Citing “Equity”, Chicago Will Close Some of the Top Schools in the Country

 Ahead of the Chicago mayoral election, I warned Brandon Johnson was 100% beholden to the teacher’s union. Unfortunately, I was correct.

“Equity” Reimagined

Mayor Johnson vows to close down Chicago’s nation-leading selective public schools. It’s a case of “Equity” Reimagined in the Windy City

Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson’s December 14 decision to eliminate the city’s 11 selective public high schools, which use standardized tests to determine student admissions, is the latest example of this new notion of equity at play.

The Windy City’s selective public high schools are among the star institutions of the American education system. U.S. News & World Report ranks Walter Payton College Preparatory High School, for example, not only as the top public high school in Chicago and the top high school in Illinois, but also as the tenth-best school in the nation. Northside College Preparatory High School, Jones College Preparatory High School, Young Magnet High School, and Lane Technical High School all follow close behind.

Under the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) school-choice system, eighth-graders can apply for admission to any of the city’s public high schools, as opposed to having to enroll in their neighborhood school. Students can rank up to six selective-enrollment schools and 20 other choices. The first 30 percent of seats at the selective public high schools go to the city’s top-scoring students, while the remaining 70 percent get divided among four socioeconomic tiers. In this second round, offers of admission go to the top-scoring students within each tier. As a result of CPS’s school-choice system, 76 percent of students attend a high school that is not located in their neighborhood, with many vying for a spot at one of the city’s 11 selective-enrollment schools.

Mayor Johnson, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, and the Chicago Teachers Union, of which the mayor used to be a member and a labor organizer (and which donated over $2.3 million to his campaign fund), blame the school-choice system for the “long-standing challenges and opportunity gaps” that afflict Chicago’s “Black and Latinx students” in particular. “This is the foundation,” a recent CPS Board of Education resolution stated, “upon which our current school choice system was built—an under-resourced system that has pitted schools against each other and has had the effect of sorting students based on performance outcomes and selective admissions criteria, which ultimately reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity.” Johnson and his colleagues plan to eliminate CPS’s school-choice system—including the selective public high schools—within the next five years, at which point students will be required to enroll in their neighborhood schools.

Consider Brooks College Preparatory Academy. At this selective public high school in Chicago, 79.3 percent of students are black, and 46.6 percent of students are Hispanic. Of Brooks’s black students, 60.7 percent are proficient in English Language Arts (ELA), 46.5 percent are proficient in math, and 80.9 percent are proficient in science. For black students in the district at large, these numbers are 16.5 percent, 8.1 percent, and 24.4 percent, respectively. And while 71.7 percent of Brooks’s Hispanic students are proficient in ELA, 56.7 percent are proficient in math, and 82.1 percent are proficient in science, for the district, those numbers are 21.2 percent, 13.6 percent, and 35.6 percent, respectively.

The student body of Walter Payton College Preparatory High School is only 9 percent black and 24.4 percent Hispanic, but—contrary to what CPS officials contend—that hasn’t kept these minority students from thriving, particularly when compared with peers at regular district schools. At Payton, 51.7 percent of black students are proficient in ELA; 48.3 percent are proficient in math; and 76 percent are proficient in science. For the school’s Hispanic students, these numbers are 81.7 percent, 73.2 percent, and 90.8 percent, respectively. Chicago’s other selective public high schools tell a similar story.

Mediocrity, not excellence, perpetuates gaps in educational outcomes for marginalized students; lowered standards rob the gifted and the driven of opportunities to succeed. If Johnson follows through with his plans, Chicago’s underprivileged youth will pay the highest price.

What Equity in Chicago Means

• More money will be siphoned off for a corrupt teachers union who clearly don’t give a damn about the kids.
• Taxes will go up to support teachers who cannot teach.
• It won’t be mediocre results as the article proclaims. Rather it will be piss poor performance all around.

In the name of “equity” no student will have a god chance get ahead.

Lori Lightfoot Asks Teachers to Encourage Students to Help Her Win Reelection

On January 13, ahead of the election, then mayor Lori Lightfoot Asks Teachers to Encourage Students to Help Her Win Reelection

Loti Lightfoot was caught offering an “externship program” in which students could earn “class credit” for helping to get her reelected in a 9 person race. It was my hoot of the day.

Hoot of the Day

Lightfoot ran for mayor in 2019 on a platform promising to root out corruption at City Hall and toughen the city’s ethics regulations in an attempt to break the grip of the city’s “corrupt political machine.”

Lightfoot should be locked up, but won’t be. Nonetheless, you can kiss her goodbye. It’s a 9-person race and she will not be one of the final two.

But don’t expect anything in Chicago to improve, because it won’t. I suspect many of the other candidates are even worse. One is from the teacher’s union, guaranteed to be no improvement. 

I apologize. I should have said “guaranteed to be worse“.

The mayoral winner, Brandon Johnson, was a “legislative coordinator” for CTU. He was hand-picked by the union to run for mayor.

After the election, one of my readers commented “Mish, After the results of Chicago’s mayoral race, you must be relieved that you don’t live in Illinois any more. The voters of Chicago have just proven that a bad situation can always get worse.“

Indeed.

Meanwhile, this is what the union leaders are doing.

• CTU President Stacy Davis Gates picked a parochial high school for her own son so he could pursue athletics and academics unavailable at his public school.
• Illinois Education Association chief lobbyist Sean Denney failed to shackle private schools with the same statewide pandemic mandates public schools followed, yet sends his children to a parochial school in Springfield.

Paid by the Union While Campaigning

The Illinois Policy Institute comments on CTU Funding for Johnson.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was questioned during his campaign about whether he would be able to separate himself as mayor from his then-employer, the Chicago Teachers Union. He never answered the question.

Records filed by CTU in October with the U.S. Department of Labor show the union paid Johnson $75,014 during its fiscal year, which did not end until June 30, 2023. Johnson announced his bid for mayor on Oct. 27, 2022.

Unless he was paid his entire salary of $75,000 from July 1 through Oct. 31 – at more than $18,500 a month – CTU continued to pay him while he was busy campaigning.

Being paid by a special interest group with something to gain by his election – coupled with his failure to explicitly distance himself from CTU – doesn’t bode well for Chicagoans.

Now he will be sitting across the table from his former CTU colleagues when they negotiate a new contract in 2024. Elected leaders should represent taxpayers and be a neutral arbiter of what’s fair. But the tight relationship between Johnson and the CTU effectively places CTU on both sides of the bargaining table.

Then within the first month of his inauguration, Johnson expanded the current parental leave policy for Chicago Public Schools teachers to up to 12 weeks when it had been from six to eight weeks. That expansion, which did not go through the typical bargaining process, was announced in a joint statement by the city and CTU.

I Despise the Teachers’ Unions

I absolutely despise Teachers’ Unions, especially in Illinois. They hold kids hostage for unjustified wages and benefits and the union protects incompetent teachers, even child molesters.

Chicago Teachers’ Union President Stacy Davis Gates will not send her own kid to public schools. Nor will Illinois Education Association chief lobbyist Sean Denney.

Letter by Franklin D. Roosevelt on Public Unions

Please consider a few key snips from FDR’s Letter on the Resolution of Federation of Federal Employees Against Strikes in Federal Service, August 16, 1937, emphasis mine.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that “under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government.”

Not Just Chicago

On November 13, I noted School Choice Dies in Illinois, Congratulations Teachers as 35% Read at Grade Level

Scores for public schools were just released and showed only 35% of students in grades 3 through 8 could read at grade level in 2023, according to the Illinois Report Card. Only 27% met proficiency in math.

High school juniors taking the SAT posted similar proficiency: 32% could read and 27% do math at grade level.

What Equity is Really About

In the name of “equity” the teacher’s union and Gov. J.B. Pritzker killed scholarships for 9,600 poor children.

That’s how deep rot is in Illinois. Offering a chance for even 9,600 kids to get ahead is too much for the unions to handle.

The teachers do not want anyone to get ahead because it will show just how bad they are. But they cannot admit that. So they seek to eliminate any evidence of how bad they are by closing every good public school they can.

That’s what’s really going on. And they hide behind “equity” punishing innocent kids seeking to get ahead to hide their own incompetence and greed.

Congratulations to Everyone from Illinois Who Left

On December 21, I offered Congratulations to Everyone from Illinois Who Left

For the 10th consecutive year, Illinois lost population. Only West Virginia was worse.

Expecting Change is Madness

Anyone who thinks Illinois will change is delusional.

The only escape from Illinois madness is by leaving Illinois. Just don’t go to states equally bad if not worse, especially California, but also New York and New Jersey.

Do It For the Kids

Get the hell out of Illinois, especially Chicago, as soon as you can.

As the teachers say, do it for the kids. Except this time, it really will be for the kids (and yourself too). Illinois is madness from both a tax and education standpoint.

Totally corrupt unions run Chicago and the whole damn state. No change is in sight. Leave now. If for no other reason, do it for the kids.

https://mishtalk.com/economics/citing-equity-chicago-will-close-some-of-the-top-schools-in-the-country/