Chalkbeat

Illinois lawmakers challenge Chicago school board’s plans to remove police, rethink choice policy

2024-03-11T20:07:43+00:00

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Illinois state lawmakers filed two bills last week aimed at reversing the Chicago Board of Education’s decisions to rethink school choice policies and remove school resource officers from campuses.

The bills focus on board moves that have drawn both support and sharp pushback in recent months from school communities and elected officials. Those decisions include a plan to reconsider the district’s system of school choice — including charter, selective enrollment, magnet, and gifted schools — and to create a new school safety plan that bans the use of school resource officers, or on-campus police.

The new state bills would significantly curtail both board decisions. One bill would prevent the closure of selective-enrollment schools and any changes to admissions policies at those schools for the next three years. The other would let local school councils retain the power to decide whether they want on-campus police — a right they would lose by next school year under a new safety plan.

Both bills have gathered support from other Chicago-based state lawmakers and powerful allies, including House Speaker Chris Welch.

The legislation is an example of lawmakers seeking to use state power to override Chicago’s authority over its schools. It comes just days after the Illinois House and Senate passed a bill governing elections for Chicago’s first-ever elected school board.

That power dynamic drew criticism from Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, who has supported the board’s moves around school choice and resource officers.

“I remember being told by (Illinois General Assembly) members that they would *not* circumvent local control of CPS BOE,” Davis Gates tweeted in response to a tweet about the resource officer legislation. “That was in 2013 when Rahm Emanuel closed down 50 Black schools impacting nearly 20K Black children. Can anyone help me define irony?”

Dwayne Truss, a longtime activist on the West Side who has opposed the board’s decision on school resource officers, felt state lawmakers took an important step.

It’s the state’s attempt, Truss said, to “say, ‘Hey, if this is what they want, and it’s fair and it’s reasonable, then we have to protect those rights.’”

Some local school councils want to keep police officers

One of the state bills, House Bill 5008, would allow local school councils to contract with the Chicago Police Department for school resource officers. It would counteract a board vote two weeks ago to create a new school safety policy by June 27 that would end the use of school resource officers, effectively removing officers from 39 schools that currently have them, by next year.

“Local school councils are designed to make the best decision for their school,” said Rep. Mary Gill, a Democrat who represents neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs, and is a key sponsor of HB 5008. “This is about keeping the power local to be able to decide if a (school resource officer) is needed, and from my research, 39 high schools would like to keep them. I think that’s enough.”

This bill passed the House’s Police and Fire committee last week, 13-0, and is headed to the House floor.

The safety plan board members called for in their vote two weeks ago would focus on more “holistic” approaches to discipline, such as restorative justice practices, which emphasize conflict resolution.

In steering away from on-campus police officers, the board cited data showing that Black students and those with disabilities were disciplined and arrested at school at disproportionately higher rates than their peers.

Schools that implemented restorative justice saw a drop in student arrests, according to a recent study.

The board decision drew substantial support, including from organizations that had pushed for years to get rid of on-campus police officers and use the money on other resources, such as more social workers or alternative discipline practices.

But it also triggered a backlash from community members and elected officials who want local councils — not the board — to decide whether their schools should have school resource officers.

Froy Jimenez, member of the district’s Local School Council Advisory Board, said Rep. Gill is “doing the city a big favor” by letting councils make the decision. Many parents, students and staff will be happy if the bill passes, said Jimenez, who is also a teacher at Hancock College Preparatory High School, which voted to remove its resource officers.

“Some will choose not to, and having that ability is crucial,” he said.

CPS spokesperson Sylvia Barragan said in a statement that the district “follows the policies and procedures set by the Board of Education and the Illinois State Board of Education” and that the district “remains committed to working with our leaders, administrators, and school staff toward improving efforts to bolster student safety and protection.”

Lawmakers say ‘hands off’ selective enrollment schools

The second bill, House Bill 5766, would prevent the closure of any school with selective admissions criteria — such as the city’s 11 selective high schools — until Feb. 1, 2027. The bill also calls for a halt to any changes to admissions criteria for selective schools or any decrease in funding to selective schools until 2027.

The bill is a response to the board resolution stating that it would rethink the school choice system and invest more resources in neighborhood schools. The resolution criticized admissions policies at selective enrollment and other “choice” schools, which were originally created to desegregate the school system but have in recent years led to segregation along the lines of student race and income.

Rep. Margaret Croke, a Democrat serving neighborhoods on the city’s northern lakefront who is sponsoring the bill, said her constituents were concerned about changes to selective enrollment schools under a majority appointed school board. They would rather wait for changes to be made after the Chicago Board of Education is fully elected during 2026, she said.

“If an elected school board that has been elected by the city of Chicago decides to take a position or action as it pertains to selective enrollment schools, I may not agree with it, but they were elected by the constituents and the voters of the city of Chicago,” said Croke.

Croke said she believes the current board is trying to change the funding formula to provide less money to selective enrollment and give more to neighborhood schools. The board’s resolution states that it wants to “ensure equitable funding and resources across schools within the District using an equity lens.”

Board members have expressed a desire to scrutinize charter schools more closely. They also want the district to provide more resources to neighborhood schools, or a child’s zoned school, in order to support “students furthest away from opportunity and ensure that all students have access to a world-class public pre-K through 12th-grade education,” officials said.

The board’s resolution did not include any language about closing schools, and board members have stated they don’t plan to close selective-enrollment schools. Written into the compromise hybrid school board bill in 2021 was a moratorium on school Chicago closures until after Jan. 15, 2025.

The resolution didn’t call for specific changes; board members said they want to hear from the public on what the district should do. The resulting plan will be part of the district’s five-year strategic plan, which the board is expected to vote on this summer.

Community groups call for better engagement

The pushback in Springfield comes after a coalition of community groups in Chicago sent a letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson urging him to push his hand-picked school board to do more — and better — community engagement.

The letter, which was sent to other elected officials, city staff, district officials, and school board members, also asked that the resolution on rethinking school choice policies, among other things, be repealed because it “was crafted with no input from the communities it will impact” and was published and approved during the final week of classes before winter break.

“There wasn’t a public comment opportunity when the resolution was announced. And then it just kind of passed,” said Daniel Anello, executive director of Kids First Chicago, a parent advocacy organization that helped create the letter.

In December, district officials said they would hold community engagement sessions in February. A Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said last week that the district now plans to hold community engagement sessions around the next five-year strategic plan after spring break, which is the last week of March.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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

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.

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.”

Three things to know about the Chicago Board of Education’s resolution on school choice

2024-01-03T12:00:00+00:00

Chicago’s Board of Education made waves last month when officials revealed a vision to move away from its school choice system and boost neighborhood schools.

The declaration, included in a resolution the board passed in December, lays out priorities for the district’s five-year strategic plan, which will be finalized this summer. Any resulting changes will depend on feedback from the community, board members said.

But the board’s new vision immediately sparked misinformation. Here are three things to know about the board’s resolution.

Will schools close?

No. Not yet, at least.

The resolution does not say anything about closing schools. State law put a moratorium on school closures in Chicago until Jan. 15, 2025, the same day a new 21-member, partially-elected school is set to be sworn in. The current seven-member school board, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, would not be able to close schools of any type – charters, magnets, or neighborhood schools – until that time.

School board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland did indicate the board is scrutinizing charter school performance through the usual renewal process and questioned whether poor-performing operators should “continue to exist.”

But even a recent board decision to revoke a charter agreement with Urban Prep did not ultimately mean those schools closed. First, the district proposed operating the two campuses as district-run schools. But after a court order, the board extended Urban Prep’s charter until June 2024.

Will I have to go to my neighborhood school?

No. The resolution does not say anything about requiring families to attend their neighborhood schools.

The closest it comes to addressing enrollment policies is a bullet point about a “reimagined vision” that includes a “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.”

Any school-aged child living in Chicago is guaranteed a spot at their zoned neighborhood school. Additionally, board policy amended as recently as last summer, allows families to apply to a myriad of selective, magnet, charter, or other speciality programs that admit students from across the city. Some schools require a test for admission, while others are a straight lottery.

These policies have not changed, but could after community feedback sessions.

“There likely will be policies that need to be revised and changed,” Todd-Breland said. “The admissions and enrollment policy is on the table.”

Data shows half of elementary school students attend their zoned neighborhood school and only a quarter of high school students do. These numbers shifted over the course of the past 20 years, when roughly 75% of elementary school students went to their local school and half of high schoolers did.

What do parents and students think?

It varies greatly.

Chalkbeat Chicago 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. Five families shared more about how — and why — they chose their schools.

The wide range of responses could be a bellwether for the kind of debate or disagreement that could emerge during community feedback sessions.

The Board of Education was awarded a $500,000 federal grant to create socioeconomically diverse schools. The district said it plans to use the money to engage the community on how to draw more families into neighborhood schools. Their application included a goal to reduce the percentage of families attending a school outside of their regions by at least 3%. The district did not answer questions to clarify their definition of region or why 3% was their goal.

The district is already collecting feedback on the next five-year strategic plan through an online survey and community meetings for the next Educational Facilities Master Plan. Officials have said they will host in-person and online meetings in February to gather feedback on the strategic plan.

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

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

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 won’t bus general education students for the rest of the school year

2023-12-21T22:54:15+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools won’t provide busing to general education students for the rest of the school year, officials said Thursday.

In a letter to parents, the district said a driver shortage persists and is preventing it from providing busing to general education students — largely those in magnet and selective enrollment programs. The district will continue to provide free CTA cards, valued at $35, to those roughly 5,500 families; about one-third of those children are using the passes, according to a CPS spokesperson.

“We fully understand how frustrating this news will be for many of our families, and sincerely empathize with the challenges and inconvenience that this situation has caused,” the letter said.

The update comes after the district announced in late September that it couldn’t provide busing to general education students this semester but would share an update with families before winter break regarding the second half of the school year. In November, the district cast doubt that it would be able to expand bus service this year.

Citing a driver shortage, the district announced in late July that it would limit busing to students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, call for transportation, as well as students who are homeless. Both student groups are legally entitled to transportation — and the district is on state watch to improve commute times for students with disabilities.

The district left open the possibility that general education students could get busing later in the year.

The district is currently busing 8,133 students with disabilities and another 146 students who are homeless, according to a CPS spokesperson.

Thursday’s busing update comes a week after the school board passed a resolution saying it wants to bolster neighborhood schools and move away from a system of choice where families travel outside their neighborhood for school. Asked if the district’s desire to move away from school choice informed their decision to sever busing for general education students, a spokesperson said the district is following state law and board policy by prioritizing students with disabilities for transportation.

Parents of children in selective enrollment and magnet programs have repeatedly shared frustrations with the Board of Education about the difficulties they’ve faced without busing to schools that are far from their homes, including difficulties balancing the school commute with their work schedules. Some parents have transferred their children to other schools.

Aria Haque, a sixth grader at Keller Regional Gifted Center in Mt. Greenwood, lives 20 miles from her school, and transferred to her neighborhood school after “so many hurdles and almost no time” to figure out the commute, Haque told the board at its meeting earlier this month. Her new school, however, was teaching material she said she’d learned two years ago.

Haque decided to re-enroll at Keller “even with the killer commute.” Her father now drives Aria and another Keller student whose family doesn’t have a car and lives 15 miles away from the school.

“That has been our routine ever since: An hour-and-a-half on the road for me, which isn’t bad, but over three hours for my dad, which is horrible,” Haque said.

Natasha Haque, Aria’s mother, said she’s been advocating with a group of parents to get busing reinstated for general education students in magnet and selective enrollment schools. She worries that students from low-income families at Aria’s school, Keller, will lose out on the chance to attend a great school. Roughly a third of Keller’s students were from low-income families last year.

“If the message to families is: ‘You cannot rely on us to transport your child to a selective enrollment school,’ it’s the lower income families that will be the first to say, ‘Yeah, I cannot afford to take my child to school. I cannot quit my job,’” Natasha Haque said Thursday after the letter to parents was sent out.

Limited busing has also helped the district comply with a state corrective action plan to keep commutes under an hour each way for students with disabilities. Last school year, about 3,000 students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour. As of October, the district was busing an average of 7 students with disabilities per route, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

Commute times had improved this year as the district has limited busing, but have worsened in recent months: In August, 47 students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour; that’s grown to 111 students as of Thursday, a slight dip from late November, according to the district.

CPS said another 115 students with disabilities are in the process of getting bus routes. The district has received 4,649 requests since the start of the school year, close to 900 more requests than last year. It is also continuing to hold job fairs to hire more bus drivers.

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.

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.

Chicago district official says adding busing this year will be tough as driver shortage persists

2023-11-29T03:16:15+00:00

Chicago Public Schools officials expressed doubt Tuesday that they will be able to provide busing to general education students for the rest of this school year.

“It’s very difficult to make a pivot within midyear to be able to add transportation now,” Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer, said during a hearing of the City Council’s Committee on Education and Child Development.

Mayfield’s comments come as the school district is still working to shorten bus rides for more than 100 students with disabilities to comply with state law.

In response to questions from aldermen about the state of student transportation, district officials cited a shortage of drivers as the core reason they’ve limited bus service so far this year to students with disabilities whose individualized education programs require transportation and those who are living in temporary housing. Both groups are legally entitled to receive bus rides to school.

About 5,500 general education students who were previously eligible for bus transportation were not offered busing this year — mostly those who attend magnet and selective-enrollment schools. The district is instead offering those families CTA passes, including a companion pass for a parent or guardian. Many parents have complained about the change, with some saying it’s hard to meet their work obligations and get their kids to school. It has led some families to transfer children out of their schools.

The district had already announced that it wouldn’t be able to expand busing to general education students for the rest of this semester. Officials have promised an update on transportation in December, before the new semester begins.

As of mid-October, the district said it had created bus routes for about 8,100 students, mostly children with disabilities.

Mayfield told aldermen that the district has now hired 715 drivers, compared with about 680 in July — meaning it has 54% of the drivers it needs. That’s only a small increase, he said, even though the district has held dozens of hiring fairs and worked with its bus vendors to increase hourly driver pay rates by $5 since last year.

“We just haven’t seen much traction with being able to build that pipeline back for drivers,” he said.

Officials added that the number of students with disabilities has grown by about 20% from last year, and the district is regularly receiving new transportation requests.

Chicago Public Schools has been under state watch since last November for failing to get students with disabilities on bus rides shorter than an hour each way. Last year, the district reported that 3,000 students were on rides longer than an hour, with 365 on rides lasting more than 90 minutes each way.

This year, with transportation for general-education students sharply limited, the district has touted an improvement in travel times for students with disabilities. As of Monday, 116 students with disabilities were commuting more than an hour to school, according to Mayfield’s presentation. That is, however, an increase from August, when 47 students with disabilities were on routes longer than one hour.

The state opened another investigation in September after advocates and parents complained that students with disabilities whose individualized education programs include transportation are being denied their federal right to a “free appropriate public education.”

The complaint alleges “widespread … delays and denials” across CPS and an “unnecessary administrative burden,” because families have to request transportation even after they’ve already been deemed eligible, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by Chalkbeat.

Looking ahead to next year, Mayfield said the district will be discussing various strategies to make bus transportation “more efficient.” The options could include creating regional bus pickup sites and adjusting school start and dismissal times. He emphasized that those decisions would be made in collaboration with unions.

“Candidly, there will be some decisions that will need to be made, because we’re not seeing that driver population come back,” Mayfield said.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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

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.

Chicago Public Schools reschedules High School Admissions Test

2023-10-18T21:27:08+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools announced a new testing schedule Wednesday for the High School Admissions Test, which was canceled last week after technical problems.

District students will take the test next week, on either Oct. 24 or Oct. 25. The district will assign one of those dates to each eighth grader’s school, according to a CPS letter to families. Students taking the exam in Spanish, Arabic, Polish, Urdu, or simplified Chinese will test on Nov. 1.

Non-CPS students — whose testing window last weekend was canceled — can take the exam on Oct. 28, Oct. 29, or Nov. 5 at Lane Tech or Lindblom high schools, the district said. These students must sign up for an exam date in GoCPS, the city’s admissions application system, by 9 a.m. Oct. 23.

The exam will not be the same one as was planned for last week, and students who were able to access the test will not see the same questions, officials said.

Students who were able to complete the exam will be allowed to retake the test, and their new score will be used for admissions even if it’s the lower of both tests, officials said. Students who don’t want to retake the exam must opt out by filing out this form and returning it to their school by Oct. 23. However, due to last week’s glitches, district officials “strongly recommend that students take advantage of this opportunity” to retake the exam, they said in the letter to families.

CPS’ roughly 24,000 eighth graders were set to take the HSAT in school on Oct. 11. The exam is part of admissions requirements for selective enrollment high schools and for enrollment at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries.

But on test day, a technical problem broke out with the testing vendor, Riverside Associates, LLC, officials said. The company later discovered that backlogged servers caused the problem, according to an FAQ on the district’s website. Students were unable to log into the testing platform, and the company’s help desk could not be reached, educators told Chalkbeat. District officials instructed principals to stop exam administration for students who were unable to log in.

The district later canceled the exam for non-CPS students, who were scheduled to take it Oct. 14 and 15.

The company fixed the problem by “adding server capacity” and testing the system to ensure that it works, the FAQ said.

Students’ HSAT scores help determine which selective high schools they might be admitted. This year, students must submit their top choices in the district’s admissions system — GoCPS — by Nov. 9, a month earlier than usual. Students were originally allowed to re-rank their choices by Nov. 22, but given the rescheduled HSAT, district officials have extended the re-rank deadline to Dec. 1.

After last week’s glitches, the district plans to be “very cautious” about the new testing plan and is “putting some strategies in place” to eliminate potential issues, said CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova during a Wednesday Board of Education meeting to review the agenda for an upcoming full board meeting. Neither she nor district officials immediately elaborated on what extra steps they’ve taken to ensure the test will resume smoothly.

In the online FAQ, the district said that its team has “reviewed results of vendor testing to confirm preparedness for resuming the HS Admissions Test program.”

During the board meeting Wednesday, Chkoumbova apologized to families for the glitches and said she was “a little bit disappointed” by the problems, given that the district’s aim was to reduce anxiety for students. The district had shortened the test length this year to an hour, from a previous 2 ½ hours, and had offered it for the first time in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

“Our team went into the testing session with a lot of assurances,” Chkoumbova said. “We did triple check everything, but the platform failed.”

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

Chicago Public Schools cancels this weekend’s High School Admissions Test for non-district students

2023-10-12T21:52:35+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is canceling this weekend’s High School Admissions Test for students who are not currently enrolled in the district but are planning to apply for the city’s selective and magnet high schools.

District officials cited ongoing technical difficulties with the vendor’s testing platform.

The cancellation comes after similar issues forced the district to pause testing Wednesday, when all CPS’ roughly 24,000 eighth graders were supposed to take the exam in school.

“We are working now to reschedule all students who were scheduled to test this weekend and will share updates to families as soon as possible,” district spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement.

The district said it is working with the vendor, Riverside Assessments, LLC, to solve the technical problems and to provide new testing dates “for students who were impacted by the vendor’s technical issues.”

In July, the Board of Education authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract with Riverside, in part to provide testing materials for the HSAT.

The vendor’s website Thursday included a note that it was aware schools in several regions were unable to log in or complete testing and that a team is “working around the clock to resolve this issue.”

Applications for next school year are currently due Nov. 9. In previous years, CPS has extended the deadline.

The glitches Wednesday prevented students from logging into the testing platform to take the exam, school leaders told Chalkbeat. Some students at one North Side school also encountered some Spanish words on their exam and needed teachers to translate, according to an administrator.

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

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

Chicago Public Schools pauses High School Admissions Test amid technical problems

2023-10-11T21:43:28+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools paused the High School Admissions Test that was underway Wednesday morning due to technical problems on the testing platform, officials told principals.

“For any students currently testing successfully, they can continue and complete,” Peter Leonard, executive director of student assessment for CPS, wrote in an email to principals. “In any other case, schools should stop testing today.”

Students take the HSAT as part of admissions requirements for the city’s selective-enrollment high schools and to enroll at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries. On Wednesday all eighth graders were set to take the exam on computers in school. This year’s exam was set to last an hour instead of the previous 2½ hours. CPS made the change in order to “reduce anxiety for students” and increase accessibility, a spokesperson said last month.

In his note, Leonard said students who finish the test today can use their scores as they apply for high schools in GoCPS. For students who couldn’t finish, the district will share alternative testing dates “as soon as possible,” Leonard wrote.

District spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement that the district is working with the testing vendor to resolve the technical problems. They don’t expect any changes to this weekend’s scheduled HSAT testing for non-CPS students, Hart said.

“We recognize the stress many students and families experience when it comes to admissions testing,” Hart wrote.

The district authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract over the summer with Riverside Assessments LLC to provide test materials for high school admissions and other placements, including gifted programs.

At one North Side school, students received error messages as they tried to log in to the testing platform, even after refreshing the page, according to an administrator at the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The school’s testing coordinator tried to call a help desk for the testing vendor but got a busy signal.

Similar problems cropped up at Brentano Elementary Math and Science Academy in Logan Square, said the school’s principal, Seth Lavin.

“They came in anxious and focused, and then they sat down, and for about an hour and a half, proctors tried to log kids into the test and they could not — and nobody knew what was going on,” Lavin said.

By the time CPS notified schools at 10:30 a.m. that it would pause the test, a handful of students were able to complete the exam at both Brentano and the North Side school.

Other students at the North Side school were finally able to log in by that time, the administrator said. But there were other issues. Some students saw words in Spanish pop up and had to ask teachers to translate, the administrator said. This is the first year the test is being offered in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

The North Side administrator called the glitches a “gross oversight” by the district, and said that it should have ensured that the system could handle tens of thousands of students taking the exam on the same day. CPS enrolled nearly 24,000 eighth graders this year, district data shows.

The administrator said all students — not just those who weren’t able to complete the exam — should be allowed to retake the test, since the process was so stressful. Students were already “very anxious” about the HSAT, this person said.

Asked about the testing issues at an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Mayor Brandon Johnson said the public school system should “not reject the hopes and aspirations and desires” of families — Black families, in particular.

“The ultimate desire is to actually build a school system that no matter where you are in the city of Chicago, that you have access to a high quality education,” he said. “I’m committed to doing just that.”

Lavin, who has criticized the district’s selective-enrollment system for being inequitable, said Wednesday’s problems underscore that the admissions system “is so fragile and arbitrary.” The exam accounts for 50% of the admissions rubric for selective-enrollment high schools.

“Kids who are 13 years old should not have a 60-minute experience that decides so much about the next four years of their life,” Lavin said.

He added, “If we are going to let some kids into some high schools and not let some kids into some high schools, we have to find a better way to do it than this.”

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

Chicago Public Schools won’t bus general education students for the rest of the semester

2023-09-27T19:41:03+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools won’t provide busing to general education students for the rest of the semester, officials said Tuesday.

District officials informed families of the decision Tuesday morning, said Charles Mayfield, CPS’ chief operating officer.

“We really wanted to give parents an early notice to let them know that you don’t have to come back and keep asking and hoping,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield said district officials will re-evaluate the decision in December before winter break and update families then on the state of transportation service.

Blaming a driver shortage, CPS has restricted bus transportation this year to students with disabilities and those who are living in temporary housing, groups that are legally entitled to transportation. District officials say they have just 681 drivers — similar to figures last month and half of what they need, Mayfield said.

At the start of the school year, Mayfield said the district would try to provide busing to more children if it could hire more drivers, but the needle hasn’t moved on new hires since August.

“We’re continuing to do more outreach,” Mayfield said.

Over the past year, the district has hosted roughly two dozen hiring fairs, raised driver pay rates by $2, to $22 to $27 an hour, and added more bus companies in an effort to ease the driver shortage, officials said. Mayfield said it may be too soon to try new strategies, given that boosting hiring can take a while, and some of the steps, such as increasing pay, went into effect only recently.

The limited bus routes have enraged many families of general education students who have relied on busing in the past, including those in magnet and gifted programs, and they have expressed their concerns at Board of Education meetings. These families are eligible for free CTA cards, including a companion pass for parents. But of the roughly 5,500 children who are eligible, just under 1,600 have used that option, Mayfield said. (The district mistakenly said in July that 8,000 students were eligible.)

Some parents of young children have said they can’t send their kids alone on buses or trains and also can’t accompany their children because of their work schedules.

Alexis Luna said the lack of transportation could force her to keep her third-grade daughter out of school occasionally. Because of Luna’s inflexible work schedule, the girl’s father usually drives her to Inter-American Elementary Magnet School in Wrigleyville in the morning, about 45 minutes from her Belmont Cragin home. Luna typically picks her up.

But if her father has to travel out of town for work, Luna won’t be able to cover the morning drop-off. In that case, Luna said, “I will have to put her in day care, and she’s probably going to have to miss school.”

Tuesday’s decision comes in the middle of the district’s school application season, during which families apply for gifted and magnet programs. The application period ends in November.

Last year, bus transportation was available to any eligible student. But the district has struggled since 2021 to provide timely and reliable service. For example, thousands of students with disabilities last year had commutes longer than an hour — a problem the district has nearly eliminated this year as it has restricted bus service.

Currently, the district is providing bus service to 7,300 students who have disabilities or live in temporary housing. It has also offered stipends to families of these students who prefer other modes of transportation. The first round of those are expected to be mailed out this week.

As of last Friday, 324 students with disabilities were waiting for routes, Mayfield said, adding that new requests continue to come in.

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

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.

After first week of classes, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities waiting for bus routes

2023-08-29T17:50:44+00:00

A week into the new school year, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities were still waiting to receive bus service, officials said.

A total of 733 students with disabilities, who are legally entitled to transportation under federal law, were waiting for bus service as of Monday, according to a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, 10 students living in temporary housing, who are also legally entitled to transportation, had yet to be assigned to routes.

Lacking half of the drivers it needs, the district decided this year to limit bus transportation to students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. These students can alternatively choose to receive stipends of up to $500 a month to cover transportation costs, which families of close to 3,270 children have done, the district said. The district is continuing to receive new requests for transportation, a spokesperson said.

For the families who haven’t accepted the stipends, the lack of bus service can be challenging, especially for students with disabilities who have varying needs. Working parents may not have the flexibility to drive their kids to school, and taking public transportation may also not be feasible.

The district said its policy is to pair students with routes within two weeks of their request, and it appears to be making progress. As of Thursday last week, 1,045 students with disabilities were waiting for a seat on a bus — about 300 more than the number at the start of this week. The district has also shrunk travel times for most students with disabilities, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez announced at last week’s board meeting.

However, that progress is happening as the district said it would not provide bus service this year to other students, including those attending selective enrollment and magnet schools. Those students have instead been offered Ventra cards, including another card for a companion, such as a parent.

Parents of some of those children, who are also struggling to accommodate their children’s commutes, sharply criticized the decision during a Chicago Board of Education meeting last week.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Board President Jianan Shi said he understands “the challenges that this has on families.” But he believes the district is doing better, citing the improvement in commute times for students with disabilities, as well as the district’s efforts to address the driver shortage by planning to boost pay.

“CPS has the responsibility to serve our students with special needs and our students experiencing homelessness, and I believe we are doing that,” Shi said.

During last week’s meeting, chief operating officer Charles Mayfield said that even as the district has employed marginally more drivers, it has received more transportation requests. As of Aug. 19, the district employed 678 bus drivers, 22 more than it did at roughly the same time last year, a spokesperson said. The district has received just over 1,000 more requests for transportation as of this August compared to last year.

This is at least the third year that Chicago Public Schools has struggled to provide bus transportation for all students who are typically eligible. Last year around this time, roughly 3,000 students with disabilities were on routes that were longer than an hour, while more than 1,800 had not been routed, officials said.

The Illinois State Board of Education has taken notice of these issues. In 2021, state officials placed the district on a corrective action plan to ensure it was providing bus service to all students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs called for it. One year later, the state instituted a second corrective action plan to shorten commutes for students with disabilities.

Chicago bureau chief Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago shortens bus routes for most students with disabilities, while others wait for service

2023-08-24T22:14:56+00:00

Just 47 Chicago Public Schools students with disabilities are on bus routes longer than an hour, an improvement over last year when that figure was roughly 3,000 and 365 children had trips lasting longer than 90 minutes, district officials said Thursday.

“We are working to get that number down to zero,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

The progress comes after more than 8,000 students who may have been eligible for bus service in the past, including those in selective and magnet schools, were told in late July they would not receive busing, but can instead receive free Ventra cards, including for one companion, such as a parent.

Martinez said again Thursday that the district was focused on providing busing to students who are legally entitled to it, such as students with disabilities and those in temporary housing.

CPS officials did not immediately share how many students are waiting to be routed as of Wednesday. As of the first day of school, 7,100 students were on bus routes, and another 3,100 chose the stipend, according to a Monday press release from CPS.

The district has blamed an ongoing nationwide bus driver shortage. In late July, officials said they had just half of the roughly 1,300 drivers they needed.

At Thursday’s meeting, some parents whose children could not get busing, including Patricia Rae Easley, blasted the district. Easley lives in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side and has a daughter enrolled at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park on the South Side — a route familiar to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who also lives in Austin and has a son enrolled at Kenwood.

“I’m trying to reach out to him,” Easley said. ”Maybe we can get in on their carpool.”

Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer, suggested CPS is not far from shortening long rides for students with disabilities. Three-quarters of those remaining 47 students who are on rides longer than an hour are on routes that are 61-66 minutes long, he said.

The district’s recent transportation struggles stretch back at least two years. In order to spur more hiring of bus drivers, Mayfield said the district has hosted several hiring fairs and is planning to work with bus companies they contract with to raise driver pay by $2.25. Currently driver pay ranges between $20-25 an hour.

The district was able to accommodate all students with disabilities or those living in temporary housing who requested transportation by the end of July, after extending the sign-up deadline twice, officials said at the time. But they could not guarantee immediate service for families who signed up after that.

Families can opt for stipends of up to $500 a month until they get routed. On Thursday, responding to criticism from some families, Mayfield described the transportation changes this year as a “tough decision that we all needed to make.”

Easley, the parent whose child attends Kenwood, said she pulled her daughter out of a private school so that she could attend the sought-after South Side school as a seventh grader this year.

She was caught off guard with CPS’s announcement three weeks ago that she wouldn’t get bus transportation. Easley said she has no use for the free Ventra card because she doesn’t feel public transit is safe enough for her daughter. That commute would involve two buses and a train, she said.

So she drives her daughter 40 minutes to Kenwood.

“It’s definitely not only an inconvenience but an expense,” Easley said. “An unexpected expense when we’re paying for gas that’s $4.57 a gallon.”

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

Chicago Public Schools’ application deadline is next week. Here’s what you need to know.

2022-11-30T00:49:11+00:00

Updated November 29, 2022 to reflect that Chicago Public Schools shifted the deadline back one week from Friday, December 2 to Thursday, December 8.

The deadline to apply for a public school in Chicago for next fall is fast approaching.

Chicago Public Schools has tried to simplify the process for going to a school that’s different from your assigned neighborhood school. Since 2017, there’s been a single online application known as GoCPS.

Still, the task of researching options, preparing required documents, and finalizing school choices dominates the minds of many parents and students every fall.

“It’s really confusing before you understand it,” said Grace Lee Sawin, founder of Chicago School GPS, which helps families navigate the public and private school application process in Chicago.

Whether you’ve been working on reviewing and fine-tuning your application since September 21 (when the portal first opened), or you’re just getting started, here’s what you need to know before hitting submit next Thursday, Dec. 8 by 5 p.m.

Preschool

If you’re the parent or guardian of a child who will be 3 or 4 next September, hang tight! You don’t need to worry about getting a spot in a public Chicago preschool until spring.

Chicago Public Schools used to require families hoping for a preschool seat at one of the sought-after public Montessori schools – Drummond, Oscar Mayer, and Suder – and Inter-American Magnet School to apply in December for the following school year. But now those schools will be part of the city’s universal preschool application used for all 4-year-old programs at neighborhood elementary schools and community-based preschools that serve mostly 3-year-olds.

While some programs may fill up quickly, officials have said there are now enough seats for all families who want a spot.

Elementary School

Half of all public elementary school students in Chicago go to a school that’s different from their zoned one. Chicago Public Schools has operated dozens of sought-after magnet schools for decades, most of which were created to promote integration.

Even after a federal judge ended the desegregation consent decree in 2009, CPS has continued to offer open enrollment. Families can choose from magnets, charters, gifted, and classical schools, and even neighborhood schools with space to take students who do not live in their attendance boundary.

A full list of magnet and neighborhood schools available online details any specialty programs offered, such as dual language and International Baccalaureate. Applicants can choose up to 20 of these schools and may get multiple offers next spring.

CPS also operates gifted and classical schools – also known as selective enrollment elementary schools – that require a test to get in. These tests are done in-person and can be scheduled once you hit submit. Families can rank up to six of these programs on their application.

Charter schools admit students via lottery. For magnet and selective enrollment elementary schools, students are admitted by a lottery that also takes into account the neighborhood a student lives in. This replaced race-based admissions. Every neighborhood is assigned to one of four socioeconomic tiers based on several factors, including median income and homeownership rates. You can look up your tier using the district’s school locator map. (Select “CPS Tiers” as an overlay.)

Middle School

Chicago sixth graders can apply to seven advanced middle school programs. These Academic Centers operate inside existing high schools, some of which are also selective enrollment: Brooks, Kenwood, Lane Tech, Lindblom, Morgan Park, Taft, and Whitney Young.

Students have to have at least a 2.5 GPA and take a test that is similar to – but not the same as – the high school entrance exam. Applicants can rank up to six of these programs and will get one or zero offers.

Once enrolled, students essentially work on their high school coursework beginning in seventh grade and can usually finish all their basic graduation requirements by the end of sophomore year. They also do not have to reapply in ninth grade to stay enrolled at the high school that houses the Academic Center.

High School

According to district enrollment data, 70% of teens in CPS attend a high school that is not their zoned school. This system of choice has been in place for many years and offers dozens of options from rigorous college prep programs to fine and performing arts to career and technical education.

Students used to have to sign up to take the high school entrance exam on one of several weekend dates. Now, all current CPS eighth grade students take the exam on the same day at their elementary school. This year, everyone took it on Oct. 26 and private school students took the test on one of two weekends in early November. Results started arriving in students’ inboxes last Friday.

At the 11 selective enrollment schools, students are admitted based on their score on the admissions exam and their grades in seventh grade. The first 30% of seats go to the top scoring students. The remaining 70% seats are divided among four socioeconomic tiers. Offers are still made to the top scoring students in each of the four tiers. The scores needed to get into each school last year are now posted online.

Earlier this year, CPS said it plans to overhaul the admissions policy for the selective enrollment high schools to make it more equitable. But the board of education has yet to vote on any changes.

Not all high schools require a test and, like elementary schools, students can choose to go to a neighborhood high school that’s not their assigned one. There is a list of all high school options and their admissions requirements online. Applicants can rank up to six selective enrollment schools and 20 other choices.

Come spring, eighth grade students can get up to two offers – one from a selective enrollment high school and one from among their other high school choices. It is possible they get no offers. A second application round occurs after offers go out in the spring, and students can always attend their zoned neighborhood school.

Transfers

While kindergarten and ninth grade are the main years when students enroll in a new school, students can apply through GoCPS at any grade.

“You are never stuck at a school,” Sawin, with Chicago School GPS, said. “If it’s not a good fit for whatever reason, then this is the beauty of Chicago, you have so many options.”

While fewer spots may be available in other non-entry grades, there are also fewer applicants.

“You’re never too late,” Sawin said. “There’s always attrition and people do make changes.”

For selective enrollment high schools, transfers can still be competitive, but students don’t have to take the high school entrance exam again. Usually, applicants are required to submit their transcript, a personal essay, and letters of recommendation. These schools, such as Whitney Young, post information about transferring in 10th through 12th grade on their websites.

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

Under pressure from pandemic, Chicago lays out changes to competitive high school admissions process

2021-04-15T19:01:14+00:00

Chicago Public Schools will streamline its high-stakes high school application process next year, replacing a spring test and its selective-enrollment exam with one high school assessment for choice programs that all students will take during the school day.

The district also said it also plans to do away with minimum test score requirements, which student advocates have said unfairly blocked some vulnerable students from even applying to specialized programs that might be a good fit for them.

The announcement came Thursday just an hour before the district and union announced the two sides had reached a tentative agreement to reopen high schools for the first time in more than a year. If the deal passes a full union vote, students can return as planned beginning Monday.

Chicago Public Schools also said it will promote all elementary students to the next grade in the fall and again suspend any update to its controversial school ratings, still relying instead on the 2019 measures. It will hit pause, too, on the spring administration of the NWEA’s MAP test that is given at elementary and middle schools; it will continue to administer the state assessment as required.

District officials, who must seek school board approval for the proposed suspension of ratings another year, said in a letter to families that the changes are a nod to the pandemic’s profound disruption to learning and an effort to respond to that.

Families and advocates had called on the district to spell out a high school application process for next year that would help account for the uneven impact of the pandemic and school closures. The upheaval has tended to be more disruptive for students with special needs and those living in hard hit, predominantly Latino and Black neighborhoods of the city, threatening to worsen their odds of getting into coveted programs next year and beyond.

It’s yet to be seen whether advocates will find the district’s testing changes go far enough. The district’s letter did not address, for instance, whether grades will factor any differently into the admissions equation next year: Black and Latino students so far this year have seen a more significant increase in Ds and Fs compared with their white and Asian peers.

The district said starting next fall, it will use one exam, the CPS High School Admissions Test. Every district student will take the test during the school day, while students at charter and private schools will have an opportunity to take it on the weekend. The change, the district’s letter said, will “promote equity by providing all students access to the test during school hours.”

The district’s decision to cancel the NWEA’s MAP test this spring means it will have no measure of student growth to factor into its school quality ratings. That means the district will stick with the 2019 ratings for the third year. The district recently kicked off a formal process to review and overhaul its ratings system, which critics say has served to drive families away from schools in historically under-resourced neighborhoods of the city.

Chicago’s high school competition: Percent of students who win spots in coveted campuses remains flat

2020-03-27T23:18:44+00:00

The percent of Chicago eighth graders who secured their first choice of Chicago’s most competitive test-in high schools this year remained essentially flat, with only 15.6% accepted to their first-choice school, compared with 16.2% last year, even as the overall number of students who applied for selective-enrollment schools dropped.

The first round of applications to schools is the apex of the anxiety-provoking Olympics of school choice in Chicago. For the second year in a row, a districtwide online portal streamlined the application process and allowed researchers to compare student interest in different types of schools.

In total, 23% of applicants will get accepted into one of their top three selective-school choices, according to data provided Friday afternoon by Chicago Public Schools. The district planned to notify students Friday evening of their individual results.

Chicago has 11 selective-enrollment high schools, and seats at these schools are among the most competitive in the district. Students can rank up to 20 choices from among 250 programs in more than 130 schools — and among those they can choose up to six selective enrollment schools — on a universal application system called GoCPS that Chicago rolled out last year.

The selective enrollment system is controversial. Some laud the city’s highly ranked and competitive schools, saying they are a crown jewel in Chicago’s education system. But others say the schools reinforce inequality by rewarding students who can spend money on test prep and tutors.

Among applicants to all high schools, 53% of eighth-graders will get their first-choice school, a blip down from 54% last year. Students rank selective-enrollment schools separately from other high school programs, such as the rapidly expanding International Baccalaureate curriculum, career technical programs, and arts programs.

The district said 26,208 incoming freshmen participated in GoCPS applications this year, compared with 26,619 the previous year.

All Chicago students are automatically zoned to a neighborhood school, and students always have the option to attend that school.

“Nearly all CPS families are using GoCPS to find their ideal high school, and the district is pleased to see that the vast majority of students continue to receive their top school choices,” spokesperson Emily Bolton said in a release announcing the new figures.

While the district released the top line data publicly on Friday, students will find out between 5 p.m. and midnight Friday exactly which schools accepted them.

Families have two weeks to accept their Round 1 offer. Students can end up on waitlists for some popular programs, and receive calls from schools later in the spring. The exception are the competitive selective enrollment programs, which don’t run waitlists.

Students tended to apply to both charter and district-run high schools. Only 4% applied only to charters, about the same as last year, and 38% of applicants applied exclusively to district-run schools.

The second-round process requires a new application, and several high schools with seats to fill usually offer open houses and tours in the spring in the hopes of recruiting incoming freshmen who may not have considered them the first time.

How that will change under the new restrictions — schools will be closed through at least mid-April — remains to be seen. One option could be to change the timeline for the high school application process.

“The CPS Office of Access and Enrollment is working to assess the impact of school closures on the remainder of the GoCPS high school application timeline and will communicate any other changes or adjustments as soon as possible,” Bolton said.

Seven things families should know about high school admissions in Chicago

2019-10-01T21:36:43+00:00

Chicago’s high school admissions window opened this week. For thousands of students and their families, so began a process marked by anxiety, questions, deadlines, and, yes, educated guesswork.

The city’s universal application, GoCPS, is now in its third year. While still controversial, the site has streamlined a process that used to be overly cumbersome and left some students stranded without offers. But even with a single application and a match for upward of 90% of students, there are plenty of unknowns — from the odds of getting a first- or second-choice to how high a student will score on the admissions test for selective enrollment high schools. (To read one father’s critique of the process, click here.)

While the high school application derby may be daunting, a trove of research on the ins and outs of Chicago high school admissions offers useful clues to families. Here are seven tips, grounded in research, that can help families who are trying to navigate GoCPS.

Are you a student or parent or educator who has been through the process and has a tip you’d like to share? Click here to tell us or scroll down to take the survey below. Or share with us on Twitter or Facebook.

The odds aren’t as bad as you think if you’re willing to put your eggs in more than one basket.

Let’s break down the numbers.

Last school year, about 26,600 prospective high school freshmen made their selections from a menu of 250 programs in about 130 high schools. Among the most competitive: the 11 selective enrollment high schools that base acceptance on test scores.

Chicago offers an array of options from dual-language programs at three high schools to STEM programs to a performing arts school, military academies, and vocational programs such as in culinary arts. These are the “choice” programs.

Students can apply to up to six selective enrollment high schools and 20 choice programs on one application. They rank selective enrollment programs and choice programs separately. Offers can come down from each.

Last year, only about 16% of students got their first choice of a selective enrollment school. But taken together, slightly more than half — 54% — got their top pick of either a selective enrollment or a choice school.

Nearly 30% got one of their top three picks for selective enrollment schools. And 81% got a match among the top three of their selective enrollment or choice programs.

2. The process favors students who select more schools.

Last school year, 92% of students received a match of a school on their list.

Research from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, which has studied the GoCPS process, shows that students who rank more programs are more likely to receive an offer than students who rank fewer programs. The numbers bear that out: Students who did not receive a match applied to an average of 2.5 schools, compared with an average of 7.1 schools for all applicants.

3. Students who want to attend their neighborhood high school can opt out of the admissions process entirely.

Every student in Chicago is guaranteed a seat in a neighborhood high school. Students who plan to attend their zoned school are not required to participate in GoCPS. The district encourages those students to submit a letter of intent form so that schools can plan for enrollment, but does not require it.

There is a neighborhood schools movement afoot in the city, but despite calls for more investments in such programs, four years of data show growing percentages of high school students choosing schools outside of their zoned campus.

Whether that trend will continue this school year remains to be seen. The district has not yet released its 20th day student count, which provides the first look at current year enrollment trends.

4. There are often multiple ways to apply to one school; insiders encourage families to try them all.

Researchers are forthright about the advantages that some families have in the application process — be it the money to pay for test prep, the car to drive to open houses, or the ability to hire personal navigators.

Grace Lee Sawin, the founder of Chicago School GPS, has for many years run a business that helps pair families with schools. Swain offers students this wisdom: “You’re not applying to a school, you’re applying to a program within a school.”

One example she gives is Amundsen High School, on the city’s North Side. Prospective students can apply for admission to any of three programs: a general education track, a game programming and web design track, and the International Baccalaureate track. Swain says she advises families who want to go to Amundsen to apply to all three — even if the application requires applicants to list and rank each separately.

“There are different ways to get into a school,” Sawin said. “I tell families, once you’re in, you can ask about making a lateral move (to another program) if the choice isn’t right.”

5. Research offers some hope to students who don’t get into selective enrollment schools.

Admission to the selective enrollment programs heavily depends on a student’s grades, score on the NWEA/MAP standardized test, and score on an admissions test for selective schools. Each selective school sets aside 30% of its seats for applicants with the highest scores, then divvies up the remainder using a rubric of scores and a tier system that attempts to account for income inequality among families. (To find cutoff scores by tier for each of the selective enrollment schools, click here. Many choice programs also have score requirements; click here for that list.)

But inevitably some students find themselves out of the competition — maybe they’re poor test takers, or they’ve got a blemished academic record, or they don’t have parents who speak English well enough to help guide them. Here’s the good news: Researchers say they’ve got alternatives.

Students who barely miss the cutoff for admission to a selective enrollment high school tend to enroll in high-performing neighborhood high schools or special programs within high schools, like International Baccalaureate. Ultimately, many end up doing just as well as or better than admitted students on a variety of academic measures, including college-entrance test scores and college enrollment, according to research from the University of Chicago Consortium.

IB, a rigorous academic program first developed for the children of British diplomats, is helping neighborhood schools make inroads with top students. District data shows that 23% of students who were admitted to both IB and selective-enrollment schools in 2017-2018 chose IB.

In fact, according to 2012 research from the consortium, students in IB programs finished high school with stronger college qualifications than did students at selective enrollment high schools, even though the former as a group tended to begin high school with lower test scores than those of students in selective enrollment programs.

“Overall, IB students showed stronger rates of four-year college enrollment, selective college enrollment, and college persistence than students who had similar achievement before high school but were not in an IB program,” said consortium Director Elaine Allensworth, who has researched educational outcomes for 20 years.

6. Don’t sleep on follow-up: Many schools require another step besides an application.

IB programs require students to attend an information session for their application to be considered (the district lists them here).

Other schools require auditions, portfolios, or interviews, depending on the type of program.

“Find out if these are needed,” Allensworth said, “and make sure to complete the requirements or [applicants] will not be considered for enrollment at those schools.” One good resource: This school guide from CPS lists the requirements for every campus in the city.

Not sure about a program? Many schools will offer open houses and tours for prospective families from now to December. The GoCPS website offers this running calendar of open houses for prospective families at both elementary and high schools.

7. Parents, educators, and students should be mindful that students are listening and internalizing how schools are described.

Kate Phillippo, an urban education policy expert and researcher at Loyola University, spent years studying dozens of Chicago eighth-graders who were going through the admissions process. All of the students valued making a choice of where to attend high school — but many, when it came down to it, struggled with the process and how their parents and peers described schools.

“Young people take these comments seriously, and judge themselves and others by the standards and expectations they we convey,” she said. “Young people need to hear from us that we see them as people, understand that this process is difficult, to say the least, and understand their capacity as far more than what can be known from a few scores and grades they got in seventh and eighth grade.”

Phillippo said that, after years of studying young people, she’s also learned that it’s important for them to hear that the family members and educators they trust will support them no matter what high school they end up attending.

As a sociologist and a father, I have one conclusion: Chicago’s high school admissions process is unfair

2019-03-29T22:45:01+00:00

Friday will bring shouts of happiness and sadness across Chicago — including in my house.

Not because of the results of the NCAA Men’s Sweet 16 game. Instead, it is a game of higher stakes for Chicago’s families: the release of the lottery results for the school district’s selective high schools.

The process is based on two sets of standardized tests and a student’s grades in seventh grade. Students are ranked on a scale of zero to 900, then ranked and sorted based on the schools they’ve applied to. But it’s way more complicated than that: For a detailed description, you can go here.

As a sociologist and a parent going through the overwhelming process, here are my three biggest takeaways:

First, it is a long and stressful road. My seventh-grade daughter and her friends experienced an emotional rollercoaster. I saw a seventh-grader cry because she had a single B on her report card. That pales in comparison to the stress of the NWEA testing, Chicago’s annual standardized test.

Second, for students, the process induces sleepless nights and constant comparisons to classmates. If this sounds like the college process, it pretty much is. Imagine doing it at age 13, at your most volatile emotional and psychological self.

Third, and perhaps most significant, the process offers a front-row seat to the deep inequality across the city’s schools. It is one thing to read about inequality among the different kinds of schools (neighborhood, choice and selective enrollment) in the same neighborhoods. It was quite another to see it for myself.

How can Lane Tech College Prep High School’s aquaponics lab or seven computer/robotics labs not blow you away? How can you enter Walter Payton College Preparatory High School and not be amazed?

I asked the parental fundraising organization at one selective enrollment high school about the “ask” for each family annually. “No ask” was the reply. Why? Because they had raised almost $900,000 the previous year, likely through fundraisers, and expected to do so again.

The fact is selective enrollment school students come from wealthier families that can afford test prep and tutoring. It is a numbers game. More than 27,000 students competed last year for fewer than 4,000 freshman seats in selective enrollment schools.

Is Chicago Public Schools making the competition worse? Students with NWEA scores in the 24th percentile can sit for the selective enrollment exam. Even with perfect grades, a student would need to score in at least the 75th percentile to have a shot.

Perhaps this is the district’s attempt to diversify the testing pool, since the bottom of the NWEA score distribution is disproportionately African-American and Latino. Their focus is off: instead of encouraging more students of color to take the test, they should be improving the educational opportunities for these students.

The demographics of the schools bear this out. The four most competitive selective enrollment high schools — Jones College Prep, Northside College Preparatory, Whitney Young Magnet, and Payton — together are 35% white, 22% Latino, 18% African American and 17% Asian.

In comparison, the district is 11% white, 47% Latino, 37% African American and 4% Asian. Rather than decreasing the inequality, selective enrollment makes it worse.

What solutions are possible? Making the admissions process more holistic, similar to admissions at selective colleges and universities would be a good start.

Ultimately, the best way I can see to fix this problem is as pie in the sky as it gets — ensure that funding and staffing for neighborhood schools is equal to that of their selective enrollment school brethren.

As my daughter learns on Friday where she’ll go to high school, there will be joy or frustration or a bit of both. Nevertheless, the process will be over — until my second daughter starts seventh grade in the fall. Then the whole painful cycle starts over again.

Simón Weffer-Elizondo is the parent of four Chicago Public Schools students from kindergarten to eighth grade and a professor of sociology and Latino studies at Northern Illinois University who specializes in race and inequality.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

Chicago sets community meetings on controversial school inventory report

2018-10-15T23:58:15+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is hosting a dozen workshops for community members focused on a controversial report about local schools that offers an unprecedented window into the assets — and problems — in certain neighborhoods.

The district published report, called the Annual Regional Analysis, in September. It shows that, in many areas of the city, students are skipping out on nearby options, with less than half of district students attending their designated neighborhood schools.

The school district and Kids First, the school-choice group that helped compile the report, maintain that the analysis is meant to help guide investments and empower communities to engage in conversations about their needs.

The report divides the school district into 16 “planning regions” showing where schools are, what programs they offer, how they are performing, and how people choose among the options available.

The meetings will start with a presentation on the report. They will include small-group discussions to brainstorm how Chicago Schools can invest in and strengthen schools. The first workshop is scheduled for Wednesday at Collins Academy High School.

While the school district has touted the detailed report as a resource to aid planning and community engagement, several groups have criticized the document and questioned the district’s intent. The document has sparked fears among supporters of neighborhood schools that the district might use it to propose more school closings, turnarounds, and charter schools.

The parents group Raise Your Hand, the neighborhood schools’ advocacy group Generation All, and the community organizing group Blocks Together penned a letter recently scrutinizing the report’s reliance on school ratings, which are based largely on attendance and test scores.

“Research has shown that test scores and attendance tell us more about the socioeconomic status of the students’ communities rather than the teaching and learning inside the school itself,” they wrote. Chalkbeat Chicago first reported about the analysis in August after obtaining a copy of it. Yet, the document has sparked fears among supporters of neighborhood schools that it could be used to propose more school closings, turnarounds, and charter schools.

Here’s a list of the 12 community workshops, all of which all begin at 6 p.m.:

West Side Region: Oct. 17, Collins Academy High School

Greater Lincoln Park Region: Oct. 18, Lincoln Park High School

Greater Calumet Region: Oct. 22, Corliss High School

South Side Region: Nov. 7, Lindblom High School

Greater Stony Island Region: Nov. 8, Chicago Vocational Career Academy

Far Southwest Region: Nov. 13, Morgan Park High School

Far Northwest Side Region: Nov. 14, Steinmetz High School

Greater Milwaukee Region: Nov. 15, Wells High School

Greater Stockyards Region: Nov. 19, Kelly High School

Pilsen/Little Village Region: Nov. 26, Benito Juarez Community Academy

Greater Midway Region: Dec. 6, Curie Metropolitan High School

North Lakefront Region : Dec. 11, Roger C. Sullivan High School

Chicago schools chief urges principals to apply for enrollment-boosting programs

2018-10-04T21:33:37+00:00

Schools chief Janice Jackson said Chicago principals have until Oct. 26 to draft letters of intent to apply for sought-after offerings for their local schools. These programs might include culinary, automotive, and language certifications or designations such as International Baccalaureate, magnet or gifted.

Jackson sent a letter Wednesday to principals and Local School Council members, saying that the decisions will be rooted, in part, by “demonstrable support of the school community” and how proposals “address programmatic gaps in their neighborhood.”

Her letter signals an effort by Chicago Public Schools to raise the profile of neighborhood schools that have been edged out by magnet, charter, and test-in programs. Chicago has been criticized for not having a fair and transparent process for deciding how schools earn such enrollment-boosting distinctions. It’s a particularly relevant issue now, with the city’s public school population declining, and many schools operating at a sliver of their capacity.

In an interesting twist, Jackson included in her letter a link to a newly released report compiled by a group called Kids First, which has its roots in a business community-backed pro-charter effort that worked in partnership with the district on the data.

The Kids First report “brings together data on seat quality, enrollment patterns, and programmatic offerings,” she wrote, “and presents a common set of facts that your school community can use to identify opportunities to address programmatic gaps.”

The report shows that, for example, the highest number of seats in the academically rigorous International Baccalaureate program can be found in the wealthy, predominately white and affluent North Side. In contrast, there are far fewer IB seats in predominantly black communities such as Englewood and Auburn Gresham and in the Latino community Back of the Yards.

At a press conference in September, Jackson said the report’s release should be viewed as a step forward in transparency. “From my time here, I’ve seen people ask the same questions over and over again. There’s been an ask around the district being more transparent, which I think is critically important. And as I stated, all of the data is publicly available.”

On Thursday, some community groups fired back with a letter of their own. They applauded Jackson’s effort to make the process more equitable, but they challenged the fact base established by the Kids First report, which uses school ratings to paint a picture of quality around the district.

“There are simply too many faulty assumptions and too many questions left unanswered,” wrote the leaders of the parents’ group Raise Your Hand, the neighborhood schools’ advocacy group Generation All, and the community organizing group Blocks Together.

In particular, these groups took issue with school ratings, which are based largely on attendance and test scores. “Research has shown that test scores and attendance tell us more about the socioeconomic status of the students’ communities rather than the teaching and learning inside the school itself,” they wrote. “When parents send their kids out the door in the morning or look for a kindergarten program for their kids, they are concerned with things well beyond whether everyone in the building is a good test taker.”

You can read their message in its entirety below.

Principals’ letters of intent are due at the end of October. The district will then evaluate proposals. Principals will be notified by Nov. 30 whether they’ve been invited to the next round, with the final decisions expected March 1, 2019. School visits and interviews of teachers, parents, and students will be part of the process, Jackson’s letter stated.

Families search for ‘hidden gem’ high schools as application season begins

2018-10-02T16:34:26+00:00

The day before applications to high schools opened in Chicago, a group of parents and their children strolled through a cavernous room at Disney II, a magnet elementary school on Chicago’s Northwest side, at a huge fair where various schools pitched their programs and attractions.

Would-be recruits and their parents were holding clipboards, brochures, and catalogues. Some prospective students betrayed their boredom by dragging their feet around the room; others fervently discussed course choices and sports programs with their parents.

They learned about Mather High’s Career and Technical Education program, Lincoln Park High’s International Baccalaureate classes and private companies’ test-prep courses for high school entrance exams — and much more.

They were preparing for Monday, which ushered in one of the more complicated and controversial processes in Chicago public education: school applications, where eighth-graders around the city compete for entry to selective-enrollment, magnet and charter high schools.

For the second year, families will use a new online portal, GoCPS, that aims to streamline the application process for students choosing from 250 programs in 132 high schools.

The Hidden Gems Chicago High School Fair seeks to advertise lesser-known courses and extracurricular activities at more than 30 public and private high schools around the city as well as a few from out of state. More than 100 families attended.

Competition for Chicago’s top-tier selective-enrollment schools is notoriously difficult — one in five high-school options pulls in 10 applicants for every seat — and favors students whose families have the language and skills to follow the complicated applications process. Sunday’s fair aimed to offer more achievable alternatives.

We “take the pressure off by realizing all of the great options in the Chicagoland area,” the fair’s promotional materials read. Compiled by Chicago Schools GPS, a company that, for a fee, helps walk parents through the public and private school systems.

The fair featured traditional high schools with specific programs, magnet schools, charters, military schools and Catholic schools.

Some parents attending the fair were determined to keep their child in a public school, even if it’s not their neighborhood schools. Others were on the brink of leaving the city altogether or wouldn’t rule out boarding school in Wisconsin to further their child’s education.

Here’s how five families who attended Sunday’s fair are approaching the high school application process:

Olivia Arroyo
Parent of a sixth-grader
Montclare neighborhood

We want to know what we have to look forward to so far as schools, programs, what the student body is like and make sure we make an informed decision before we start applying for any schools.

Our local neighborhood school is Steinmetz. I know that they have a few programs — honors, AP programs — but that is just not something we are interested in.

With the Noble network we have realized that they are pushing the testing so aggressively. I have heard the kids that come from a Noble school kind of struggle because the school is only focused on getting them to push these high test scores.

We came hoping to look more into the schools that have the seventh- and eighth-grade transition programs. That is really what we were coming to see. We would rather have him be in one school for six years so that we’re not bouncing him around and he can create solid relationships with his teachers and peers.

I don’t think there is a point in paying for tuition [at a private school] when there are great public options. We just want to be informed.

Willette Duncan
Parent of an eighth-grader
Rogers Park

We want to find other options besides the selective-enrollment high schools, other good options in Chicago. I am really big on education — I was considering moving out of Chicago — so we just want to learn more about the resources available. I was thinking about moving to Niles. It has one of the top high schools in Illinois.

I haven’t really looked into charter schools, mainly public and private. Our neighborhood school is Sullivan High School. I went to Sullivan, so I know it may be a little better but I don’t feel like they have as much of the resources and college preparation.

Trevel Andrews, 13
Willette Duncan’s son

I look for leadership programs, AP honors courses and the IB programs. The thing I look into is the student-to-teacher ratio, is it a smaller classroom or a large classroom, and is there on- or off-campus learning.

Andrea Guzman
Parent of a seventh-grader
Little Village neighborhood

We wanted to learn about the diverse opportunities our kids could have. As a parent, I am very interested always in the community that is in the school, really feeling out their sense of community. We all need a community around us to support us in our future, so relationships are very important.

Obviously academics are really important but also the opportunities the students will have once they are done with high school. It provides a lot of open doors, what is my son going to be exposed to moving forward? What trips are they going to go on? What cultures will they get to learn about?

All of that matters to me, because it’s not just about what your scores are, but also personal development.

We are really connected to the Little Village-Lawndale High School. They unfortunately don’t have an automotive program there. We’ve been connected to the high school from dirt until now, but if it doesn’t provide what my son is looking for then we might have to look somewhere else.

Judy Highman
Parent of a seventh-grader
South Shore neighborhood

There are too many options for high schools in Chicago, I don’t know how to narrow it down, so we are starting now at seventh grade. Even here it’s still overwhelming, so we are just trying to narrow it down and get a feel for how to do the whole high school application and how to figure out what school is going to benefit her the most.

At this point, I’m not eliminating anything. One school had a student-teacher ratio of 12 to 1, so it’s not just the standard classroom environment. I don’t want her to apply for a high school and regret it. I can’t sway her decision without showing her what is available.

Andre Aguilar
Parent of an eighth-grader
Humboldt Park neighborhood

We don’t want to settle for a neighborhood school. I know that Clemente is probably a little bit better than it was before, but we want to explore all of the different options and make sure she is going to somewhere that she is going to fit and excel.

Commute is a big one. We don’t want her to be going too far. Other than that, we want her to go to a school that is pushing for the kids to actually excel,.I don’t want her to go to a school where teachers are just letting the kids flounder. I guess smaller maybe, hopefully, and go somewhere with an IB program.

A new school in Bronzeville says a lot about what parents want

2018-09-07T11:00:21+00:00

The first day of school, Nicole Spicer woke up at 4 a.m., put on a kelly-green blouse that matched her school colors, and was greeting new families at the door by 7:30 a.m.

By 9:30 a.m., the founding principal of the new Bronzeville Classical Elementary had run the school leadership gauntlet: encouraging her small cadre of teachers, welcoming jittery students and parents, and throwing an opening-day party complete with a balloon trellis and visits from such VIPs as Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago schools CEO Janice Jackson.

Her venti Starbucks coffee had long grown cold. So she headed to the teachers’ lounge to zap it in the microwave before embarking on another tour of the building, a former elementary school that closed under former schools chief Arne Duncan, reopened as a charter, then closed again.

In the school-choice era in Chicago, school buildings can have many incarnations, and 8 West Root Street’s latest says a lot about what parents in and around Bronzeville want. The only new selective enrollment school opening this year, it comes amid amped-up debate about the degree to which test-in schools pick off accelerated learners and middle-class families at the expense of neighborhood programs.

The debate recently has been stoked by reports that paint a never-before-seen picture of supply and demand in individual schools as well as the startling number of open seats in neighborhood schools.

Assistant principal Raven Talley and principal Nicole Spicer

A case study in what a school can look like with robust support, Bronzeville Classical’s deep bench consists of black religious and business leaders from the community around it. A multimillion gut rehab puts its facilities-wise on par with private schools — there are smart boards in classrooms, a new playground and turf area, even a donated pottery kiln. And the principal has ties with the historically black neighborhood, which still really matters in Chicago.

“Bronzeville has always been a part of who I am,” said Spicer, who grew up near 41st and Indiana streets and attended Catholic schools in the area, despite family who were alums of Phillips High School. “I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.”

The opportunity she’s describing is building a school from the ground up, from hiring the staff to prioritizing Spanish-language immersion and music theory to recruiting the students. Since the school was announced last December, Bronzeville Classical has enrolled 80 children in grades K through second, with plans to add a grade each year. It still has 100 students to go to reach its initial goal.

To recruit more families, Spicer is setting up her front office to help families navigate the selective-enrollment process, which includes completing a centralized online application and registering children for a testing appointment at a facility near IIT. There will also be orientations for prospective families, tours, a social media push, and workshops for families, said Assistant Principal Raven Talley. “When you walk into a school, you want to feel and see the community and the culture,” Talley said.

Not everyone who lives in the surrounding neighborhoods can attend the school, no matter the supports. That bothers public education organizers like Jitu Brown, the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance. He has long encouraged CPS to stop segregating students by test scores and shower its neighborhood schools with the same resources and attention it gives new schools. “The rest of our babies are left to languish in neighborhood schools that are starved.”

In essence, other schools could use smart boards and Spanish immersion. A balloon trellis wouldn’t hurt.

The parent perspective

Brittany Smith, the parent of a first-grader at Bronzeville Classical, sympathizes with that argument. But, at 27, she’s part of a generation that came up in the choice era, traveling to a magnet school as an elementary student that was near the Indiana border and then attending Whitney Young, the city’s first public magnet high school.

In other words, “I’m used to the idea,” she said.

Smith lives in Bronzeville, just down the street from Ida B. Wells Preparatory, which reported an average kindergarten class size of 38 last year (the district average was 16.9, according to the 2017 Illinois School Report Card.) Put off by the class sizes, she tested her daughter and gained admission into a selective-enrollment school that was a 20-minute drive from her house. When she heard about Bronzeville Classical, which would be less than 5 minutes away, she applied. “I can tell there is a lot of support from the teachers and the principal, and it’s in the neighborhood.”

For many families, the decision to transfer to a new school with no record is not made lightly. There’s no word of mouth and no test score data to compare, though classical schools — which teach a grade level above, focus on language, and usually have strong art and music programs — are consistently among the district’s highest performing.

A gut rehab meant fresh new paint and lockers, but the marble staircase remains

A few days in, both Smith and another parent, Alicia Blais, who lives in McKinley Park, feel encouraged. Smith, who is black, appreciates the diversity of the school (numbers aren’t fully in, but an early measure shows the school at 50 percent black, 20 percent Asian, and 10 percent white, with a third of the students qualifying as low-income), the sparkling facility, and the fact that her daughter comes home happy.

Blais, who is white, says Spicer and her assistant principal are working with her to provide the right experience for her daughter, who is highly sensitive. Already, the first grader has really connected with the Spanish teacher. Calling it a “last stop” before moving to the suburbs, Blais said, “We are one of many parents who need this school to work.”

Design from the ground up

The siren call of a new school doesn’t just lure parents. Educators hear it, too. An award-winning reading specialist who formerly served as assistant principal at another classical school, Skinner North, Spicer participated in a highly competitive process for the principalship. It culminated with her speaking in a public forum last spring alongside another finalist.

After getting the job and taking what she describes as a “listening tour” of community organizations, she approached hiring her small staff with the same careful scrutiny: sorting through hundreds of applications to find a diverse roster of candidates. She opted for full-time music, PE, and Spanish in addition to her K-2 classroom teachers, special education teacher, and a counselor. In lieu of full-time art, a nonprofit group will come in and teach one day a week. (An alum of Golden Apple, the prestigious Illinois teacher training program, Spicer said three of her hires share those ties)

For Jessica Lyons, the Spanish teacher, who previously taught in a Catholic school, the chance to build curriculum from the ground up was persuasive. So was Spicer’s vision of earning a Seal of Biliteracy. For her, that means teaching classes completely in Spanish and cultivating a positive mindset around learning languages through books like “La Vaca Que Decía Oink,” about a cow that says oink. “I’ve designed Spanish programs at schools before, but this is an opportunity to really start something from the ground up and have ownership over it.”

Music teacher Reginald Spears has been working in Chicago schools for a decade, most recently at the nearby Doolittle Elementary. He brings with him a vision for a musical curriculum that prepares children for elementary band, or orchestra, complete with sight reading and songwriting. At some schools, music is viewed as a vehicle to teach reading or math, he explains — here, it’s a subject worthy of its own study and exploration.

He also brings training in calm classroom techniques, such as breathing and stretching, that he has shared with his fellow teachers. “I’m excited that this going to be part of the school.”

But despite the gleaming hallways and pottery kiln, Bronzeville Classical is still a public school in Chicago and can’t escape the realities of the district’s ongoing budget crunch. So Spears’ ambitions of a piano lab and a suite of shiny instruments might require some creativity. He plans to start the way teachers across the city do — a crowdsourcing page on the website Donors Choose.org.

Chicago school board votes to request a one-year delay for gifted access plan

2018-08-28T14:57:00+00:00

Chicago’s school board has agreed that the district should ask for an extra year to phase in a plan to make gifted services available to more children outside of its test-in schools. This comes despite opposition from a vocal group of advocates who pushed for a new state law to expand gifted services in Illinois schools.

Chicago Public Schools’ request will now advance to the Illinois State Board of Education, where it will likely be approved. The statute does not specify how long a district has to adopt or implement the policy, according to an ISBE spokeswoman.

Explaining the reasoning behind the request Wednesday, Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade told the board that the district needed more time to comply with the Illinois Accelerated Placement Act, which took effect July 1. The act, which Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law in August 2017, compels districts to put programs in place to accelerate learning for children who qualify. That could include offering the chance to start kindergarten and first grade early, accelerating a child in a single subject, or having the child skip a whole grade.

McDade told the board that, to work as intended, Chicago’s plan would need to go beyond the scope of students who’ve already been identified as gifted and talented. Chicago needs a plan that is “open to all children who demonstrate high ability,” McDade said. Mirroring some national trends, low-income students in Chicago make up more than 82 percent of the district but only comprise 60 percent of gifted seats, according to a 2016 report.

“In order to do this effectively and implement with integrity,” she said, “we want to take time to do this the right way.” It will take time, she said, for the district to identify an assessment tool that could be used at individual schools and incorporate a public engagement period aimed at parents, she added.

Chicago schools currently offer parents the option to test elementary children for placement in its gifted and classical programs, but there aren’t enough seats for every child who qualifies and not every neighborhood has access to a nearby program. The assessments are administered in a central location in one-on-one sessions between children and proctors who contract with the district.

Joshua Dwyer, the policy director of Empower Illinois, which advocated for the law, said Chicago’s process of sorting gifted children favors the “lucky” and the “connected.” Delaying implementation of the law, even for a year, denies some children “the right to reach their full potential,” he said.

Speaking before the board Wednesday, Eric Calvert, an associate professor who works with Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development, and two parents who identified their children as exceptional learners also urged the district to act now. Angel Alvarez, a parent, likened waiting a year to provide services for his daughter to telling a star athlete to sit on the sidelines. “It’s unfathomable to suggest to a star athlete that they not share their talent with the world,” he said. “Doing nothing is not the same as doing no harm.”

Irene Gottlieb, whose daughters have bounced between regional gifted centers, private schools, and homeschooling, said she has been waiting for a public comment period since the law passed in 2017. “They’ve had a year to do it. I know CPS is a large district, but they have an opportunity to lead from a policy perspective, instead of being a late adapter.” A particularly compelling part for the act, she says, is the ability for children to skip grades.

A 2016 study titled the Untapped Potential Report examined the gifted gap in Chicago and found that white students, who make up 10 percent of the district, occupied one in four gifted seats. Hispanic students, meanwhile, were particularly underrepresented, comprising 46 percent of total CPS students, but only 25 percent of seats in elementary gifted programs.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to reflect that Joshua Dwyer is policy director of Empower Illinois, not executive director as previously written.

How many students apply to Chicago’s most competitive high school programs? Search by school.

2018-08-16T05:01:53+00:00

How many students ranked each public high school program among their top three choices for the 2018-2019 school year? Below, search the first-of-its-kind data, drawn from Chicago Public Schools’ new high school application portal, GoCPS.

The database also shows how many ninth grade seats each program had available, the number of offers each program made, and the number of students that accepted offers at each program.

The district deployed the GoCPS system for the first time in advance of the 2018-2019 school year. The system had students rank up to 20 choices from among 250 programs in 132 high schools. Through the portal, applicants had the choice to apply separately to, and rank, the city’s 11 in-demand, selective enrollment programs. Before the GoCPS system streamlined the high school application process, students lacked a common deadline or a single place to submit applications.

A report released Thursday by the University of Chicago Consortium of School Research and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that the system is mostly working as intended. The majority of students who used GoCPS ultimately got one of their top three choices. But the study also disclosed problems that the district now faces: There are too many empty seats in high schools. Main findings of the report are here.

New data pulls back curtain on Chicago’s high school admissions derby

2018-08-16T05:01:10+00:00

Before the online portal GoCPS system streamlined the high school choice process, Chicago schools lacked a common deadline or single place portal to submit applications. Some students would receive several acceptances, and others would get none. But a new report shows that the new, one-stop application system is working as intended, with the majority of students ultimately getting one of their top three choices.

But the study, released Thursday by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, also lays bare a major problem with which the city’s public schools must wrangle: There are too many empty seats in high schools.

And it shows that demand varies by income level, with students from low-income neighborhoods casting more applications than students from wealthier ones and applying in greater numbers for the district’s charter high schools. Click here to search our database and see demand by individual school.

The report leaves unanswered some key questions, too, including how choice impacts neighborhood high schools and whether a streamlined application process means that more students will stick with their choice school until graduation.

Deployed for the first time in advance of the 2018-2019 school year, the GoCPS system let students rank up to 20 choices from among 250 programs in 132 high schools. Separately, applicants can also apply to, and rank, the city’s 11 in-demand selective enrollment programs through the GoCPS portal.

The data paints a never-before-seen picture of supply and demand for seats at various high school programs across Chicago Public Schools. One in five high school options is so popular that there are 10 applicants for every seat, while 8 percent of programs fall short of receiving enough applications, according to the report.

CPS CEO Janice Jackson said the new data presents a full, centralized inventory and will help the district “have the kind of conversations we need to have” with communities. The district is facing pressure from community groups to stop its practice of shuttering under-enrolled schools. Asked about what kind of impact the report might have on that decision-making, Jackson said that “part of my leadership is to make sure that we’re more transparent as a district and that we have a single set of facts on these issues.”

As for declines in student enrollment in Chicago, “that’s no secret,” she said. “I think that sometimes, when when we’re talking about school choice patterns and how parents make decisions, we all make assumptions how those decisions get made,” Jackson said. “This data is going to help make that more clear.”

Beyond selective enrollment high schools, the data spotlights the district’s most sought-after choice programs, including career and technical education programs, arts programs, and schools with the highest ratings: Level 1-plus and Level 1.

“What that says to me is that we’re doing a much better job offering things outside of the selective schools,” said Jackson, who pointed out that 23 percent of students who were offered seats at both selective enrollment and non-selective enrollment schools opted for the latter.

“Those [selective] schools are great options and we believe in them, but we also know that we have high-quality schools that are open enrollment,” she said.

Programs in low demand were more likely to be general education and military programs; programs that base admissions on lotteries with eligibility requirements; and programs located in schools with low ratings.

Other findings:

Chicago has far more high school seats than students — a dynamic that’s been clear for years and that the report’s authors stress is not interfering with the admissions process. About 20,000 freshman seats remain unfilled across CPS for the upcoming school year. At least 13,000 of those empty seats are a consequence of plummeting enrollment at CPS.
It’s still not clear how neighborhood schools, which guarantee admission to students who live within their boundaries, affect demand. About 7,000 students are expected to enroll at their neighborhood high schools. When CPS conducts its 20th day count of enrollment at district schools, more complete details will be available. Lisa Barrow, a senior economist and research advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said one of the things researchers weren’t able to dig into is the demand for neighborhood programs, because students didn’t have to rank their neighborhood schools.
The report suggests that the process would be more streamlined if students could rank selective enrollment programs along with other options. “If students received only one offer, there would be less need to adjust the number of offers to hit an ideal program size,” the report says.
Students don’t participate in the new process evenly. The report shows that students from low-income neighborhoods were more likely to rank an average of 11.7 programs, while students from the wealthiest neighborhoods ranked an average of 7.3. The authors said it was not clear whether that meant students from wealthier neighborhoods were more willing to fall back on their neighborhood schools.
Students from the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods were also more likely to rank a charter school as their top choice (29 percent), compared to students from the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods (10 percent). The same was true of low academic performers (12 percent), who chose charter schools at a percentage considerably higher than their high-performing peers (12 percent).
While the new admissions process folded dozens of school-by-school applications into one system, it didn’t change the fact that schools admit students according to a wide range of criteria. That means the system continues to favor students who can navigate a complicated process – likely ones whose families have the time and language skills to be closely involved.

Barrow, the researcher from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said one final question the report cannot answer is whether better matching students with high schools on the front end increases the chance that they stick around where they enroll as freshmen.

“If indeed they are getting better matches for high schools,” Barrow said, “then I would expect that might show up in lower mobility rates for students, so they are more likely to stay at their school and not transfer out.”

This story has been updated to reflect that the excess capacity in Chicago high schools does not interfere with the admissions process.