A Fair System? CPS Tiers

It's CPS elementary school admissions-offer letter time in Chicago, and Northside parents (and the Interwebs) can't get enough of the chatter. Everywhere I turn, whether online--CPSObsessed, NPN, Facebook--or in real life--at the park, on the train, in the office--parents are talking about acceptances, waitlist numbers, school tours, first impressions, curriculum and teachers and principals, choices or options, possible moves to suburbia, and the odds. 
It's actually kind of exciting to watch and read and hear about. I know that perspective is a luxury; a luxury that comes from satisfaction with my kids' school and therefore outside of this year's process.
The acceptance date for first-round offers is fast approaching: April 11. I picture a flurry of activity and then silence, leaving new-to-CPS families to spend 5 days hand-wringing during the District's spring break. And as the date of family acceptance or rejection of offers approaches, the annual bitching about the unfairness of the system begins. (There's always bitching, but it gets worse around process dates.)

This is most often directed at the tier system, a method adopted by the Board of Education in 2011 to improve equity of access to magnet and selective-enrollment (gifted/IB) schools by using a formula of SES and other factors to assign each block in the city a tier.
I don't think the tier system is perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it does as good of a job at striving for equity as it can do. The system is underfunded and under-resourced; sometimes I think the District makes asinine decisions, and sometimes I think the District is doing the best it can. The tier system of admissions in the second category.

There is a mindset among some city (and even some suburban) parents that it's "selective enrollment high schools or bust." This creates a lot of frustration, anger, tears, and threats because Chicago's nine SEHS simply do not have enough seats to educate everyone who wants to attend those schools, and a fierce competition for those seats is one of the results.  

When the public discussion turns to how unfair the (tier) system is for SEHS, I always think of the gifted schools in New York City. There are also nine, And the NYC schools offer admission considerations for disadvantaged students as well. My father attended one of the "Specialized High Schools," as NYC calls them, Bronx High School of Science. In 2013, according to the literature in the link above, the acceptance rate at Bronx Science was 5.3 percent.

When looking at Chicago's data, the complaints about how the system is unfair seem, well, unfair. The tier system doesn't seem to give a hugely unfair or imbalanced advantage to kids who live on statistically less-advantaged blocks. I mean, it's like a 5%.

For SEHS, the current system gives 40% of seats to students in order of pure score rank. Then it takes the remaining 60% of students and divides them evenly among the tiers. Looking at the mean scores among tier 1 and tier 4 students from this year's applicant class, it doesn't look like there is a huge difference in achievement levels at any of the SEHS between tier 1 and tier 4 except at Lane (85.73% T1, 94% T4). And oddly, the mean tier 4 score at Westinghouse is the mean scores for tier 2 and 3, but the percentage difference between tiers 1 and 4 is miniscule - 80.84% (T1) v. 81.79% (T4).

I do understand the frustration with the SE process. But I think it's misdirected at the tier system. I think we'd do better to advocate for stronger programs that serve the 80-92%-level achieving students within our neighborhood/magnet schools, but that isn't a popular opinion in the larger "SEHS or bust" mindset among parents who are engaged in and vocal about their children's education.

Scrap Pickers

As you may know, Disney II faces a CPS school action. In our case, this is a positive thing. However, the process has not been without its challenges and roadblocks. We applied in August, and CPS announced its approval of our proposal in December 2012. Immediately the conversations turned to: "Where are they going to put this expansion? CPS is going to put it in Thurgood Marshall Middle School, right?"and an onslaught of conjecture-fueled upset from neighborhood groups, neighbors, other schools, school groups, the press, and watchdogs.

In late March, CPS announced its proposal to co-locate the Disney II expansion with nearby Thurgood Marshall Middle school. And immediately, the charge of the conversation was amplified. Suddenly, TMMS became a much-loved neighborhood gem upon which every stakeholder pinned his/her hopes and fears.

Hopes for a way to buck the system and gain automatic entry (GIPNA's proximity overlay proposal), hopes for a relief valve for an overcrowded neighboring school (Belding's request to redraw attendance boundaries), hopes for a different high school model (Murphy LSC's on-stage proposal), hopes for a renewed interest in a neighborhood middle-school model (TMMS teachers), hopes for re-election (Ald. Arena), and fears for the strength of current programming (Murphy parents). 

As a stakeholder myself, I've taken a keen interest in the process. I've attended many meetings about this, from poorly-communicated District-sponsored meetings to well-publicized community meetings on the network level to legal-compliance meetings within the community and downtown. I have attended LSC meetings and LSC meetings, and community-led meetings. I've had innumerable conversations with neighbors, friends, and classmates' parents about the process and what each new development means. For the record, this details the process. It is an imperfect document, a reflection of the imperfect details provided to Disney II by the District. 

To be honest, the process from March 31 through today has stunk. Half of my neighbors won't talk to me or to the smattering of other Disney II families who share our neighborhood. I don't really blame them; envy is a powerful and difficult emotion. I wish every parent really had the options that the system has led us to believe that we have. Because choice in the context of elementary education is a fallacy. Choice is applicable to a select few--those with the means to pay for private or parochial school and the lucky souls whose names were chosen out of a hat.* 

The gradual dissolution of my relationships with my neighbors--especially because I have opted to engage them--bothers me. CPS's School Actions policies and the media have primed everyone for a fight. Although I am open to debate, I don't want to fight with anyone. I believe every one of the statements I made at every CPS public meeting. My intent, and the intentions of those intimately involved in the Disney II expansion project, are good.

But the part of this that bothers me the most is this feeling that we are all fighting for scraps. While listening to a handful of parents and teachers express outrage at CPS in the guise of rejecting Disney II at Monday's meeting, I was reminded of my earlier work with Raise Your Hand and its initial mission of equal funding for all. We banded together to show CPS that we want a bigger pie rather than fight each other to get a bigger slice. Unfortunately, fighting for scraps is exactly what has happened in the public comment portion of the expansion process.

This is, quite frankly, ridiculous. I am not part of a scheme to subjugate high-poverty, low-resources students and their families within the public school system.  Growing our school by 200 students next year is the best example of meeting our priorities that I can give. As I wrote last year, there is a difficulty in setting and funding to priorities within CPS. Antoinette Sea-Gerald wants equity for charter schools? Belding wants equity? I want equity too.  



* More on what that means for me later. 

Utilization Meeting, Round Two

CPS released its "schools still on the table for possible closure" list a few weeks ago. There are no schools in the massively overcrowded O'Hare network on it. But that hasn't seemed to stop the conjecture about what is going to happen to the only two under-performing, under-utilized schools within the network. Last week, GIPNA circulated its proposal to the Board of Education. My reaction to late-in-the-game GIPNA proposals has hit nerves in the past, and I anticipate that this one will as well.

At today's O'Hare network community meeting, representatives from 13 schools spoke in 6-minute segments about the challenges faced by their communities. Three schools did not speak about overcrowding. Murphy school was one of them. The other two were Roosevelt H.S. and Disney II.

Murphy's LSC chair, Roberta Salas, and other representatives focused their comments on how Disney II is going to take over "their" neighborhood school, Thurgood Marshall Middle School, and how the community will feel the loss of this highly prized neighborhood jewel.

As both a current Disney II parent and Independence Park resident, I find this stance presumptuous and misleading. First, as I noted later, CPS has not yet identified a facility for the expansion of Disney II, which the board approved in December. This lack fuels conjecture and negative sentiment. Decisions should not be made based on rumors. Second, it's misleading for Murphy community to act like TMMS is their neighborhood school.

Indeed, as Paul Flaherty, TMMS principal (who was in the audience, but did not make public comment) told me after the meeting, TMMS has four feeder schools; Murphy began retaining its 7th and 8th graders in 2010, so very few go on to TMMS. The vast majority of TMMS students come in on a bus, from Falconer, Henry, Barry, and Volta. When speaking candidly of his students' challenges, Mr. Flaherty told me that although I live within two blocks of the building, I am ineligible to serve on its (anemic) LSC because I do not live in the school's community. When I looked up the attendance boundaries for TMMS on the CPS site, the map overlays do not correspond in any way to the GIPNA boundary.


Roosevelt High School was the third school in the O'Hare network not facing overcrowding. A teacher, Tim Meegan, spoke. He urged parents concerned about high school to consider Roosevelt, and spoke for 6+ minutes about the scourge of charters and the importance of public education, citing study after study. I had no idea that the investors in charter school organizations enjoy a 39 percent tax credit, for example.

Perception V. Reality

Last week, I had a great opportunity to meet with a group of parents and Chicago Public Schools' CEO Jean-Claude Brizard. When Brizard was first named to the post, I heard a fair amount of negativity about his methods, approach, and success rate. But: I like the guy. I've found him to be approachable, thoughtful, and well-informed. On Thursday, he ponied up to the table with myself and parents from Scammon, Taft, Farnsworth, Canty, Peterson, Jahn, Hibbard, Roosevelt, Foreman, Portage Park, and Kelvyn Park, and introduced himself as a parent of three children who also happened to be the CEO of CPS.

And then he took and answered questions for an hour.

There were essentially three themes in the discussion:
- perception versus reality within CPS
- Common Core and curriculum
- funding / resources

I'll cover the first one in this post.

I think the issue of perception versus reality is prescient. During the conversation, Brizard made a few conflicting points, a reflection of the wider issue. He pointed put that there is "a crisis of 'good' available seat" within CPS, but noted that this is a perception that can create reality. For example, he said, Lincoln Elementary has gross overcrowding, but the network in which Lincoln resides has 1,000 more seats than bodies to fill them. Why does this happen? Is Lincoln infinitely better than Alcott or other schools within the network? Or is it a perception?

I have long believed that if everyone sent their kids to the local elementary school and made the time investment, these schools would quickly because the ideal schools we expect and demand for our children. To wit: Nettelhorst, Coonley, Agassiz, Blaine, Burley, Skinner West, Hamilton, Belding, Portage Park. Taft, Amundsen, and Schurz may be next on the high school front. The problem, however, is the perception that these--or any school--are broken beyond repair. (The turnaround plan unfortunately runs against this current.) However, I fully recognize that this takes a leap of faith and it may seem easier to make the investment in a "new school" in the form of a charter.

Brizard noted that the crisis of quality high school seats is really a crisis of (mis)perception that the only H.S. worth pursuing are on the selective enrollment list. As a parent from Taft noted, this does everyone a disservice. Like CPSObsessed, I've got my eye on the H.S. piece. (And given what comes out of The Boy's mouth these days, I'd say he's thinking about it too.) The Boy is certainly on track to do well in a challenging H.S. setting, but I'm not sure that a highly competitive, non-local high school is the best choice for him, or for any of my children. I'd love to see the city as a whole rework our collective definition of "choice" and "options" so that more students and their families really can choose.

As an aside, did you know that Taft has an average ACT score of 24? I didn't. And that is a fantastic achievement for "just" a neighborhood school; Brizard shared that the college boards consider 21 to be the absolute minimum for a student to achieve college success.

But: how do schools like Taft get the word out? Brizard suggested a few things that his office is launching in the next year. One is to relaunch the principal for a day program as a culmination of a successful partnership between schools and corporations or agencies. Another is a Blueprint for Success in community engagement, which will come out in draft form in late June.

The crisis of quality seats can also be blamed for Brizard's answer to my question: is there a way to revisit the Human Capital issue of teachers' children enrolling in the SE and magnet schools where they work?

Last summer's Blue Ribbon Commission referred this issue to Human Capital. Somehow, I don't see the union fighting for this issue in their list of demands. Although the discussion at the Listening Tour indicated to me that many people do not support teacher "preference," I just can't let this one go.

I believe that giving our teachers the opportunity to enroll their children in the schools in which they teach is nothing short of good policy. It seems ridiculous to me that my 3 children can get into Disney II because of another good policy to keep families together, but my children's teacher, who has been working there for 4 years (and yes, even in the summer), cannot enroll her child through a special teacher lottery when he or she is ready to enter K. At Disney II, we are talking about 1-2 entry-level spots per year, or about 4 percent of the class. In fall 2012, the year The Tot enters K, 54 percent of the class comprises siblings.

A teacher preference policy supports keeping families together. And more than that, it benefits the school communities themselves. Would I rather have my kids' teacher available to run an after-school program at Disney II or would I rather have him/her across town at his/her child's school? What would you choose?

However, Brizard said that although the Board of Education has been debating the issue for months, there is no consensus on the issue either within the board or among CPS parents. To prove his point, he asked the Listening Tour crowd and several people said no.

I'm not going to stop asking. Will you join me?

High School: The New Frontier

Everyone of late seems to be focusing on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): the first standardized assessment of student achievement across nations. Developed by the OECD, the PISA was introduced in 2003 and is administered every three years. In fact, U.S. high school freshmen and sophomores may be taking it right now. 

In our current educational culture, concern about students’ academic achievement has reached a fever pitch. But immediately on the heels of any mention of American students’ academic performance comes the fear that they are not competitive with (read: better than) those students in other countries. We’ve been concerned specifically about our students’ academic competitiveness with Japanese students since I was in high school. And China has been on our radar for awhile as well. But Finland? I think even Scandinavians are similarly astounded. 

I recently heard that the PISA is administered willy-nilly to American students, whereas other countries test only their “college ready” students. I’m not quite sure how a 15-year-old can be considered wholly ready for college, given that many students begin college at 17-19… But in any case, the OECD denies such sifting in its testing methodology.  

To suggest otherwise seems like a massive case of sour grapes, in my opinion. The reality—that American students are not performing as well as we’d expect—has hit a national nerve. But America’s PISA scores cannot be blamed on test methodology or unit of analysis. Certainly, the scores of the elites—like students at Northside Prep, Jones, Payton, Young, etc.—are going to pull up the scores of the masses to produce a PISA score that hovers in the middle of the pack. Even in Chicago, the elites don’t reach 100 percent exceeding rates, and graduation rates are in fact below 90 percent at three selective enrollment high schools (Brooks, King, Lindblom), according to the latest data available on CPS.edu. 

More pressing for the average Chicago parent/child is that admission into the SE high schools is incredibly fierce, with 14,000+ students vying for just 2,000 seats each year. And the number of applicants seems to go up every year. Much has been made about the inadequacies of the current system—but the fact remains that SE high schools are for the elite among the elite. I heard one educator call the practice, “skimming off the cream.” 

To be honest, I am not sure that my kids will be among the elite of the elite. I’m not sure I’d want them to be. They’re smart, they’re curious, and they enjoy the version of elementary learning that they receive at Disney II. But so do thousands of their peers at other good schools across the system. It’s this likely reality that has led me to consider other avenues for my children’s secondary education. And not the kind of avenue that requires a moving truck. Ideally, my kids can attend their local Chicago public high school and build up the knowledge that will help them do well in college and in life.

Our local public high school is Carl Schurz. I believe—and more importantly, Dan Kramer, its principal—believes that it’s an ideal candidate for a community-led or community-supported rebirth. In fact, he launched this effort yesterday through an Arts Showcase, inviting neighbors, community leaders like myself in my role as Disney II PTA president, and local government officials to hear and see Schurz’s performing arts students. Admittedly, I am easily impressed. But I was impressed with the students’ drama scenes, which made me laughed and made me want to cry. I was impressed with the band playing Sousa marches in the library. And I was impressed by the teachers’ interest in and dedication to seeing their students succeed. A 9^th grade piano class? The second longest continuously running orchestra in Illinois? Lit classes that cover grammar and liberal thinking? Except for the piano, it sounds a lot like my suburban high school.

Some in my party argued that it was a masterful display of PR that didn’t address major issues* associated with the school. But it left me with the impression that Schurz could be a viable option for my children and their neighborhood peers. I mean, The Boy is in third grade; by my math, that means that I have about 4-5 years to see Schurz thrive. I think JacquelineEdelberg managed to change Nettelhorst’s image among parents in their well-heeled Lakeview neighborhood within the same span of time.

* The most crucial issue at Schurz is about gangs. Aside from the lawsuit against the former principal of Schurz, Mary Ann Folino, I couldn’t find much information online about the problem, but that’s something Dan Kramer and his team are going to have to address.

Lincoln Park, the Suburbs and High School

On Sunday, I went to dinner for the first time at John's Place in Lincoln Park. I knew only that it was kid-friendly and had to have good food because Melissa has spoken about it. Our party of 9 adults and 3 kids was there for a little over 2 hours. The magician and balloon-blower who came to provide entertainment to The Boy, The Girl and The Tot (Who Isn't) was able to get in some real humor with our audience. He had just blown up balloons for the two kids, two dads and a pregnant mom at an adjacent table. In our time at the restaurant, that table turned over twice while the rest or the restaurant stayed fairly empty. Both times, the table was populated by babies and toddlers and their REI-clad parents.

I remarked upon this with a bit of surprise to my closest urban tablemate, The Dad's cousin's fiancée. She was not surprised, telling me that the neighborhood comprises her peers (mid-30s) with their young children. In fact, she said, one of her friends with two kids used to live in the area until she'd outgrown her condo and moved to the suburbs. 

Ah, the suburbs. I've been a Chicago resident since 2002. This Thanksgiving is the 9th I've spent in this house. I joke to my husband that he'll have to drag me kicking and screaming to the suburbs. And yet.

There it is. Always. Looming over me. Although it did surprise me to learn that the average demographic of Lincoln Park is now essentially a rolled back version of me, what follows doesn't particularly surprise me: Grown-up Trixies and Chads get married, buy condos, have babies and flee to the suburbs. Where the grass is always green and the schools are always good. Or so I'm led to believe. 

Sociologically, I find this phenomenon interesting. I was raised in the suburbs by two former urbanites (NYC). The Dad was raised in the suburbs by one suburbanite and one rural Hoosier. My father (Grandpa Texas) spent my son's first three years trying to convince me that I'd want to move the suburbs. That I should want to move to the suburbs. But, to quote my friend Sonia, I just don't want to.

And I do wonder: what's wrong with me that I don't? After all, it is what people with means do. Among the women of my moms' group, who are all like me: educated women with the means for mobility, whether upward or outward, there are more of us who have moved outside the city than who have retained residency. 

At the moment, I think my reluctance to leave the city has much to do with both luck and a deeply ingrained stubborn streak. In 2008, The Boy won the CPS lottery, gaining admission into what is turning out to be a great public elementary school. By luck again, CPS changed the policy for sibling admissions and The Girl also attends the same great school. Luckily for me, The Dad talked me into a single-family house in what is a really great neighborhood, so I have a garage, patch of grass and three floors upon which we can scatter our stuff. 

The big unknown, of course, is high school. We're still five to six years away from the high school decision, but if time flows at the same rate as it has since 2003, it will be here before we know it. My biggest concern is academics: Will The Boy get into one of the six current selective-enrollment schools in the city? And whether he does or doesn't, how can we hold our schools accountable to meet a high academic standard? What is the formula in the suburbs that makes suburban schools regarded as universally better than Chicago public schools? And can we replicate it? Is there a way to solve the fundamental barriers to success for some CPS students?

The Dad's biggest concern in the high school picture is the social influence: how to keep The Boy out of trouble? Will we hurt our child's overall chances for success if we keep him in an urban school environment? Can you make a "good" kid bad? And how far are we willing to take the social experiment of trying to even the playing field when it comes to our own children's future success or failure, happiness or misery? 

The statistics about high school students' success released by the Chicago Public Schools are grim. These statistics report that only 30 of 100 H.S. freshmen will go on to enter college; only 6 will go to highly selective schools. They consider the University of Illinois one such highly selective school. Yikes! Twenty percent of my suburban high school went to the University of Illinois -- and most of us considered it "slumming it" because we weren't headed for an Ivy. These stats were drawn in part from a 2006 University of Chicago study that suggests that, once again, luck will be on our side in the high school and college admissions process. This reassures me on an academic level, but does nothing to relieve The Dad's concerns about the potential for bad influence.

And it doesn't discount that staying in the city surely promises a lot of work in our future. I'm not sure I have it in me to dig into turning around the local high school.

What about you? Are you planning to stay in the city for the long haul? Do you plan to move to the suburbs? Have you already moved to the suburbs? Do you think there's a way for CPS to turn it around? Are you involved in the CPS process at any level?

High School

As I reached the train platform this morning, I noticed a high school girl wearing sweatpants and a backpack who had just exited the train and was walking down, presumably to go to school. I assume that she was on her way to nearby Schurz High School. In about 6 years, high school for The Boy will be on our minds. It's really not that far away. If schools get better by parent/community involvement and marketing power, maybe it's time to get involved in the local high schools in the hopes that by the time my 7-year-old is ready for them, they'll be worth attending?

However, high school is still a daunting thought to me. First, there are only a handful of selective enrollment high schools in the city, which means that competition is fierce. One group, the North Side High School Initiative, is trying to start the process to improve options at the high school level. Unfortunately, this group is from/focused on wards 32, 42, 46 and 47; I'm in ward 39. 

Second, and slightly more upsetting, is the issue of school violence at the high school level. Last week, I attended the League of Women Voters' lunch talk on school violence in CPS. Unfortunately, I missed the first 5 and the last 20 minutes of the presentation because I had to work, and missed the speaker's name. However, he was an administrator with Chicago Public Schools and presented data from a September 2009 PowerPoint deck on school violence. While the deck did present some good information (80% of school violence takes place in 38 schools, for example), the presenter had taken the CPS spin class, and could/would not give me specific answers to some of my questions (like the names of the 38 schools). 

I'm committed to CPS through 8th grade, but will we be city-dwellers after 2017? It has nothing to do with street cred; I'm not sure I can hack the politics of everything.