Chalkbeat

Chicago Public Schools kicks off community forums on upcoming strategic plan

2024-04-16T03:57:48+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is mapping out its goals for the next five years and wants feedback from the public.

The plan — which will be finalized this summer — will focus on three priorities: how to improve students’ daily experiences in the classroom, staffing and funding, and collaborating more closely with school communities, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told a crowd of about 40 people at Crane High School on Monday night for the first of seven community forums. Many of the attendees were district staff. Others were parents, community advocates, and representatives from outside organizations.

The plan gained some attention in the winter when the Chicago Board of Education announced it would move away from the school choice system. The board said it would outline a new approach in the strategic plan, and specific changes would depend on community feedback.

But school choice didn’t come up at Monday’s session. Martinez told Chalkbeat the district will ask families their opinions on school choice and capital planning in May, because those are “big topics.” The next three meetings this month will focus more on the daily school experience and funding, though parents also can share their thoughts about school choice, he said. Martinez said he’s already heard from Spanish-speaking parents who have struggled to navigate the GoCPS system.

As Martinez went over the district’s priorities, he highlighted some successes, including a recent growth in reading and math.

“We are building a five-year plan so this continues, and we continue to accelerate,” Martinez told the crowd.

Martinez, who was hired in 2021, established a three-year blueprint in the fall of 2022. The district is developing the next five-year strategic plan at a moment of big change.

Chicago is holding its first school board elections this fall and candidates are starting to emerge. In January 2025, a hybrid board with 10 elected members and 11 members appointed by the mayor will be sworn into office.

Since taking office a year ago, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointed school board has voted to remove police officers from schools in addition to passing the resolution to shift away from school choice. Both moves prompted a response from state lawmakers who are debating bills that could prevent those changes.

District officials have also rolled out a new budgeting formula that provides set staffing levels to all schools and additional discretionary spending based on need. They’ve also cut bus service for general education students and struggled to comply with providing transportation to students with disabilities who are legally entitled to it.

Martinez and other district officials spent the first hour of Monday’s meeting talking about the vision for the district over the past few years, as well as the feedback officials have collected so far through other community meetings and focus groups, such as on how to ensure the success of Black students. So far, that feedback has run the gamut, Martinez said, including asking the district to better prepare students for life after high school, focus more on supporting students’ mental health, provide more funding for building repairs and transportation, and include families in decision making.

In the second hour, attendees rotated between three tables. At each, CPS staff talked about their work — such as changing the funding formula for school budgets or their desire to expand dual language programming — and then took questions from members of the community.

At one table, which focused in part on funding, most of the roughly 15 people seated were CPS staff. One of the few community members was Catherine Jones, a longtime education advocate on the West Side who asked if the district was still considering enrollment under its new funding formula. Budget Director Mike Sitkowski told Jones that the new formula would “guarantee that even the smallest school has a baseline” of staff.

“Which is good,” Jones responded.

At another table, parent Alexandra Beltrand, a mother of three CPS kids, asked if the district could expand dual language programs.

By 8 p.m. — the scheduled end of the meeting — attendees had only rotated tables twice, and attendees at at least two of the tables had just a few minutes to ask questions after hearing from CPS staff. Attendees were encouraged to write down their questions and feedback so that staff could review and record it later.

“We’re going to see what worked today, what didn’t — so for example, we didn’t have as much time to have more rotations,” Martinez said. “We’re even wondering, do we start having even more groupings instead of three?”

Still, Beltrand said the meeting was helpful. After the meeting ended, she chatted one-on-one with staff from the district’s Office of Cultural and Language Education.

“I felt heard,” Beltrand said.

People interested in attending the meetings can register online here.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Busing not guaranteed next year for general education students, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez says

2024-03-21T18:56:46+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools may not provide busing next school year for general education students, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said during a board meeting Thursday.

Martinez shared the update one day before families of elementary school children will receive admissions offers to magnet and selective enrollment schools, which provided busing to eligible students until this school year. The district is currently providing busing to students with disabilities and those who are homeless.

As a result, the district is extending the deadline for accepting school offers by a week, to April 19 at 5 p.m., Martinez said.

Martinez said the district is working to find other options for transportation, such as adjusting bell times, but for now, the district cannot guarantee busing for next year. The district remains under a state-issued corrective action plan that requires CPS to shorten bus commute times for students with disabilities to less than an hour. A Chalkbeat analysis in December found that hundreds of routes were carrying fewer than 10 students.

“We want to make sure families are aware of the challenges,” Martinez said during the meeting.

CPS canceled busing this year for about 5,500 general education students as it worked to ensure students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs call for transportation were getting it. The state required CPS to take multiple corrective actions over the past two years to ensure students with disabilities entitled to busing were receiving it and that their ride times were not longer than an hour.

The district is also now taking state-mandated corrective action for how it assigns students with disabilities to schools. Those assignments are often far away from where they live.

The district’s “unwavering commitment” to provide legally required transportation to students with disabilities and those who are homeless “has, admittedly, presented challenges in accommodating general education students,” said Mary Fergus, a district spokesperson, in a statement. The district said it has not attracted the number of drivers it needs, despite efforts to hire more of them that include increasing pay.

The district said Thursday it’s currently busing 8,700 students. As of December, nearly all of the students who received busing were students with disabilities.

For general education students, the district is offering prepaid Ventra cards, a move that has drawn criticism from families who don’t have the flexibility to accompany young children on public transportation. Additionally, about 3,700 students with disabilities have opted for stipends of up to $500 to cover their transportation needs on their own, down from 4,000 students at the start of the year, according to the district.

Currently, about 130 students with disabilities are on bus routes longer than an hour, according to CPS. That’s significantly down from the 3,000 such students on long routes last year, but it is up from 47 students at the start of the school year.

Many families with general education students at magnet and selective enrollment schools have protested the district’s decision and have demanded a stipend to cover their transportation costs. Some families who have struggled to juggle transportation have pulled their children out of magnet schools and enrolled them somewhere closer to home.

This week, 27 Chicago alderpeople signed a letter urging the district to make several changes to transportation, including to provide stipends to families with general education students.

“We cannot afford to live in Lincoln Park or Lake View, so please include transportation,” Laura Leon, the grandmother of a student who lost busing this year, said during the board meeting.

On Thursday, a district spokesperson said stipends are “not sustainable” this year as the district focuses on students with disabilities and homeless children, and faces a projected $391 million budget deficit next year.

Advocates have also suggested regional transportation hubs in which students would join an existing route. However, that has been a challenge to implement, Fergus said. Hubs “would work for some but not all routes, thus not serving all families and schools in an equitable manner, but, again, we will continue to explore all options for the coming school year.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High school is one key to unlocking dreams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even so, Selah and her mother had some concerns.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glitch adds to test day stress

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

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

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

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

Chloe

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

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

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

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

Daniel

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

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

Elias

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

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

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

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

Selah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After scores come back, reality sets in

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

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

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

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

Chloe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daniel

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

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

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

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

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

Elias

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

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

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

Selah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what you need to know.

Families can apply to several types of Chicago elementary schools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CPS offers admission to 7 accelerated middle school programs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is the application process for children with disabilities?

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

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

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

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

Chicago preschool applications are open. Here’s what you need to know.

2023-04-14T23:20:01+00:00

Chicago families can now apply for preschool for the 2023-24 school year — marking the culmination of a yearslong effort to offer free universal access to the city’s 4-year-olds.

The initial application period runs through May 2 and offers will be made on May 19. After that, people can apply and will be admitted on a rolling first-come, first-served basis.

The Chicago Early Learning portal includes all full-day and half-day programs for 3- and 4-year-olds operating within Chicago Public Schools, including public Montessori options, as well as early childhood programs run by community-based organizations through the city’s Department of Family and Support Services.

Families can also apply by calling 312-229-1690 or at select public libraries. Registration events will also be held across the city during the month of April.

Is there a spot in CPS preschools for everyone?

Four-year-olds living in the city, regardless of family income, can now attend preschool for free at most of the city’s public schools.

“We’re pretty close to being fully universal,” said Leslie McKinley, chief officer for the Office of Early Childhood with Chicago Public Schools.

The district said it has 15,755 full-day spots for 4-year-olds and 6,704 half-day spots for 3-year-olds in Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, the city is funding 13,091 seats in community-based programs, 7,424 of which are for children over the age of 3. The remaining are for babies and toddlers.

Last year, 12,460 4-year-olds and 3,943 3-year-olds enrolled in district preschool programs. That’s up since the first year of the COVID pandemic, but enrollment has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, when 14,300 4-year-olds and 3,192 4-year-olds attended pre-K in Chicago Public Schools.

Last year, roughly 3,500 spots went unfilled in the city’s public pre-K classrooms. Many were in high-poverty neighborhoods, an analysis by WBEZ found. Overall, birth rates and the number of school-aged children in Chicago has declined in the past decade. But a Chalkbeat analysis of census data indicates there are nearly 65,000 3- and 4-year-olds living in Chicago.

How do I find a preschool near me and apply?

Families can apply to up to five programs and are able to search what’s offered using an interactive map. The application can be submitted through GoCPS, which is also where results will come through.

Applicants should rank programs in order of preference. The application asks for demographic, residency, and income information, but no paperwork is required until you enroll. You can save your application and come back to it later if you aren’t ready to submit it right away or need to dig up information that you don’t have at your fingertips. This video provides a helpful walkthrough.

Many public schools are offering tours and information sessions April 24-28. The district recommends calling schools directly or visiting their websites to find out when they’ll be offering these sessions.

When will I know if my child got into a preschool program?

All applications submitted by May 2 will receive an offer on May 19. Families can still apply after that, and will get offers on a rolling first-come, first-served basis.

For full-day pre-K offered through Chicago Public Schools, 4-year-olds get priority. Children are also prioritized based on their proximity to a school, whether or not they have siblings enrolled, their family’s income, and whether or not they have a disability.

Unlike previous years, applicants will be given waitlist numbers for programs where they do not initially get offers. If an applicant gets waitlisted and wants to apply to a different program, they can call the Chicago Early Learning hotline at 312-229-1690.

Another word of caution: Waitlist numbers could change almost daily, McKinley said, because spots are prioritized based on need.

Once I get an offer from a pre-K program, then what?

Applicants can accept or decline offers through the GoCPS portal, using the hotline, or by calling or visiting the school directly.

In order to enroll, families will need to provide a birth certificate or passport to prove the child’s age. They will also be asked to provide documentation confirming income and showing they live in Chicago, though alternative forms are available if a family has no income or is in a temporary living situation. Proof of citizenship is not required.

If your 3- or 4-year-old attends their neighborhood school or is admitted into the public Montessori programs at Drummond or Suder for pre-K, they are guaranteed a spot in kindergarten and beyond. But if your child chooses a pre-K outside their neighborhood or at another magnet school, they may need to reapply for kindergarten.

More details are available on the Chicago Early Learning website. And if you still have questions, send them our way at chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org.

This story has been updated with new information from district officials clarifying how waitlists for preschool programs work.

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

Will the pandemic reshape Chicago’s high-stress high school applications?

2021-04-14T22:14:33+00:00

Maile Solis’ son wants to follow an older sister to Lane Tech College Prep, one of Chicago’s selective-enrollment high schools on the Northwest Side. Across the city on the Far South Side, Orzella Denton’s daughter dreams of landing a spot in one of the district’s fine arts programs.

But both parents are monitoring grades anxiously — and bracing for a high school admissions process profoundly disrupted by the pandemic.

The COVID-19 crisis has added pressure and uncertainty to a process that was already grueling and high-stress for many families. The upheaval forced the district to make temporary changes — from hosting virtual open houses to letting students choose which recent test scores to use — but some families and advocates worry about what the high-stakes ritual might look like next year and beyond amid the pandemic’s academic fallout. They argue a crisis that has widened academic disparities should lead the district to rethink the process, which has left Black and Latino students and those with special needs underrepresented in some of the city’s most coveted programs.

“This would be a great time to make compassionate changes to the process and really consider the neediest students,” said Mary Fahey Hughes, the special education parent liaison for the advocacy group Raise Your Hand, who is pressing the district to do away with minimum requirements for grades and test scores.

Across the country, the pandemic and a reckoning over race have intensified a debate over how selective high schools determine who gets in. In Boston, an overhaul of the application process for the city’s exam schools stirred protests and resulted in a parent lawsuit.

In Chicago, the district is gearing up to release admissions decisions for next fall at the end of the month, along with data that would show if the district experienced the drop in high school applications some other districts have reported. Asked about changes the district might be weighing, officials declined to comment for now. As part of a broader initiative to improve the high school experience, the district said earlier this year it would earmark about 15% of seats at selective-enrollment high schools for students with special needs, where they now make up only 6% of the student body.

Some progress, a way to go

The high school application process is considered a critical milestone for Chicago students. More than 25,000 eighth graders use the district’s universal application platform each year, though all students are guaranteed a spot in their neighborhood high schools. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and district leaders have said making close-to-home options more attractive is a priority. But historical disinvestment and enrollment losses in some schools continue to prompt families to look beyond their neighborhood boundaries for campuses with specialized programs and more robust course lists.

The district launched GoCPS four years ago in a bid to streamline a cumbersome earlier process. The platform helped reduce the number of eighth graders stranded without any offers while some peers sat on multiple acceptances well into the summer.

Chicago uses seventh-grade grades and the NWEA’s MAP test scores for admissions into specialized programs, with a separate exam for students seeking entry into the city’s 11 selective-enrollment schools. The district also factors in a student’s neighborhood in an effort to boost representation for students from low-income parts of the city.

Last year, about 15% of students who applied to selective-enrollment high schools got their first choice, and just more than half of applicants to all GoCPS programs got their first choice. About 80% landed one of their top three choices, according to district data.

“There are a lot of things the GoCPS system has added to promote equity,” said Kate Phillippo, an associate professor at Loyola University and the author of a book about high school admissions in the city. “But there is still a long way to go.”

Last year forced changes to the process: With shuttered campuses last spring, the district did not administer the MAP test, so eighth graders instead got to choose the highest of their previous three scores. In recognition of barriers to remote learning access, the district also used either a student’s final grades for the year — or the average of their first- and second-quarter grades. It did not consider attendance, and it pushed back the application deadline to early January. It offered students a string of dates to sit for the selective-enrollment exam, even as some families and educators sharply criticized the decision to host that test in person during a surge in COVID-19 cases last winter.

Phillippo said she has long advocated for virtual open houses and auditions, which can introduce families to programs in unfamiliar neighborhoods, while removing transportation, child care and other hurdles to participating. Giving students more time to research schools and complete their applications this winter was “the humane thing to do given multiple interlocking crises,” she said.

The choice of test scores added a measure of flexibility. But students had to go with scores they did not know would end up carrying high stakes when they took those tests — in some cases back when they were sixth graders.

Yolanda Luna-Mroz, chief programs officer at High Jump, a nonprofit that helps low-income students with high school applications, said, without a doubt, the pandemic made the process more stressful for families. She suspects the district will see a marked drop in applications, and that some students found it harder to access competitive programs. She said families who don’t have the technology savvy needed to submit the online applications can usually walk into their school building and get help. In previous years, High Jump hosted group sessions to troubleshoot and answer questions.

This year, the organization offered more than its usual one-on-one student support to families, straining its capacity like never before. The nonprofit hosted district officials at its virtual information session last fall, which it recorded and promoted in English and Spanish, to explain the process and this year’s changes. Luna-Mroz also said she hopes virtual events that improved access for some families are here to stay.

“In some ways, forcing schools to adjust and adapt, there was some progress,” she said.

A lot of confusion

Families of seventh graders are already bracing for how the high school application process might play out next year.

Solis’ son at Taft Academic Center spent the seventh grade in a new school, where he hasn’t yet set foot or met his teachers in person. (Academic center buildings remained closed even as other middle schools reopened in March.) The school told families earlier this spring that the district would likely administer the MAP test in May, but that without recent testing data, schools likely would not be able to help with preparing for it as some have done in previous years. Solis and other parents signed up for a private test prep program — only to hear from the school more recently that the district might not administer the test this spring after all.

“There’s just a lot of confusion and no communication at all from CPS — not a word,” said Solis. “There does not seem to be a plan and that’s really concerning to me as a parent.”

But Solis also said she thinks a lot about how the crisis is putting families with limited resources at an even larger disadvantage. When her son’s school-issued Chromebook turned out to be too slow for live virtual classes, the family was able to buy another device. When her son struggled in some classes, the family hired a tutor.

“I’m fully aware that’s not something many parents have been able to do,” she said.

Denton, the mom of the seventh grader at Parker Community Academy, chose to keep her daughter learning from home for the remainder of this school year, believing it’s not yet safe to return to the school building. But she worries about how remote learning has tested the girl: The family’s internet connection has been often spotty, and her daughter has found it more difficult to get consistent guidance from teachers.

“You have an A and B child, and you turn around, and the grades have dropped,” Denton said.

Hughes of Raise Your Hand, who has a son in the seventh grade, said: “We’ve got to really push this year to get his grades up. It’s just criminal we have to worry about that on top of everything else.”

Seeking bold changes

Advocates say the district should think boldly about further overhauling the process for next year to account for the uneven impact of the pandemic. The crisis has widened inequities in a host of ways — for students who are learning English, caring for or overseeing remote learning for younger siblings, navigating remote learning without parents guiding them at home, or dealing with grief and loss amid a pandemic and an uptick in violence that have both hit predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in Chicago much harder.

Hughes, who has an older son in special education, wants the district to eliminate MAP and grade “cut scores.” She said these minimum requirements can block students with special needs from even applying, not only to academically competitive programs but also to the vocational and fine arts programs that can be a great fit for them. By her estimate, about 220 of the 318 GoCPS programs use MAP or grade cut scores or both, including almost all of the district’s 35 specialized art programs. Hughes said principals have an incentive to set these minimum requirements higher to help maintain or improve their school rankings.

“You don’t deserve to be in these programs because you don’t test well,” she said. “It’s infuriating to me. It’s a great time to rethink inclusion and support.”

Offering students with disabilities a portion of the seats at selective-enrollment schools, where some families worry their students will not get enough specialized support, is not enough, Hughes argued. Students with special needs have often struggled particularly amid the pandemic, with some unable to access remote learning altogether.

Phillippo said the district’s changes this year made sense, but a deeper overhaul might be needed for next year.

“Counting grades and test scores next year seems really problematic to me,” she said. “Young people are on such uneven footing.”

She noted Boston’s decision to drop the admissions test for its three highly competitive exam schools, instead basing decisions on grade point averages and, in a tiered system officials there said was inspired by Chicago’s, factoring in zip codes, with priority for students living in lower-income neighborhoods. District leaders there said the approach would increase the representation of Black and Latino students, but the changes have resulted in major pushback. San Francisco’s premiere Lowell High School went even further, replacing a review of students’ academic records with a lottery system.

Luna-Mroz of High Jump said the data on application outcomes the district is slated to release April 30 should inform how the city approaches the process next year. Any changes should also be rooted in long-term shifts the pandemic is likely to bring, such as likely making digital assignments and remote interaction with students a permanent fixture.

“We’re still in a pandemic, and we’re living in the moment,” she said. Still, she added, “Sometimes these kinds of emergencies spark change and force us to innovate and adapt.”

As Chicago’s class size crackdown begins, schools that are ‘overenrolled by choice’ could face admissions changes

2019-12-10T22:48:36+00:00

Crowded neighborhood elementary schools aren’t the only schools in Chicago that could face changes to how students are admitted.

Now that oversized classes will cost the city, Chicago Public Schools is also taking a hard look at schools that choose to admit so many students that class sizes swell beyond the city’s limits — a move that cushions those schools’ budgets but also leaves students and teachers in classes of 30 or more.

“We are as a district looking at schools that are overcrowded by choice. I think that’s an important nuance,” CEO Janice Jackson told Chalkbeat recently.

Jackson said conversations with the Chicago Teachers Union in contract negotiations, including during the 11-day teachers strike in October, had revealed that “some local decisions being made” have contributed to oversized classes. The new contract obligates the city to put funding for the first time behind reducing class size — up to $35 million a year.

Jackson did not point to any particular schools or specify what actions could result from the district’s scrutiny. But anxiety about how the class size rules might affect admissions is already beginning to emerge at schools that could be vulnerable.

“This will have an impact on a lot of decisions we make,” Ravenswood Elementary School’s interim principal, Patrina Singleton, told attendees at Monday’s Local School Council meeting. “We don’t have to worry about anyone coming after us right now, but it does have an implication for us to start thinking about what we’ll do for class size.”

Up to now, principals in Chicago have been given significant discretion to make enrollment decisions as they see fit, facing consequences only if members of their communities complain.

Neighborhood elementary schools must admit any student in their zone who wishes to attend, and all schools also admit students by lottery through the city’s choice process, known as GoCPS. Under the current system, the vast majority of schools — about 85% — have classes below the city’s limits of 28 in kindergarten through fifth grade and 31 in middle and high school grades.

A small but significant number of schools, though, have oversized classes. In some cases, so many students live in the zone that large classes are impossible to avoid. (Some of those schools could face enrollment caps.) Other schools can’t afford to add another teacher when classes exceed the limits by just a few students, or can’t find a teacher to hire at all.

But sometimes principals choose to push the class size limits because they know they’ll receive an additional $4,500 from the district for each student, meaning that maintaining oversized classes can result in art teachers, special programs, and school services that schools otherwise might not be able to afford. Especially in more affluent communities, that tradeoff can feel palatable for parents and teachers who might otherwise prefer smaller classes.

The new contract with the teachers union puts the city on the hook for addressing oversized classes however they were created. The contract also emphasizes that schools in low-income areas should get support first.

Sarah Rothschild, a union official who led bargaining around class size issues, said contract talks grappled with the different origins of oversized classes.

“I kept saying that we’ve got to make sure we’re not rewarding principals who are overstuffing their classes on purpose,” Rothschild said.

Exactly which schools could face additional enrollment oversight is unclear, but the new contract offers clues. When it comes to schools that enroll many students who live outside their boundaries, a “side agreement” says, “the board will address projected overenrollment with principals and provide guidance with the intent of reducing oversized classrooms.”

Ravenswood and Hamilton elementary schools were among several schools that last year had large kindergarten classes and more than a third of students across all grades coming from outside their zone, suggesting that those principals might have overenrolled on purpose or struggled to balance zoned and lottery admissions.

“It’s our privilege to be open to all neighborhood students,” Jessica Ashley, chair of Ravenswood’s local school council, told Chalkbeat. “That often means the week before school, we get a surge of kids coming in, and it’s really difficult to plan for. … It’s a systemic issue.”

Some of the city’s gifted and magnet schools, too, have maintained large classes even though no students are guaranteed admission to them. They include Hawthorne and Stone elementary schools, which last year had kindergarten classes with 30 students or more.

Exactly what changes will look like, and who might contest them, remains to be seen. Unlike capping enrollment at zoned schools, reducing the number of students admitted through GoCPS won’t result in families being sent away from schools they believed they were entitled to attend.

But schools could soon feel the pinch, and since additional students can translate to additional staff members, even seemingly small changes could soon add up.

“We cannot lose budget. We cannot,” Ashley said. “But I know what the dollars mean and there is a very limited window of what is too many [students in each class] and what is a functional number for our school.”

The contract obligates the school board only to inform the union about changes to board policies, suggesting that the district has wide latitude to make changes to admissions on its own. But Rothschild said she hoped the city would involve communities and teachers in decision-making, which could build buy-in but slow change.

Even admissions changes that go uncontested could take a while to make their way to schools. Rothschild noted that it took three years for rules adopted in the 2016 contract about kindergarten aides to turn into a process that works.

Just the fact that enrollment policy is breaking into public view has union officials optimistic that issues they raised at the bargaining table could reshape city schools policy.

“The fact that we had conversations in contract negotiations and all of a sudden there were school meetings, that was a huge shocker,” Rothschild said. “I definitely am hopeful.”

For now, as at Ravenswood, schools that could face new enrollment scrutiny are beginning to think about what the contract’s class size rules could mean for them.

At Hawthorne’s Local School Council meeting last month, Principal Patricia Davlantes said she had already been told that a teachers aide would join a kindergarten class of 32, a number that exceeded even her own preferences after one family that was expected to move away had not.

But she said she wasn’t sure whether or how Hawthorne — which as a magnet has no zoned students — might be hemmed in in the future.

“What has always been at least talked about in schools that control their enrollment, is that something CPS can fund, or the school has to fund?” she told community members at the meeting. “I still don’t know the answer to that. Before we plan for fall enrollment, I’ll try to get a definitive answer.”

Ariel Cheung contributed reporting.

Some feared GoCPS would drive high schoolers to charters, but enrollment is up at neighborhood schools

2019-05-23T11:32:58+00:00

Dispelling fears that a universal application system for high schools would drive more students to charters, a new study shows enrollment at neighborhood schools is up slightly.

About 100 more Chicago Public Schools freshmen enrolled at neighborhood high schools during the 2018-19 school year, an increase from 22 to 23 percent over the previous year, according to the study, from the UChicago Consortium on School Research and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The percentage-point jump marks the first such increase since 2014, when 26 percent of district high school students attended neighborhood schools.

With the fall 2017 launch of GoCPS, Chicago Public Schools became the nation’s largest school district to integrate charter schools with district-run schools in its universal application. Since the platform made it easier to apply to charter schools, some Chicagoans worried enrollment at neighborhood schools would slide. But the opposite happened.

“I think maybe what happened is a lot of high schools run small specialized programs, and it’s possible that the GoCPS platform raised awareness of those programs,” said Lauren Sartain, a consortium senior research analyst.

For example, she said, tech-minded students might have assumed that their neighborhood school only has a general education program. But when they logged on to GoCPS, they could see that their local school also has a computer game design program that interests them.

Here are some other highlights from the report:

Nearly all district 8th graders, 91 percent, applied to high school via GoCPS.
About four out of five got an offer from one of the schools they ranked in the top three on their application.
Students who didn’t get an offer at all were more likely to have applied to fewer schools or were non-district students applying to district high schools.
Most students, 61 percent, enrolled where they were accepted.
Another 26 percent enrolled at another district or charter school.

The report also found that black students and students living in lower-income neighborhoods on average applied to more schools than their peers — but they were less likely to rank a highly rated school among their top choices.

“We think students and families are making the best decisions they can about school enrollment given the constraints they face,” Sartain said. “Maybe it’s about transportation, or not having schools near them they feel comfortable with.”

She also noted that there might be non-academic reasons why families choose to enroll at lower-performing schools, such as parent programming and wrap-around services.

Another big finding from the report centers on the impact of what Sartain called “application screens.”

Some applicants had to go through post-application requirements to get an offer, like auditioning for arts programs or attending mandatory information sessions for International Baccalaureate. More than half of students applied to schools and programs that asked for additional requirements, but fewer than half of the students who applied to those programs fulfilled the requirements, rendering most ineligible.

Sartain said students of color and students who live in high-poverty neighborhoods are the least likely to complete the screens, especially for IB programs, raising questions about what the district can do to make things easier for them.

The answer, she said, could involve holding online information sessions, having elementary school counselors set aside time during advisory sessions to help increase access for students having trouble completing screens, or another solution.

“What we see from parents is that they weren’t expecting there to be all these additional barriers,” said Nate Pietrini, a former district principal and executive director of High Jump Chicago, a non-profit organization that helps families navigate the high school selection process.

It still takes a lot of research and patience to navigate that extra layer of applying to a school, and Pietrini said that families with time and resources often find the puzzle easier to crack than families from marginalized communities and under resourced schools. With that basic inequity in mind, he posed a question to the district — and new Mayor Lori Lightfoot

“We know that GoCPS has improved access for a lot of families, but my question would be when can we see a more nuanced look with an equity lens into that choice application?” he said.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said it is encouraged by the findings, which also highlight the ways that the admissions process can be strengthened and made more equitable. “This research has provided an unprecedented look into families’ choices and trends and we are eager to learn more about families’ preferences, accessibility and equity as we continue this process,” it reads.

Sartain said that her research team will continue to study high school admissions and the impact of GoCPS. Specifically, they are looking to understand what students and families value when weighing their high school options, and whether the platform results in better academic outcomes, fewer transfers, and a more positive experience overall.

Decision day: What happens when students don’t get their first-choice Chicago high school

2019-04-11T18:53:36+00:00

Eighth-grader Mia Paulus’ first choice for high school was Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy in Chicago’s Roseland community.

Last month, she said she was confident, but nervous at the same time, because she knew how tough it is to get in: “It’s like the lottery.”

But Mia didn’t get into Brooks nor the other two selective-enrollment schools she applied to. She’s heartbroken and stopped talking about process altogether, even to her friends at school and church. Her father, J.P. Paulus, said: “This whole process has sort of shut her down from wanting to communicate about the results.”

Friday is the deadline for eighth graders to accept offers from high schools in the first round of an emotionally taxing and competitive selection process that holds high stakes for families.

It’s a far-reaching ordeal that slices through all the city’s neighborhoods, resulting in elation and despair, and leaving many families trying to restore their teens shaken self-confidence.

More than 26,600 eighth-graders applied for admission to high schools via Chicago Public Schools’ online GoCPS platform, and just over half were offered a seat at their first choice.

But among those who sought entry to selective schools, only 16 percent got an offer from the school atop their list. And only three out of 10 landed an offer from any of the selective schools they applied to.

Mia, an aspiring astronaut at Burnside Scholastic Academy on the Far South Side, has an attractive fallback close to home. She likely will attend Dyett High School for the Arts, her father said. It has the city’s second-highest rating, Level 1, and the Paulus family recently bought a house nearby in Bronzeville, within the neighborhood school’s attendance boundaries, so Mia is guaranteed admission.

Thousands like Mia will end up at schools in their zone, a scenario some families go to great lengths to avoid. The proportion of high school students attending neighborhood high schools has declined from 27 percent to 23 percent in four years, and black students are the most likely to look elsewhere.

Artist Tonika Johnson’s son was rejected from his first choice, Lane Technical College Preparatory High School, in Roscoe Village on the North Side. He did get an offer from the selective enrollment King College Prep High School in the Kenwood neighborhood on the South Side, and Johnson said it’s a good school, but would prefer a more diverse setting for her son than King, which is nearly all black.

She and her son are both leery of their designated neighborhood school, the new $85 million Englewood campus opening this fall, which will offer enticing options but also will have no track record.

“I know my son will be fine,” Johnson said. “However I can’t ignore the fact that this kind of selection process makes a particular population in Chicago more vulnerable than others, and that part is unfair. ”

“I put myself out there.”

Asking 13- and 14-year-olds to navigate choices that will shape their future is a huge expectation.

While teens are forming identities and making big decisions, “people at this age tend to not have mastered executive functioning — that is, the ability to anticipate, plan ahead, organize and coordinate actions toward a particular goal,” said Kate Phillippo, a researcher in urban education policy at Loyola University Chicago, who spoke to Chalkbeat Chicago in March and wrote a book on the subject.

Phillippo’s research showed that students from more affluent families got into their preferred schools far more often than students from less-affluent families.

In addition to school and social pressure, teens place high expectations on themselves to get into a good high school, which they are told is a stepping stone to a good college and career, and feel pressure to succeed from family.

“My mom, she genuinely cares about my future, but sometimes that pressure hits me,” said Simone Tyler, 13, who attends Kipling Elementary School in Washington Heights on the South Side. “A lot of my family didn’t make it in high school, they didn’t finish or they went into the Army, and I just want to make them proud.”

She was so worked up this application season that she broke down in tears one day in the school lunchroom.

The aspiring writer’s first choice, like Mia’s, was Brooks. She didn’t get in, but was relieved to be accepted at Lindblom Math and Science Academy in West Englewood, which she heard has an excellent writing program.

She said students choosing high schools are “put in a very adult situation.”

“I really put myself out there,” she said. “When you apply to a high school, you’re allowing yourself to be vulnerable for that whole year. Sometimes being vulnerable hurts — but you do learn from it.”

She got help preparing for the complicated application process from High Jump, a partnership of private schools and foundations, which offers a two-year enrichment program to rising seventh graders with strong grades and standardized test scores. The students, who are low income, attend weekly classes at one of three sites, prepare for the selective-enrollment exam, and get help with applications to Chicago schools and private options.

High Jump participant Nancy Mejia, a 14-year-old at Seward Communication Arts Academy Elementary School, said that even though adults may tell children not to view the selection process as competition — it is. And it’s stressful.

“Some of my friends were applying to the same schools, so we were still two applicants who wanted that same spot,” said Nancy, who lives in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

She was accepted at two selective-enrollment schools, Whitney M. Young Magnet High School and Lindblom, but she’s thinking about attending Back of the Yards College Preparatory High School instead, because she’s interested in its International Baccalaureate program, a special track at the predominantly Latino neighborhood school on the Southwest Side.

The IB program is the kind of in-demand option — along with dual-language and science-technology immersion programs, that Chicago is seeking to expand. The school district recently announced it is investing $32 million in such programs across six years to help 32 mostly neighborhood schools attract new families.

In the predominately white Jefferson Park community on the Far Northwest Side, Jeanne Warsaw said her eighth-grader at Stone Scholastic Academy decided to skip the application process and attend his neighborhood school — which automatically enrolls neighborhood children. Taft High is a Level-1 International Baccalaureate school.

“For us, I have to say, it’s been a breeze,” said Warsaw, who runs a social justice arts program. “I almost feel guilty because a lot of my good friends who are parents have been a nervous wreck about this process.”

Race and class have a lot to do with school choice. Even though the Chicago district is just 14 percent white and Asian, those students have disproportionate access to elite high schools and challenging academic programs, such as Advanced Placement courses, according to federal civil rights data.

Neighborhood schools in black and Latino communities, especially disinvested parts of the city with high rates of poverty and crime, often struggle with stigma that complicates their recruitment pitches to prospective students.

Tonika Johnson plans to appeal to the Lane Tech principal for one of the few discretionary openings at the selective school, hoping her son can get the offer he didn’t get in the first round. But that feels like such a Hail Mary pass that she hesitated to tell him about it. She was worried about potentially setting him up for “another round of disappointment.”

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.

In final stretch of recruitment season, Chicago high schools race to impress

2018-11-13T15:54:26+00:00

When Jared Gonzalez toured Little Village Lawndale High School with his parents earlier this fall, it marked high school visit No. 6.

Gonzalez left impressed by the academic focus and values espoused at two of the campus’s four autonomous schools, Greater Lawndale High School for Social Justice and the Multicultural Academy of Scholarship High School.

His mother favors the smaller class sizes at the West Side schools, which she said could ensure her son gets more attention from teachers, and the fact that it’s a 10-minute drive from their home in Little Village. Proximity and programs are the two guiding principles behind the Gonzalez family’s high school search, his mother Lucy Gonzalez said.

“We still have other schools to check out, and it’s going to be the same all the way until December,” she said.

Chicago Public Schools heads down the home stretch of recruitment season, when high schools make final pushes to attract next year’s freshman class amid a game-changing, online application process that debuted last fall. Schools dearly want to land among student’s top three choices, one of which typically ends up being their destination.

In the heightening competition for students, Chicago’s more than 160 high schools behave like small colleges desperately vying to impress would-be freshmen and their families.

On campus tours, student guides chat up their school’s facilities, curriculum and campus culture. Principals tout their vision for the school and track record of success. Families walk away with brochures and totes full of swag like water bottles, lanyards, refrigerator magnets and T-shirts. There are 53 high school open houses scheduled between now and Dec. 14, when GoCPS applications are due.

While choosing a high school is serious business for students, their collective choices can become a do-or-die point for schools competing for a shrinking pool of students. The dozens of Chicago high schools labeled as underenrolled risk falling into an unforgiving downward cycle. Schools losing enrollment also lose district revenue, which is doled out per student, then find it even more difficult to offer popular programs to appeal to applicants.

Multicultural Academy for the first time created a marketing committee, according Principal Maria Amador, who was greeting families at the door during the open house. The volunteer committee is working to redesign the school’s logo, create flashier brochures, upgrade the school’s website, and boost its social media presence.

Unlike some schools, especially on the North Side, Multicultural High School doesn’t have a campus “friends” group to raise money and spread the word about school accomplishments, but Amador said that’s in the works.

Because families now can research and apply to every high school and high school program option in the city via the universal, online GoCPS platform, principals realize they need to up their marketing game.

“The different specialization of each school is really starting to become what’s driving decision-making, which is, I think, a very healthy thing,” said Dan Kramer, principal of Roosevelt High School on the Northwest Side.

As Back of the Yards College Prep High School Principal Patricia Brekke said, “it’s game on now.” Just attending high school fairs no longer is enough.

“We always had in-house made brochures and we had our students helping us promote our school to talk to other students — and it’s not enough,” she said, noting other schools’ professional-looking flyers. “It’s like it’s from a college. It’s not just about something that lists your programs and gives a good description.”

Applicants can choose up to 20 schools on the GoCPS application.

The stakes are particularly high for neighborhood high schools that must compete with high-demand selective enrollment programs, charter schools, magnet schools, and other campuses that draw students from across the city rather than from neighborhood attendance zones.

The competition puts some neighborhood schools at a disadvantage — those without parent booster groups, or influential alumni, or established marketing budgets. At a conference last week at Chicago Vocational Academy High School in Greater Grand Crossing, educators and parents pushed for the school district to help neglected high schools to counter outdated images and raise their profile.

The mariachi band of the Benito Juarez Community Academy plays for the school’s Open House event. Juarez offers mariachi as a credit-bearing course.

Even at overenrolled schools like Benito Juarez Community Academy, in Pilsen, the recruitment push is on. The school designed for 1,572 students now holds 1,708 from across the city. Leaders still experimented with how to communicate the school’s values to families.

The school has gone through several iterations of open houses — having parents sit in auditoriums and watch presentations, or allow parents to walk around the school at their leisure — but in the end found it was most effective to offer student-guided tours that gave families a sense of the school’s culture, like those you can spot on college campuses around the city.

At a recent open house, Principal Juan Carlos Ocón walked around the auditorium, shaking hands with parents and prospective students as the school’s mariachi band played on stage. Talking to the families, Ocón touted how the school supports students. He ticked off the range of academic offerings, including medicine, architecture and the International Baccalaureate, as well as evaluations that consider students’ developmental milestones as well as grades. And students can earn credits playing in the mariachi band or learning folkloric dance.

Back at Little Village Lawndale, Jared and Lucy Gonzalez remained undecided. After all, they’re also applying to at least three top-rated selective-enrollment options and plan to take full advantage of space on the universal high school application for up to 20 schools, Lucy Gonzalez said.

“We’re trying to do the best for our son.”

On Nov. 2, students lead parents on a tour of Little Village Lawndale High School.

Applying for school in Chicago? Your odds may have just changed.

2018-10-25T11:30:11+00:00

One of the key factors in Chicago public school admissions, tier numbers assigned by a student’s address serve to more equitably distribute seats in test-in and magnet programs.

The numbers, on a 1 to 4 scale, reflect a neighborhood’s socioeconomic status. The school district has issued new tier assignments that redesignate 91 areas: 60 have gone down a notch (or two) and 31 have gone up. The changes are observable across the city, but tier shifts generally follow gentrification patterns.

“I tell families, if you live in or near a gentrifying area, check (your tier) every year,” said Grace Lee Sawin, the owner of Chicago GPS, which helps families navigate Chicago’s school application process for a fee. “Certainly it could go up and it could go down.”

The tier labels factor mostly into admissions to prekindergarten and kindergarten and again for entrance into competitive seventh-grade academic centers and high schools. They are not a factor in attending open enrollment, or neighborhood, schools.

Using public schools data, a group of civic technologists this week updated an application that lets families look up their tier by address. Every household gets assigned a tier of 1, 2, 3, or 4, with a “1” generally being a low-income neighborhood and a “4” being the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

Besides median income of the households within the census tracts, other factors that influence tier assignments are the percentages of single-parent homes, homes where English is not the first language, and homeownership. Also factors are the education levels of adults who reside in the tract and achievement results of neighborhood schools.

The Open City app.

When families apply for popular schools — those requiring tests or lotteries — the school system sets aside a percentage of seats for students from each tier. According to preliminary research results from the first year of the district’s universal enrollment system GoCPS, students in tier 4 neighborhoods are more likely to apply to the district’s most popular programs. And so, when it comes to test-in schools, they tend to have to post higher scores to gain admission.

Put another way, a student from a Tier 1 neighborhood often can gain admission into a selective enrollment school with a lower cutoff score than a Tier 4 one, said Sawin.

Here is the latest Open City app, created by Derek Eder and Forest Gregg with contributions from Juan-Pablo Velez and Josh Kalov.

They also mapped the tier redistributions here.

The deadline to submit applications for most CPS programs for next school year is Dec. 14. Here’s our explainer with more details about the process.

In one Chicago neighborhood, three high schools offer dramatically different opportunities

2018-10-16T11:21:04+00:00

This story is part of a partnership between Chalkbeat and the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica. Using federal data from Miseducation, an interactive database built by ProPublica, we are publishing a series of stories exploring inequities in education at the local level.

It’s a Thursday morning at Roosevelt High School, and Gillian McLennan’s first-period class takes place where her students have wanted to be all week — in the kitchen.

Today, McLennan jokes, “is a bit of a gory day.”

Quartets of students wearing bonnets, aprons, and gloves stand around metal prep tables, threatening a whole chicken spread on a cutting board.

One 16-year-old junior works his boning knife carefully, making precise incisions between joints and flesh. “We are removing the entire leg,” he explains.

The student — his first name is Lan, and school officials asked that students’ full names not be published — lives in Albany Park on Chicago’s Northwest Side. He considered applying to North Side schools with better reputations and higher test scores, such as Lane Tech or Lake View.

But Lan ultimately landed at Roosevelt because he thought its popular culinary certification program offered more options. He could be a chef, go to college, or both.

Lan highly recommends Roosevelt for that reason — despite the bad things he’s heard people say about his school.

“I don’t think they know Roosevelt,” he said.

By one important measure, Roosevelt, where nearly 93 percent of students qualify for subsidized meals, looks like a school that might not offer the richest educational opportunities. Less than 10 percent of students there take Advanced Placement classes, the college-level courses that often mark the transcripts of students at schools with more affluence.

At the same time, far more students take AP courses at two other schools in Albany Park, one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods. Those differences in educational opportunity are put in stark relief through a new interactive database from the news organization ProPublica built using federal education statistics.

Even as Chicago Public Schools has made some historic academic gains, the data show vast disparities in the kind of coursework available to students.

But as Lan’s experience illustrates — it’s vocational education that drew him to the neighborhood school — opportunity doesn’t hinge on just one class, on one measure.

This underscores a critical question confronting principals and top Chicago school administrators alike: What does opportunity look like? And what’s the right balance between classes that boost their schools’ reputations and those that serve their students’ varied needs?

A fresh look at data

In a starkly segregated city like Chicago, Albany Park appears more diverse. Nearly all-white as recently as the 1970s, the neighborhood has become a major port of entry for new immigrants and is now nearly half Latino, with residents who are Korean, Indian, Lebanese, African, German, and Eastern European too.

But even here, three high schools in the area that sit within 10 blocks of one another and share an El stop couldn’t be more different.

About half of the 1,100 students at Northside College Preparatory High School, a test-in school that is one of the top in the state, are white or Asian. Nearly 60 percent of Northside students take Advanced Placement classes, compared with the district average of 22 percent.

Blocks away sits the 1,800-student Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center, a magnet high school with a citywide lottery to enter and a separate selective “scholars” program for those with a minimum 3.0 GPA. There, 37 percent of students take AP classes.

Chicago rates both Northside and Von Steuben Level 1-plus schools, its top rating. At both schools, few students are English language learners.

At neighboring Roosevelt High, there are no admissions requirements. Nearly 69 percent of students are Latino, and 28 percent are English language learners. Only 8 percent of the students take AP classes, and there’s no AP math courses or calculus offered.

Such contrasts extend systemwide. Even though the Chicago district is just 14 percent white and Asian, those students have disproportionate access to elite high schools, AP classes, International Baccalaureate programs, and even arts and music education in some neighborhoods.

What to do about those inequities at the school level is far from clear. At Roosevelt, Principal Dan Kramer is working to revitalize the neighborhood high school by improving safety and boosting achievement. He and his predecessors have made progress: Roosevelt is graduating more students than in recent years, up from 56 percent in 2011 to 66.5 percent this year. He is also growing a program that lets students take courses for college credit.

Roosevelt’s enrollment has dropped by more than 400 students since 2014. Two-thirds of its current students take vocational classes, formally dubbed career technical education.

Lan and some of his classmates say they want more courses on aviation mechanics, engineering, digital media, and nursing — classes that will secure them certifications, apprenticeships, and jobs.

Now Kramer, like principals at other underenrolled neighborhood schools, faces a tough decision. To attract and prepare more college-bound students, should the school invest in more AP classes? Or should it provide more career prep — like its popular culinary program that graduates students with kitchen experience and certifications that provide an entre to the food and hospitality industry?

“Pushing students into the AP classes for the sake of saying, ‘look how many kids I’ve got in AP classes’ — I think is really unfair to those students,” Kramer said, “for the sake of trying to make the school look good.”

One way Kramer hopes to attract more students is a pilot “scholars” program that steers high achievers to honors and AP classes. The program is in its first year.

No guarantee of equity

Nearby Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center, which is considered a high-quality alternative to selective-enrollment high schools like Northside, has come up with its own way to attract students: an honors-level “scholars” program that requires a 3.0 GPA and an application with an essay. It split the school’s population into “scholars” and what students call the “regulars.”

In practice, the tiers mean that access to advanced coursework varies by race.

“It creates a sense that, if you’re a scholar, you deserve more, you’re smarter, you have all of these opportunities available to you, and if you’re a magnet school student, you’re just regular,” said Ashayla Freeman, 18, a senior who lives in Austin on the city’s West Side.

And, she said, while the student body is diverse, “I feel like in the scholars program you see that diversity less and less.”

At Von, 43 percent of the students who take AP courses are white or Asian — groups that together make up on 31 percent of the school. Overall, the school is 56 percent Latino and 11 percent black, but those groups make up just 46 percent and 8 percent, respectively, of AP enrollment.

Friends Jade Trejo Tello, 16, and Itzel Espino, 15, who are both Latino and live in Albany Park or neighborhoods nearby, have had divergent experiences at the school. Both applied for the honors track. Tello, who passed, takes all honors or AP classes and loves geometry and algebra.

Espino, meanwhile, didn’t get into the selective program. She’s still happy with her high school experience — she’s focused on keeping her grades up, so she can become a teacher — but feels that the selection criteria for the scholars program wasn’t entirely fair.

“I didn’t get the chance to be able to show myself, and I know some kids do have troubles that affect their school life and their grades,” she said. “We are not given a second chance to show ‘Oh, I can handle an honors class.’”

Messages seeking comment from Von Steuben leadership were not returned.

Declining enrollment

To have the budget to offer more courses for students like Espino, schools need to attract more students. But to attract more students, schools need a robust menu of courses. It can become a chicken-and-egg proposition.

To boost Roosevelt’s declining enrollment, Kramer has made the choice to market its vocational curriculum. “We’re meeting a demand,” Kramer said, emphasizing that many students have family members who work in child care, preschools, restaurants and health care — classic vocational education tracks.

Roosevelt High School in Albany Park

“Families see there’s a lot of career opportunity without much investment in postsecondary education,” he said. “In working-class neighborhoods in Chicago there’s an appreciation that these are growth industry areas.”

But if a school like Roosevelt offers culinary courses but no AP math classes, that could limit students’ choices in other ways. Advanced courses can signal students’ readiness for college work, and passing scores can earn students college credits, though research isn’t conclusive on the benefits if students don’t pass the tests.

P. Zitlali Morales, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, argues that vocational courses should be available throughout the city— but it’s important to not allow that path to become an either/or choice for students.

“Right now, certain vocational opportunities are offered at certain schools for certain kids, and right now those are the kids who are English learners and also the children of immigrants,” she said.

For the first time, Chicago has hired someone whose job it is to wrestle with that and other tough questions of race and opportunity. Schools chief Janice Jackson has tasked new Chief Equity Officer Maurice Swinney with tackling the imbalance of opportunity districtwide for black and Latino students.

Jackson also has offered neighborhood high schools the chance to apply to offer specialized programs, including vocational offerings, arts programs, dual language certifications, or designations such as International Baccalaureate, magnet or gifted programs.

The competitive application lures principals with a pledge: Selected schools will also win money to cover the expenses of new teachers or certifications. It’s meant to help principals like Kramer to avoid having to make such stark choices about programming.

Kramer says he’s planning to propose applying for a dual-language academy. Students would have the opportunity to earn a prestigious seal of biliteracy, which will allow them to waive two years of a foreign language requirement at any Illinois public university.

Letters of intent are due Oct. 26. Kramer sounds almost giddy at the prospect.

Chicago schools start taking applications Monday. Here’s what you need to know.

2018-09-17T17:37:44+00:00

With its new online portal, Chicago Public Schools has made a point of simplifying and streamlining its application process for schools. But even with the new GoCPS system, finding a school and enrolling a child can be a daunting challenge, requiring knowledge, research and online navigation skills.

In fact, just as Chicago families are getting acclimated to their back-to-school routines this fall, CPS application and testing deadlines are approaching for next fall — the 2019-20 school year.

We’ve done our best to sort it out (and we’ll also update this page as we learn more). Here are the dates you need to know:

Preschool

Despite CPS’ new universal application portal, families applying to preschools still have to fill out two applications: one for open-enrollment preschools, and another for the district’s four highly competitive magnet preschools.

Open-enrollment: Applications for CPS’ open-enrollment preschool programs, as well as the city-sponsored, community-based programs, are accepted year-round. Click here for information on applying to open-enrollment preschools, and here for answers to common enrollment questions.
Magnet preschools: CPS’ four magnet preschools are Drummond Montessori in Bucktown, bilingual Inter-American in Wrigleyville, Oscar Mayer Montessori in Lincoln Park, and Suder in Near West Side. These preschools are especially popular because their pre-Ks feed into the schools’ kindergarten classes, according to the CPS portal. The application period for these programs is from Oct 1 to Dec. 14. The application link should be live here starting Oct. 1.

Kindergarten, elementary and middle schools

For parents who want to go outside of their assigned neighborhood school, applications open on Oct. 1 for all CPS elementary and middle programs. Schools are categorized as open enrollment; selective enrollment; magnet; and magnet cluster schools. The application deadline is Dec. 14.

There also is sometimes a brief end-of-school-year window to reapply for schools with open seats. In 2018, for example, applications were accepted from May 28 to June 1 for dozens of schools.

Selective-enrollment testing K-4: Admission to CPS’ selective-enrollment schools is determined based on a testing process that varies with the age of the student. For students in grades K-4, the application process opens on Oct. 1. Students must sign up for testing; dates and sites are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.
Selective-enrollment testing 5-8: For students in grades 5-8, selective-enrollment eligibility is determined using the Northwestern Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress (NWEA MAP) test. This test is administered during school hours to all CPS students. Students transferring into CPS must take a CPS-administered NWEA MAP test in order to apply to selective schools. This test is offered during three weekends in September, but the registration date for those tests has passed. The test will be given once more in January; email oae@cps.edu for more information.

For more information, click here to visit CPS’ Office of Access and Enrollment.

High school

Applications for students who will be ninth-graders in CPS high schools in 2019-20 will be accepted from Oct. 1 to Dec. 14, 2018, but families can activate their accounts now and start looking at options. The district’s new unified application portal, GoCPS, also lists schools with open seats for transfers. (Students applying for admission as sophomores, juniors or seniors are considered to be transfer students and do not participate in CPS’ universal application process; would-be transfer students must contact each school directly.)

Chalkbeat earlier wrote about how many students are applying to each high school. To search our database and see how supply and demand varies for each school, click here.

To see average scores for individual high schools on the college admissions exam and make comparisons side-by-side, click here.

Selective enrollment test dates: Students applying to one of CPS’ 11 selective-enrollment high schools (Brooks, Hancock, Jones, King, Lane Tech, Lindblom, Northside, Payton, South Shore, Westinghouse, and Young) must take an entrance exam. The test dates are Oct. 20, Nov. 17, Dec. 1, Dec. 15, Jan. 19, Jan. 26, and Jan. 27.
Selective enrollment eligibility for transfers: Eligibility for the selective-enrollment test is based on NWEA MAP scores. Students transferring into CPS must take a CPS-administered NWEA MAP test in order to be considered for the selective-enrollment test. The NWEA MAP test is offered during three weekends in September, but the registration date for those tests has passed. The test will be given once more in January; email oae@cps.edu for more information.

For more information, visit GoCPS go.cps.edu.

Transfers

Students who wish to attend CPS schools must establish proof of Chicago residency by July 1 prior to the fall term in which they wish to enroll.

Stay up to date

At the bottom of the GoCPS portal, there’s a form allowing students and families to sign up for CPS email lists to keep them informed about the 2019-20 application process.

Secret CPS report spotlights big vacancies, lopsided options for students

2018-08-18T00:06:54+00:00

An unreleased report by a school choice group backed by the business community paints in stark detail what many Chicagoans have known for years: that top academic schools are clustered in wealthier neighborhoods, and that fewer black and Latino students have access to those schools.

The report highlights startling figures: About 27 percent of black students are in the district’s lowest-rated schools, compared with 8 percent of Latino students and 3 percent of whites. It also says that while Chicago Public Schools has more than 150,000 unfilled seats, 40 percent, or 60,000 of them, are at top-ranked schools. That surplus will grow as enrollment, which has been plummeting for years, is projected to decline further by 5.1 percent over the next three years to about 350,000. What that means is the cash-strapped district is moving toward having nearly one extra seat for every two of its students.

The document effectively 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.

In a city still reeling from the largest mass school closure in U.S. history, this report could lay groundwork for another round of difficult decisions.

The school district says the report will help inform how it invests in and engages with communities. Communities groups worry the document will be used to justify more school closings, turnarounds and charters.

The “Annual Regional Analysis” report, compiled by the group Kids First Chicago on CPS’ behalf, has been circulating among select community groups but has not been made public. It comes on the heels of a report showing students’ high school preferences vary with family income level. Students from low-income neighborhoods submit more applications than students from wealthier ones and apply in greater numbers for the district’s charter high schools.

The group behind the latest report has had many iterations: Kids First is a new name, but its origins date back to 2004, when it started as the charter fundraising group Renaissance Schools Fund. That was during the Renaissance 2010 effort, which seeded 100 new schools across the city, including many charters. The group changed its name to New Schools Chicago in 2011 and again rebranded this year as Kids First, with a greater focus on parent engagement and policy advocacy.

The report has caused a stir among some community groups who’ve seen it. Because the school district has used enrollment figures to justify closing schools, some people are worried it could be used to propose more closings, turnarounds, and charter schools.

“To me this is the new reason [for school closings],” said Carolina Gaeta, co-director of community group Blocks Together, which supports neighborhood schools. “Before it was academics, then it was utilization, now it’s going to be access and equity. Numbers can be used any way.”

In a statement on the report, Chicago Teachers Union Spokeswoman Christine Geovanis blasted Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration for policies that she alleged “undermine enrollment at neighborhood schools,” such as the proliferation of charter schools, school budget cuts, and building new schools over the objection of community members.

Reached by phone Thursday, Kids First CEO Daniel Anello confirmed that his organization helped put the report together, but declined to comment on its contents, deferring to the district. CPS Spokeswoman Emily Bolton acknowledged the report’s existence in a statement emailed to Chalkbeat Chicago that said the school district “is having conversations with communities to get input and inform decisions” about where to place particular academic programs. The statement said CPS is still in the process of drafting a final version of the document, but gave no timetable. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office didn’t grant requests for interviews about the Annual Regional Analysis.

Below is a preview of the report provided to Chalkbeat Chicago.

Gaps in access to arts and IB programs

Data released this week from the district’s GoCPS universal high school application clearly shows what academic programs are most in demand: selective enrollment programs that require children to test in; arts programs; and career and technical education offerings, or CTE.

The Kids First’s analysis puts those findings into context, however, by detailing how supply is geographically uneven, especially when it comes to arts. Maps in the report divide the city into regions defined by the city’s planning department and show how highly-desirable arts programs are not spread equally throughout the city, and are most concentrated along the northern lakefront and downtown.

This map shows the number of fine & performing arts program seats available per 100 elementary school students in each planning area.

Worse, four regions offer 10 or fewer arts seats per 100 students, including the Bronzeville/South Lakefront region that includes neighborhoods such as Woodlawn, Kenwood, Hyde Park, Washington Park and Bronzeville. They are also scarce in the West Side region, which includes Austin, Humboldt Park and North Lawndale, in the Far Northwest neighborhoods of Belmont Cragin, Dunning, and Portage Park, and in the Northwest Side area, home to neighborhoods like West Ridge and Albany Park.

The report also shows an imbalance in the number of rigorous International Baccalaureate programs.

This map shows the number of IB program seats per 100 students available to elementary and high school students in each planning area.

The highest number of IB seats are in the wealthy, predominately white and affluent Greater Lincoln Park area, which includes the Near North Side, Lakeview, and Lincoln Park. In contrast, there are far fewer IB seats in predominantly black communities such as Englewood and Auburn Gresham, in the predominantly Latino Back of the Yards, and in the mostly black and Latino community of Ashburn. All of those communities are in the South Side planning region.

When it comes to selective-enrollment elementary school programs such as gifted centers and classical schools, which require students to pass entrance exams, options tend to be concentrated, too, with fewer choices on the South and West sides of the city. This map shows where selective enrollment high school options are most prevalent:

This map shows the number of selective enrollment high school seats available per 100 students in the city’s planning regions.

STEM programs are more evenly distributed across Chicago than both IB and selective enrollment schools, yet whole swaths of the city lack them, especially on the South Side, including the Greater Stony Island region, which includes far South Side neighborhoods like Roseland, Chatham, Greater Grand Crossing and South Shore. As the other maps show, that region lacks most of the high-demand academic programs the district has to offer.

This map shows the number of STEM program seats available per 100 elementary school students.

Racial disparities in school quality

The analysis also shows disparities in quality of schools, not just variety.

At CPS, 65 percent of students districtwide are enrolled at Level 1-plus or Level 1-rated schools. But only 45 percent of black students and 72 percent of Latino students are in those top-rated seats, compared with 91 percent of white students.

The disparities are even more severe given that the school district is mostly Latino and black, with fewer than one in 10 students identified as white.

A page from a presentation of the Annual Regional Analysis showed to select community groups.

In the Greater Lincoln Park region, 100 percent of elementary schools have one of the top two ratings — the highest concentration of them in the city. The highest concentration of top-rated high school seats, 91 percent, is in the Central Area, which includes Downtown and the South Loop.

The lowest concentration of top-rated elementary seats, 35 percent, is in the Near West Side region, and the lowest concentration of high school seats, 14 percent, is in the West Side region.

Long commutes from some neighborhoods

The number of students choosing schools outside their neighborhood boundaries has increased in recent years.

But the report shows that school choice varies by race: 44 percent of black students attend their neighborhood elementary school, compared with 67 percent of Latino students, 69 percent of white students, and 66 percent of Asian students. For high schoolers, only 14 percent of black students attend their neighborhood school, compared with 28 percent of Asians, 30 percent of Latinos, and 32 percent of whites.

More students enrolling outside their neighborhood attendance boundaries means more and more students have longer commutes, but how far they travel depends on their address.

Again, this is an area where the Greater Stony Island area stands out.

A graphic from the Annual Regional Analysis executive report that shows how far elementary school students in each of the city’s 16 planning regions travel from their homes to school. The data shows that students on the South and West Sides tend to have longer commutes.

The average distance traveled for elementary school students is 1.5 miles — but K-8 students in Greater Stony Island travel an average of 2.6 miles. The average distance to class for high schoolers citywide is 2.6 miles, but students in the Greater Stony Island region travel an average of 5 miles, about twice the city average.

A graphic from the Annual Regional Analysis executive report that shows how far high school students in each of the city’s 16 planning regions travel from their homes to school. The data shows that students on the South and West Sides tend to have longer commutes.

Looking forward

The introduction to the Annual Regional Analysis describes it as “a common fact base” to understand the school landscape. It clearly states the intent of the report is to assist with district planning, not to provide recommendations.

It still bothers Wendy Katten, founder of Raise Your Hand, who has seen the report and said it tells little about how kids are actually learning at schools.

“It sounds like some data a company would use to reduce inventory at a manufacturing plant,” she said.

Gaete with Blocks Together said the numbers in the report are also missing important context about how the proliferation of charter schools, a lack of transparent and equitable planning, and a lack of support for neighborhood schools in recent decades has exacerbated school quality disparities across race and neighborhoods in Chicago, one of the nation’s most diverse but segregated cities.

It’s unclear when the final study will be published, or how exactly the school district will use its contents to inform its decisions and conversations with communities.

But an event posting on the website for Forefront, a membership association for “nonprofits, grantmakers, public agencies, advisors, and our allies,” mentions a briefing for the report on Oct. 10.

Kids First Chicago CEO Dan Anello and CPS Director of Strategy Sadie Stockdale Jefferson will share the report there, according to the website.

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.