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In Government and Policy
CPS officials took their proposed magnet and selective school admissions policy on the road this week and encountered some suggestions, a host of questions and a fair amount of confusion and frustration.
Parents at public hearings held around the city said they are confused about the details of the policy but also angry in general about the limited number of seats available in good schools.
At King High School, a handful of people, including activist Wanda Hopkins from the grassroots Parents United for Responsible Education, walked away from the microphone after some variation of the pronouncement: “You will be in court.”
Black parents in particular seemed worried that their children would have a tougher time getting into the district’s elite schools, and that the proposed policy will award more seats to white students and those with high test scores—including students who have attended private elementary schools. The district’s top selective high schools have become less diverse in recent years, as have top-performing magnet elementary schools.
District officials consulted with policy expert Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation to come up with the proposed policy, which was announced Nov. 10. A federal judge vacated the desegregation consent decree, which governed magnet and selective school admissions, in late September.
Four of six scheduled public hearings took place over the past week. Between 80 to 120 people attended the hearings at Amundsen, a neighborhood high school with specialty programs on the North Side; King, a selective high school on the South Side; Jackson Language Academy, an elementary magnet on the Near West Side; and Little Village/North Lawndale, a neighborhood high school on the Southwest Side.
Rather than race, the new policy would take a student’s family and neighborhood socio-economic status into consideration for admissions. Census tract data will be used to divide students into four socioeconomic categories; each category will get about 10 percent to 12 percent of open seats. District officials are promising by next week an interactive map on the CPS website that families can use to figure out what category they fall into.
The rest of the seats will be allocated to specific groups of students. In magnet schools, siblings are guaranteed spots; after that, half of the remaining seats are reserved for local kids. In selective enrollment schools, half of the seats will be awarded to the highest-scoring students, regardless of race or socio-economic status.
Parents skeptical
A key concern expressed by parents was whether the district would take their concerns into account and make any revisions to the policy. Comments such as “Are you just giving us a forum to rant?” and “We hope this isn’t a way to just blow off steam,” were heard.
King High Principal Jeff Wright said selective enrollment principals were not even asked for ideas or feedback until recently. He, too, wondered whether district officials are open to changing the plan.
CPS official Kathryn Ellis admitted that the basic framework of the policy would likely be presented to the board without any changes. Some elements, such as how much preference to give to siblings and neighborhood children, could be changed.
Amy Boonstra, a parent of two who attended the meeting at Jackson, favors preference for siblings. “Logistically, for families to function positively it’s important,” she said.
But others pointed out that most of the high-performing magnet schools are in upper-middle-class neighborhoods such as Lincoln Park and the West Loop. These neighborhood students would essentially have three shots at admission: As a sibling, as someone who lives nearby and through one of the four categories.
Susan Rosenberg, a parent who attended the King hearing, recommended an approach tailored for individual schools: Well-to-do students would not get any seats (other than those for siblings and neighborhood children) at magnet schools in wealthy neighborhoods, while poor students would not get seats(other than those for siblings and neighborhood children) at magnets in low-income areas.
Ellis, however, said that the district did not want to develop different criteria for individual schools.
Parents at the Amundsen hearing—most of them white—seemed to acknowledge that the policy would give their sons and daughters a better shot at admission.
Harry Jozefowicz, a father of three, says he thinks that putting aside some spaces for students from higher-poverty neighborhoods is a thinly-veiled way to make sure some black and Latino students are admitted. “We can make amends [for past discrimination], but we can’t punish high-performing [white] students,” he said.
At King, where most of the audience was black, several parents noted that white and Asian students, as well as students who have attended expensive private schools, out-perform African-American students in general. Allocating more selective enrollment seats based solely on test scores would then favor white, Asian and private-school students.
Al Kindle, a member of the King local school council, noted that many black students attend poorly-resourced neighborhood schools that don’t offer a rigorous education.
“A lot of African American students miss the boat,” getting into selective enrollment high schools, he said.
A re-occurring theme was the difficulty of navigating the system and finding a decent school. Several parents confronted district officials with their stories of sons and daughters who got good grades and good test scores, but did not score high enough to win spots in the highly-competitive selective schools. Some underscored the importance of getting their children into a specialty school, pointing out their neighborhood high school is dangerous.
Natalie Bradford says her daughter is bright, but is not performing as well as she could because she’s at a school that is not providing a challenge. “I need her to be somewhere where she is pushed,” Bradford said.
John Walker, a single father, said he lives down the block from King, but his daughter couldn’t get into that school or any other selective high school. She wound up at a charter school and is doing well, but Walker says the process of finding and applying for schools, only to be turned away, left him and his daughter distraught.
“I do not want any other child to have to go through what she had to go through,” he said.
District officials say they will review the effects of the policy next year and make revisions if it is not producing economic and racial diversity.
The remaining two community meetings to be held Friday and Saturday are at predominantly black schools, Westinghouse High School on the West Side and Simeon High School on the South Side.
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MailAND why were there 2 police cars and 1 police wagon at the Basil Campus at 11:30 on Friday?
Quality, expertise, and ability are determined by the individual, not by the licenses or degrees he/she holds. Doctors study an extra 4 years, plus clinical experiences. Teachers spend, what, 2 years in an education program? The difference is staggering.
There are probably hundreds of people who have the common sense, quiet sense of leadership, communication skills, and content knowledge to be a great teacher. You don't have to have a history degree to teach a 5th grader about the American Revolution.
IMO, the problem with teacher certification is that the process involves a lot of unnecessary hoops without a lot of rigor. It should really be the other way around: a rigorous but simple certification process. I know at least a dozen people who'd like to become a teacher but simply do not have the luxury to go back to school to earn 24-31 hours worth of classes. Why not just drop the hours requirement and base it on the Content Tests?
There are stories of rare individuals with incredible talents and empathy who--despite no medical education at all--are able to perform medical services quite well. For the vast majority of our species' history, we have survived without medical school-trained physicians.
Likewise, with education. I believe there are some very talented people who can become superior teachers without the benefit of any education school training.
But for most people, specialized training is necessary to provide society with good physicians and good teachers.
I do agree, however, with those who think there is too much pedagogy and too little rigorous content in the current Ed School programs.
For high school (and probably middle school, too), I do wish the education preparation model were more like the medical model. Young people should earn a baccalaureate degree with concentrations in the academic discipline(s) they might someday teach.
The requirements for teacher certification should be part of a Master's degree program, starting with pre-service courses in the summer. Eliminate the student teaching semester and replace it with a full-year teaching internship that is paid at perhaps 60% or 66-2/3% of a beginning year teacher's salary. The remaining coursework can follow during summer or part-time evening sessions.
Thus a teacher would need 4 years baccalaureate + 1 year graduate coursework + 1 year internship = 6 years of preparation for full licensure. (Medical doctors need 4 years baccalaureate + 4 years medical school + 3 years internship/residency = 11 years for full certification. Of course, they earn more money on average, too.)
Kids are kids, but my child's school always had a full-time librarian, art and music. Two of the schools I have taught in have had no music teacher at all. One lacked a full-time librarian. My child never had to deal a school that did not have enough textbooks. In fact, during high school, there was a classroom set, plus a book issued to each child to be kept at home, for most classes. As a teacher, I have not once been able to send books home with children to be read outside of school. Every single bit of reading that I have assigned has had to be done in class. There was also adequate technology in the building to allow teachers to truly be creative in terms of integrating technology into their lessons.
My child never felt unsafe traveling to and from school or walking the halls in school. She was also able to eat healthy food that she enjoyed in school because I (and later, of course, she) packed her lunches. In schools where I teach, students are not even permitted to bring a lunch, and there are no facilities for storing food brought from home.
At my child's school, nobody got on the loudspeaker at the end of each day to yell at the kids to get off the school grounds and go home. Students routinely stayed late to interact with teachers and classmates, and to participate in activities. Before-school tutoring was available as well.
The school buildings were clean, cheerful and welcoming.
High school students actually had a choice as to which foreign language they wished to study, and had the option to study that language for longer than the bare minimum requirement of two years. There was more than one social studies elective to choose from, so that the title of "elective" was actually an accurate one for the course offerings. There was enough money for a whole class, rather than just a select few students to participate in field trips, so that the educational value of such trips could truly be integrated into the curriculum.
"For high school (and probably middle school, too), I do wish the education preparation model were more like the medical model. Young people should earn a baccalaureate degree with concentrations in the academic discipline(s) they might someday teach."
I can't see why the content test isn't or COULDN'T be) a suitable measure of the knowledge needed for 6-12 education. A knowledge of literature and writing/grammar is necessary to teach English, but a well read, literate person could teach a standard 9th grade curriculum. A self taught historian could teach an American history class. Anyone who has taken Calculus is capable of teaching Algebra.
As I'm thinking about it, I'd actually reverse your proposed idea of an internship to make it be for elementary school. Elementary school is so critical that students should be assured the very best skilled teachers. It'd be incredibly helpful to have an internship done as a classroom aid. Students could be assured 2 teachers to provide more direct instruction and one-on-one help.
CPS has taken away the discretion of magnet school principals to select students until more stringent systems are put in place. All schools and principals, regardless of the type of school, should be subject to the same rules and privileges. I recommend that all principals be stripped of this discretion, until a uniform system may be worked out for all principals to follow. As an aside, one of the biggest problems CPS faces is having different rules for different "classes" of schools. As a result, some schools are not held accountable to the same standards as others.
The admissions process for all magnet schools and selective enrollment schools will be handled from the central office. I think this is a mistake. CPS should have confidence in its principals (as they do with charter schools) to allow them to manage an admissions process at the local school level. There should be systems in place for Central office to monitor the process and reconcile data without micomanaging schools.
In the ideal world, if each school in the City of Chicago provided access to a quality education, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Unfortunately, because many schools in low-moderate income African American neighborhoods lack the resources to provide students with a quality education, students from these schools will always be at a disadvantage competing for slots in selective enrollment high schools.
I was hopeful, when I put my kids at a school with great test scores and a diverse composition, that I could have my cake and eat it too. But, I was wrong. Our neighborhood magnet WAS diverse. Each new group of incoming kids gets more and more vanilla. Why? Because it is mandatory to take all neighborhood kids and what used to be a mostly Latino neighborhood is now gentrifying into wealthy and white.
For every neighborhood kid that comes in, there is one less magnet spot open to a student of race other than Caucasian. The solution? Magnet spots need to be reserved and inviolable. A school only has enough space for so many bodies. Once the rooms are full, then neighborhood admissions need to be limited. What is the priority?
If we look at the overall good of the city and the people, kids need the chance to go to school where they can flourish, not just where they can afford to live. How else are we going to break the patterns that keep people in poverty? And it's everyone's tax dollars that are going to pay for it in the long run.
The plan outlines CPS' process, but does not include a simulation of the results on students currently attending magnet or selective enrollment schools. There is a map depicting the Census Tract groupings, color coded. The median income numbers are different from what I recalled in my post, which was done from memory, as opposed to any notes. Either my recollection was faulty, or the version Mr. Huberman used for the press conference was slightly different. Regardless, this document will allow you to see for yourself what I described. You may also create an account and download it.
Also, does anyone know if there is a minimum point level that will be required or must a SE High School take 1/4 of the 50% from each group (1, 2, 3 and 4) even if there are only some low scoring students remaining in a particular group?
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