Highlights from Wirepoints across print, television and radio.
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
The Equality of Failure
The city’s school board wants to cancel selective-enrollment schools that are a
path upward for low-income students.
By The Editorial Board
What if you could create public schools that are racially and economically diverse with 90% of children reading at grade level? That’s the profile of a handful of selective-enrollment schools in Chicago that have been a success for many parents. Instead of replicating the model, the Chicago Public School system (CPS) wants to end it.
The Chicago school board last week passed a resolution that endorses phasing out selective enrollment. The purpose would be to “transition away” from test-based enrollment policies “that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools,” the board said. That would cover Chicago’s 11 selective high schools that rank academically among the best in the state and nationwide.
The schools are a beacon for children from all neighborhoods, and admission is weighted to allocate spots among different income groups. The idea is to bring in high achievers from all backgrounds, ensuring that children from difficult circumstances can thrive. At Jones College Prep High School, 91% of students read at grade level. At Northside College Prep, 92% do, according to Wirepoints and the Illinois State Board of Education.
But Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson sees the success of black and Hispanic students at selective-enrollment schools as a threat. “When those students succeed at a selective enrollment, particularly black students,” Mr. Johnson said in a 2018 conversation, “what ends up happening is all other black students who don’t meet those same standards get shamed. . . . ‘See, so and so made it out, what’s your problem?’”
His solution is the equality of failure. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) agrees, noting in a statement that while selective-enrollment schools were intended to desegregate school districts, they have now “contributed to more segregation.” The lack of resources at neighborhood schools, they say, is a form of “educational apartheid” while selective enrollment schools “uplift the few and usher in inequities to the many.” In fact, selective enrollments narrow the racial achievement gap that is typical in Chicago.
At Bronzeville Classical Elementary, a selective school on the south side, 73% of students are black and 72% of the black students read at grade level. For other public schools in the district, only 26% of students read at grade level, according to the Illinois Report Card. Perversely, the school board would prefer to cancel Bronzeville and send more children to lousy neighborhood schools.
The school board claims selective enrollment succeeds at the expense of neighborhood schools. The truth is they succeed where neighborhood schools are already failing. They are on the chopping block because their success undermines the union line that public schools merely need more money.
CTU President Stacy Davis Gates sends her son to private school, but many can’t afford that option. The CTU worked hard to end a scholarship program that allowed families school choice at local private schools. Now they are seeking to end a route to academic achievement even at union-staffed public schools. Mr. Johnson said during his campaign that he wouldn’t end the school’s selective-enrollment schools. What does he say now?
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
School Choices dies in Illinois
The union-Democratic machine kills scholarships for 9,600 poor children.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker lets it happen.
By The Editorial Board
Sometimes the worst political scandals occur in plain sight, even if most of the press corps chooses not to notice. That’s what happened last week in Illinois, where the Democratic-union machine killed scholarships for 9,600 low-income children.
The state and national teachers union made a priority of blocking an extension of the Invest in Kids program that provided a 75% state tax credit for donations to help families afford private schools. The unions claim the credit drained money from public schools, but public funding has increased nearly $2 billion since Invest in Kids began under former Gov. Bruce Rauner. Only 35% of Illinois children read at grade level, according to Wirepoints, so no wonder there are more than 20,000 children on the Invest in Kids waiting list.
Current Gov. J.B. Pritzker refused to help save the program, even for children currently benefiting from it. Those families will now have to find some other way to pay tuition. Empower Illinois, the state’s largest scholarship-granting organization, says it will seek private donors to cover tuition.
But the most common donation was $1,000, and many of those smaller donors may disappear without the tax credit.
Gov. Pritzker is a billionaire, and his Pritzker Family Foundation could help. According to Crain’s Chicago Business Journal, the foundation has donated $8.3 million to Milton Academy, the Massachusetts boarding school Mr. Pritzker attended. It has donated $2.5 million to Duke University, according to Carolina Journal, and $100 million to Northwestern Law School, which has renamed itself in his honor. Invest in Kids is a bargain by comparison, requiring about $71 million for the coming year.
Illinois is now the first state to kill a major school-choice program. The scandal reflects the bloody-mindedness of the unions that want to snuff out even minor competition to retain their monopoly. And it reveals how little most Democrats care about the children they imprison in these failure factories.
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