Trapped in a death spiral: Chicago Public School spending hits record $29K per student as enrollment shrinks, outcomes plummet – Wirepoints

By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

The arguments for tearing apart Chicago Public Schools and replacing it with a universal school choice program continue to pile higher. The system is an abject failure any way you cut it. 

Families are fleeing in record numbers as another 9,000 students left the district this school year. In all, student enrollment has dropped by 120,000 over the last two decades. 

Reading proficiency for minorities, already dismal before Covid, collapsed by more than 30 percent last year compared to 2019. Only 11 percent of black students and 17 percent of Hispanic children in the entire district could read at grade level in 2021.

Taxpayers are being forced to pay ever more for the district’s failure, with all-in costs now just shy of $30,000 per student. Four years ago it was just $20,000. 

Not to mention that corruption and union excesses – remember the strikes and walkouts in 2019, 2021 and 2022 – have only entrenched themselves more deeply as things have gotten worse.

There are really no legitimate arguments left for keeping the system intact. The “public good” argument falls flat considering the district’s abysmal results. And the argument for “community schools” is fizzling, too, as schools empty out from shrinking enrollments. A third of CPS schools are not even half-full, while some are at just a quarter of capacity, 

For sure we need to make the obligatory case that there are many good teachers, students, schools and administrators at CPS. Of course there are. But for every success story at CPS, there are what, 8 or 9 examples of failure? Whatever the precise ratio, the system can’t and shouldn’t be defended. 

Any defense simply keeps kids trapped in a broken system. And that only perpetuates the cycle of more families looking for choices outside Chicago.

Here are the details:

Fewer and fewer parents want what CPS has to offer.

The district’s announcement that enrollment shrunk by another 9,000 students this school year means CPS has shrunk a total of 27 percent over the last two decades. In 2003, the district had 439,000 students. Today, enrollment is down to 321,000. 

What’s worse, the losses are accelerating. Since 2017, the district has averaged a student loss of almost 3 percent yearly. 

Student achievement is falling toward single-digits.

What’s most damning about the entire system is its absolute embrace of “social promotion” – the process by which students are automatically moved on to the next grade whether they can read or not. Just look at the grade-by-grade performance for blacks below. No more than 14 percent of black students throughout the entire system could read at grade level in 2021. The numbers for Hispanics are only slightly better.

It doesn’t matter, say the district and the unions. Just move them on and graduate them. Last year, Mayor Lightfoot celebrated CPS’ 84 percent graduation rate, the district’s record high.

It’s a system that fundamentally doesn’t care about where students end up.

Taxpayers are being forced to pay increasingly more for a failing system.

Total costs for taxpayers have jumped by nearly 40 percent in just four years, to nearly $30,000 per student.

In this case, we’re not using the Illinois Report Card’s misleading financial numbers, which show just $17,800 in operational spending per student in 2020.

Instead, we’re taking CPS’ total budget – the full amount that taxpayers put into CPS – and dividing it by enrollment. CPS plans to spend $9.4 billion in the 2023 school year on 321,000 students. That comes out to $29,307 per student – a new record.

Just four years ago the district spent $7.5 billion on an enrollment that was 40,000 students higher. Then, the total taxpayer cost was just under $21,000 per student.

CTU power-plays and district corruption continue.

It’s not an overstatement to say the CTU remains the most militant union in the country. The union’s strike over “the most generous contract in CPS history” and its walkout over CPS’ reluctance to impose draconian Covid mitigations is evidence enough of that. Wirepoints covered both in our WSJ editorial Why the Chicago Teachers Union Always Gets What It Wants

The CTU is used to getting what it wants – no matter the cost to students. Gov. Pritzker, for his part, made things worse by granting the union even more negotiating powers in 2019. For years, CTU had to make due bargaining over salaries and related benefits. The bill Pritzker signed restored the union’s power to negotiate over all labor conditions. 

Then there’s the corruption. Former CPS CEO Barbra Byrd-Bennett spent time in federal prison for steering contracts to a former employer. And another former CEO Forest Claypool had to resign under a cloud of ethics violations.

Add to that the district’s wide-ranging sexual abuse scandal involving more than 520 investigated cases of juvenile sexual assault and abuse in Chicago’s schools over the last decade, plus a host of other corruption cases, and the evidence for a complete reboot of Chicago education becomes overwhelming.

School Choice is the future

Chicago politicians and the Chicago Teachers Union have proven time and again they can’t run schools for the purpose of learning and for preparing students for college or a career. Not the Daley’s, not Rahm Emanuel and not Lori Lightfoot. They’ve all had their chance – you only need to look at the data over the years to see how they’ve failed. 

New politicians, regardless of party, won’t be any better. Neither will a break up of the district into several pieces run by separate charter school operators. That’s the same system under a different name. 

CPS as a whole is unfixable. The pols and the unions need to be kicked out and the power and control given to parents. Vouchers, Education Savings Accounts – whatever cuts out the bureaucrats and the unions and puts parents back in control. The outcomes can’t be worse than they are today.

Detractors will warn that teachers will lose their jobs, that school buildings will go empty, that kids will be lost in the cracks. 

But all that’s already happening under the current system. It’s why more and more families are looking for choices outside Chicago.

The reality is universal school choice in Chicago will give parents a reason to stay – and for others to move into the city. More school options means a more thriving Chicago. And that means more schools, more teaching jobs and more opportunities. 

How much more damage needs to be done to children – and how many more families need to flee – before Chicagoans demand the alternative?

Read more from Wirepoints:

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Shaun
1 year ago

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Last edited 1 year ago by Shaun
Stewie the Roof Baby
1 year ago

Only 11% of black CPS students can read at grade level. The CPS instruction plans must have been designed by the KKK. Lori and the CTU have achieved the KKK’s dream of keeping blacks illiterate. Lori and the CTU should get the KKK’s lifetime achievement award

candy.neuman
1 year ago

Racial profiling? I know for sure that a lot of white children read below grade level. WHY are they excluded? Are you saying it’s because they’re black or Hispanic? Your article is BULLSHIT. If you’re going to stir the Shit Pot have the Balls to lick the spoon.

ProzacPlease
1 year ago
Reply to  candy.neuman

My, what an eloquent analysis. A proud CPS grad?

Platinum Goose
1 year ago
Reply to  ProzacPlease

Could be a CTU leach.

Pat S.
1 year ago
Reply to  candy.neuman

Putting aside your rude comment, don’t you recognize the core problem? This is far from racial profiling and is not a judgment based on skin color – it’s ISBE statistics.

This is an indictment of the system’s poor performance … it’s no reflection on the children.

Pouring more time and resources into CPS/CTU is not going to benefit students – after all, “no child is left behind” in social promotion, much to students’ and society’s detriment.

Eugene from a payphone
1 year ago
Reply to  candy.neuman

Looking beyond the humorous crudeness, the middle class abandoned the public schools decades ago. Those children left there are not enriched or encouraged at home. Or if they are, the daily chaos of their classrooms makes it very hard to reach the “at grade level” standard. Too many problems at CPS to justify any thing but dissolution.

debtsor
1 year ago

I disagree. CPS is functioning exactly as intended. CPS has a “…83.8 percent, up by nearly 27 percentage points from 2011 when the rate was 56.9 percent…” The transition from the 3 R’s to woke indoctrination during the late Obama and Trump administration has been wildly successful beyond the administration’s wildest dreams.

Aaron
1 year ago
Reply to  debtsor

That means it’s working indeed

jajujon
1 year ago
Reply to  candy.neuman

With all the hype around social justice, one would think that calling out the minority child education abuse conducted by the school district and the union would be praised. Instead, rage is blind. Do your homework, Candy. For the 2020-2021 school year, the CPS student population was 46.7% Hispanic, 35.8% black, 11% white, 4.4% Asian. One could infer from these numbers that whites are also poorly taught, unless of course the teachers are all racist and are tutoring white kids on their spare time. (So you don’t set your hair on fire, there is no proof of that.) Your opinion… Read more »

Aaron
1 year ago
Reply to  candy.neuman

If you wan to anger a liberal tell the truth. If you want to anger a conservative tell a lie. Only liberals consider factual statements political. Facts are not political. Question: do only 11% of Chicago black students read at grade level?

Pensions Paid First
1 year ago
Reply to  Aaron

Illinois public pensions will continue to be paid. Pensions are first in line along with debt to get paid. Taxes will continue to increase to pay for those pensions. Think higher income tax rates, eventual progressive taxes, service taxes, retirement taxes, etc… When tax revenue can no longer be raised, then and only then will pensioners receive a small cut. Think Detroit pensions cut by 5.5% If you were able to cut pensions 15 years from now, that 120k pension today will be 187k per year in the future. These are all factual statements that seem to anger so called… Read more »

JimBob
1 year ago

How can any prediction about the future be classified as “the truth?” Philsophers and peasants are groping for your truth and my truth. Las Vegas would perhaps give good odds that $ will be paid in the future but Jim Jones and those who relied on him learned differently. And, no I’m not saying that you should be classified with JJ or with A. Hitler or others who made long-term predictions. The beleagured residents of Sanibel Island probably counted on the property value appreciation predicted by the realtors. You left federal bailouts off your list. However judicial adherence to precedents… Read more »

Aaron
1 year ago

Until a judge says different.

Pensions Paid First
1 year ago
Reply to  Aaron

You mean the same judge that also gets a pension? lol

debtsor
1 year ago

I’ve heard rumors from people involved in the pension system that TRS is actually starting to buy people out with lump sums to off-set some of those future increases. The guy telling me the story was a little tipsy during the Bears pregame but that was the gist of the story.

JimBob
1 year ago

Public employee unions and Vlad Putin have the same sort of power — the power to screw things up big-time. Or, as you hint, the power to elect judges. And you also hint that the outcome of bargaining is also power-based. Whether power leads to the ruination of Illinois or the destruction of Western Europe is currently unpredictable. Good advocates combine power with cynicism and irony.

Marie
1 year ago

This is not an issue that more money can fix. This is an issue the teachers Union has to fix with the money they already have… because they have plenty of it.

jajujon
1 year ago
Reply to  Marie

The status quo has been quite profitable and unaccountable for the CTU. Don’t hold your breath that the light bulb will shine and altruism will overtake them.

Last edited 1 year ago by jajujon
Aaron
1 year ago

$29k? Those are rookie numbers. Let’s go for $60,000 ! #unionstrong

JackBolly
1 year ago
Reply to  Aaron

CPS is aiming to be #1 in union featherbedding. That’s something for Illinois to be proud of.p

Old Joe
1 year ago

Once again folks — Don’t ever confuse a government required Democratic Party jobs program with education.

JackBolly
1 year ago

Pritzker is more concerned with kids wee wee’s than the complete lack of academic achievement in the state taxpayer supported CPS. Any normal Gov would be using his executive powers to change this status quo of complete failure.

Honest Jerk
1 year ago

Obviously, the taxpayers aren’t doing their part and should pay a lot more.

ToughLove
1 year ago

Only 11 percent of black students and 17 percent of Hispanic children in the entire district could read at grade level in 2021.

Coincidentally, 11% of Black parents and 17% of Hispanic parents care. Not really, but I bet it’s not far from the truth.

JackBolly
1 year ago
Reply to  ToughLove

The ones that do care have moved on.

ProzacPlease
1 year ago
Reply to  ToughLove

Most of the parents are themselves products of this pathetic education system. Why would you expect anything different from them? It all goes back to the education system.

ToughLove
1 year ago
Reply to  ProzacPlease

Even if parents cared, they don’t help kids because they can’t help, and thus another generation of future physical laborers is produced by CPS.

debtsor
1 year ago
Reply to  ToughLove

My son attends a ‘good’ school district and I can’t help him with his homework either because common core uses an entirely foreign and convoluted method of instruction. Common core uses overly complicated terms for simple concepts like ‘add’ and ‘subtract’ and the curriculum focuses on poorly word problems instead of numbers. Some of the questions are so poorly written there is no correct answer. Don’t even get me started on the nonsensical progressive curriculum in the language arts and social studies classes, that again, uses the foreign language of common core, requiring students to respond in a certain way.… Read more »

ProzacPlease
1 year ago
Reply to  debtsor

Yep, the schools are nothing but woke madrasas.

ToughLove
1 year ago
Reply to  debtsor

Helps explain why corporations look overseas for qualified job candidates.

Confused
1 year ago
Reply to  ToughLove

At this point in the cycle, the primary lesson CPS/CTU should be delivering is abstinence, contraception and sterilization. At least until the CTU reinvents its strategy to improve achievement/outcomes for the current demographic.

Willowglen
1 year ago
Reply to  ToughLove

A progressive teacher in Oakland California is saying enough is enough and with others is demanding that the system return to phonics. He freely concedes that phonics were rejected because the teachers did not enjoy teaching phonics because it required discipline and smacked of white privilege. Note the science has been settled on phonics for years. To his credit, the Oakland teacher realized that a system which pumps out no more than 19 percent proficient is both a tragedy and in a sense racist. He deems it utterly unsustainable. His eureka moment? His friend was in prison and very concerned… Read more »

Confused
1 year ago
Reply to  Willowglen

Phonics is important–however, syntax and standard English conventions are even more so in the science of reading. Students cannot access academic language and read complex texts if they do not understand the basic rules of English syntactic structures and grammar.

Rick
1 year ago

A complete and utter failure on the part of CTU, CPS and city hall. And the schadenfreude part of the whole thing is that CPS, CTU and city hall are all woke democrats, birds of a feather, all three tow the party line, beautiful. They own this train wreck, 100%.

Old Spartan
1 year ago

Where do I hear or read about this in any of the mainstream media? Nowhere of course. Great work again, Wirepoints.

And if the black and Hispanic voters in Chicago keep electing the same folks once next time around, shame on them for what they are doing to their own kids. But they are getting what they deserve. No one to blame but themselves.

bross
1 year ago

3…2…1…here come the racist barkers…

debtsor
1 year ago
Reply to  bross

LOL here come the icky progressives.

NB
1 year ago

It’s my understanding the 9,000 student drop in enrollment this year is still just ST/ WBEZ estimate? CPS still hasn’t relaesed the official #s

The Paraclete
1 year ago
Reply to  NB

Hilarious, they’ll delay the actual enrollment count until after they’ve gotten the story straight. The decline is a good thing taking the long view. Dynamic and focused learning experience for all. They’re still trying to figure out the Holiday home Covid testing.

Stewie the Roof Baby
1 year ago
Reply to  NB

How can CPS release numbers when they can’t count?

nixit
1 year ago
Reply to  NB

20th Day enrollment numbers usually aren’t released until late October.

ProzacPlease
1 year ago

Excellent article. The current system, CPS and the CTU are impossible to defend. Every Democrat candidate for mayor and governor should be forced to defend the indefensible. And Republicans should be shouting from the rooftops, especially emphasizing that minorities are left with nothing, while CPS employees can look forward to a cushy retirement.

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