offer personalized interventions.

During the pandemic, the district piloted a menu of interventions in six alternative schools and three neighborhood high schools: high-dosage math tutoring; a literacy program called Wilson for students with dyslexia and other struggling readers; new “postsecondary champions” to help students make a plan for after graduation; and cognitive behavioral therapy.

But the district also set about quietly overhauling the process of referring students to alternative programs.

A push to limit transfers

During the 2018-2019 school year, about a dozen district high schools — largely shrinking campuses on the South and Southwest sides — saw a fifth of their student populations or more transfer to alternative schools, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat. At Tilden, Austin, and Marshall high schools — campuses that serve almost entirely low-income student bodies — almost 30% of students made their way to alternative campuses that year. At Manley, more than 40% did.

But those numbers have since plummeted. Districtwide, the number of alternative transfers went from 3,820 in 2018 to about 1,200 last year. At Tilden, the transfers dropped to just more than 4% of the student body. At Bowen High School, they went from almost a quarter of all students to about 3%.

Even so, the major decrease in transfers did not stabilize enrollment at these feeder schools, which at some dropped sharply during the pandemic.

School Name	2018 Enrollment	2020 Enrollment	2018 % of Student Body Transferred	2020 % of Student Body Transferred	% Change in Transfers, 2018 to 2020
HIRSCH HS	103	90	57.3%	32.2%	-50.8%
MANLEY HS	83	87	42.2%	28.7%	-28.6%
MARSHALL HS	258	228	29.5%	17.5%	-47.4%
AUSTIN CCA HS	211	235	29.4%	9.8%	-62.9%
TILDEN HS	217	203	27.2%	4.4%	-84.7%
DOUGLASS HS	62	50	25.8%	0.0%	-100.0%
HARPER HS	87	21	25.3%	9.5%	-90.9%
BOWEN HS	255	218	23.9%	3.7%	-86.9%
FENGER HS	203	286	23.6%	4.2%	-75.0%
GAGE PARK HS	349	323	23.2%	8.4%	-66.7%
HARLAN HS	327	297	19.3%	5.1%	-76.2%
DUNBAR HS	320	413	19.1%	3.9%	-73.8%
UPLIFT HS	162	106	17.3%	3.8%	-85.7%
CORLISS HS	277	284	17.0%	3.2%	-80.9%
HYDE PARK HS	798	770	15.7%	4.2%	-74.4%
JULIAN HS	456	390	15.6%	1.8%	-90.1%
RICHARDS HS	224	233	14.3%	2.1%	-84.4%
BRONZEVILLE HS	218	87	13.8%	8.0%	-76.7%
CHICAGO VOCATIONAL HS	894	741	13.6%	4.9%	-70.5%
RABY HS	346	246	13.6%	4.5%	-76.6%
FOREMAN HS	759	604	12.0%	3.5%	-76.9%
WILLIAMS HS	177	107	11.9%	2.8%	-85.7%
FARRAGUT HS	668	540	11.8%	6.3%	-57.0%
BOGAN HS	838	736	11.8%	1.8%	-86.9%
WELLS HS	365	316	11.8%	6.3%	-53.5%
SPRY HS	126	97	11.1%	1.0%	-92.9%
CRANE MEDICAL HS	433	446	10.9%	2.5%	-76.6%
CLEMENTE HS	703	684	10.2%	3.7%	-65.3%
AIR FORCE HS	198	196	10.1%	1.5%	-85.0%
KELLY HS	1,918	1,780	10.1%	2.9%	-73.6%
KELVYN PARK HS	408	395	9.3%	4.1%	-57.9%
SCHURZ HS	1,615	1,518	8.7%	1.1%	-87.9%
MATHER HS	1,490	1,617	8.7%	2.4%	-70.8%
NORTH-GRAND HS	993	1,039	8.4%	2.6%	-67.5%
SOCIAL JUSTICE HS	302	335	8.3%	1.8%	-76.0%
ROOSEVELT HS	962	1,021	8.1%	2.5%	-66.7%
MORGAN PARK HS	1,237	1,079	7.9%	2.5%	-72.4%
SIMEON HS	1,345	1,420	7.9%	2.0%	-72.6%
CURIE HS	2,913	2,993	7.6%	3.2%	-56.6%
STEINMETZ HS	1,233	1,167	7.4%	2.1%	-73.6%
HUBBARD HS	1,706	1,721	6.5%	1.2%	-82.0%
DYETT ARTS HS	484	583	6.0%	2.6%	-48.3%
SULLIVAN HS	660	597	5.3%	0.8%	-85.7%
WASHINGTON HS	1,445	1,505	4.8%	1.0%	-78.6%
KENNEDY HS	1,610	1,474	4.8%	1.3%	-75.3%
SENN HS	1,420	1,547	4.7%	2.8%	-34.3%
MULTICULTURAL HS	218	225	4.6%	1.3%	-70.0%
GOODE HS	919	936	3.6%	1.1%	-69.7%
JUAREZ HS	1,708	1,705	3.5%	3.0%	-13.3%
KING HS	516	463	3.5%	0.4%	-88.9%
LAKE VIEW HS	1,385	1,353	3.5%	1.6%	-54.2%
SOUTH SHORE INTL HS	657	561	3.3%	2.1%	-45.5%
ALCOTT HS	318	333	3.1%	0.9%	-70.0%
PROSSER HS	1,329	1,214	3.1%	1.9%	-43.9%
TAFT HS	3,432	3,960	2.9%	0.5%	-82.2%
LINCOLN PARK HS	2,105	2,117	2.8%	1.2%	-56.9%
CHICAGO MILITARY HS	299	280	2.7%	0.7%	-75.0%
CARVER MILITARY HS	483	442	2.1%	0.9%	-60.0%
WORLD LANGUAGE HS	355	345	2.0%	0.9%	-57.1%
OGDEN HS	597	632	1.8%	0.6%	-63.6%
DISNEY II HS	717	785	1.8%	1.1%	-30.8%
VON STEUBEN HS	1,773	1,674	1.7%	1.1%	-36.7%
MARINE LEADERSHIP AT AMES HS	849	829	1.5%	0.6%	-61.5%
WESTINGHOUSE HS	1,202	1,255	1.4%	0.6%	-58.8%
DEVRY HS	173	158	1.2%	1.9%	50.0%
KENWOOD HS	1,863	2,125	1.1%	0.8%	-23.8%
HANCOCK HS	1,013	1,019	1.1%	1.1%	0.0%
LINDBLOM HS	1,362	1,397	0.9%	0.0%	-100.0%
LANE TECH HS	4,520	4,428	0.8%	0.3%	-59.5%
VAUGHN HS	225	234	0.4%	0.0%	-100.0%
NORTHSIDE PREP HS	1,091	1,059	0.1%	0.0%	-100.0%
PAYTON HS	1,153	1,216	0.1%	0.0%	-100.0%
NORTHSIDE LEARNING HS	219	239	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
GRAHAM HS	114	184	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%

Declining transfers to alternative schools from district campuses

Source: Chicago Public Schools

Based on interviews with school leaders and experts, the pandemic and the shift to remote learning contributed to the transfer declines. During virtual school, students had fewer conflicts with peers or staff when compared to in-person schooling and were more likely to stay put rather than seek out a new campus, for instance.

But district-run schools were also expected to rein in departures for alternative campuses. This fall, the district codified this expectation in a presentation for school leaders marked “confidential” and obtained by Chalkbeat. In it, a district student support official argues CPS would stand a better chance of reengaging students who disconnected from learning during the pandemic if they stay at traditional schools rather than switching schools.

The presentation outlines a more labor-intensive transfer request process. Now, one of five newly hired transition specialists reviews each request and could kick some back to schools, directing them to come up with a “support and intervention plan” to keep the student.

Jackson says these changes are overdue.

“There were simple fixes,” she said, “like putting extra steps in the system, proving that this is a choice that the student and the family are making, and not the school is making for the kid, and the kid feels like they don’t have any power.”

High school principals privately said the policy is well-intentioned and can stem some inappropriate referrals, such as for students with disabilities who did not receive adequate services on traditional campuses. But they said their campuses need more support to keep struggling students in house.

One principal said the ability to offer more flexible class schedules — including the half-day schedules that draw students who juggle school with jobs or parenting to some alternative campuses — would make a major difference. Federal COVID relief funds to target interventions to students who fell behind last year are helping, but school leaders worry that once the dollars run out, only the added layer of bureaucracy will remain.

“I now have to justify the transfer to someone who does not know the students or their background,” one South Side principal said.

Some alternative school leaders also voice measured support for the shift.

“We see the trauma students experience when their schools push them out.”

At Instituto Justice & Leadership Academy, a Pilsen charter alternative school, principal Jennifer Ventimiglia said she appreciates efforts to keep more students in traditional settings. Her school bucked the pandemic-era trend, growing its enrollment through neighborhood word-of-mouth and, occasionally, parole officer referrals.

Ventimiglia wonders if some traditional schools held on to more students in part because the district put rating its campuses on hold, taking away an incentive to push out students who might drag down a school’s attendance, and graduation rates. In any case, it was the right thing to do.

“We see the trauma students experience when their schools push them out,” she said.

But some in the alternative school world are more skeptical. Jack Wuest of the nonprofit advocacy group Alternative Schools Network, says he worries the move will sink smaller nonprofit campuses while for-profit providers stay afloat. He said the pandemic is a precarious time to shift gears on transfers after years of unchecked growth.

Sheila Venson, executive director at Youth Connection Charter School, a network of charter alternative schools, notes that the average age of students in the network is 18, leaving little room for error to complete graduation requirements before they age out.

Alternative school leaders stress that the pandemic also hit options students hard: Many took on full-time jobs that can be hard to balance with school. Some have gotten arrested, became displaced from their homes, or had babies.

But Venson says the district also is trying to buttress South and West Side feeder schools desperate to hold on to students after years of enrollment losses.

“CPS has already failed these kids,” Venson said. “I am extremely skeptical of this move at a time when the city has lost enrollment.”

She added: “I don’t know if our schools will survive.”

Panduro works on a project about Arctic tundras at Ombudsman Chicago South.

‘Nothing has changed’

On a recent morning, Panduro Googled images of hardy plants for a PowerPoint presentation on the arctic tundra in a sprawling computer lab at Ombudsman, decorated with tinsel and paper snowflakes.

On Thursdays, he and other students spend the bulk of their 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. school day working independently at computers, with several instructors pacing the room and offering suggestions. On the walls, colorful posters tracked the number of credits students had made up and displayed student work, under the heading, “You too shall pass.”

In the lab, Panduro had met Duane Terry, a junior.

Unlike Panduro, Terry had experienced academic upheaval even before the pandemic, leaving his neighborhood high school in Englewood for a charter school. Remote learning derailed his studies completely.

“I wasn’t patient enough to sit all day and do the work,” Terry said.

Both Panduro and Terry have made fast headway.

“If you fall behind at a traditional school, they are not stopping for you,” Panduro said. “Here, they stop for you.”

A couple of months into the semester, the school invited Panduro to try out for one of 20 spots in a new internship program that would place students in jobs working in City Council offices, banks and other resume-boosting settings. Staff at Ombudsman ran mock interviews with him to prepare for his interview at his alderperson’s office.

The internship was one of the new programs launched through Education Lab’s Student Success Initiative.

At YCCS-West, one of the two campuses in that network that served as pilot sites, principal Early King credits a postsecondary coach with boosting its graduation rate. Meanwhile, teens who participated in intensive math tutoring improved their grades.

Alternative school students were included in a new programs, including a summer jobs program and a transition program for recent graduates, according to CPS.

But when it comes to the relationship with the district, Ombudsman regional administrator Audry Peden-Blinstrup says, “Nothing has changed — absolutely nothing. We’re not working together.”

The district says alternative school students were also included in a new summer jobs program, a summer transition program for recent graduates and the district’s Moving Forward Together plan to address the pandemic’s academic and mental health fallout.

At Ombudsman, Terry says his goal is to get caught up by the end of this semester and transfer back to a traditional high school. He misses having “a real high school experience,” from playing on the basketball team to attending school assemblies.

Panduro says he has no plans to leave. He never landed an internship but recently made Ombudsman’s honor roll, his achievement noted on a “Star Wars”-themed board in the computer lab. The school threw a party for the students who made the roll, with fried chicken and speeches by a few classmates.

“We’re making it,” he thought as he listened. “We are getting back on our feet.”

Chicago’s charters enroll more students with disabilities than traditional schools, but funding unclear

2021-07-27T20:12:04+00:00

Chicago’s charter schools enroll a higher percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools, but there is no way to track how much funding goes to those students’ education, according to a new report.

Of 18 cities studied by a University of Arkansas research team, Chicago was the only one where charter schools enrolled a larger percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools, 15% compared to 14.1%. On average, the study reported that the 18 cities charter schools enrolled 9.5% of students with disabilities, while traditional public schools enrolled 13.1%.

The report, published last week, used data from 2018 to analyze per-pupil spending on students with disabilities at public charter schools.

During the 2017-2018 school year, 372,432 students were enrolled in Chicago Public Schools while almost 60,000 students attended charter schools in the city.

Researchers found that charter schools authorized by Chicago Public Schools receive $1,086.77 per pupil in special education funding, but without more detailed centralized accounting for how charters spend that money, researchers were not able to assess whether there is a funding gap between district-run schools and charters.

Chicago Public Schools says that the district allocates funding up front on a per-pupil basis to charter schools based on the number of students requiring special education services at each school as part of regular tuition payment.

According to the district, charters are audited each year and provide an accounting of how their funding was spent but those documents are not readily accessible to the public. Chicago has an appeals process for allocating additional funding to schools if their needs change or if the per-pupil amount is not enough.

While financial documents were available in Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans and Oakland, CA, school finance experts at the University of Arkansas found that they lacked specificity around special education funding. Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor and co-author of the report, suggested that policymakers in those cities step up and develop clear documentation of all charters revenues and spending.

Corrected: This article has been updated to reflect that there were financial documents in Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans and Oakland but they lacked specificity in funding for special education.

Chicago charter strike ends with a tentative agreement and unanswered questions

2021-06-09T21:08:53+00:00

A teachers’ strike during final exam week at an all-male, predominantly Black charter network in Chicago ended early Wednesday.

Teachers at three campuses of Urban Prep Academies agreed to a tentative contract with the charter division of the Chicago Teachers Union that would extend through June 2022. The agreement includes retroactive raises for the past three years that would put educators closer to a district-run salary schedule. During walkouts, union officials described an $11,000 pay gap between starting salaries at the Chicago charter and district-run schools.

An official from the charter network, believed to be the nation’s first all-male charter when it was founded in 2005, said the strike capped a year of “tremendous challenges” due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and the fatal shooting of an Urban Prep student.

“We have been especially appreciative of our teachers during this past year,” said Troy Boyd, the chief operating officer in a statement. Despite the challenges, 100% of seniors were accepted into colleges for the 12th straight year and one of the campuses — Urban Prep Bronzeville — maintained the district’s second highest school rating of a “1,” he said.

Boyd said that campuses continued to operate during the strike under the watch of administrators and non-unionized staff. Students will be able to finish the school year on time, he added.

Urban Prep was founded with the goal of sending all of its students to college. State data from the 2018-2019 school year shows that 69% of students enrolled in college, slightly higher than the district average.

The strike — a rare event at the end of the school year — made public some grievances about the charter’s financial management and whether the network allocates sufficient money and services to students with disabilities, who make up about a quarter of enrollment. It’s not yet clear how those complaints could factor into Chicago Public Schools’ decision to renew the charter for one of the campuses, in Englewood, next year or whether the strike prompted additional scrutiny by the city or state.

Earlier this year, Urban Prep Englewood was flagged by district officials for not meeting certain financial and academic standards set by Chicago Public Schools.

After the Englewood campus had been on an academic warning list for two years and could have been eligible for revocation, the school district in January recommended a one-year contract extension — but that recommendation came with a sharp rebuke from the district’s chief portfolio officer, Bing Howell. Howell said the school demonstrated “consistently troubling performance” in three categories — academic, financial, and in operations — and that the district would terminate the Englewood campus charter in 2022 if it didn’t “cure its unacceptable performance.”

Chicago already moved to revoke the charter for the third campus, Urban Prep West, but the charter network appealed to the state through a now-defunct charter commission. That campus is now under state purview.

In a Tuesday letter to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and school district CEO Janice Jackson, the union alleged that the charter network took out a series of short-term, high-interest loans that siphoned dollars meant for students away from schools.

“Every dollar of that loss means less funding for Urban Prep’s classrooms and student needs,” reads the letter, signed by Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey. “Our teachers at Urban Prep’s three campuses remain deeply committed to our schools’ mission to nurture and support our Black male high school students ... Management’s financial practices are a direct threat to this mission, particularly in terms of these practices’ undermining of funding for special needs.”

A spokesman for Chicago Public Schools said the district was previously made aware of the allegations in the letter; an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General is ongoing.

Asked about the letter, Boyd, of Urban Prep, said Wednesday in an e-mail that charter schools face financial obligations that traditional public schools don’t — such as paying for buildings, technology, and security. “On occasion this requires us to utilize all funding options available to us. Which is why Urban Prep has previously entered into agreements with various loan companies,” he wrote, adding that the network had been open with the school district and the union about its finances.

“(We) are currently working with CPS to ensure Urban Prep is on the most solid financial footing possible,” he wrote.

The union said Wednesday that the agreement included changes to the teacher evaluation system, additional paid leave for teachers, and smaller class size provisions. According to the union, the agreement also includes a “commitment” from management to follow special education law.

Chicago day cares and private schools reported 495 COVID-19 cases, but numbers don’t tell the whole story

2020-11-10T15:05:27+00:00

New Chicago data on coronavirus cases and outbreaks in day cares and schools appears to back up public health officials’ assurances that these settings have not been the site of major transmission — but the numbers don’t factor in a recent sharp increase in infections citywide.

The Chicago Department of Public Health data, provided to Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information request, are only through Oct. 17, the cusp of what officials have described as a second wave of infections. From April 1 through mid-October, the city has tracked 267 cases in child care centers, 207 in private and charter schools that offer some in-person instruction, and 21 at in-person park district camps. Most of those cases, though, involved adults — 90 cases in day cares, 145 cases in schools, and five at camps involved students.

Most of the cases were isolated, officials said. During that period, there were 20 cases at day cares when two or more infections occurred within 14 days of each other, 12 at schools, and one at a camp. In late October, the city and state changed the definition of “outbreak” to five or more related cases, but they continue to track two or more related infections as “clusters.”

Health officials have said in recent days that the citywide rise in COVID-19 cases has not had a marked impact on settings serving children. But more recent data is not available yet, and there’s still no one-stop source for state, city, and Chicago Public Schools numbers, which are tracked separately.

The city’s health department does not have precise numbers on how many children have attended day cares since they reopened last summer or private and some charter schools that have reopened this fall, or how many adults have been employed at them. About 19,000 students alone attend Catholic schools in the city, with about 2,700 teachers and staff.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the city’s top health official, Dr. Allison Arwady, have frequently referenced school-based data in their comments around reopening schools. But that data has been hard to find, a point of concern among parents and educators. The city’s COVID dashboard breaks down cases by age group but does not signal which cases are connected to schools versus community spread.

The numbers through mid-October seem to echo national data that suggests that with masking, social distancing, and other measures, schools and other settings that serve children can minimize COVID-19 transmission between students, said Dr. Larry Kociolek, a physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University.

“However, with rising rates in the community, we need to remain vigilant to ensure this safety record continues,” he said.

Parents and experts have called for more publicly available, real-time data about school- and child care-based cases and outbreaks. They have argued such information would help inform crucial decisions about when and how to reopen school buildings — and help families decide whether they are comfortable sending their children back.

Chicago case data is also missing from a new state dashboard launched Friday that tracks outbreaks and contact tracing data across Illinois.

According to that dashboard, there have been 10 school-based COVID-19 outbreaks statewide in the past 30 days, which includes those associated with before- and after-school programs, such as sports. There have been 647 schools with potential coronavirus exposure statewide, including about 230 in Chicago, meaning somebody with confirmed or probable COVID-19 visited those campuses.

A challenge in interpreting data on school-based cases is that it is often unclear whether students and adults contracted the virus in those settings — or in the broader community.

Chicago Public Schools is tentatively planning to bring back pre-kindergarteners and some special education students at some point during the school year’s second quarter, which started Monday. Parents in those programs had to respond to a survey about whether they planned to send their children back to school buildings late last month.

The district recently started reporting its own data on COVID-cases and is not included in the statewide dashboard. By its own count, the district has seen 318 cases among employees or other adults and eight cases among students since March, with a marked uptick in cases since the start of this school year, when it began requiring more employees to report to work. Chicago school buildings have been closed since March, but a handful of campuses have been serving as child care sites.

Two Chicago charters to keep virtual learning until the new year; CPS hasn’t announced plans

2020-10-10T01:18:28+00:00

Two of Chicago’s largest charter school networks announced this week they are sticking with virtual learning for the second quarter based on family input, while Chicago Public Schools also remains in remote learning but has not announced its plans nor broadly consulted parents as a possible reopening deadline draws near.

Chicago International Charter Schools and Acero, which each oversee more than a dozen campuses, said they surveyed parents and found a majority preferred to continue learning remotely.

Meanwhile, Chicago Public Schools says a decision is coming soon but has not said when.

A month from the start of the second quarter on Nov. 9, district leaders have disclosed little about the ins and outs of their decision-making, the timing, or how they are engaging with the city’s powerful teachers union. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson have said they are prioritizing the needs of children, not adults, and that they still want to see school buildings reopen given the academic and other benefits of in-person learning to students.

In the absence of any districtwide survey on second quarter reopening, parents say it’s time for the district to solicit their feedback and lay out what metrics will determine the final call. Families say they lack information on school plans, as many struggle through remote learning, balancing work and child care, or making sure their children’s special education needs are met.

“Every kid is different, even with special needs,” said Jeannie Liu, the parent of a high school student with Down syndrome. In deciding whether to go back to campus, “some are not able to because the families are concerned of their immune systems but others are able to. The choice should be given and not made for them.”

The teachers union, another big stakeholder in any reopening of Chicago schools, also is pressing for more consultation. “We don’t even have a hypothetical sketch of a plan,” Stacy Davis Gates, the union vice president, said. “It’s difficult for us to react to something that doesn’t exist.”

A reality that changes daily

Chicago’s metrics give mixed messages and change daily. Its COVID-19 test positivity rates now hover around 4.2%, which could permit a cautious reopening. But the COVID death recently of a district first-grade teacher has rattled the school community. Case counts remain high in some Black and Latino ZIP codes where many students and essential workers live.

Meanwhile, progress toward reopening school buildings in the Chicago suburbs and in urban districts such as Miami-Dade and Denver is putting pressure on district leaders.

Tracy Occomy Crowder, of the group Community Organizing and Family Issues, which advocates for parents of color, said parents are eager to weigh in.

“Parents want to be consulted about how this is working out,” she said. “They definitely want to be surveyed before any decisions are made about going back in the buildings.”

District officials, in an email about the upcoming Indigenous People’s Day holiday, said this: “We will provide an update on the second quarter in the near future. Parent input will remain an important consideration, and we will be engaging you as soon as possible.”

In Chicago’s mayoral-controlled district, Lightfoot likely will make the final call, though her office said the announcement will come from Chicago Public Schools officials.

Last summer, the district convened a task force of employees and representatives of the private and charter sectors to advise it on reopening. It has not assembled a similar group recently.

The district hasn’t shared data on parent preferences this fall, but last summer a survey showed more than one-third did not feel comfortable sending their children to school. Black and Latino families were even more reluctant.

This week Lightfoot said the city was working toward providing some in-person learning. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that children learn best, particularly our youngest children, with in-person instruction,” she said Wednesday.

She also said she was following the experience of the Archdiocese of Chicago, which has reopened 150-plus campuses. The city also is examining data from child care centers it is running. “We’re tracking everything,” Deputy Mayor of Education Sybil Madison said Thursday. “So far we haven’t seen anything terribly concerning.”

Neighboring decision-makers

Parent feedback determined the course for both Acero and CICS, the charter operators said this week.

In an email Friday to CICS families, interim network chief Christine Leung said CICS’s 14 schools would remain remote until at least early January.

“An overwhelming majority of parents and guardians indicated they were not yet comfortable with their children returning to school buildings, and this information was a critical factor in our decision-making process,” wrote Leung, who promised the network would revisit the decision in December.

Acero, which runs 16 schools, told families that a recent survey showed nearly 60% of respondents favored remote learning. “Scholars are deeply engaged in learning as demonstrated by an average 93% daily student attendance rate across our network,” a statement on the networks’ website said.

Any return to hybrid learning, Acero officials said, would include a new parent survey, input from Chicago Public Schools, and a transition agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents the network’s teachers.

In contrast, the Archdiocese of Chicago says it will stick with in-person learning.

In a Friday interview, Justin Lombardo, the archdiocese’s chief human resources officer and the point person on reopening schools, said the schools only once has had two coronavirus diagnoses indicating possible transmission within a “cohort” — groups of 15 to 23 students who spend the school day together.

He declined to provide the number of COVID-19 cases among students and employees or the number of school quarantines imposed.

He noted that Catholic schools tend to be smaller than district schools and often can take advantage of parish space to place students apart — an ability that may not translate to other settings.

Lombardo said an archdiocese team responds to COVID cases with rapid contact tracing and 14-day quarantines of student cohorts.

“We are really comprehensive about this,” he said. “That’s led to very, very good outcomes for us.”

As political winds shift, no new charter schools apply to open in Chicago

2019-12-10T01:07:14+00:00

No new charter schools are applying this year to expand or open in Chicago, a sign of the shifting environment for the independently run, publicly funded schools in Chicago and at the state level.

Last summer Illinois abolished the state agency hearing appeals of charter school denials. Chicago schools, both district- and charter-run, are experiencing an ongoing drop in enrollment, leaving schools competing for fewer students.

A charter school operator named Destiny STREAM Academy for Girls Charter School initially applied to open a new charter, focused on math and technology education for girls, but then withdrew its application.

Chicago has more than 120 charter schools; the school district runs more than 500 schools. The number of charter school applications has diminished by half over the past three years, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

After more than two decades of expansion in Chicago, charter school growth has tapered off.

Last year, the district denied three new charter proposals.

In 2017, nine schools sent in proposals. One was approved, one denied, and seven schools withdrew their applications. In 2016, there were 10 submissions, one of which was incomplete, and the rest were withdrawn.

That’s a wildly different landscape to just a few years before, when more than 16 schools threw their hat in the ring for a new charter or expansion in 2014-2015 school year (the majority later withdrew their proposals).

The district is also recommending that two charter schools be closed: Chicago Virtual Charter School, which offers primarily online classes for elementary and high school grades, and Frazier Preparatory Academy Charter School, a K-8 school in North Lawndale that shares a building with a district-run school.

The virtual school is under investigation by the district’s Office of Inspector General and has “the lowest School Quality Rating Policy score, used to rate how schools are performing, of any charter high school, the lowest Freshman OnTrack rate, and one of the lowest graduation rates in the district,” according to the district. Last year, it received a rating of 2, the second-lowest possible.

Chicago Virtual Charter School has held a charter with the district since 2006. The district renewed its charter in 2015 for five years.

The district is recommending that the board revoke the Frazier Preparatory Academy charter because it hasn’t been able to get off the academic warning list, which is for schools who received a low school rating three years in a row. During the 2017-18 school year the board proposed the school’s charter be renewed for three years, with conditions. The board approved a co-location with Theodore Herzl Elementary School in 2014.

As with district school closings, students will get transition support that includes staff to help them find new schools.

The proposals will be discussed, and likely voted on, at Wednesday’s board of education meeting, to be held at Curie High School at 5 p.m.

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers found that while charter school closures had decreased since 2011-12, they were holding steady at a rate of 7% from 2014-16.

The city teachers union, which opposes both charter schools and school closures, issued a critical response to the district’s announcement.

“The Chicago Teachers Union believes that school closings are racist and irresponsible, especially when schools targeted for closure were once promoted as the future of Chicago Public Schools,” the union’s statement read. “This is what happens when ‘choice’ is forced upon our communities as an alternative to traditional neighborhood public schools.”