8 Comments - Anonymous - Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 11:36 am: == “Once again, Gov. Rauner is relegating poor minority children to a second-class education,” == Actually, you and your fellow Chicagoans have been doing that for decades, Forrest… - Former Hoosier - Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 12:05 pm: The New York Times recently wrote an extensive story about the Sizemore charter school. According to the story, Sizemore students have been underperforming for awhile and the school had previously been placed on remediation status. According to the 2015 (common core) test results, 3rd thru 8th grade students from Sizemore scored, on average, in the 18th percentile in reading and the 8th percentile in math. As a point of reference, the average score of 3rd thru 8th graders in CPS schools= 48th percentile in reading and 52nd percentile in math. I don’t think this was a “random” action by CPS. I think it was an action taken against a charter school whose test scores clearly demonstrate a severe deficit in their students knowledge. The schools’ defense is that 97% of their students live in poverty. Fair enough- that’s a monumental challenge. However, I volunteered at a CPS school that had a 98% poverty rate and a high proportion of homeless students and students who did not speak english. Despite these multiple challenges, their students far surpassed the scores received by the Sizemore students. Standardized test scores don’t tell us everything about a school and its students, however, test scores in the 18th and 8th percentile tell us volumes about what is going wrong at Sizemore. - Maximus - Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 12:43 pm: So I didn’t do the research yet but aren’t there non-charter schools in CPS that are just as bad in test scores? If schools are going to be closed due to underperforming then there should be a whole bunch of other schools joining Sizemore in closing their doors. - Juvenal - Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 1:53 pm: For goodness sake! Read the school report card for Betty Shabazz A 10 percent high school graduation rate, only 3% of students college-ready, most students don’t even graduate with the skill set necessary to hold down a minimum wage job. - NSideLady - Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 2:03 pm: These charters are now being held to the same standards as the public schools. I think Sizemore has a lot going for it, but they simply are not demonstrating student growth or acceptable student performance. Here is the NYT article referenced: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/us/poor-scores-leave-an-afrocentric-school-in-chicago-vulnerable.html?_r=0 - Quality charters supporter - Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 2:53 pm: Not a shock, but the Sun-Times got it wrong (again). CPS didn’t notify the affected charters they were on a potential closing list a month after adopting a new policy. The schools were already on a two-year warning list. State law requires such charters to be closed if, after this period of academic failure, they fail to implement a remediation plan, which is what happened here. - Carhartt Representative - Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 2:57 pm: =So I didn’t do the research yet but aren’t there non-charter schools in CPS that are just as bad in test scores? If schools are going to be closed due to underperforming then there should be a whole bunch of other schools joining Sizemore in closing their doors.= Have you ever heard of Arne Duncan? They’ve been closing “poor performing” CPS schools for over a decade, but few if any do as poorly as these charters. Charter schools are costing CPS over $700 million a year and these schools will now be getting more money under the commission than they would have under CPS. Chicago’s population is shrinking, but they keep building more and more of these schools. There are thousands of empty seats in the charters, but they bleed of resources at an alarming rate. - Due Process for All Students - Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 7:36 pm: To put the facts out there. Schools were officially notified that they were being put on remediation in December 2014. Remediation plans were submitted in January 2015 and then the schools were told they were closing in October 2015 even though scores went up in two of the schools. Don’t get me wrong, the schools are not performing well academically, however, the schools were left unaccountable for years without any proper oversight. Even with remediation plans submitted do you think cps even did a site visit before moving to close the schools. Systemically it was a failure. Any school closure should require a more rigorous remediation process. It wasn’t until the night before this meeting when CPS knew commission staff was recommending keeping the schools open that they offered to beef up their plan to help relocate all of the displaced students. Parents and students have no faith in the system. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.