Even as CPS opens more new schools, children with special needs have a tougher time finding options. Placements in private therapeutic schools are scarce, and some charters are reluctant to enroll them.
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Pitfalls with school choice in Chicago, other districts
By: John Myers / October 06, 2009
A new report by The Center on Reinventing Public Education strikes an optimistic note on the emergence of “portfolio schools”—that is, charter and charter-like schools—in Chicago, New Orleans, New York and Washington DC. But the report also offers a long list of potential pitfalls—from the evaporation of philanthropic dollars to shifting political terrain—that threatens any well-oiled network of autonomous school options.
The center is a research collective at the University of Washington that generally takes a constructively critical view of school choice and district decentralization efforts. In this report, the researchers offer little in the way of evaluation of each city’s portfolio initiatives, but they do serve up a good reference tool for understanding the differences in scale and scope of major reform efforts in the country’s hotspots for urban educational change.
But the authors do knock Chicago for limiting its portfolio approach to new schools started under the Renaissance 2010 initiative. The city’s inability to take to scale per-pupil budgeting also draws fire, and Chicago’s experiment with local school councils gets short shrift.
A new report by The Center on Reinventing Public Education strikes an optimistic note on the emergence of “portfolio schools”—that is, charter and charter-like schools—in Chicago, New Orleans, New York and Washington DC. But the report also offers a long list of potential pitfalls—from the evaporation of philanthropic dollars to shifting political terrain—that threatens any well-oiled network of autonomous school options.
The center is a research collective at the University of Washington that generally takes a constructively critical view of school choice and district decentralization efforts. In this report, the researchers offer little in the way of evaluation of each city’s portfolio initiatives, but they do serve up a good reference tool for understanding the differences in scale and scope of major reform efforts in the country’s hotspots for urban educational change.
But the authors do knock Chicago for limiting its portfolio approach to new schools started under the Renaissance 2010 initiative. The city’s inability to take to scale per-pupil budgeting also draws fire, and Chicago’s experiment with local school councils gets short shrift.
Community-based school councils in Chicago, site-based management in Miami, uniform curriculum and instructional methods in San Diego, and a succession of reform approaches in D.C. have all created hope for a while. Though supporters of these reforms could claim with some justification that they hadn’t been fully tried—that results would improve with more time and better implementation—local politics and inconsistent funding rendered such initiatives unsustainable.
Another red flag identified by researchers is the impact that limited transportation systems and poorly run selection procedures can have on school choice and access for some parents. That should be an important area of concern in Chicago where the recent lifting of the desegregation consent decree has thrown school application rules and spending on busing into question.
Along these lines, a Catalyst report found that African American students were more likely to "opt" for lower performing schools in Chicago.
The report makes note of student safety issues in urban districts that experiment with school choice. But Chicago’s woes with shifting gang boundaries and youth violence deserves more attention.
The Portfolio School Districts for Big Cities: An Interim Report is available at www.crpe.org. The complete report is due in 2011.
Pitfalls with school choice in Chicago, other districts
Well, I'm sorry Local School Councils get shoryt shrift when a closer look would reveal that they are by far the largest number of well-managed and effective public elementary schools in the city. If the fact that they have survived more than 20 years of efforts by CPS to dismantle them doesn't suggest sustainability, I'm not sure what does. Perhaps if the same effort went into nurturing site-based management that goes into hobbling it we would see even more success. After all, each school that is able to take care of itself is one less that CPS has to worry about. (See John Simmon's book "Breaking Through" or Don Moore's report "The Big Picture." www.designsforchange.org.
Pitfalls with school choice in Chicago, other districts
The school where I teach is on the West side of Chicago and is considered the lowest performing high school in the city. I am a history teacher, working with the freshmen this year. A few of my students read at grade level but the great majority have reading levels ranging from 3rd to 7th grade. We have good textbooks and other materials but they are all geared for 9th grade reading levels and above. My curriculum must have "rigor" and as a history my job is to teach reading and writing to raise my students' skill levels. My students are unable to write a comprehensive paragaph and are reading at a level where they can understand the reading assigned to them.
Why is our school in this situation? We have many charter schools in our neighborhood and parents are sending their students there. The problem comes in when the charter schools no longer want certain students and send them back to us. This begins about 3 weeks after the start of school, In December, when charter schools receive their money we get another stream of students coming back to our school. If charter and specialty schools are serious about their mission they should keep their students, work with them, don't send them back to me.
Pitfalls with school choice in Chicago, other districts
Why can't we get some sort of boarding Christian-run military boarding school to send the so-called bad kids to? They can have the fear of Jesus and authority beaten into them. Break them down, then build them back up into successful, educated young men and women.
Instead of dropping millions of dollars into "fixing" children and schools that are being destroyed from outside forces, why not just remove the children who are at-risk, acting out, going down the wrong track, etc.? The outside forces will always be there, and a 6.5 hour school day that shelters the children from the outside simply cannot out weigh the other 17.5 hours of the day where they are surrounded by gangs, violence, drugs, and a serious misunderstanding of humanity. Get these kids OUT and into a better place.
The violence and chaos children experience is not normal, but to them, it is perfectly normal. Instead of trying to convince them that everything they see, feel, touch, hear, and experience is NOT normal, why not give them a place where they can see what a safe, good life is?
Pitfalls with school choice in Chicago, other districts
First of all, the fear of Jesus and a public school does not seem like a good mix constitutionally speaking. Of course, a Christian community couldn't run such a thing as a private school and an option and that would be fine. Secondly, doesn't that strike you as a bit like the policy of taking Native American children away from their tribes and giving them to other Americans to rear? It seems creepy, to me as a general policy. On the other hand, if you've got a case of children who are being abused or neglected then of course, a removal, perhaps to a public non-sectarian boarding school, is in order.
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