By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
CPS shrank by another 14,000 students this school year, a 4 percent-plus drop from last year’s 341,000 enrollment, according to a recent CPS release.
While it might be convenient to blame COVID for the drop, that would be a mistake. The district has now lost 25 percent, or more than 100,000 students, since its population exceeded 430,000 in 2000. Families are increasingly leaving a school district that doesn’t work for them.
The flight is being led by black families, many who are fleeing not just failing schools, but the city of Chicago as well. U.S. Census data shows over 180,000 blacks left Chicago between 2000 and 2010, and another 85,000 left between 2010 and 2020.
While it would be wrong to blame just CPS schools for the flight – crime, lack of opportunity and the rising cost of living also contribute – it’s hard to ignore how poorly CPS is doing in educating Chicago’s minority children. Blacks and Hispanics now make up about 80 percent of the district’s enrollment, while whites now make up only 11 percent.
Just 30 percent of black students meet or exceed reading standards in the 3rd grade and the number falls to just 14 percent for 11th graders.
Results for Hispanics are only somewhat better and also depict the district’s failure. The numbers for Hispanics are: 37 percent meet or exceed reading standards in 3rd grade and just 25 percent do by the 11th grade.
Focus on the 3 R’s, not equity
New district CEO Pedro Martinez will have his hands full trying to stem the outflow – and he’s right to talk about under-enrolled schools. Wirepoints wrote about the district’s most-empty and worst-performing schools in 2018, where we highlighted how dismal the situation had become.
Student populations had collapsed, as had building use rates, while none of the 17 most underpopulated high schools had more than 8 percent of its students ready for college.
But unless Martinez changes tack from what CPS has been doing for decades, you can expect him to join Lightfoot in calling for both more money and more “equity-based” policies. Those are both failed goals, as we’ve documented here, here and here and in Wirepoints’ most recent podcast on equity and Critical Race Theory here.
CPS’ operating spending per student has more than doubled from $8,000 to $18,000 since 2000, and it’s done nothing to stem the tide of student flight. That’s a 121 percent increase in per student spending, more than double the 50 percent increase in inflation over the entire period.
Even the promises of ballooned COVID budgets haven’t been able to persuade CPS families to stay. At $9.3 billion this year, CPS will spend a total of $28,000 per student (operational, capital and all other spending), compared to just $19,000 in pre-COVID 2019.
The focus on equity, particularly under Mayor Lightfoot, is also derailing the district’s focus on student performance. CPS says it has “a focus on equity in all we do” as part of its mission.
The problem is, that devotion to equity is bound to make everything worse for CPS students. A focus on equality of outcome leads to perverse results where success is defined down.
It’s why CPS can unabashedly celebrate a graduation rate of 82.5 percent – read the press release here – even though only a quarter of district high-schoolers can actually read at grade level.
The ultimate expression of “equity” may be to get rid of measurement altogether. The progressive state of Oregon recently did just that. As reported by the WSJ:
Politicians and school officials in Oregon are embarrassed that too many minority children fail tests designed to confirm they’ve mastered the “essential skills” that high school is meant to teach. So in the name of racial equity, they’ve now done the progressive thing. Instead of lifting graduation rates by boosting student performance, they’re eliminating the proficiency requirement.
Don’t be surprised if CPS moves in a similar direction.
Chicago families would be far better off if CEO Martinez focused on improving the most basic functions of CPS, including:
- Stabilizing the district’s spending and massive pension debts.
- Obsessing about the three Rs.
- Controlling the labor costs and the power of the Chicago Teachers Union.
- Consolidating the district’s resources as it shrinks.
- Expanding school choice far beyond charters. Vouchers and ESAs are the real solution to keeping kids in Chicago and making CPS more competitive.
Absurd as those goals may appear to some – and even politically suicidal to Martinez – it’s the only way to improve outcomes for Chicago students.
The other choice is for Martinez to continue doing the same old, same old, meaning the best he can hope for is controlled shrinkage as parents continue to leave both CPS and Chicago.
Read more about Chicago Public Schools’ many crises:
- Test scores: Rahm’s celebration of test results ignores how cps is still failing students
- Finances: Chicago students receive more state funding than the average Illinois student
- Enrollment: The fiscal insanity in Chicago continues. Despite $22.7 billion pension shortfall, Chicago Public Schools to add 2,000 employees
- Operational costs: Chicago teachers contract costs a record $1.5 billion, and that doesn’t even include pension costs
- Union power: Appease the Chicago Teachers Union and this is what you get
- Union power: Pritzker Signs Expansion Of CTU Powers
- Labor laws: Illinois strike laws prioritize Chicago Teachers Union over children
- School choice: Chicago leaders’ hypocritical stance on school choice
Appendix
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Sad how many miscarriages of institutional goals in our country, and particularly in our state, go on and on without mitigation because an obfuscated function is camouflaged as success.
In this case, that would be pretending that a very expensive and marginally successful program of nanny-state daycare – relieving underemployed and unemployable family members of the burdens involved in supervising and feeding their soon to be unemployable children – is the same thing as education.
Aside from a dozen magnet and selective-enrollment schools, Chicago Public School system’s primary mission is providing supervised albeit low-quality day-time “child-care”. Low and moderate-income Chicago parents, themselves poorly-educated, are often unable to procure competent education for their children. Chicago’s privately-run schools are often functionally and financially inaccessible to these parents and their children. Meanwhile, there’s zero CPS management-accountability. No one truly expects “quality” educational services from CPS teachers. Given supposed average CPS teacher-score of “ACT19”, not much can be expected, much less delivered, at said average CPS school. Many CPS schools are de facto daytime “holding-facilities” for children, free food… Read more »
“Low and moderate-income Chicago parents, themselves poorly-educated, are often unable to procure competent education for their children.”
Not unable, just unwilling to move to the suburbs like the hundreds of thousands of other low to moderate income families have done for generations. Visit any grocery store in middle to lower middle income suburbs and you quickly realize that it is the united nations out here. We’re all americans and there’s nothing wrong with anyone who seeks a better and safer life. Just don’t vote democrat and destroy this place.
got to be conservative thinker dan proft
Stories like this out of Baltimore do indeed suggest that the urban school model is often one of a social welfare service agency, with education well down on the priority list. See this story out of Baltimore: https://www.yahoo.com/now/least-41-baltimore-high-school-121900046.html And this one too: https://www.foxnews.com/us/baltimore-student-fails-classes-top-half
It makes me think that the situation in these areas are hopeless – a very difficult perception to adopt.
School Choice is the only solution, if your focus is education of the kids.
9.3 billion for daycare, until they qualify for prison.
For $28,000 per student, you could hire one excellent teacher for $80K to teach four children exclusively in one room in any of the schools, and still have $32K leftover for facilities, books and supplies. For four children! This tells you that something is very wrong here. There are many people grifting off the system, and combined with parental indifference, it is a colossal failure. As much as I think CTU is a despicable organization, I don’t blame them entirely. I blame the parents of these kids who apparently do not invest any time into their children’s future. Parent(s): Raising… Read more »
You’ve said it well: “ Parent(s): Raising a child and educating them for life is hard work. It takes all of your leisure time, and requires great sacrifice. If you think that just letting them sit in front of a screen and then dropping them off and picking them up from school is doing your duty, you have failed.” Truly good parents can allow their children to imagine a life beyond their immediate experience and help instill the sense of motivation generally required to be part of it. Failing that, children tend to drift into an attitude of accepting the… Read more »
Parents, along with the personal sacrifices you make for your children, you must pay ever-increasing salaries and benefits to the group that graduates 85% of children while only 25% of them have even been taught to read. And don’t you say a word against the teachers and their unions, because they are all heroes you know.
Good parents know they are a crucial part of their childrens chances for a successful life. Those of a lesser intellect always blame others. Now, who should be blamed for your status in the pecking order of possibilities?
Did I say anything that wasn’t true?
Guess not, thus the smear tactics.
I’m not knowledgable about you nor have an opinion in that regard other than the comment you make for blaming others for the lack of success of so many CPS students. Adults not in the immediate family have no authority to command any student to do anything with only the rare exceptions. Children have the right and ability to take advice/instruction or leave it. Generally speaking, guess which group tends to find more success in school and otherwise. The greater blame falls upon the immediate household who sets standards or does not and who follow-through with periodic, frequent progress checks… Read more »
You know, James, I actually agree with you that the current cultural climate makes it almost impossible to teach many children. I know that I wouldn’t want the job. But teacher unions have advocated for the policies that produced this mess for decades. They also lobby constantly for more money for schools and teachers, while knowing full well that the problem will not be fixed if only school systems were given more money. They know it, because they, too, point to parents and culture issues as the problem, while simultaneously demanding more money to “fix” it. Liberal policies have created… Read more »
I don’t know at what point America’s infatuation with education as a credentialled process became so important in one’s career aspirations, but we all know for better or worse that we now live in a “sheepskin society.” Our grandparents lived in an era where that was mostly untrue, and the whole education was given the respect it deserved. So, my immediate take is that forced education is not the answer for creating a more truly educated society. LIke other aspects of life, once a person has been exposed to the “basics,” then furhter instruction should be treated more optionally. Forcing… Read more »
I enjoyed these comments. They made me think! I think education is ripe for some new thinking, with a lot more pragmatism as the foundation. We live in a world where it seems that many people lack basic skills to survive. I think of all those years wasted, staring off into the windows in a school classroom for these kids. But your comments are nicely said. Thanks for sharing what is clearly something you have some expertise about. We probably don’t agree on everything, but that’s what a discussion is for. I’m not offended nor afraid of what you might… Read more »
As the aging process has slowly altered my thinking I remember so well my parents having attitudes and skills resulting from being children and young adults during the Great Depression. They often mentioned that they learned a lot from that experience. Things once thought as permanent sometimes are not, times spent with family are important and can be a source of comfort if all are treated with respect and learning life skills don’t always require money or even formal schooling. My father could do almost literally anything of a practical nature in the way of building or repairing things whether… Read more »
We need a new theory of pedagogy, since the model we are now using is clearly no longer working. But rather than re-evaluating our educational models, unions (and by extension the teachers who vote with them) are doubling down on failure by pushing CRT. This toxic stew of irrational thought and hate will end up putting a target on the back of every white teacher in CPS. Students are taught that whites are oppressors. Do you think that a teenager will make an exception to that rule for his teacher? How long before a teacher is shot and killed in… Read more »
Educational philosophies come and go but sometimes a bit too quickly to fully gauge their worth. Its a bit similar to the Presidential election cycle where what’s widely praised at the beginning of one term is equally reviled at its conclusion. The imaginary pendulum of the acceptance for public education’s stated goals and how well they are accomplished also can be expected to swing because such institutions are political in their design and financing. What’s considered a good pathway for the public’s acceptance changes with the political mood swings of the times.
Screw the CPS and CTIU- Best gift ever for your children
They pluck the high achieving kids out and put them in magnet schools. Chicago has a few HS in the top 100 nationally. North side prep, Payton, are as good as any in the country. Whitney Young does a good job too. There are others. If you look at the numbers, Chicago has 6 regions. In the Southern regions they barely have enough kids to fill the college prep track. They have 60% at grade level only. High poverty is a big driver. The biggest predictor of educational success is education of the mother. There are outliers, but that holds… Read more »
Good, when people buy a car or new TV set they do some research, they look for QUALITY, and those car and TV set companies get rewarded. But because public education is “free” and there is only one brand to choose from, even worse only one zip code brand to choose from. Nobody has any skin in the game, schools know they are the only choice, so parents know they have no ability to shop for QUALITY other than moving to the burbs. The one good side for CPS is that teaching staffs can be reduced, excessive buildings closed, janitorial… Read more »
Rick–at cps if you inquire about your kids neighborhood school test scores or academic rating your a RACIST. But of course, if your comrad sharkey you don’t have your kids at the neighborhood schools for loosers ( who does) but have them at one the FEW top performing selective enrolment schools instead… if ever you want to experience lib hypocrisy at its finest, get your kid in one of cps top selective enrolment hs.
Can this be correct ? 4% fewer students but 4% more employees. Looks like piss poor management.
CPS is attempting to hire social workers and nurses for the schools that lost them during Rahm’s administration. Otherwise, CPS’s problem continues to be asset allocation. Too many underutilized schools.
Arne Duncan also doesn’t see any problems with the lack of basic educational achievement in CPS.
As to the five points of focus suggested by Wirepoints, they make sense but in any near term sense they will not happen. One of the lessons of the massive Kansas City tax experiment in the 80’s and 90’s is that the city public schools are a key source of community employment- particularly among those with modest academic preparation and achievement – and employment concerns drive conduct and policy, Despite billions and billions, Kansas City schools declined in enrollment and quality. The market eventually corrected, with many schools closing in the 2010’s. But who wants to wait to see market… Read more »
This article states CPS is dropping mandatory academic MAP test. Testing is now voluntary. And schools or students can voluntarily take MAP or something called Skyline or nothing at all. Dropping testing was all heavily pushed by CTU. What a complete joke at +$28,000 per student
https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2021/7/28/22598976/chicago-will-drop-nwea-map-adopt-skyline-curriculum-testing-amid-questions-about-covid-academic-loss