By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
No big deal, the Chicago Sun-Times and its partner WBEZ want us to think. CPS’ continued loss of students might just be a good thing: the “silver lining” of fewer students means more money for the kids who remain.
It’s an absurd position for the newspaper’s Editorial Board to highlight, given everything it knows about CPS’ long-running leadership and union failures. CPS has already lost more than 100,000 students, about 25 percent of its enrollment, since 2000 and the expected loss soon of tens of thousands more won’t suddenly be good.
We’re blunt because the Sun-Times has access to the same data Wirepoints has: The Illinois Report Card’s performance data, ILEARN’s financial data and CPS’ annual budgets and enrollment history. All of it shows that massive increases in per student spending over the last two decades have done nothing to improve outcomes or convince Chicago parents to keep kids at CPS. Per student spending has doubled to $28,000 since 2013.
The Sun-Times could have reached countless other conclusions in its editorial: shut down empty schools, dramatically roll back teacher union powers, reconstitute the entire system or create universal school choice for all CPS kids. Or some combination of them all.
Instead, the board laid out a false hope that maybe, this time, more shrinkage might be good.
CPS’ failures
To be fair, the Sun-Times did write an obligatory critique of CPS’ many problems. It mentioned the district administration’s failures and wrote of the “well-documented flight of Black families” escaping Chicago due to crime and a lack of opportunities.
But in presenting its flawed conclusion, it ignored, willfully or not, several critical facts.
1. As enrollment has collapsed, CPS’ total spending has already doubled from $14,000 to $28,000 per student. The $28,000 per student was the real cost to Chicago and Illinois residents in 2022. It includes all the capital, debt and operating expenses taxpayers are on the hook for to run CPS.
Expect per student spending to jump even higher next year. A $9.4 billion budget with even fewer students means CPS could spend a record $30,000 per student.
2. That increased spending hasn’t helped with student achievement. In pre-Covid 2019, just 17 percent of black students and 25 percent of Hispanics could read at grade level. Overall, only about a quarter of the entire CPS student body was proficient at reading and math. And post-Covid 2021 scores are even worse.
3. Funding has gone to prop up increasingly empty schools. One-third of CPS schools are less than half full – over 150 of the city’s 478 “traditional” schools. And just look at the bottom 20, which we recently wrote about. Schools like Manley High are just 5 percent filled and only 2 percent of its students can read.
The education system has clearly abandoned these children. It’s a crime to keep them trapped in those empty, failing schools.
4. There’s a major disconnect between reading proficiencies and graduation rates for Chicago seniors. Over 77 percent of CPS students graduated in 2019 despite the fact that only a quarter of them could read at grade level the year before.
The disconnect was even worse in 2021. Mayor Lightfoot and CPS bragged about pushing the graduation rate up to 84 percent despite the worse student outcomes that resulted from remote learning, the teacher walkout and other Covid disruptions. It makes no sense.
5. There’s a major disconnect between teacher evaluations and student outcomes. In 2019, 91 percent of teachers were rated proficient or excellent. In 2020, in the midst of Covid and remote learning, the rating was 98 percent. And even more stunning, the 2021 ratings reached 100 percent.
So, not a single CPS teacher needed improvement in 2021? Doesn’t that deserve at least a mention by the Sun-Times?
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Some might say we’re making a big deal out of one paragraph in an editorial. But the inclusion of “silver-lining” was deliberate. Editorials are by definition, strategic. Which is why it shouldn’t be ignored.
Talk of a “silver-lining,” no matter how half-hearted, is wrong considering CPS already spends $28,000 per student to deliver dismal results, empty schools, and little to no accountability.
It’s no wonder so many parents have simply given up fighting or have packed up and left Chicago.
Wirepoints has no doubt that CPS kids can perform when given the right environment, but it will take far more than money to make that happen. We’ll leave the details of that for later, but if recent polling is any indication, the changes will be driven by school choice.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- More failure at Chicago Public Schools: About one-third of traditional schools are half empty or worse
- The opportunity that Chicago – and Illinois – kids need is real school choice
- Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system
- Video: Poor achievement, zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system
- How can 84% of Chicago Public Schools students graduate when only 26% of 11th graders are proficient in reading, math?
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.
The silver lining is that many Chicago school systems can now spend a larger portion of the budget on teachers and retirees. I mean this is great! Lavish spending on students was getting in the way of funding our teachers and retired teachers. The students were unable to learn anyway. One hundred percent of our teachers are excellent or proficient so it’s ok the dead weight is leaving. Money was just being squandered on students. This will allow more time for teachers to advocate for political issues that are important to them. Teachers union strikes will be less harmful to… Read more »
Keep polishing that turd CPS
Once again folks, don’t confuse education with a government jobs program.
Public schools fail the students not only in Illinois & the problem starts from the quality of teacher preparation, general system of education, those in charge of education, indoctrination of the kids vs. teaching them real hisotry and science, language and math. We fail them on all fronts. Unless we separate education from wokeness, we will fall behind as a country behind the whole world. America used to be a country that promoted talent, hard work and achievments. Now it’s collecting criminal garbage from all over the world and provides them with all teh resources stolen form hard working Americans.
Let me describe this so-called “silver lining” in terms that impacted me. My high school started out with 500 students. By the time the SAT/ACT rolled around and I was applying to colleges, my class size was 400. Unfortunately for me, everyone below me dropped out, so my class ranking went from top 10% to top 20%. My record was less special. I suspect CPS is similar. The smart folks that move out before their kids reach Kindergarten continue to do so and the ones that stick around live in the few neighborhood with great schools or are enrolled in… Read more »
You are a particularly creative thinker, though. To what do you attribute it?
Take a ride southwest along interstate 55, exit at Weber Road either North or South and work your way back to Chicago through Will or DuPage Counties. Nothing but new homes, warehouses and manufacturing. The area is still prosperous but the big city is dying. CPS and CTU are but two of the self inflicted wounds.
As long as Chicago continues to attract their most lucrative profit center – young professionals without school-aged kids – it will be fine. But if the yuppies ever decide to eschew the city altogether, look out.
The anti-gentrifiers don’t have the resources to support the city lifestyle they expect, yet they don’t want the people who actually pay for those services anywhere near them.
I live out we’re you are talking about, prosperous depends on who you talk to property taxes are extremely high out this way the majority like anywhere else goes towards the public school district. Fortunately Romeoville is still a very safe village to live in crime is low but Chicago’s rip rap is starting to make the area and surrounding suburbs like Bolingbrook there new stomping grounds.
CPS enrollment has been declining steadily for a decade now. Why is this suddenly a good thing?
So much failure everywhere in Illinois that costs working families far, far more than what people are taxed for successes in other states.
And then there’s the Sun Times, and the Tribune, and Gannett’s Illinois’ “home town” rags and the network news stations that just keep trying to find ways to claim that “on the other hand” a hair on the sow’s ear is really going to turn into a silk purse, and life in Illinois really isn’t that bad.
The pipe dream of raising children in the big city has disappeared. This is reflected in both declining CPS enrollment and increasing suburban enrollment. My sleepy bedroom suburb is bursting at the seams with families and children. The fall youth football, soccer and cheer programs, established decades ago, have some of their largest participation in recent history, as parents are fleeing the city for suburban enclaves. Even my elementary school is bursting at the seams with one of the largest enrollments ever. There is a baby bust out there, with decreased fertility, but the suburbs seem to be benefiting from… Read more »
Another article from Wirepoints with data/facts that most Dem voters will ignore or never know. Many will however be aware of the SunTimes article. Wirepoints is all about the future of Illinois. Any way you look at it, it’s bad. It’s really bad with little reason for hope. The reason people are leaving is they recognize the ditch it has dug is already too deep. Even if the next election put sincere, honest, smart people into leadership, the states ability to change course while carrying so much debt would be extremely difficult. Additionally, everyone benefiting from the status quo will… Read more »
Everyone who says they can’t leave because of job or family really needs to do a 10 year projection on their finances to see how much of a hole Illinois is putting them in. Many people will never recover financially from what Illinois does to them. For example, I would have paid at least $100,000 in property taxes if I had stayed in Illinois, but here in North Carolina I’ll pay at most $20,000 over the next 10 years. My house in NC is way bigger, my lot is now 1 acre, and I get to look at mountains everyday.… Read more »
Glad there a few others that can do math and reach obvious conclusion. Hope all continues to go well for you in NC and my family in Tennessee.
My best to you and your family. I first started looking in TN but ended up on the other side of the Smokies in NC.
Same thing for us in SC. Bigger house, bigger lot, yet saving $10K/year property taxes, another $2K in homeowners and auto insurance, only 7% sales tax, gas never got above $4/gal. People are more calm, more friendly, more helpful, probably because they don’t have the weight of all the taxes, crime, and corruption in IL. Saw Lightfoot is raising property taxes, now taxing streaming services like Netflix, and put up 1800 more parking meters. They like to say it’s only a couple bucks a day, the cost of a beef sandwich. Death by a thousand cuts.
Good points. On top of all the many benefits of this region, the people are just great. I know more of my neighbors than I did in DuPage, and I would rather associate with my independent-minded Southern neighbors than most people in DuPage.
Tough Love,
I can personally attest that those people who could have gotten out of Detroit (think late 60s to mid 70s) but waited “too” long spent the rest of their lives trying to get back to where they were financially from a housing equity perspective.
Many never fully recovered “housing wise” and went to their graves financially impared. There’s a reason (not necessarily good) you could buy a house in Detroit for a dollar. I’ll assure Wirepoints readers that none of you would consider living in one of those $1 Detroit homes something to aspire to.