By: Mark Glennon*
The Chicago Board of Education is poised to end its school rating system, as reported this week by the Chicago Sun-Times. What will replace it? Nothing, for at least a year. The Chicago Teachers Union has been trying to end the ratings system for at least three years, allowing plenty of time to come up with a better alternative. Since that never happened, there will be no accountability until a bureaucratic mess produces what is nearly certain to be a far less meaningful solution.
The ranking was known as SQRP, which stands for School Quality Rating Policy. As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, SQRP scores haven’t even been updated since the pandemic began. The first ratings under SQRP were issued for the 2014-15 school year, based on data from the previous year, according to the Sun-Times.
The rankings were based mainly on student test scores, academic growth, closing of achievement gaps, school culture and climate, attendance, graduation and preparation for post-graduation success.
As you would expect, the CTU would have none of that.
“Its superficial measures—heavily reliant on standardized test scores—don’t value the culture that educators and students work so hard to cultivate in their school, the CTU has said. SQRP “contributes to the ‘hunger games’ culture in which schools must desperately compete to avoid a snowball effect of harmful repercussions,” according to the union. CPS has wanted the schools to “abolish SQRP and reject any rating system that evaluates schools based on test scores, attendance, or other measures that are to a large degree measures of the socioeconomic level of the students rather than the quality of the school.”
CTU does have a valid point about recognizing variance in the challenges different schools face. Segregated schools that serve large numbers of low-income students tend to receive lower ratings, they say, which is surely true.
But that only argues for additional rankings that recognize and adjust for those factors, thereby identifying the schools that are relatively good or bad at beating the odds. There’s no reason, however, that the public shouldn’t be also be given broad, objective rankings based on test scores, attendance levels and the like, as SQRP did.
But Chicago has chosen to deal with the issue by doing nothing, dropping all rankings.
CTU’s other objection to SQRP is as you would expect — that it’s racist.
Here, their argument is confusing. Their document condemning SQRP says schools with white middle-class and upper-class students tend to receive higher ratings, but then says, “These schools also tend to hire and retain white teachers.” Not sure what they are saying there.
The document goes on to say that “a school’s lack of educator diversity doesn’t have a negative impact on SQRP ratings at all, which is further evidence of the racial bias baked into SQRP. Of the 7 schools with no Black teachers, 57 have [the top] level 1 or 1+ ratings. The end result is that SQRP stigmatizes schools in predominantly Black and Brown communities while reinforcing white supremacy.” So, apparently they are saying it’s racist not to mark rankings down for schools that have all white or all black/brown teachers, though it’s hard tell what they mean.
The pending resolution for the year-long process to replace SQRL is bureaucratic gobbledygook at its worst. It calls for this “RAPID decision-making framework that is a useful tool to promote radical clarity”:
Confused? Surely this, showing the desired outcome will clear things up:
It’s perhaps no surprise that CPS teachers don’t like standardized tests and other conventional, objective criteria as part of any ranking. According to one reported study, CPS teachers who took the ACT test when they were in high school averaged a score of 19 out of a possible 36 — which is worse than the average median score for all students nationwide. In fact, Illinois students beat the teachers, scoring a 21 on average at the time. That study is from 2008 though I am aware of nothing more recent.
What’s definitely no surprise is that accountability of any kind is anathema to CTU because Chicago schools are an abject failure — aside from a few competitive-entry schools, some of which are excellent.
It’s not just Chicago. We will be reporting soon in detail on the collapse of government schools across most of the state.
They cannot be reformed. School choice is the only answer.
And, yes, racism is part of the picture, but not the way unions say. Wealthier, white families more often have the means to send their children to private schools where public schools are failing. Lower income families don’t. The true inequality is inequality of choice. Only vouchers, or some other form of school choice, will end it.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints
Read more about the Chicago Public Schools:
- Six sources of Chicago Teachers Union power – Wirepoints
- Chicago teachers are paid some of the highest salaries of any big district in the nation. What do Chicago parents get in return?
- How can 84% of Chicago Public Schools students graduate when only 26% of 11th graders are proficient in reading, math?
- Chicago’s public schools are broken. It’s time to give parents school choice. – Op-Ed by Wirepoints’ Glennon and Dabrowski – Chicago Tribune
- Give in to the most militant teachers union in the country and this is what you get: Another walkout
- Families continue to flee Chicago Public Schools as it loses 14,000 students in 2022
- True inequality: In-class education at Chicago’s Catholic schools but remote learning at public schools
- Chicago leaders’ hypocritical stance on school choice
- Chicago teachers contract costs a record $1.5 billion, and that doesn’t even include pension costs
- Chicago Public Schools fiasco continues: Just half of teachers show up to class as CTU threatens strike to keep schools closed
- How can 84% of Chicago Public Schools students graduate when only 26% of 11th graders are proficient in reading, math? –
- Chicago teachers contract costs a record $1.5 billion, and that doesn’t even include pension costs
- Look Who Is Standing In The Schoolhouse Door Now: The Chicago Teachers Union – Wirepoints
- Here’s A Comprehensive Solution For All Chicago School Financial Problems And The Teacher Strike
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
We’ve been doing it to the students for years: “Here are the expectations. Oh. You can’t meet them? Let us lower them for you, then.”
It stands to reason then, that the system which no longer has any standards for its clientele, should then feel that it also needs no standards. If we don’t care about their performance (unless it’s how well a student demonstrates the ability to use preferred pronouns), why should you care about ours?
FYI – we graduated a kid last year (8th grade) who showed up for remote learning 12 times. Thumbs up all around.
As a former cps parent, and yes cps student, for many years ago, any informed push-up parent worth their salt already knows what are the few good cps schools and knows generally to avoid the neighborhood schools in favor of magnat/selective enrollment schools (the cps schools sharkey & I’m sure gates and most ctu members send their kids to). The selective enrolment hustle is really more of a class thing than a racial thing. If ctu was really serious about all their equity bs rhetoric they would avocate for eliminating all the magnate/ selective enrolment cps schools. But instead all… Read more »
Why even bother with the selectives and magnets. Just move to a decent suburb and the schools are good without the hassle.
Sigh,
Our Chicago and so much of the (dis) United States of America has fallen down in to George Orwell “1984” levels of dishonesty, woke, political indoctrination. We literally can’t teach basic math in a lot of public schools because…
“That’s Racist”!
As Orwell once said “Freedom begins with the ability to say 2 + 2 = 4. Once that is achieved all else follows.” (That’s my recollection).
Once again, an Illinois public employee union gets what the union wants. In this case, that would be more vastly expensive “woke” Orwellian nanny-state day care camouflaged (not very well) as the kind of education that prepares students for a self-supporting adult life. Everyone gets an “A”. Everyone graduates – thoroughly prepared by their “teachers” to understand how, as an adult, they will go about getting the same taxpayer funded food-n-transportation-n-housing-n-health care they received for free as a “student”. Prepared to be able, or willing, to fill out an employment application, balance a checkbook, save for retirement, raise their own… Read more »
It’s a race to the bottom in virtually every meaningful measurement for the City of Chicago. We’ve now reached the point where they don’t even want to be measured. It’s as if they’re saying, we know we suck, but we don’t want to be reminded about it. Run strictly by Democrats for 70 years, right into the ground.
It’s the old CTU game of damned if you do damned if you don’t. In a school district where 50% of the teachers are white but only 10% of the students are white, what do they expect?
Strange to hear CTU not only call out their own members for finding a school they like and staying there but also implying that minority teachers are inadequate.