HALT NEW HIGH SCHOOLS
For many of Chicago’s kids, a wide range of high schools from which to choose is a great thing.
There are selective enrollment high schools for kids with high test scores and excellent grades in the classroom; schools with rigorous International Baccalaureate programs for other top students; magnet, career or vocational schools for kids who want to define an area of study; charter schools; and the list goes on.
To give kids choices, Chicago has increased its number of high schools by 39 percent since 2005, even as total high school enrollment barely inched upward. Now Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools must deal with unintended consequences: School choice has gravely undermined neighborhood schools.
Chicago is right to give kids choices. But until the mayor and CPS can draw up a comprehensive plan to bring these schools to life — to stop them from being hollowed out — the city would be wise to put the brakes on opening new high schools. While a boon for some, school choice has led to disadvantaged neighborhood schools.
That’s a conclusion reached by Generation All, a group brought together two years ago by CPS, the Chicago Teachers Union, the Chicago Community Trust and the Ford Foundation to come up with ways to revitalize public neighborhood schools.
Neighborhood schools welcome every student living within assigned boundaries and serve kids with diverse needs. That includes kids who can’t get in to upper- tier schools or charters, those living in poverty, some kids with disabilities, others marked as troublemakers and immigrants still learning English.
“While some students have benefited” from school choice, “many others have not,” the report states. “Expanding school options has diverted resources from neighborhood high schools, which serve just under half the city’s public high school students and a majority of low- income students of color, putting them on an unequal playing field.”
Only 12 percent of high school students in Chicago attend selective enrollment schools, such as Northside College Prep or Walter Payton College Prep. Those are two of the best public high schools in the country, according to U. S. News & World Report. Almost 22 percent attend charters, which enroll kids through a lottery system and usually cannot accept all applicants.
Neighborhood public high schools account for the majority of Chicago high school students, with 42.5 percent, though a rapid decline continues.
A new article in the Atlantic on the “hollowing out” — a perfect phrase — of Chicago schools points out that 76 percent of city high school students chose not to attend their assigned neighborhood high school this year.
Who can blame them? Many of those schools have been decimated financially. CPS funds schools on a per- pupil basis. When a student heads to a new school, funding follows the child. That leaves neighborhood schools high and dry. They have to get by with less even though the needs of some children — whether they have a learning disability, physical disability or a behavior disorder — require more money.
Dwindling enrollment also leads to fewer Advanced Placement courses, honors classes and electives at neighborhood schools. The Generation All group believes CPS needs to redo its funding formula.
“The district funding formula must also better account for underenrollment, so that schools that have lost substantial numbers of students are still able to provide an adequate range of courses and support services and rebuild their enrollment over time,” the report said.
As it stands now, kids who end up in neighborhood schools must fight the perception that they are losers.
“The school- choice policy idea in Chicago creates a stratified, classist society,” Wells High School Principal Rita Raichoudhuri told The Atlantic. “The cream of the crop is together at selective enrollment schools. The second tier, with involved families, is at charters and magnets. Then the ‘ rejects’ end up in neighborhood high schools.”
Neighborhood high schools are supposed to be anchor institutions for communities, the report from Generation All says. They often are host to athletic events, community gatherings and adult education classes.
When they thrive, surrounding communities thrive. When they struggle, communities suffer. If it does not properly educate kids, the city risks having to pay in other ways — maybe by supporting them as adults through social service agencies. A worst- case scenario: Some will turn to crime and land in our jails. Despair does this to some.
Neighborhood schools on the South and West Sides have been hit hard by lower enrollments and shrinking funds, but the North Side is not exempt.
Ald. Ameya Pawar ( 47th) told Generation All that while knocking on doors during his 2011 campaign, many families said they were moving to the suburbs in time for their children to go to high school. Upper- and middle- class families didn’t want their children to end up at neighborhood schools if they didn’t get into fiercely competitive top- tier schools.
Pawar recruited other aldermen to boost Lake View and Amundsen High Schools through a grass- roots approach. TIF funds were allocated for improvement projects. The schools reached out to University of Chicago to collaborate on improving instruction, safety and family involvement.
Generation All envisions more efforts like these to get neighborhood schools going.
They provided a blueprint. Now the mayor must take the lead.
Only 12 percent of high school students in Chicago attend selective enrollment schools.